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

Hello!
I agree that non-Anglican theologians are not a source of authority on Anglicanism, and I wish to follow the site's rules.

 

I didn't say he removed himself...only that those who eat the sacrament do not receive the Body and Blood of Christ, only eat the bare elements. I don't know how this is accomplished. The scriptures give no details. The scripture gives no details on HOW Jesus turned water into wine or multiplied the fish or healed the sick. Yet they happened. It is sufficient to know that something occurred to believe in the truth of the occurance, knowledge of how it happened is not necessary and, when speaking about the deep things of God's salvific action, most likely impossible.

I am not a theologian, I don't keep a running list of citations to Anglican experts to back up my statements. I can offer this website which discusses Anglican eucharistic theology down through the ages: http://anglicaneucharistictheology.com/Anglican_Eucharistic_Theology/Welcome.html. Anything more may be found at Project Canterbury, Anglican History, or in the excellent source documents found on this site.

 

The idea that Jesus removed himself from the bread of the unworthy was proposed by someone else earlier in this thread, I think Stalwart.

Isn't that the implication of what you are proposing, to wit: When Jesus said TAKE EAT THIS IS MY BODY, and gave Judah a piece of bread, Jesus' words of the real presence must be objectively true. So sometime between Jesus saying that and Judah eating the bread, Jesus must have secretly removed himself from the bread.

 

Dear Layman,

This is from the Anglican Eucharistic Theology site you provided:

In other words, these two sentences that form the focus of your discussions with your Lutheran friends occupy the place where a passage rejecting the real presence stood.

Here is from another essay on the website:

The site also says:

 

You also pointed to the excellent source documents found on this site. The only one I found on Article 28 was Ellis' Defence of the Articles, which says:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...irty-nine-articles/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

 

I wrote about this earlier:

when Rome uses the language of 'species' they attempt to teach the presence of Christ's physical body. This is a contradiction indeed. Ellis picks up on this and refutes it.
Ellis does not disagree with our receiving of Christ's Heavenly and Spiritual body, or that we indeed truly receive and eat it

 

Dear Layman,

You also pointed me to Project Canterbury. It cites:
From The Works of the Rt. Rev. Charles C. Grafton (Volume 7), edited by B. Talbot Rogers, New York: Longmans, Green, 1914, pp. 201-205

Another essay, The Continuity of the Church of England, on Project Canterbury explains an original debate on the grammar issue

Another essay records the same incident with Bp. Guest's letter, and then says that Bp. Bishop later changed his view to object to "only".

http://anglicanhistory.org/england/enraght/realpresence.html

​

A biography of the Anglican theologian Bennett on the Project Canterbury website says:

http://anglicanhistory.org/england/bennett/bio/03.html

 

That is one way to read it. But I am unwilling to venture where scripture has given no clear sign post. It could be that Christ, in his foreknowledge, witheld the gift of his body and blood from Judas' portion. Or perhaps, as Fr. Jonathan at Conciliatory Anglican writes, Christ's body and blood are truly present in the elements given to the wicked and unbelieving communicant, but due to the same's lack of the requisite spirit, he cannot receive or digest any part of it but the gross elements. Spiritual food may only be eaten by spiritual people, or as the liturgy says: the gifts of God for the people of God. (See https://conciliaranglican.com/2012/03/10/on-the-eucharist-spiritual-food-is-real-food/). Or perhaps it is none of these. We see now as through a mirror darkly. We make out the big shapes but some of the finer details remain hidden. Part of faith means being OK with not knowing all the answers, imo.

 

ok. What is your point?

 

again, what is your point?

 

and again, what is your point?

 

Dear Spherelink,
Hello!
You wrote:

1. Does Ellis anywhere state that Christ has a body that can be everywhere?
2. Doesn't Ellis go beyond refuting the RC teaching of physical presence and also reject a direct presence of the body itself in the bread itself?

For example, Ellis notes in objection 3 that:
"Obj. 3. The Words of the Institution are to be understood in their proper Sense, because they are the Words of a Will or Testament, and Christ uttered them, when he was about to die, to his illiterate Disciples."

If someone accepts the "real" presence in bread, that Jesus had in his hands his "real" body, doesn't she/she accept the Words in their "proper sense".

