The Supper, Rome, and Other Traditions
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Seven items. What arrives when someone in the class has a background, a friend, or a family.
The governing rule
Correct the doctrine; leave the person’s grandmother out of it. Nearly every question in this part comes attached to somebody the asker loves. A teacher who wins the point and loses the tone has taught nothing.
9. “If no more offering for sin is needed, what is the Lord’s Supper?”
Hebrews, Session Ten
Do say: It is not another offering. Christ was offered once and it is finished. The Supper doesn’t repeat that sacrifice — it delivers its benefit to you personally, which is why the words are for you. The one sacrifice happened. The Supper is how it reaches your particular mouth on a particular Sunday.
10. “How does this passage relate to the Catholic teaching about the Mass?”
Hebrews, Session Ten
Do not caricature. State the actual disagreement, plainly and once.
Do say: The disagreement is over whether the sacrifice is re-presented or applied. We say Christ was offered once, that it cannot and need not be repeated, and that the Supper distributes what that one offering accomplished. That’s a real difference and worth naming — and notice what it isn’t a difference about: both traditions confess that Christ’s body and blood are truly given.
Confessional ground: AC X on the true presence; Hebrews 9–10 on the once-for-all offering.
11. “Was the bread and wine of Melchizedek the Lord’s Supper?”
Genesis, Session Twelve
Do not say yes, even though the resonance is strong. The connection would rest on a shared pair of elements rather than on anything the text or an apostle draws.
Do say: No — and we should resist saying so, even though it is tempting. The Supper is instituted by Jesus in the upper room, with his own words joining his body and blood to the bread and the cup. Melchizedek’s bread and wine is provision and blessing for a returning warrior, brought out by a priest of God Most High.
Then give the concession, because it is true and it costs nothing: the church has always heard a foreshadowing here, and rightly — a priest-king who brings out bread and wine, and blesses. Hebrews reads Melchizedek as pointing to Christ for his priesthood. That is the real connection, and it is better than the one we just declined.
12. “Is the meal at Emmaus the Lord’s Supper?”
Genesis, Session One
Do say: Nobody can say for certain, and the church has read it both ways for a long time. What is certain is the shape — he takes, blesses, breaks, and gives, and they recognize him in it. Whether or not it was the Supper, Luke is telling us where the risen Christ is recognized: in the Word opened and the bread broken.
A teacher who says nobody knows here builds credit for the places where he says a thing is settled.
13. “The Roman Catholic Church says Peter was the first pope. How do we handle that?”
1 Peter, Session One
Do say: Read what he calls himself in his own letter. Not supreme pontiff — a fellow elder, writing alongside the men he’s addressing. Whatever the later office became, the man writing this letter did not describe himself as holding it. That’s not an insult to anyone; it’s just what the text says.
Then stop. This question invites a long detour and does not repay one.
14. “Is the ‘Sun of righteousness’ really Christ, and is Elijah really John the Baptist?”
The Twelve, Session Twenty-Two
Do say — and yes to both, on the New Testament’s own authority: Zacharias, filled with the Spirit, calls the Lord Jesus the dayspring from on high who gives light to those in darkness — the Sun of righteousness rising with healing. And Jesus says plainly of John the Baptist that this is Elijah who was to come. Not the old prophet returned in the flesh, but the promised forerunner in his spirit and power.
Both have apostolic warrant. This is a case where a teacher can be more confident than he expects — the connections are drawn in the New Testament, not by us.
15. “When Peter says ’elect,’ is he teaching predestination? Isn’t that a Reformed emphasis?”
1 Peter, Session One
Do not cede the word. This is the most common failure in the whole vein — a Lutheran teacher hearing elect and treating it as somebody else’s vocabulary.
Do say: It’s Peter’s word, in Peter’s letter, and it was ours long before it was anyone’s emphasis. What Lutherans decline to do is turn it into a system that runs both directions. Scripture says the saved are saved entirely by God’s choosing, and it says God desires all to be saved, and it never resolves the two for us. We confess both and stop where Scripture stops.