Session 3
Anglican Eucharistic Theology
Some case studies
Thomas Cranmer - 1489-1556
‘The force, the grace, the virtue,
the benefit of Christ’s body that
was crucified for us, and of his
blood that was shed for us, be
really and effectually present with
them that duly receive the
sacraments: but all this
understand of his spiritual
presence ... Nor no more is he
corporally or really present in the
due ministration of the Lord’s
Supper’ (Answer, 1844: 3)
thomas cranmer
‘As we see with our eyes and eat with our mouths very
bread, and see also and drink very wine, so we lift our
hearts unto heaven, and with our faith we see Christ
crucified with our spiritual eyes, and his flesh thrust through
with the spear, and drink his blood springing out of his side
with our spiritual eyes of faith’ (Answer, 1844: 317)
In Cranmer’s scheme Christ can only be present
(physically) in heaven and really present nowhere else in no
other way - such an empirical view prevents any real
presence on earth in the Eucharist
thomas cranmer
‘So that although we see and eat sensibly very
bread and very wine, and spiritually eat and drink
Christ’s flesh and blood, yet may we not rest there,
but lift our minds to the deity, without the which his
flesh availeth nothing, as he said himself’ (Answer,
1844: 317)
Earthly eating and drinking and heavenly
communion are two self-enclosed activities - no
realism - sign and signified separated
Nicholas Ridley c.1500-1555
‘The Lamb is in heaven, according
to the verity of the body: and here
he is with is in a mystery,
according to this power; not
corporally’ (Works, 1841: 248)
‘The heavenly Lamb is, as I
confess, on the Table, but by a
spiritual presence by grace, and
not after any corporal substance
of His flesh taken of the Virgin
Mary’ (249)
Nicholas Ridley
‘I grant that the priest holdeth the same thing, but
after another manner. She [Mary holding Christ in
her womb] did hold the natural body; the priest
holdeth the mystery of the body’ (251) sophisticated philosophical reflection - instantiation
of a universal nature? Reconsider Ridley?
In the Eucharist ‘we eat life and drink life’ receiving
‘the virtue of the very flesh of Christ’ (Examination,
1966: 314)
Richard Hooker c.1554-1600
Sacraments are ‘the
medicine that does cure the
world’ (V, lvii, 5)
‘The grace of the sacrament
is here as food which we eat
and drink’ (V, lxvii, 1)
For Hooker sacraments no
mere signs but confer grace
by participation in reality
the 1549 book of common Prayer
Retained much Catholic flavour words, canon, ornaments
epiclesis and anamnesis suggestive
of realism
‘bl+esse and sanc+tifie these thy
giftes and creatures of bread and
wyne, that they may be unto us the
bodye and bloude of thy most dearly
beloved Sonne Jesus Christ’
NB ‘may be unto us’ not ‘become’ as
in Sarum Missal
BUT in 1549 BCP
‘partaking’ of Holy Communion not bread/wine
‘offering’ related to prayers not gifts
Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving only
Oblation qualified with once offered
However - memorial of Christ made ‘with these
holy gifts’ of bread and wine
1552 Book of common prayer
Traditional aspects mostly
removed - more Reformed
theology
Canon broken up - no
epiclesis
Offering of thanks and praise
for a completed event
emphasised
1552 BCP
Institution narrative becomes central with bread
and wine consumed immediately - ministration
becomes focus of a faithful, heavenly and
spiritual reception
Words of administration less definite - ‘Take
eat/drink this’ without defining ‘this’
Thankful remembrance central rather than
presence, sacrifice, change
1559 book of common prayer
Words of administration combine
1549 and 1552
Ornaments Rubric restored: ‘And
the chancels shall remain as they
have done in times past ... such
ornaments of the Church, and of
the Ministers ... shall be retained,
and be in use, as were in this
Church of England by the
Authority of Parliament, in the
Second Year of the Reign of King
Edward the Sixth’ i.e. 1549
john (1703-1791) and charles (1707-1788)
wesley
John and charles wesley
1745 - published a collection of hymns called
‘Hymns on the Lord’s Supper’ - some excerpts are
useful
•
‘The tokens of thy dying love
•
O let us all receive
•
And feel the quickening Spirit move,
•
And sensibly believe’ (Hymn 30)
john and charles wesley
•
‘Draw near ye blood-bespeckled race,
•
And take what vouchsafes to give
•
The outward sign of inward grace,
•
Ordain’d by Christ Himself, receive:
•
The sign transmits the signified,
•
The grace is by the means applied’ (Hymn 71)
John and charles wesley
•
‘Come Holy Ghost, Thine influence shed
•
And realise the sign
•
Thy life infuse into the bread;
•
Thy power into the wine’ (Hymn 72)
John and charles wesley
•
‘We need not now go up to heaven,
•
to bring the long-sought Saviour down;
•
Thou art to all already given,
•
Thou dost even now Thy banquet crown:
•
And show Thy real presence here!’ (Hymn 116)
john and charles wesley
•
‘To Thee thy passion we present,
•
Who for our ransom dies
•
We reach by this great Instrument
•
Th’ eternal sacrifice.
