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Saturday, June 5, 2010

Answers to my four questions about communion:

These are four questions I asked a little over a week ago about communion, inviting reader participation to aid my thought process, again, I'm grateful for the responses.  I've aggregated the responses in order under each question (1) and then provided my own responses (2).  (Your welcome to either add your own responses or comment on the aggregations.)
  1. If you had to choose one theological word to describe communion which one would you choose?
    1. "Fellowship, Communion, Mutual-affirmation, Feast, Means-of-grace, Sacrament, Communion & Participation."
    2. Assurance
  2. What do you think happens during the Lord's Supper, above the surface (tangibly) and what happens below the surface (intangibly)?
    1. Eat together/ emotions, Consecrated meal / "nourished" by God's grace, Eat together / remember, Eat in context/ remember, Prayerfully eat / spiritual good, Eat together / receive by faith the spiritual body of Christ, Eats after exposition / union with Christ is strengthened by collective remembering, "community is encouraged / individuals are assured"
    2. Eat in context (tradition, word & prayer) / remembering has specific gospel effects
  3. Pretend that, all things considered, you were a faithful Christian for a year, but didn't have the Lord's Supper during that time, what would be the negative consequences?
    1. None but maybe a loss of emotional aspect, "imbalance in my spiritual equilibrium", "not sure", none, little but maybe similar to not singing for a year, "Spiritual dryness", loss of  fellowship of the church plus loss of an emotional aspect and same as not hearing the gospel for a year. 
    2. Similar to not attending church for a year.
  4. Which bit of the gospel is being primarily focused on during communion?
    1. All+sacrifice, sacrifice-resurrection-union, substitutionary-atonement, love-God-and-your-neighbour, death-and-person-of-Christ, all,  "eschatological-feast", "Christ's offer to us in his death, resurrection, ascension, and promise of return"
    2. Promise-of-return, subjective-persuasion-of-atonement, assurance-of-salvation and unity-with-church