POLL: Does Anglicanism consider the Eucharistic food itself to really be or have Christ's body?

The essay's author does not support the presence in the bread, by the way. It says:

The Reformed Episcopal Church does not condemn "the Presence of Christ in the Lordʼs Supper," - rather it affirms it. What it does condemn is the teaching "That the Presence of Christ in the Lordʼs Supper is a presence in the elements of Bread and Wine."​

 

To explain any seeming discrepancy above: Calvin's claim was that Jesus' body stuck in heaven was "really" "present" to believers because the holy spirit connected their spirits to it during the ritual of the Supper.

 

PHILIP, PER YOUR POST ON MY PROFILE, PLEASE SEE:
http://forums.anglican.net/threads/...-an-anti-catholic-false-flag.1623/#post-21995

 

I read one Anglican writer propose that the Articles technically teach the idea Stalwart proposed of a secret real presence that gets secretly withdrawn from the unfaithful. The author proposed this because he felt that on one hand the Articles taught the real presence in the bread, but that in article 29 they taught that the faithful did not partake of the real presence, and so the writer concluded that the only logical conclusion was that the real presence got secretly withdrawn.

I also see a major contradiction between the two articles, reflecting that the first one is acceptable to those like Bp. Guest who believed in the real presence, and that article 29 was demanded by those who (like Calvinists, Cranmer, and the Queen at the time) taught Receptionism, that only the faithful "receive" the body.

Article 28 says that 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."

What does it mean that the bread itself is a partaking of Christ's body? This is one of the indications I think for some Anglicans that the physical bread itself was not just a symbol of communion in Jesus, but an actual partaking of Christ.
The Calvinist/Symbol-only/Cranmerist response would be that the bread's own "partaking" of Christ's body is only symbolic or "virtual", not an actual partaking.

Next is where the contradiction arises. Article XXIX. "The Wicked..., in no wise are they partakers of Christ". What does it mean here to "partake" of Christ? It must mean a real partaking, not just a symbol or virtual partaking. The faithful don't just metaphorically commune in Christ, they actually commune in Christ. Even Anglicanism teaches that Christians actually commune with Christ.

Therefore, the Articles had said in seriousness and actuality that the bread is a partaking of Christ. Yet we also know that even the unfaithful partake of the bread. So how is it that the unfaithful don't partake of Christ when they partake of that bread that is the partaking of Christ?
This is where the resolution comes in of the conflict between Article 28 and 29, proposing that the body of Christ was present (Article 28) but then secretly withdrew so that the unfaithful don't take it.

A second, Calvinistic/Cranmerist resolution is that partaking is symbolic in Article 28, but real in Article 29. I think that this second, conflicted resolution is how Anglicans normally resolve the contradiction.

 

@rakovsky unless you have made a detailed study of Calvin please avoid any references to him as any comments in which you mention him are a mass of illiteracy and inaccuracy. if you've read anything at all on this issue it seems to have been apologetics which seek only to portray the Eastern Orthodox in a positive light and rarely understand the reformation accurately. Just, stick to the Articles and other purely Anglican material and you'll be on safer ground of interpretation.

This is the basic root of your misunderstanding as I've tried to explain to you across pages and pages of prior discussion. To you anything other then Eastern Orthodox theology is symbolism. Anything other than physical is symbolic or outright memorial.

Spiritual presence to you is not real because apparently you don't believe in the reality of the spirit. An Anglican theology of a spiritual real presence seems to not compute, make your lights blink and head explode.

 

The Bread by Sydney Carter published in Nothing Fixed or Final - Galliard London 1969

This is the bread: the most important thing
to do with it, is eat it.

Who baked the loaf and how, who sowed the seed
is relevant. But all of that can wait.

And how the universe, of which this loaf
is a fantastic part, first came to be

Is worth a thought; which you will never have
unless you learn to eat.

How anything can ever be at all is
something to wonder at; for none can live

By bread alone, but show me any who
can get along without it. This is where

All faith and wonder start: by eating and
drinking what is offered. This is the

Body and Blood: the sacrament you take
or commit suicide.​

 

Modern Anglican writings explain that there are three common views about the bread: 1. the idea of RC Transubstantiation, 2. Lutheran belief in Jesus' body in spirit mode "in" and "under" the "forms of bread and wine" (Book of Concord), and 3. the belief that Jesus is not himself in the bread at all. Orthodoxy does not have a required choice between the first two options. As to the third, there are some variations. Some Anglicans emphasize "virtualism" saying that the bread in "effect" is Jesus' body because during the ritual, while others have a more Calvinist emphasis that Jesus' body is up in heaven but that it is "really" "present" to believers during the ritual because the holy spirit connects their spirits to Jesus' body which remains up in heaven.

According to Luther, Jesus' body was present directly on earth in the bread in spirit mode, but he explicitly rejected the Calvinist view that the unworthy like Judas do not make contact of any kind with the body of Christ, which he considered a "Sacramentarian" view.
See the Book of Concord
http://bookofconcord.org/sd-supper.php

Simple question: How did Cranmer interpret the word "is" in the phrase "Take eat, This is my body" when Jesus handed them a piece of food?

