As a Catholic looking in, do you guys ever feel trapped in the middle?

Discussion in 'Navigating Through Church Life' started by NextElement, Jun 16, 2014.

  1. Lowly Layman

    Lowly Layman Well-Known Member

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    IDK, the sixty pages or so of Cranmer systematically dismantling the doctrine on Transubstantiation led me to believe it leaned toward Protestantism. Lol
     
  2. Rev2104

    Rev2104 Active Member

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    LL can you explain the difference. From my limited understanding the Anglicans have adopted that it is just a mystery to explain it. I was wondering can you summon up Cranmer for me.

    I like that it i s just a mystery, trans just seemed too sterile i suppose. It is a problem I think shows up in a few things from the medieval times that over explaining things that lose the sense of a mystery.
     
  3. Lowly Layman

    Lowly Layman Well-Known Member

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  4. Rev2104

    Rev2104 Active Member

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    Sorry, was crawling into to hed when i wrote that. Sum up, what is his key points.

    My intro book in Anglicanism was a book called the Catholic religion by vernon staley. In it Eucharist is explained more like Roman Catholics and less like Calvinism. I always thought reformed theology had such a lowly view of the Eucharist. That it went against scripture and the church fathers.
    To sum up my views of Eucharist it is the lords body and blood. You must take it for salvation. If you take unworthly you condemn oneself.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2014
  5. highchurchman

    highchurchman Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Mine too! The problem is, what happens to the people who claim they don't believe in the real presence, or that it doesn.t matter? The people who do not teach correct doctrine and those who set up their own sects?
     
  6. Lowly Layman

    Lowly Layman Well-Known Member

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    The short of it is that, Cranmer believed in the spiritual presence of Christ in the sacrament. His views in this regard differed little from John Calvin's as far as I can tell. The best summary for his view of the Lord's Supper, however, is Article 28. The consecration of the elements doesn't effect a metaphysical change to their substance but rather a change in their use. They become holy signs, the earthly half of the twofold union that defines a sacrament for Anglicans (see Article 26). Those who rightly receive the sacrament, feed on Christ's body and blood in their hearts by faith. Those who receive the sacrament unworthily, that is without faith and repentance, feed on nothing but their own damnation. No spiritual presence is imparted to them, thus it is no sacrament at all to them. That's how I read it at least.

    We know this to be his mature and final view on the Lord's Supper, since his final testimony before his martyrdom contains the following: " And as for the sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the bishop of Winchester, the which my book teacheth so true a doctrine of the sacrament, that it shall stand at the last day before the judgment of God, where the papistical doctrine contrary thereto shall be ashamed to show her face.”
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2014
  7. Lowly Layman

    Lowly Layman Well-Known Member

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    In Book 2 of his work, Cranmer rather handily uses scripture, reason and testimonies from the church fathers to show Transubstantiation to be unscriptural, illogical, and nontraditional (as Anglicans generally define the word) foolishness. It convinced me, but I already leaned that way.
     
  8. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    There is a particular way to understand this, where some low-church zwinglians would to say that the Body isn't connected with the eucharist, and the Body becomes present "in the recepient" when he receives the host. I've had debates here about this topic before.

    This is a subtle question of location, "where" the Body is during holy communion. The language in the Prayerbooks talks of the minister giving the Body to the recipient. There is language about him (and not God) feeding the recipient. How are we to understand that?

    The only way I see how, is that the Spiritual body is present in the Host. When he feeds the communicant, he gives the Host and the Spiritual Body at the same time.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2014
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  9. Lowly Layman

    Lowly Layman Well-Known Member

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    very true Stalwart, his work is complex, even ambiguous if one uses soundbites rather than digesting the book as a whole. Some of it would make baptists happy, other parts would warm the heart of the most ardent Anglo-Catholic. For me, I would say his view was virtualist, in that he bypasses the "where" question and teaches that the real but spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist is found in the sacramental action rather than in the elements, which remain, in substance at least, merely bread and wine. Through the ritual action, the power or virtue of the Body and Blood of Christ is transferred to worthy communicants. Its a powerful argument, but not one I'm entirely ready to embrace.

    How would you characterize Cranmer's view Stalwart.
     
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  10. Rev2104

    Rev2104 Active Member

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    I think the Eucharist can be explained in a few ways and still get it right. It is so behind are experiance that it near impossible to put it in words.
    I can bothered when certain things happen. I get bothered when it is reduced to a sign or we do this just in memory. The whole lack of faith in the real presence. I also get bothered when people do like the catholics have done and reduce to this sort of magical formula.
    In between these two I think there is a lot of room on how to explain. It is his body, it is his blood. Easier for me to say it, than explain so I try to not explain it too much.
    That quote from Cranmer I think reduces it to a sign, it sounds very calvin. I do not know if i am reading it wrong or understanding it wrong.
     
  11. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    You said it yourself LL, that the book doesn't meticulously analyze the "where" of the Lord's Body. And the reason is, I think, that we just don't realize just how early and ancient this book is. It predates nearly all controversies and debates about the Eucharist, which characterize all later history.

