In reading Arthur Kay’s piece I did enjoy learning about Free Church of England eucharistic doctrine and piety, and I was glad to learn about the theological architecture that upholds them. I did not enjoy Kay’s treatment of Church of England eucharistic doctrine and piety. This treatment tells us a great deal more about the Free Church of England’s self-understanding, but it shows little interest in pursuing the logic that underlies the idiosyncratic approach of historic Anglicanism. In the brief space allotted me I will simply make a few notes which I hope will fill in some of the gaps.
The first question that needs to be answered is whether Christians encounter God when they gather to worship. The answer here must be yes–”For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). More complex is the question of the mode of His presence–”how” He shows up. For the architect of the English Reformation, Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), the two dominant modes of Divine presence are the reading and exposition of the Word of God (his disciple Richard Hooker calls these the two ways of preaching) and the celebration of Holy Communion. Cranmer calls his eucharistic service “communion” because it is an encounter and he calls it “holy” because it is an encounter with the Divine.
Kay endorses memorialist language throughout his piece–he emphasizes that the Eucharist is a memorial and he paints this position as the only real alternative to the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, which he calls a “magical concept” and “murmuring a holy abracadabra.” He describes this doctrine as the idea that the bread is blessed “for the purpose of infusing it with a special power,” a doctrine which is rather far removed from the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. This is only one of many instances where Kay “strawmans” his opponents. But Kay at least rightly names the Roman Catholic position. His treatment of Anglican eucharistic theology is more troubling still, for his purpose in addressing transubstantiation is to implicitly attribute this doctrine to Anglicans though it is something almost all Anglicans profess to reject.
Kay does not note that transubstantiation is merely one of many historical ways Christians have articulated a doctrine of real presence and, in particular, that all of the magisterial Protestant Reformations found the language they thought they needed to allow them to reject transubstantiation and affirm real presence: Luther found it in the language of substantial union, Calvin in spiritual presence, and Cranmer ends up somewhere hazy but close to Calvin.[1] In his enormous tome Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, Cranmer ends up saying that the Divine presence in the elements is a figurative presence and in believers, a spiritual presence, even as he offers a somewhat Zwinglian reflection upon the words of institution. It is far from clear what he means in all this but it is evident that he is, predictably, searching for language to affirm real presence in a way that avoids perceived Roman Catholic pitfalls. Thus the twenty-eighth Article of Religion states that “The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign” for “the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ,” and yet continues, in the very next sentence, to insist that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.” Consistent with this point of view, Cranmer, in his service of Holy Communion, adds the language of memorialism and removes the epiclesis but retains the structure of the Roman Catholic liturgy because of his enduring conviction, which he shared not only with western Christians but also with the Greeks, the Russians, the Copts, the Syrians—Christians everywhere–that the celebration of the Eucharist is, as a moment of Divine encounter, at the center of Christian life and worship.
We would do well to ask why these historic churches have for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years been insistent about this, and we would have to carefully listen to them each in turn. But we can at least say that it is a way to make sure that Christ remains at the center of it all. Kay worries that the effect of using communion rails is that “laypeople still find that their habitual journey of ascent ends, not in rest and complete acceptance at Jesus’ family meal table, but in a barrier at which a penitential posture must be adopted, and beyond which the lay person can never go.” But this again is an objection against a position that his opponents do not hold. Anglicans, and the historic churches with them hold that communion with Christ just is communion of Christ and that it is communion enough for all, for God is “no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34): the priest who receives the body and blood of our Lord in Holy Communion receives the same Christ as lay communicants, no more, no less, the Christ who gives himself fully and freely to His people. There is one Eucharist because Christ is One–“One Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4:5). Thus the point must be made not only that a doctrine of real presence can accommodate the democratic impulse which Kay insists upon, but that it is the best way of doing so.
The things that Anglicanism retains that Kay worries are vestiges of popish idolatry, including not only communion rails but also Holy Orders and the common cup, are merely the architecture which provides a framework within which the One Christ is offered to those who have come to him through the waters of baptism and in faith. Kay worries that these things distinguish individuals so as to establish what he calls an “architecture of individualism.” This is not an argument I had heard, though I was a part of free church traditions for more than thirty years. I had thought that Kay’s biggest concern was to reserve universal individual access. The distribution of the elements to individuals in insta-cups or glass cups in metal trays would seem to be the correlative practice of this concern. If I understand Kay’s argument, though, this free church method of distribution is able to overcome individualism through the practice of synchronicity. But the practice of Holy Communion must distinguish the individual, whatever the architecture, because it proceeds by enabling the consumption of the elements by individual mouths. The historic way of ensuring that this distinguishing does not become individualistic is to insist upon a single act of consecration, as well as the use of a celebrant’s host and a common cup: “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17). The historic conviction that the common cup is the locus of Christian unity, for all believers, is correlative of the belief that Christ is One.
