Eucharistic Sacramentality in an Ecumenical Context

The Anglican Epiclesis

David J. Kennedy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754663768
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317140108
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book explores the epiclesis or invocation of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic Prayer, using the Anglican tradition as an historical model of a communion of churches in conscious theological and liturgical dialogue with Christian antiquity. Incorporating major studies of England, North America and the Indian sub-Continent, the author includes an exposition of Inter-Church ecumenical dialogue and the historic divisions between western and eastern Eucharistic traditions and twentieth-century ecumenical endeavour. This unique study of the relationship between theology and liturgical text, commends a theology and spirituality which celebrates the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist as present and eschatological gift. It thus sets historic, contemporary and ecumenical divisions in a new theological context.

Chapter 1

The Reformation Heritage

The liturgical revisions of the English Reformation are chiefly associated with Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1533 to 1556. Cranmer was the main architect of three eucharistic liturgical rites: the 1548 Order for the Communion, and the communion services from the 1549 and 1552 editions of the Book of Common Prayer.1

The 1548 Order was a vernacular eucharistic devotion, encouraging general reception in both kinds, to be inserted in the Sarum mass after the priest’s communion; it thus left the Sarum canon intact.2 It made provision for supplementary consecration of the wine, if required, using the eucharistic words of Jesus concerning the cup from the Sarum rite.3 The notion of consecration here was perfectly in line with medieval western eucharistic theology4 save that the prohibition on elevating the chalice for the supplementary consecration heralded the first liturgical sign of a move away from the understanding that there is an objective presence of Christ in the elements. The 1549 canon included a preliminary epiclesis before the narrative of institution:

Heare us (o merciful father) we beseche thee; and with thy holy spirite and worde, vouchsafe to bl+esse and sanc+tifie these thy giftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, that thei maie bee unto us the body and bloud of thy moste derely beloued sonne Jesus Christe.5

The rendering of the institution narrative in the 1549 canon included the statement ‘and when he had blessed, and geuen thankes’ in the bread saying, but only ‘geuen thankes’ in the cup saying.6 The 1552 rite, while retaining a petitionary prayer to God which led into the institution narrative, deleted reference to the blessing and sanctification of the elements by the Holy Spirit and word so that the petition related directly to the worshippers:

Heare us O mercifull father, we beseche the, and graunt that we receiuyng these thy creatures of breade and wine, according to thy sonne oure sauiour Jesu Christes holy institution, in remembraunce of his death and passion, may be partakers of hys most blessed body and bloude, who in the same …7

The reference to the blessing of the bread was also deleted from the narrative of institution.

In addition to Cranmer’s liturgical writing, his major theological explanations of his position were published in his A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ8 in 1550 and his An Answer unto a Crafty and Sophistical Cavillation devised by Stephen Gardiner9 written in 1551, and incorporating the Defence. Both works were written with 1549 in view, although it may be regarded as probable that Cranmer already had his 1552 revision in mind or even on paper.10 A proper starting place therefore is to enquire what light Cranmer’s writings shed on the meaning of the 1549 epiclesis.

Cranmer’s clearest definition of consecration is in book 3 of his Defence: ‘Consecration is the separation of any thing from a profane and worldly use unto a spiritual and godly use.’11 In relation to baptism, Cranmer argues that when water is separated from ordinary usage for the administration of the sacrament, such water may be called consecrated water, or water put to a holy use. He continues:

Even so when common bread and wine be taken and severed from other bread and wine, to the use of the holy communion, that portion of bread and wine, although it be of the same substance that the other is from the which it is severed, yet it is now called consecrated or holy bread and holy wine.12

Cranmer is clear that the eucharistic bread and wine have no holiness in themselves but because of their use and the fact that they represent Christ’s body and blood they may rightly be called holy. So in his Answer he writes:

And yet do I not utterly deprive the outward sacraments of the name of holy things, because of the holy use whereunto they serve, and not because of any holiness that lieth hid in the insensible creature. Which although they have no holiness in them, yet they be signs and tokens of the marvellous works and holy effects, which God worketh in us by his omnipotent power.13

This is verified in the anamnesis of 1549 rite where the elements are indeed designated ‘holy’:

WHerfore O Lorde and heauenly father, accordyng to the Institucion of thy derely beloued sonne, our sauior Jesu Christ, we thy humble seruantes do celebrate, and make here before thy diuine Maiestie, with these thy holy giftes, the memoriall whiche thy soone hath willed us to make …14

