(2 of 2)
After two days of examination, it was obvious that, try as it might, the committee could not reconcile its views with Pastor Crist's. Its verdict: guilty of nine of the 14 charges. Recommendation: immediate suspension from the ministry.
Unheeded Pleas. The Rev. Paul Wagner Roth, 77-year-old committee chairman, pleaded with Crist: "We all would be most happy if you could make the supreme sacrifice of your intellectual doubts and differences as a bearer of the Cross and a follower of Christ."
But Pastor Crist would not recant, instead announced that he was determined to continue voicing his views as a teacher. Then, his status as pastor uncertain until the general synod meets in Milwaukee next May to take final action on his case, he took off with his family for a vacation in northern Wisconsin.
* Luther rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, i.e., that the substance of bread and wine is' changed into the body and blood of Christ while the appearance remains the same, but believed in the real presence through consubstantiation, i.e., that the body and blood of Christ coexist with the substance of bread and wine. Some followers held that he later rejected consubstantiation as well. Today Lutherans generally believe that Christ is present in the Lord's Supper "sacramentally and supernaturally."