This came as a surprise to me, and I just checked Finnish Evangelic Lutheran church's website, if there were information about it. I would be very amazed, if even 1% of Lutherans believed that commuinon was something else than just a symboilc ritual (at least in Nordic countries, which is understandable, as most of them aren't religious anyway). The official doctrine of church is of course a different thing, and I didn't find anything definitive about it. I'll see if there's some place where people can ask.
There's often a difference - sometimes a big difference - between what people "officially" believe (according to their church's statement of faith) and what they "actually" believe. I doubt you'll find many Anglicans who think that all pub owners are damned, for example (it's in the 33rd of the 39 Articles). In this case, I think
the Augsburg Confession is fairly basic for all Lutheran churches, but it's a bit vague:
the Augsburg Confession said:
Article X: Of the Lord's Supper.
Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord; and they reject those that teach otherwise.
That rules out Zwinglianism (the elements are mere memorials) but it would be compatible with Calvinism (the body and blood are spiritually present, but the elements do not literally transform into them).
Luther's Small Catechism is a bit clearer in some ways:
Luther's Small Catechism said:
What is the Sacrament of the Altar?
It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself.
Where is this written?
The holy Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and St. Paul, write thus:
Our Lord Jesus Christ, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread: and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and gave it to His disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is My body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of Me.
After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Take, drink ye all of it. This cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the remission of sins. This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me.
This states that the body and blood are actually there "under" the bread and wine, which is basically consubstantiation. Luther personally placed a great deal of weight upon the words "This is my body" attributed to Jesus. When he and Zwingli were arguing about this he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the verse in big letters on the table between them. He tended to do that sort of thing quite often.
Continuing little
a question you (Plotinus) answered in the previous thread: Do christians think it is essential to repent your sins in order to avoid Hell? Why is it necessary? What counts as repenting?
I should think that most Christians think it essential, although as I've often said before, there is no single doctrine that I can think of that all Christians agree on, so statements in the form "Christians believe X" must always be taken with a pinch of salt (especially when uttered by Christians).
The word "repentance" translates the Greek word "metanoia" in the New Testament, which literally means a change of mind. So it's about completely changing your outlook on things, not simply saying you're sorry for something. And throughout the New Testament there is an idea that a true encounter with Jesus will produce such an effect; the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10 is the classic example. Perhaps more importantly, the notion of becoming a changed person is central to Paul's theology of salvation:
Romans 6:3-4 said:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
The idea is that sin is a sort of oppressive force that keeps people captive. The only way to escape from sin is to die, which is not very helpful. But Christ died and rose again. Paul believes that Christians are united to Christ in some mysterious way which means that what is true of Christ is true of Christians: they are one. So because Christ died, Christians have also died to sin. And because Christ rose again, Christians too will rise again after their physical deaths:
Romans 6:5-11 said:
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has any dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
This is why Paul says at the start of this passage:
Romans 6:1-2 said:
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in in?
So the point here is that repentance is not simply something that you have to do, for some obscure legal reason, in order to be saved, like a sort of precondition that God imposes upon people before letting them off hell. It is part of what salvation is. To be saved you must become one with Christ and die to sin, and this has ethical as well as metaphysical implications. Note, by the way, that Paul never talks about people having been saved: salvation always lies in the future for him. Christians have died with Christ, and they will rise with him and be saved.
In the light of all this it's rather striking that the Gospels don't portray Jesus as talking about repentance very much. John the Baptist seems to have made repentance a key part of his message, according to Matthew 3:2. Mark 1:15 portrays Jesus as preaching a similar message: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." But for the most part this summary of his teaching is not borne out in the rest of the material in the Gospels. The theme of repentance hardly appears in them. In fact some have argued that Jesus specifically did not call upon sinners to repent, and this explains why many people were annoyed at him. The Gospels portray people as criticising Jesus for spending his time with sinners; but they would not have been angry had he been trying to persuade those sinners to repent. The conclusion is that Jesus did not do so. No doubt he was pleased when they
did repent - he wasn't encouraging them to continue in their sinful ways - but he accepted them whether they repented or not.
Why are religious beliefs so deeply held?
You would have to ask a psychologist that, or consider your own most deeply held beliefs, whatever they may be, and think about what it is about them that makes you hold them deeply. I suspect that a lot of religious beliefs are deeply held because they form part of a person's self-identification, and people are more reluctant to give up beliefs about themselves than any other kind of belief.