For Cranmer, the heart of the communion service is the reception of the elements by the worthy communicant; the body and blood of Christ are not received physically through the medium of transubstantiation or Luther’s variant on it, but spiritually through reception of the elements in remembrance of Christ’s death, so that ‘by the exercise of our faith our souls may receive the more heavenly food’.15 It is in this context that the elements can be called ‘holy’. Colin Buchanan has rightly observed that Cranmer is not opposed to ‘realist’ language ‘so long as it is concerned with what is received by the faithful’.16 Therefore, Cranmer’s view of consecration is specific and limited, and it is in this sense that the verbs ‘bless’ and ‘sanctify’ are to be interpreted. However, in relation to the means of consecration, in his Defence Cranmer assigns a special role to the eucharistic words of Jesus: ‘But specially they may be called holy and consecrated, when they be separated to that holy use by Christ’s own words, which he spake for that purpose, saying of the bread, This is my body; and of the wine, This is my blood.’17

Citing ancient authors, Cranmer is explicit that it is ‘after those words be pronounced over them’ that the elements are taken as consecrated or holy bread and wine. Earlier in his Defence he refers to the eucharistic words of Jesus as ‘words of consecration’,18 but he rejects any notion of transubstantiation. The role of the narrative is again asserted thus:

And lest we should forget the same, he ordained not a yearly memory, (as the Paschal lamb was eaten but once every year,) but a daily remembrance he ordained thereof in bread and wine, sanctified and dedicated to that purpose, saying, This is my body; this cup is my blood, which is shed for the remission of sins. Do this in the remembrance of me.19

Again, in his discussion of 1 Corinthians 11, Cranmer, albeit answering Gardiner, nevertheless repeatedly refers to the narrative of institution in that chapter as ‘the sanctification’, concluding: ‘Wherefore, gentle reader, weigh St. Paul’s words, whether he call it bread after the sanctification, or only before …’.20 However, the spiritual effect of the sacrament is entirely in the worthy communicant.

Stephen Gardiner, in his work An Explication and Assertion of the True Catholic Faith, Touching the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, with Confutation of a Book Written Against the Same,21 written in response to the Defence and which provoked Cranmer’s Answer makes explicit reference to the 1549 epiclesis as suggesting conversion of the substance of the elements into Christ’s body and blood. Cranmer’s response is clear:

And the bread and wine be made unto us the body and blood of Christ, (as it is in the book of common prayer,) but not by changing the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s natural body and blood, but that in the godly using of them they may be unto the receivers Christ’s body and blood … And therefore, in the book of the holy communion, we do not pray absolutely that the bread and wine may be made the body and blood of Christ, but that unto us in that holy mystery they may be so; that is to say, that we may so worthily receive the same, that we may be partakers of Christ’s body and blood, and that therewith in spirit and in truth we may be spiritually nourished.22

It could be argued that Cranmer’s petition of 1552 gives much clearer expression to his theology than 1549. Or can we perceive a change in his theology between the two prayer books, a change anticipated by his Answer and Defence so that in both we see an exposition of 1549 through 1552 spectacles? Three observations are important. The first is that 1549 bears all the marks of a well thought-out piece of liturgical writing and Cranmer in his later theological works betrays no sense of a change of theological emphasis – indeed, in his Defence he concludes by stating that the 1549 order for communion ‘is agreeable with the institution of Christ, with St. Paul and the old primitive and apostolic Church’.23 Second, the 1549 invocation includes a significant change from Sarum in the effect desired upon the elements:

Sarum … ut nobis cor+pus et san+guis fiat dilectissimi Filii tui Domini nostri Jesu Christi.

1549 … that thei maie bee unto us the body and bloude …

The use of the verb ‘be’ as opposed to ‘become’ or ‘be made’ suggests a more open theological context. As his response to Gardiner above shows, in Cranmer’s thought the stress of the 1549 petition falls on ‘may be unto us’.24 The comment of Geoffrey Cuming is apposite: ‘he is able to keep the phrase “that they may be unto us the body …” by placing great stress on the words “to us”, which he expounds in the Defence as meaning “to those who receive worthily”’.25 While it is true that the Latin petition includes nobis and that Cranmer’s phrase could be accepted as a straight translation of...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Reformation Heritage
• 2 Scripture and Tradition: Post-Reformation Exploration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
• 3 Anglican Diversification
• 4 Pan-Anglican Reports and Statements
• 5 Ecumenical Exploration
• 6 The 1928 Prayer Book: ‘Eastern’ or ‘Western’ Identity?
• 7 Liturgical Renewal in England: 1945-2000
• 8 The Anglican Communion: Case Study 1: The Episcopal Church in the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada
• 9 The Anglican Communion: Case Study 2: The Churches of the Indian Subcontinent
• 10 The Epiclesis: The Spiritual Dynamics of Sacramentalism
• Select Bibliography
• Index