Cranmer writes:

This comes out in Bp. Stephen Gardiner's debate with Cranmer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gardiner#Death

Please avoid personal insults in the future. Where does this style of insulting polemic come from? Have you had close relationships with Calvinists or Calvinism? I notice it is a pattern in his rhetoric, as Calvin writes:

Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion[/quote]

 

Luther was pretty insulting as well...his comments about Erasmus in his "Bondage of the Will" were exemplary of his usual invective.

 

All thanks to Lowly being notwithstanding, I wasn't trying to be insulting. It's just a comical image of a robot who cannot compute a self-contradictory statement and their lights go off. So for you, the idea of the "real" is closely tied to the idea of the "physical". One cannot be without the other. Over the long course of this thread you've charged in with bald assertions about who's right and who's wrong, who's a Calvinist and who isn't, what constitutes real presence and what doesn't, often without support.

Each time I clarify that no, we don't deny the real presence, we firmly support and establish it, for the spirit is real. You seem convinced for a time, until a while later you return saying you've found New Evidence that our doctrine of the Eucharist is false and symbolic, because we don't affirm physical presence with you. At that point I can do little more than facepalm and make a comic remark.

I'm not a calvinist but I know for a fact the invective and calumny that the Eastern Orthodox pour on any Christian who isn't one of them, often even upon their fellow Eastern Orthodox, mocking the Archbishop of Constantinople, proclaiming Kirill as nearly a whole new Pope for the world, thwacking each other in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and generally carrying on a most un-Christian attitude while blaming everyone else for being "less Christian" than them.

Simple. He interpreted it as passing on a wallet which has money in it. The person giving might say "here take this money" but all they're giving SEEMS to be the wallet, and the money isn't even visible. Is that analogy clear enough?

 

I am not certain that Calvin would consider himself a Calvinist by what passes for Calvinism today! Calvin spoke of the Catholic Church as a means of grace, and advocated the reservation of the Sacrament for the communion of the sick and infirm.

We all affirm we know him in the breaking of the bread, and our hearts have burnt deep within us.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’​

I have always seen the sense of Elizabeth I's declaration

His was the word that spake it, and what his word doth make it, I do believe and take it.​

†

Lord, I am not worth to come under your roof, speak but the word and your servant will be healed.​

 

Hello, Stalwart!

If by "real presence" you mean a "real presence" of Jesus' body itself directly in the food like Lutherans do then there are Orthodox theologians and Church fathers who hold to such an idea. Luther preferred to say that in such a case Jesus' body was present in the bread in spirit form, rather than physical form.

Here is where the Lutheran Book of Concord describes the fundamentals that it shares:

If by "real presence" you mean that Jesus' body is only up in heaven where it remains 'really" "present" to believers and not in the bread itself, and you agree with Cranmer that "Take, eat. This is my body" means "This signifies my body", then such a view is definitely excluded by Lutherans and by Orthodox.

A good example where Luther rebutted the idea that "This is my body" means "this signifies my body" was where he showed that the word "is" consistently means "is" when Jesus spoke about himself:

Calvin's view in his commentary was that the moving rock "signifies" Christ when it says that the moving "rock" was Christ.
Luther and the Orthodox say that No, this verse is actually about Christ being a spiritual rock accompanying the Israelites.

In the Last Supper, the bread was a physical object, not symbolic bread. There was an actual piece of bread in Jesus' hands and he told them "This is my body", referring to the bread in his hands. This is also what Augustine says in his commentary on the Psalms, saying that Christ was speaking "literally" when he held Himself "in his hands".

 

I think you are right in some cases. But it seems not to have been a pattern passed down to modern Lutherans, while it seems that modern conservative Calvinists have an especially abrasive personal attitude, particularly toward RCs.
I would prefer to be misperceiving this.

 

The analogy is not quite exact. The analogy would be "This are my dollar bills", with the meaning being that they just actually handed you real dollar bills in their physical hands. They would not be saying "This signifies my dollar bills".

Cranmer didn't believe there was real money(Jesus) contained in the wallet (bread) itself. This came out pretty strong in the disputations on the topic with Cranmer:

https://davidbawks.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/cranmers-doctrine-of-the-eucharist.pdf

http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/00/hhr00_1.html

 

Compare here Cranmer's words with the words in the articles:

WESTON: We eat it with our mouth.
CRANMER: I deny it. We eat it through faith.

The articles say: "And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith."

Here it says "the mean [singular] is Faith". This seems to rule out complementary forms of eating, like eating through the mouth. In the Lutheran, Orthodox, and Catholic expressions, since Jesus' body is directly in the bread itself (whether physically or in spirit mode), therefore it is also eaten with the mouth.

The Reformed pastor Payne explains that according to Luther:

https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/zwingli-and-luther/

But then you have the fact that the Articles call the bread a "partaking" of Christ, an expression which elsewhere seems to mean a real partaking. If the bread itself partakes, then the Articles appear confused or internally contradictory to an outsider like me since they have just stated in agreement with Cranmer that the means (singular) of receiving Jesus' body is faith, as opposed to using the mouth.