Kaye’s critique of communion rails depends upon his conviction that it is concomitant with a ‘“degrees of holiness’ idea” which is endemic to “Old Covenant theology” but which “Christians are forbidden to return by Jesus’ propitiatory death and the epistle to the Hebrews.” If this idea is what Paul says when he says that access to Christ is not determined by created distinctions (Gal 3:28)–then who can disagree? But if by this Kay means that the category of the “holy” is not a New Covenant category then we must equally demur. In the New Testament people are still called Holy (1 Pet 2:9), things are still called Holy (Acts 19:12), and Holy still has the ability to “sanctify” (1 Cor 7:14), whatever that means. To begin we would do well to recall that the act of consecrating in the Old Testament, as in the New, was not a matter of saving but rather distinguishing, and thus finds its theological underpinnings in the doctrine of creation ex-nihilo: for the Lord, to create and distinguish are one and the same. In the New Testament holiness is, as it is in the Old, a matter of attending to the distinctions that the Lord has already established within creation.[2] The differences that mark creation are not obliterated by Christ but rather affirmed and sanctified in His body through his death and resurrection. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” when it comes to the reception of the body and blood of our Lord, and yet these distinctions remain. The Jew comes to the table as a Jew, just as the Greek comes as a Greek. And like each and every person, the Jew and the Greek are beheld for who they truly are, in individuality and commonality both, as they stand before the Lord.
Just as Christ’s overcoming of the distinction between Jew and Greek in the New Testament is not its obliteration, so too the moral distinctions laid out in the Old Testament (including the distinction between clean and unclean), which are now explicitly defined in relation to Christ’s Body. Cranmer’s liturgies make it obvious that he takes all of this for granted: his universe is marked by more than just physiological distinctions. It is a morally charged universe in which the distinction between clean and unclean regularly confronts the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Cranmer knows that though he has been elevated to the role of archbishop he, like all Christians, inhabits this universe as one who is, to borrow Luther’s phrase, simul justus et peccator–at once justified and a sinner. Cranmer included two lengthy prefaces in his 1552 Holy Communion service, one which urges Christians to approach the throne of grace with confidence, and another which urges great caution for fear of Divine wrath. The first, which the curate is instructed to say at “certaine tymes when the Curate shal see the people negligent to come to the holy Communion,” exhorts the people, “for the Lord Jesus Christes sake, that ye will not refuse to come thereto, being so lovingly called and bidden of god hymselfe.” The second, which begins with the rubric “some tyme shal be sayd this also, at the discrecion of the Curate,” exhorts the people to instead “consider the dignitie of the holy mistery, and the greate perel of the unworthy receiving thereof.” Cranmer gives no further directives about when each preface is to be preferred, which implies that it is to be a matter of pastoral discretion. But when at last the penitent priest and his flock prepare to receive the body and blood of their Lord they all recite a curious prayer, of Cranmer’s devising, in unison:
We do not presume to come to this thy table (O merciful Lord) trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies: we be not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table: but thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, [in these holy Mysteries,] that we may continually dwell in him, and he in us, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood. Amen.
The point here isn’t just that Cranmer’s celebrant, along with the people, acknowledge their position as Gentile sinners, those who have no native right to communion with Israel’s God, in this “Prayer of Humble Access.” The point is that in so doing they paradoxically uphold the distinctions between clean and unclean and sacred and profane while equally insisting that they be overcome. Cranmer seems to intuitively recognize that these boundaries must be upheld in order to be trespassed; and they must be trespassed in order to preserve the gratuity of grace.
David Ney is Associate Professor of Church History at Trinity School for Ministry and Director of the Robert E. Webber Center.
[1] See Brett Salkeld, Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019).
[2] Ephraim Radner, Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2020),108. For a masterful treatment of the relationship between creation and distinction see Radner chapters eleven and twelve.