•
The Lamb as crucified afresh
•
Is held out to Men,
•
The tokens of Blood and Flesh
•
Are on this Table seen’ (Hymn 126)
Edward pusey - 1800-1882
In his Lectures on Types and
Prophecies (1836) he argued for types
(particular signs) and archetypes
(signified universals) in a realist
framework saying:
‘God has appointed, as it were, a sort of
sacramental union between the type
and the archetype, so that the type
were nothing, except in so far as it
represents, and is the medium of
conveying the archetype to the mind, so
neither can the archetype be conveyed
except through the type’ (Lectures,
1836: 23)
Edward Pusey
Pusey’s Lectures
edward pusey
•
‘God has joined them together [type and
archetype], and man may not and cannot put
them asunder. We think ourselves in no danger
of the fleshy system [immoderate realism]
which clung to the type, without looking to the
archetype; but in truth, in looking to separate
the archetype from the type by this pseudospiritual system we are adding this error to that
which is more peculiarly our own’ (Lectures,
1836: 23)
incarnation central
•
‘For whereas the type never did exist for itself but
always bearing the character of the Archetype
impressed upon it, we by separating it therefrom, do
as thoroughly empty it of its meaning, as they who
saw nothing in it beyond its outward form. The
pseudo-spiritualist and the carnal man alike see in
the water, the bread and the wine nothing but the
bare element, and thereby each alike deprives
himself of the benefit intended for him: the carnal
would live on bread alone, the pseudo-spiritual
without it’ (Lectures, 1836: 23)
paul zahl
Works from a position
denying realism and what he
calls ‘objectification’
‘Bible religion knows nothing
about a God who can be
found out or made out from
our side of things’ (A Short
Systematic Theology, 2000:
5)
paul zahl
Describes the idea that ‘Christ is objectively present
in the “elements” of the eucharist’ as ‘thinking
equivalent to magical thinking’ (26) and comparable
to voodoo!
Reject sacramental principle in relation to
sacraments and idea that Christ is present through
words of the Bible (27-30)
Linguistic and sacramental objectification is a human
activity which God does not use
paul zahl
Christ is present in tangible manner of not at all ‘we live, rather, in the presence of his absence’ (35)
‘We are required to give up all ideas of sacred time
and space’ (30)
‘Objectification is out! God has never existed in
forms, save during a short period of time from
roughly 4 B.C. to A.D. 29. That period is unique and
cannot be repeated’ (33)
Christ known only by works of love
Catherine Pickstock
Rejects nominalist assumptions
which only look back to a dead
body in memory or text - ‘textual
calculus of the real’ (1998: 3)
Reject immoderate realism (or
what she calls ‘identical
repetition’) looking back to a
dead body - she calls this
necrophilia - love of dead body
(1998: xv)
Catherine Pickstock
Argues for ‘non-identical repetition’ (moderate
realism) where there is life in the present such
that there is ‘mediation of the transcendent in
and through the immanent’ (1998: 25)
Identical repetition (immoderate realism)
rejected - operates on ‘the assumption that by
reifying a quality one obtains access to its true
nature’ (1998: 104)
Catherine pickstock
True nature of quality only found in non-identical
repetition - not dependent on a particular but
rather ‘the presence of the infinite in the finite’
where ‘infinity does paradoxically invade the finite’
(1998: 66)
Western preference for writing over speech she
argues creates a ‘textual spacialization’ and a
corresponding ‘suppression of eternity’ (1998: 118)
catherine pickstock
Rejects both the immoderate realist drift in Catholicism of the Middle
Ages and the drift towards nominalism in Reformation
Argues for balance between 3 foci of:
historical body
sacramental body
ecclesial body
Too
closely associating
historical
and on
sacramental
leads
toexpense of
immoderate
realism
where
emphasis
dead
body
at
the
presence of Christ with people
Reformed theology in reaction lost the balance and emphasised a
nominalist separation with a merely thankful looking back to a past
and completed event, that is, the death of Christ at a point in time resulting in textual spacialization and love of dead body
catherine pickstock
So she argues for ‘a collapsing together of
sense and reference’ where there is ‘a faithful
trust in the bread and wine as disclosing an
invisible depth of Body and Blood’ (1999: 54)
Too much emphasis on ‘sense’ results in
immoderate realism
Too much emphasis on ‘reference’ results in
nominalism
Robert doyle
Rejects sacramental principle
‘Christ does not work in the world
by way of sacraments or signs,
but ... works directly, by his word’
(1998: 2)
‘We only participate in Christ in a
real and substantial way, by faith,
for he does not offer himself either
sacramentally or as a sacrament
but directly by his promise’ (1996:
14)
robert doyle
Doyle therefore denies what he calls
‘sacramental ontology’ and asserts a ‘word
ontology’ (1996: 12)
This subordinates sacrament to word by
assuming that word is God’s only way or
working in the world and sacraments function
merely to remind us of that
Rowan williams
‘Jesus “passes over” into the
symbolic forms of his own
word and gestures, a
transition into the vulnerable
and inactive forms of the
inanimate world’ (2000: 215)
Jesus also ‘passes over’ into
the ecclesial community so
that the community becomes
a new creation (2000: 218)
rowan williams
‘The eucharist hints at the paradox that
material things carry their fullest meaning for
human minds and bodies - the measuring of
God’s grace and of the common life thus
formed - when they are the medium of gift, not
instruments of control or objects of
accumulation’ (2000: 218)
conclusion
‘No adequate “catholic” sacramental vision can be
centred on and sustained by anything but the
living Word of God, and no adequate “reformed”
theology of the Word can rest content without
acknowledging and proclaiming the sacramental
embodiment in that word’ (Cowdell, 1996: 21)
The recognition of multiformity and the need for
dialogue within that multiformity is vital if the AET
is to have and maintain integrity