    Like the Trinity, where we know some of the early fathers didn't make a clear statement on the Three Persons, to tell us they aren't Arian, it's a silly anxiety for us, because those particular questions weren't even on their radar. So here, looking at Cranmer's work through the centuries of the eucharistic heresies from the Baptists, evangelicals and other zwinglians, we are very anxious for him to make a statement refuting those errors, but it's simply anachronistic, and was impossible for him to do. The question of "where" wasn't even a burning question, which I'd suggest means, that his view was the same as anyone else's. Otherwise wouldn't he have a section about it, making a big new teaching that was different from everyone else? He seems to be taking the "where" for granted, which means it wasn't different from anyone else around.

    Furthermore, he wrote the Articles and the Prayerbooks, and there there's no question. They give us a definitive commentary on his views. In giving and taking the Body, he seems to mean it as obvious that the Body is local in the host. And I'm not a scholar but I'd bet we can find those words (giving and taking) in the Book itself.

    So at the end of the day, it is a local, real, spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The same doctrine taught in the Scripture and the Fathers, recovered at the Reformation and still the Anglican doctrine to this day.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2014
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  12. Lowly Layman

    Lowly Layman Well-Known Member

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    here here!!
     
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  13. Gordon

    Gordon Well-Known Member

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    Hi NextElement take it from someone who has moved from one Church to the another trying to find the one true Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church - you won't find it while ever humans continue to approach religion from a point of dogma and fixed beliefs about a, b, c, and d etc. etc. etc. so far it has got us no where. I came back to the Anglican Church because it was the Church I was bought up in and I appreciate the rich liturgy and tradition of the Church. It is not perfect and no where you look will be perfect because the Church is a human institution. I believe we can do ourselves justice if we stay where we are and work to move the Church to a unity of believe rather than the - ooopppps you're wrong lets move to or start another denomination.
     
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  14. 7sacraments

    7sacraments Member

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    only thing I'd add, which may sound ananthema to some,but I already do is that,any Trinitarian church technically belongs to the One Holy Catholic (small c catholic really) Church. Apostolic, maybe not so much.
     
  15. Gordon

    Gordon Well-Known Member

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    I was never any good at grammar anyway so small 'c' capital 'C' mean nothing to me just as another other label means nothing to me.
    I was bought up in the Church of England in Australia before it became the Anglican Church of Australia, I was baptised in the Baptist Church when I was involved with a bunch of bikers referred to as the God Squad in the late 60's and early 70's. When I married my first wife she was a RC so I got married in the RC Church, and I was a Christian Spiritualist and an ordained minister of the Church for many years. One day I decided to follow a earlier calling to follow St. Francis and returned to Anglican Church and started my Franciscan journey about 3 years ago now. Why because I always been drawn to Franciscan Spirituality... On the 26th of July I take life profession in the Order and I feel I have found my later life calling, my work will involve JPIC issues (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation).

    Maybe some time annoying you lot :)
     
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  16. 7sacraments

    7sacraments Member

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    Life Profession?!!! Amazing :)

    God's call in our life is amazingly strong my friend :) I can only pray as I discern my own call to greater role with in His Church that I can serve it as strongly as you are commiting yourself to.
     
  17. Gordon

    Gordon Well-Known Member

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    Well thank you but I am 62 years old now so life profession is not as long as it is for a 35 year old :)
     
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  18. highchurchman

    highchurchman Well-Known Member Anglican

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    JH,! Gordon in his reply to your mail is in serious error! Or at least it would appear so by Anglican Authorities. C.B.Moss, in his writings, (Christian Faith, pg, 203. Ch., 34.)
    "The Creeds and other definitions of what members of the Church are required to believe are said to be 'of faith" He goes on ,"Doctrines which are ,'of faith,'that is, which are regarded as necessary to the Christian Faith are called Dogmas."
    Authority within the Church of God, the One True, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, lies in the Gospel and teachings of Christ as recorded in Scripture. (S.Jude.) Scripture is to be understood through the teaching of the apostolic college and the Bishops in Council , who we are told claimed to be guided by the Holy Ghost! Plus the Greek Fathers of the First three centuries. I.E. The Patristic Fathers.
    Anglicans, as a Catholic Communion, believe in the Seven Ecumenical Councils , who interpret and explain , thus completing the cycle.
    The trouble is we are getting to a stage where every man is his own pope.
    Anglican faith and dogma as it derives simply from the first thousand years is the distillation of two thousand years of study and practice. Not the whim of men!

    Highchurch man!
     
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  19. Gordon

    Gordon Well-Known Member

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    Well thank you John and I will leave that one with you.
     
  20. Lowly Layman

    Lowly Layman Well-Known Member

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    Thank you for sharing your story Gordon. I wish you joy, peace, and fulfillment in your life commitment.

    I do have one question, what is a Christian Spiritualist? Is it a kind of Pentecostal?