In reading Arthur Kay’s piece I did enjoy learning about Free Church of England eucharistic doctrine and piety, and I was glad to learn about the theological architecture that upholds them. I did not enjoy Kay’s treatment of Church of England eucharistic doctrine and piety. This treatment tells us a great deal more about the Free Church of England’s self-understanding, but it shows little interest in pursuing the logic that underlies the idiosyncratic approach of historic Anglicanism. In the brief space allotted me I will simply make a few notes which I hope will fill in some of the gaps.
The first question that needs to be answered is whether Christians encounter God when they gather to worship. The answer here must be yes–”For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). More complex is the question of the mode of His presence–”how” He shows up. For the architect of the English Reformation, Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), the two dominant modes of Divine presence are the reading and exposition of the Word of God (his disciple Richard Hooker calls these the two ways of preaching) and the celebration of Holy Communion. Cranmer calls his eucharistic service “communion” because it is an encounter and he calls it “holy” because it is an encounter with the Divine.
Kay endorses memorialist language throughout his piece–he emphasizes that the Eucharist is a memorial and he paints this position as the only real alternative to the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, which he calls a “magical concept” and “murmuring a holy abracadabra.” He describes this doctrine as the idea that the bread is blessed “for the purpose of infusing it with a special power,” a doctrine which is rather far removed from the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. This is only one of many instances where Kay “strawmans” his opponents. But Kay at least rightly names the Roman Catholic position. His treatment of Anglican eucharistic theology is more troubling still, for his purpose in addressing transubstantiation is to implicitly attribute this doctrine to Anglicans though it is something almost all Anglicans profess to reject.
Kay does not note that transubstantiation is merely one of many historical ways Christians have articulated a doctrine of real presence and, in particular, that all of the magisterial Protestant Reformations found the language they thought they needed to allow them to reject transubstantiation and affirm real presence: Luther found it in the language of substantial union, Calvin in spiritual presence, and Cranmer ends up somewhere hazy but close to Calvin.[1] In his enormous tome Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, Cranmer ends up saying that the Divine presence in the elements is a figurative presence and in believers, a spiritual presence, even as he offers a somewhat Zwinglian reflection upon the words of institution. It is far from clear what he means in all this but it is evident that he is, predictably, searching for language to affirm real presence in a way that avoids perceived Roman Catholic pitfalls. Thus the twenty-eighth Article of Religion states that “The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign” for “the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ,” and yet continues, in the very next sentence, to insist that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.” Consistent with this point of view, Cranmer, in his service of Holy Communion, adds the language of memorialism and removes the epiclesis but retains the structure of the Roman Catholic liturgy because of his enduring conviction, which he shared not only with western Christians but also with the Greeks, the Russians, the Copts, the Syrians—Christians everywhere–that the celebration of the Eucharist is, as a moment of Divine encounter, at the center of Christian life and worship.
We would do well to ask why these historic churches have for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years been insistent about this, and we would have to carefully listen to them each in turn. But we can at least say that it is a way to make sure that Christ remains at the center of it all. Kay worries that the effect of using communion rails is that “laypeople still find that their habitual journey of ascent ends, not in rest and complete acceptance at Jesus’ family meal table, but in a barrier at which a penitential posture must be adopted, and beyond which the lay person can never go.” But this again is an objection against a position that his opponents do not hold. Anglicans, and the historic churches with them hold that communion with Christ just is communion of Christ and that it is communion enough for all, for God is “no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34): the priest who receives the body and blood of our Lord in Holy Communion receives the same Christ as lay communicants, no more, no less, the Christ who gives himself fully and freely to His people. There is one Eucharist because Christ is One–“One Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4:5). Thus the point must be made not only that a doctrine of real presence can accommodate the democratic impulse which Kay insists upon, but that it is the best way of doing so.
The things that Anglicanism retains that Kay worries are vestiges of popish idolatry, including not only communion rails but also Holy Orders and the common cup, are merely the architecture which provides a framework within which the One Christ is offered to those who have come to him through the waters of baptism and in faith. Kay worries that these things distinguish individuals so as to establish what he calls an “architecture of individualism.” This is not an argument I had heard, though I was a part of free church traditions for more than thirty years. I had thought that Kay’s biggest concern was to reserve universal individual access. The distribution of the elements to individuals in insta-cups or glass cups in metal trays would seem to be the correlative practice of this concern. If I understand Kay’s argument, though, this free church method of distribution is able to overcome individualism through the practice of synchronicity. But the practice of Holy Communion must distinguish the individual, whatever the architecture, because it proceeds by enabling the consumption of the elements by individual mouths. The historic way of ensuring that this distinguishing does not become individualistic is to insist upon a single act of consecration, as well as the use of a celebrant’s host and a common cup: “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17). The historic conviction that the common cup is the locus of Christian unity, for all believers, is correlative of the belief that Christ is One.