 

Rakovsky you're back quoting Reformed pastors on Luther, posting random snippets of dialogue without any citations, secondary and tertiary opinions from blogs, and making statements like this:

What is "spirit mode" for you, if not our doctrine?

... Anyway I conclude that it's becoming pointless to engage in dialogue with you about this. Notice that you don't quote a single primary source, relying on blogs and secondary/tertiary opinions for all your authorities.

 

Hello, Stalwart!

You ask:

Luther's claim was that Christ was in bread in the same spirit form that he went into and through the tombstone and house doors in John 20 when He visited the apostles and when he became invisible after eating with them in Luke 24 and in John 20.

Below is Calvin's rejection of the Lutheran belief that Christ's flesh had an invisible "presence under the bread" in "spirit" form in the Institutes, a primary document of Calvinism. At the end, Calvin complains that Luther is making a spirit of Christ's flesh:

Another example of Christ being present in spirit mode would be in 1 Cor 10:3-4 when the preincarnate Christ is a "spiritual rock" following the Israelites. God is many times called in the Bible a rock, and Christians commonly think of interactions with the preincarnate Christ in the Old Testament. It's true that his corporeal body was not yet existing in the Old Testament, but it is still an example of what a body in spirit mode would be like. In Genesis 1 and elsewhere in the Torah we read about God having body parts, eating with Abraham and walking, yet we also know that the incarnation hadn't occurred yet.

So Jesus' body in spirit mode in bread would mean that Jesus has a "spirit body" with qualities like the post-resurrection bodies that Paul describes. It would mean that the food eaten with the mouth in the Eucharist was not just bread, but also Jesus' body.

This contrasts with Cranmer's position in the Disputations, a back and forth dialogue:

Weston: I will go plainly to work by scriptures. What took he?

Cranmer: Bread?

Weston: What gave he?

Cranmer: bread

Weston: What brake he?

Cranmer: bread

WESTON: What did they eat?

CRANMER: Bread
...
...
WESTON: We eat it with our mouth.

CRANMER: I deny it. We eat it through faith.

Writings and Disputations of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury​

Isn't Cranmer a primary source for understanding Anglican theology?

In case you just consider this snippets out of context, feel free to check the full text yourself:
https://books.google.com/books?id=Om4JAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA402&lpg=PA402&dq=in+very+deed,+setting+the+figure+aside,+formally+it+is+not+his+body.&source=bl&ots=GUq2BfMHdC&sig=Swtx6IAO5mYnXtIbqNaJlEFot4I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwio0LDAx9DMAhWJyRoKHeg9ALIQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=in very deed, setting the figure aside, formally it is not his body.&f=false

If we are going just by scripture, it's true that Jesus "broke bread", but it's not stated that "they ate bread", as simple as that. Going by the scripture alone, it's clearly stated that they ate his body, but it's not clearly stated whether it can still be called bread after the consecration.

The reason I did not give longer quotes, Stalwart, is that I must type them out by hand. This is in fact what Cranmer said.Cranmer's position is that Jesus gave his body, but it was not in the food.

So aside from the bread being a "figure", it is not formally Jesus' body, and the scripture this is my body is "most true".

For Cranmer, the scripture is "most true", and the scripture "Take eat this is my body" means that they ate "bread" and that it is not indeed his body but a figure of his body.

 

Hi Friends

If we anchor this discussion in the reformation, then we may simply relive the fracturing of the reformation. Anglican Theology did not somehow mystically appear with Henry VIII's declaration, and neither did it mystically stop at the approval of the 1661 Prayer Book by the Houses of Parliament in 1662.

Science and Faith are different. If - and I am not suggesting one should or would - one was to take consecrated elements and subject them to scientific analysis, regardless of the denomination I would expect them to return the same results as the elements would have returned prior to consecration. That has no bearing on the matter of my faith as by faith I receive the Body and the Blood of Jesus. Faith knows nothing of bread and wine.

I really like something of the Orthodox tradition where so much of this happens on the other side of the doors - which I understand to be heaven.

In a sense to demand a physicality to the statement of Jesus (take eat this is my body) is do unhinge the spirituality involved. I am not sure in fact that we don't risk doing damage to our theology of the incarnation, for Christ was wholly Man and wholly God.

Real Presence as a theology works for me, and allows me to find a balance that allows me to take faith and science seriously. Many of my friends disagree with me, however they are happy to allow e this delusion.

 

Maybe you mean to reject physicality is to reject spirituality?

When Jesus said that he restored the temple of his body in 3 days, he did not mean that as a spiritual statement only. His body was a real object located in physical space. Jesus restoring his body was not just a spiritual expression, but a real action in real life.

To say that "This is my body" is true only in the sense of one's personal spirituality starts to go down the path of Unitarians who teach that Jesus "rose" and also interpret that term as only spiritual.

 

No, quietly.

I don't think only adequately describes anything spiritual.

This as absolutely what I am not saying. The foolishness of such idea is culpable, as to suggest that Man made God in his own image. More possibly I am suggesting that it is only by faith and in faith that these realities will be apprehended. The true light, that enlightens every person is coming into the world.

Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

 

This has now deteriorated into a situation of words for the sake of words!