But it does not matter what you are concerned about. No Christian church until modern times has ever practiced open communion.
Even if that's so, it doesn't change the fact that the meal that Jesus himself instituted was one of radically open commensality. I'm fully on board with the proposition that the meal that Jesus instituted was corrupted very early in the Christian tradition (perhaps right about the time that the actual agape feast itself passed out of use in favor of the Eucharist as we'd recognize it today as a strictly liturgical ritual), but corrupted it certainly was.
The earliest Christian communities demonstrated a great deal of diversity on many matters, probably including their practices regarding the Lord's Supper. It wasn't until Augustine that a unified Christian tradition started to emerge, and the tradition that did emerge was saddled with all of Augustine's mistakes, which were many.
The issue in the Corinthian church was not an issue of people who wouldn't allow those who denied the Deity of Christ to commune with them but of people who were united in belief but divided economic situation.
Precisely so; this is what I've been saying all along. Nevertheless this is where respecting our place as bystanders and overhearers of the conversation between Paul and the Corinthians (well, Paul's half of it, anyway) can help us possibly learn something that's relevant to our own situation. The reason that Paul was furious about the Corinthians' communion practices was that those practices were not in keeping with the meal that Jesus himself instituted.
We need to go back to the Gospels to see what sort of meal Jesus himself did institute, and what we see there is that everybody was welcome, everybody had a place and everybody had their fill. Nobody was turned away from Jesus's table, nobody was seen as a lesser-than at it and nobody came away from it having received less than enough. It is certainly worthwhile for us to reflect on our own practices and ask ourselves whether they demonstrate fidelity to what Jesus instituted. Close(d) communion does not; it does not welcome all, offer everybody a place or ensure that all receive abundantly what is offered at the Lord's table.
I don't feel qualified to make judgment as to whether or not people are still experiencing physical death for partaking unworthily. I think they very well may be but that has no bearing on whether or not they were in Paul's day. If you are placing yourself in the position of corrector of Paul then I don't see how you can ever arrive at a correct interpretation.
A correct interpretation, as far as I'm concerned, is one that's faithful to what Paul himself actually meant. I can agree with Paul or disagree with him; I can take his words at face value or or recognize that he's often employing rhetorical devices. Agreement with Paul is not required for understanding him, though. Do you really mean to claim that it's only possible to interpret and understand a text correctly if you accept everything it says at face value? Well, why would anyone believe that? Or did you have something else in mind when you claimed that it's only possible to arrive at the correct interpretation of a text if one accepts the truth of its contents uncritically?
You are obviously going to discount anything that conflicts with your rationalistic worldview.
No, I'm going to seek to understand those things in such a way that they can be meaningful to modern hearers and readers. There's a huge difference between that and discounting.
I just don't see the point in being a Christian if we are going to explain all the miraculous events as being misinterpretations.
Yeah, I suppose if you were to assume that Christianity were primarily about miracle stories, then there certainly wouldn't be much point in being a Christian without literally believing in those stories. That's plainly obvious.
But what if, instead, being a Christian meant something like the following:
- Being a somebody in a world that tells you that you're a nobody;
- Being accepted in a community when others have turned you away;
- Having your worth and dignity affirmed when the rest of society stigmatizes you and looks down on you;
- Sharing and seeing to it that everybody's cared for in a world that lets too many people go without;
- Affirming the equal worth of all in a world that insists that some are more valuable and than others;
- Having the courage to live out God's empire as a radical alternative to the imperialism of human civilization?
Now, of course, that's a pretty different picture of what it means to be a Christian. It doesn't really seem to have much at all to do with the conception of Christianity as being primarily about individualistic, otherworldly, supernatural, personal salvation. But it definitely has a lot to do with what Jesus's own movement and ministry were actually about. It has to do with all of the above being an expression of the true nature of God's own self, and Jesus as the unique person who fully reveals to us that divine nature. When people encounter Jesus, that encounter fully reveals to us both what God is and who we were. In him, the implicit unity of God and humanity is made explicit through the concrete, historical event of the Incarnation, and that real historical event of the Incarnation has reconciled, once for all, God and the world. Now, if we have all of that, but no miracles (or any of the theodicy problems that come with them), that's OK by me.
so is there a way for the Communion in a Church that believes it to be symbolic..well is it possible for them to do it wrong? Also is it wrong to participate in a Communion that is being treated as symbolic? (oh..I think I remember the words now..ehh.. the "words of institution" ? oh well)