Kaye’s critique of communion rails depends upon his conviction that it is concomitant with a ‘“degrees of holiness’ idea” which is endemic to “Old Covenant theology” but which “Christians are forbidden to return by Jesus’ propitiatory death and the epistle to the Hebrews.” If this idea is what Paul says when he says that access to Christ is not determined by created distinctions (Gal 3:28)--then who can disagree? But if by this Kay means that the category of the “holy” is not a New Covenant category then we must equally demur. In the New Testament people are still called Holy (1 Pet 2:9), things are still called Holy (Acts 19:12), and Holy still has the ability to “sanctify” (1 Cor 7:14), whatever that means. To begin we would do well to recall that the act of consecrating in the Old Testament, as in the New, was not a matter of saving but rather distinguishing, and thus finds its theological underpinnings in the doctrine of creation ex-nihilo: for the Lord, to create and distinguish are one and the same. In the New Testament holiness is, as it is in the Old, a matter of attending to the distinctions that the Lord has already established within creation.[2] The differences that mark creation are not obliterated by Christ but rather affirmed and sanctified in His body through his death and resurrection. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” when it comes to the reception of the body and blood of our Lord, and yet these distinctions remain. The Jew comes to the table as a Jew, just as the Greek comes as a Greek. And like each and every person, the Jew and the Greek are beheld for who they truly are, in individuality and commonality both, as they stand before the Lord.
Just as Christ’s overcoming of the distinction between Jew and Greek in the New Testament is not its obliteration, so too the moral distinctions laid out in the Old Testament (including the distinction between clean and unclean), which are now explicitly defined in relation to Christ’s Body. Cranmer’s liturgies make it obvious that he takes all of this for granted: his universe is marked by more than just physiological distinctions. It is a morally charged universe in which the distinction between clean and unclean regularly confronts the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Cranmer knows that though he has been elevated to the role of archbishop he, like all Christians, inhabits this universe as one who is, to borrow Luther’s phrase, simul justus et peccator–at once justified and a sinner. Cranmer included two lengthy prefaces in his 1552 Holy Communion service, one which urges Christians to approach the throne of grace with confidence, and another which urges great caution for fear of Divine wrath. The first, which the curate is instructed to say at “certaine tymes when the Curate shal see the people negligent to come to the holy Communion,” exhorts the people, “for the Lord Jesus Christes sake, that ye will not refuse to come thereto, being so lovingly called and bidden of god hymselfe.” The second, which begins with the rubric “some tyme shal be sayd this also, at the discrecion of the Curate,” exhorts the people to instead “consider the dignitie of the holy mistery, and the greate perel of the unworthy receiving thereof.” Cranmer gives no further directives about when each preface is to be preferred, which implies that it is to be a matter of pastoral discretion. But when at last the penitent priest and his flock prepare to receive the body and blood of their Lord they all recite a curious prayer, of Cranmer’s devising, in unison:
We do not presume to come to this thy table (O merciful Lord) trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies: we be not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table: but thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, [in these holy Mysteries,] that we may continually dwell in him, and he in us, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood. Amen.
The point here isn’t just that Cranmer’s celebrant, along with the people, acknowledge their position as Gentile sinners, those who have no native right to communion with Israel’s God, in this “Prayer of Humble Access.” The point is that in so doing they paradoxically uphold the distinctions between clean and unclean and sacred and profane while equally insisting that they be overcome. Cranmer seems to intuitively recognize that these boundaries must be upheld in order to be trespassed; and they must be trespassed in order to preserve the gratuity of grace.
David Ney is Associate Professor of Church History at Trinity School for Ministry and Director of the Robert E. Webber Center.
[1] See Brett Salkeld, Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019).
[2] Ephraim Radner, Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2020),108. For a masterful treatment of the relationship between creation and distinction see Radner chapters eleven and twelve.
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