Anglicans, the Wittenberg trail and the eucharist

'The Wittenberg Trail' (Lutheranism) has its obvious attractions to those disillusioned with the evangelical sub-culture - what one confessional Lutheran website describes as "the ahistorical, non-creedal, shallow and commercial trends in today’s 'pop-church' culture". The shared historical experiences of Anglicanism and Lutheranism suggest that the Canterbury Trail, like the Wittenberg Trail, also offers an alternative to contemporary ahistorical, non-creedal Christianity.

The historical similiarities between Canterbury and Wittenberg have been well-summarised in the Porvoo Agreement:

"the faith, worship and spirituality of all our churches are rooted in the tradition of the apostolic Church. We stand in continuity with the Church of the patristic and medieval periods both directly and through the insights of the Reformation period. We each understand our own church to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic Church of Jesus Christ and truly participating in the one apostolic mission of the whole people of God. We share in the liturgical heritage of Western Christianity and also in the Reformation emphases upon justification by faith and upon word and sacrament as means of grace. All this is embodied in our confessional and liturgical documents and is increasingly recognized both as an essential bond between our churches and as a contribution to the wider ecumenical movement.

Despite geographical separation and a wide diversity of language, culture and historical development, the Anglican and Lutheran churches in Britain and Ireland and in the Nordic and Baltic countries have much in common, including much common history. Anglo-Saxon and Celtic missionaries played a significant part in the evangelization of Northern Europe and founded some of the historic sees in the Nordic lands. The unbroken witness of successive bishops in the dioceses and the maintenance of pastoral and liturgical life in the cathedrals and churches of all our nations are an important manifestation of the continuity of Christian life across the ages, and of the unity between the churches in Britain and Ireland and in Northern Europe".

The Augsburg Confession of 1530 clearly influenced the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Ecclesia Anglicana. Both statements open with classical Trinitarian and Christological declarations. The Articles quite clearly echo Augsburg's statements with regards to justification by faith, original sin, works, baptism, sin after baptism, ecclesiastical traditions, the ordained ministry and civil affairs. Then, however, there is the eucharist.

Augsburg professed that "the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord". The Formula of Concord (1576), expounding Augsburg, stated:

"that the true body and blood of Christ are truly present in the Holy Supper under the form of bread and wine, and are there dispensed and received ... The Sacrament of the Altar is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine ... we confess that in the Lord's Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, and are truly tendered with the visible elements, bread and wine, to those who receive the Sacrament".

Article 28 of the 39 clearly states the contrary, affirming the high Calvinist doctrine of a real feeding - but not a real presence - in the eucharist. The Black Rubric stated in true Calvinist fashion:

"the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than one".

As noted before on More than a via media, Anglican eucharistic theology and formularies from 1559 embraced a more realist expression of eucharistic faith. The sacramental Catechism added in 1604 included distinctly Lutheran-sounding language:

"the Body and Blood of Christ ... verily taken and received ["dispensed and received" in the Formula of Concord] by the faithful in the Lord's Supper".

I am in the somewhat uncomfortable position of regarding the eucharistic faith of Wittenberg to be more in continuity with the catholic tradition than the 'real feeding' of Article 28. As one Presbyterian convert to Lutheranism has stated:

"I found that the Lutheran teaching on Communion was grounded in the doctrine of the Two Natures in Christ. For Christ to be really God Incarnate, his divine nature could not be separated from his human nature by an interval of space. In the book of Colossians 2:9 we are told that 'In Christ, all the fullness of the deity dwells bodily'. If this is true, there is no deity apart from the humanity. Luther said that if we could find a location in creation where the divine nature existed apart from the human nature, we would have discovered a part of the divine nature that was not incarnate, and had never been incarnate. He said that he did not want anyone to try such a God on him! The point was that Christ as the God-Man is our Mediator. To meet God apart from the Mediator was to confront a consuming fire. While this teaching is incomprehensible and leads to some paradoxes, the opposing teaching leads to deeper problems ... In Lutheranism, the humanity of Christ is placed between us and his deity. In the Reformed view, the humanity of Christ is absent from us, residing in a particular location in a spatial heaven. Here the deity is placed between us and his humanity. This presents an upside-down incarnation".

That Canterbury has affirmed Wittenberg's eucharistic faith in the Porvoo Agreement - "we believe that the body and blood of Christ are truly present, distributed and received under the forms of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper" - gives me considerable comfort. Here is the faith of the historic church, of the catholic tradition.