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Close Communion, Stephen Bartelt

Master of Divinity Thesis

The scope of-this study, rather, is to see where the Lutheran church has stood on the practice, as well as its reasons for standing where it has. Within these limits, furthermore, no claim is laid to the comprehensiveness of the treatment. The material presented is selective. The excursion into the practice of the early church was included for two reasons. First, the study Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries by Werner Elert indicates that the practice of closed communion was maintained in the early church for some of the same reasons it was practiced among Lutherans. Secondly, …