Ellis answers Objection 3:
"Answ. The Words of a Will may be clear, though figurative. Every Trope is not obscure; it is sometimes the Light and Beauty of Speech."
Isn't Ellis implying that Jesus' words "This is my body" is "figurative", and that they are the "beauty of speech", not used in their "proper sense"?

Also, Ellis lists Objection 4 as follows:
"Obj. 4. Christ is Omnipotent; and therefore his Body may be offered in the Eucharist under the Species of Bread and Wine."
Why does Ellis see this as an Objection?

According to the Anglican writer Headlam on the Old Catholics and their relation to the RCs:

http://anglicanhistory.org/england/acheadlam/notes.html

And according to the Anglican Canon Veal in The Living Church:
"The Augsburg Confession clearly teaches "that the true body and blood of Christ are really present in the Supper of our Lord under the form of bread and wine and are distributed and received" (Article X). Luther emphatically taught that Christ was present "in, through, and under" the species of bread and wine."
http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cg...Carticle.pl?volume=214&issue=26&article_id=16

 

Hello, Layman!

I agree with your view that the Bible teaches the real presence in the food. I would like our churches (EOs and Anglicans) to reach agreement on issues and to reunite as well. I like it that the Anglican church teaches the importance of Tradition in a way very similar to our Orthodox church. And so I would like it to be true that the Anglican Church and the Articles teach the real presence in the Eucharistic food like our church does, and I know that many Anglicans feel this way about the Eucharistic food as well.

At the same time, I have to recognize that many other Anglicans take the view that the Articles teach that Christ's body is only "eaten" by faith and that this "eating" is performed only in a "spiritual" way. Even though I prefer to read the Articles as you do, in order to reach your same conclusion, then as a matter of rational critical thinking, I must consider and address the reasons that those Anglican theologians give for teaching that the "eating" in the Articles is only the "spiritual eating" that Cranmer described in his view of the Eucharist. I'm not pre-disposed against the Articles, actually the opposite.

 

Everyone agrees on that. I believe the question is what kind of presence it is.
whether it is present physically or in a heavenly manner as I just wrote...

 

Please let me know if you happen to find any Anglican scholars who teach that the faithful physically eat Jesus' real body that is in spirit form in the bread but that the unworthy do not.

 

According to the Anglican Eucharist Theology website that Layman pointed me to, Cranmer did not believe that Jesus' body had a real, actual presence in the bread itself, but instead took a nominalist (in name only) view of this:

http://anglicaneucharistictheology...._The_Books_of_Common_Prayer1549_and_1552.html

 

Hello, Spherelink.

What I meant was what you said: that Jesus' body has two forms of being: spiritual and physical. The spiritual mode you did a good job describing when you mentioned:

the heavenly/spiritual body which can be everywhere, and... the physical body which can only be in one place at one time, ie. in heaven and not on earth...​

Along with this, I meant that eating can be spiritual or physical, "spiritual eating" referring to believing, and "physical eating" referring to the mouth. Note that in John 6, Jesus said that you must "eat" (phagon) and "chew" (trogon) his body.

How else do you understand the concept of spiritual eating vs. physical eating, other than "believing" vs. "chewing with the physical mouth"?

Layman was saying that only the faithful physically eat the bread that has Jesus' body in it when he said:

Stalwart said something similar- that the unworthy had Jesus' presence removed from their pieces of bread before they ate it.

Thus in Layman's and Stalwart's view, there is a real eating of Jesus' spirit body in the bread, but this only occurs for the faithful.

 

Personally, I believe, and my Anglican Chuch teaches, that the real presence of Jesus Christ is in the Bread and the Wine of which I partake during the Eucharist. Whether the unworthy eat the real presence or eat only the bread and wine is something I cannot get that concerned about. There is evidence pointing both ways as far as I can see. God knows and I leave these things up to Him. To keep arguing about it and citing different sources seems futile. You will just go round and round in circles. This was debated in the past and people held different views then as they do today.

 

Same with me and the Anglican church I attend.


As for the unworthy in Article 29, and that whole debate... I think the important thing is that it reminds us that we Christians ourselves should indeed be worthy of partaking His Body and Blood.