An Anglican Theology Of The Lord's Supper

Anglicans believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They reject any doctrine of a crudely material presence. The Thirty-nine Articles, the sixteenth-century Anglican statement of doctrine and polity, also rejected the less crudely materialist Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. The following paragraphs outline four ways that Anglicans explain Christ's real, sacramental presence.

Real But Not Carnal or Local Presence The Anglican Communion (sixty million worldwide) is catholic and evangelical. It is catholic in that its creeds, sacramental theology, and polity (episcopacy) conform to the undivided church prior to the East/West division of the eleventh century. At the same time, the English church has concluded that the main doctrinal developments of the Protestant Reformation, such as the authority of Scripture and the necessity of personal faith, are also part of the ancient faith. These catholic and evangelical threads are reflected in the Anglican view of the presence of the bread and wine. The Anglican Communion advocates the Real Presence of Christ regarding the Eucharist. When Christ says, "This is my body .… This is blood" (Matt. 26:26, 28), referring to the bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper, he declares his presence. No attempt is made to explain away Real Presence, for this would be, as someone has said, "The real absence of Christ." The Word of God clearly calls the church to believe that it really and truly feeds on Christ in the Holy Communion. This is a mystery, not able to be fully comprehended by the human mind (a mystery no less than other doctrines such as the Trinity and the relationship between the deity and the humanity of Christ). Nevertheless, this presence is to be acknowledged and affirmed. Anglicans hasten to add the qualification that Real Presence is not physical or local, as the doctrine called transubstantiation is often thought to teach. (See "The Lord's Supper in the Medieval West," chapter 9; transubstantiation was in fact aimed at countering a crude doctrine of Christ's physical, local presence in the Eucharist.) The Thirty-nine Articles confessional statement of the Anglican Church state in article 28, "Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread and wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions." Any notion that the elements of Communion change into the physical body and blood of Christ—not simply into the substance of Christ—goes beyond the statements of Scripture, for the Bible only tells Christians that the bread and wine are his body and blood, and not how that occurs. If the elements become the physical reality, then they cease to be a sacrament, a sign. Granted, the Eucharist is more than a sign in that grace is applied through it (hence a sacrament), but if the bread and wine become the physical body and blood, then the elements become less than a sign. Despite the effort by medieval theologians to counter such crudely corporal interpretations, such interpretations reappeared from time to time and led to abuses of the elements themselves. Although the Anglican Communion has upheld the real-yet-mystery view of presence, this view has been understood in a variety of ways. Apart from those who would simply leave Real Presence as a mystery and go no further, there are four main views. First, the Anglo-Catholic understanding of presence (the more Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox view) advances a view of real sacramental change that rejects any crude theory of physical or material changes. At the Conference on Anglo-Catholic Theology in London in 1927, the following position was stated:

After consecration it [bread] is changed, … not by any change in anything which can be correlated in terms of electrons, but by the addition of opportunities of spiritual experience in that, by devout communion, we are made partakers in Christ. We are guilty of gross materialism if we think of the Host, or Chalice, in terms only of their physical properties, as purely physical objects, rather than in terms also of the opportunities of spiritual experience they afford, opportunities which are no less fundamental, and which are infinitely more significant (A. E. Taylor and Will Spens, The Real Presence [London: Anglo-Catholic Congress, 1927]).

This statement is careful to avoid a materialist change but pushes for some sort of change in a real sense. The distinction between spiritual and physical is not pressed, nor is the material considered to be more real than spiritual. A second view of the sacramental presence of Christ is known as virtualism. "As used in the Sacrament they [the elements] have the 'virtue' of Christ's body and blood, inasmuch as they are vehicles of Christ's gifts to the soul, though they cannot be ontologically identified with what they convey" (Oliver C. Quick, The Christian Sacraments [London: Nisbet & Co., 1927, 1995], 206). The virtue of Christ is applied when the Holy Spirit descends to the sacraments at the epiklesis, the invocation of the third person of the Trinity, the Spirit. This application of Christ's virtue has been considered as taking place at the service as a whole, at the consecration itself through an additional prayer before or after the canon, or upon the reception of the elements into the faithful recipient. Virtualism is sometimes called a memorialist view. However, virtualism should not be confused with Zwinglianism, a position that believes in no special presence relative to the Eucharist in the service proper or in the person. The epiklesis, historically an Eastern Orthodox distinctive, has also come into Anglicanism at different times, particularly as one of the emphases of the Anglo-Catholic movement of the last century. This prayer was incorporated into the 1928 version of the Prayer Book. Modern versions often make the epiklesis optional. A third view of the Real Presence of Christ is another variation of an Eastern Orthodox emphasis that was taught by John Calvin, who was quite influenced by the Eastern church Fathers. Calvin built on the verse, "Let us draw near with a true heart … not neglecting to meet together … all the more as you see the Day drawing near" (Heb. 10:22–25). This mystical drawing near was Calvin's understanding of the sursum corda, a historical statement in virtually all eucharistic services that is based on the previous Scripture and is translated, "Lift up your hearts." According to the Reformer at Geneva, the sursum corda teaches that Christ is really present at the Eucharist because the church draws near to him in the heavenlies in a mysterious sense. The ascended Lord is at the head of the table. This ascension position can also be combined with any or all of the other approaches to Christ's presence in the Eucharist. A fourth view of presence in Anglicanism is receptionism, the most popular conviction among many evangelicals since the Reformation. This opinion maintains that the elements become the body and blood of Christ when actually received by faith and not until then. They remain simple elements of bread and wine when taken in unbelief. All of these views of presence are represented in the Anglican Communion, a large and comprehensive church. The Anglican church believes in a true Real Presence, even though there are various ways of understanding the reality of this presence. It rejects a physical transformation of the elements. It thus affirms in the Articles of Religion: "The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the means whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is Faith." As such, the Anglican Communion embraces the Catholic as well as the evangelical position in its belief in Christ's presence in the bread and wine.