CONCORDIA - 3 THEOLOGICAL - %- - - P r QUARTERLY a2 q - Volume 48, Nurnbers 7 6r 3 z s s &I vj as APRIL-JULY 1984 ; h C The Use of the Church Fathers in the - > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Formula of Concord J .A.O. Preus 97 Clergy Mental Health and the Doctrine of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Justification .Robert Preus 113 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Luther's Last Battles Mark U. Edwards 125 The Doctrine of Man: Christian Anthropology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Eugene F. Klug 141 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Luther the Seelsorger .George Kraus 153 Wittenburg and Canterbury . . . . . . . . . . . . . .John Stephenson 165 The Grace of God as the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Foundation for Ethics Jeffery Gibbs 185 Implications of Recent Exegetical Studies for the Doctrine of the Lord's Supper: A Survey of the Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .John T. Pless203 Propitiation in the Language and . . . . . . . . . .Douglas Judisch221 Typology of the Old Testament Theological Observer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245 Book Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .251 CONCORD lA THEOLOGICAL SEMI NARY, 1 BRARY n. WAYNE, 1FiOtAI.iA $5525 Wittenberg and Canterbury John Stephenson The recent bouts of dialogue between Lutheran and Anglican Christendom, in both North America and Western Europe, have been a product of the modern ecumenical movement in which those set in political authority over us have shown little or no interest. The first instalment of theological conversation be- tween our Church of the Augsburg Confession and the newly autonomous Church of England was, by way of contrast, brought about by sheer political necessity. In 1535, when the breach with Rome was barely two years old, Henry VIII was discomfited at the thought that his ex-wife's nephew, Charles V, and Francis I of France might join forces to restore England to the papal obedience. Expediency therefore dictated that the king must seek an alliance with the Lutheran princes of Nor- thern Germany. As far as Henry was concerned, the purpose of any such accommodation would be purely political and military, but Elector John Frederick had been schooled to apply Augustana VII even to his foreign policy. Accordingly, if the king of England wished to take out full or merely associate membership in the League of Schmalkalden, doctrinal consen- sus must be achieved between the English Church and the adherents of the Augsburg Confession. We may safely assume that the prospect of resuming dialogue, however indirectly, with Martin Luther filled Henry VIII with dismay. For the relation- ship between the two men already went back a decade and a half, and it had got off to a disastrous start. While Luther pondered spiritual things in Wittenberg, Henry brooded on the unfairness of a world where the kings of Spain and France boasted the titles "Most Catholic" and "Most Christian" respectively, while their counterpart across the Channel lacked a similar honour. Henry desperately coveted an equality of digni- ty with his brother monarchs, and the label "Most Orthodox King" was probably the title that he had in mind. Leaping to the aid of a harrassed papacy would be one way of prompting the Pope to confer a grand title on the English Crown, and Henry duly burst into print in 1521 with the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, a polemical work which purported to refute 1 66 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Luther's critique of the Roman sacramental system of the previous year. It appears likely that the royal foray into theological Controversy was in fact the work of those future martyrs for papal supremacy, John Fisher and Thomas More, but Henry VIII got all the credit, with the result that a grateful pontiff conferred on Henry f ~ r his lifetime the title "Defender of the Faith."' As is well known, this style was tenaciously maintained by Henry's Protestant successors, and the Latin ab- breviation "Fid. Def." still appears on British coins. As Henry settled down t o enjoy his new title, Luther resolved that, if the king of England wished to engage in theological polemics, then he must be treated no differently from the rest of the Reformer's literary opponents. Works published in both Latin and German2 taking issue with the theology published under the king's name did nothing t o foster affection for Lurher in Henry's heart. Nor were things helped when, later in the decade, the then Archdeacon Thomas Cranmer was sent to Ger- many t o gather theological opinions favourable to Henry's desired divorce from Catherine of Aragon. With his opposition to the dissoIution of the marriage, the Reformer found himself in the unlikely company of the Bishop of Rome; but while Cle- ment VII dithered and dallied on the issue of the marriage and was finally brought t o oppose the divorce only by the armed might of Charles V, Luther consistently denounced the fragile case brought forward by Henry against the validity of his mar- riage. During the winter of 1535 and 1536, laborious negotiations were conducted between the Wittenberg theologians and a delegation of English divines headed by Edward Foxe, Bishop of Hereford, and including the future Lutheran martyr, Robert Barnes. A cordial relationship developed between Luther and Foxe. Bishop and Reformer discovered that they shared a com- mon affliction with kidney stones. They swapped remedies for their painful ailment, and on his return t o England Foxe was to display a marked enthusiasm for the Wittenberg theology. The theological discussions between the English and the German theologians were based on the recent Augsburg Confession and the two sides were able to draw up thirteen articles of agreement covering the topics dealt with in the Augustana- As one reads these Wittenberg Articles of 1536, One cannot avoid the impres- sion that each side is holding something back while at the same time going out of its way t o avoid offending the other. The treatment given to such themes as justification and good works Wittenberg and Canterbury 167 cannot be considered as evidence of genuine theological agree- ment, but rather as a papering over of the real differences between the two sides: the English Church was not yet ready to give serious consideration t o the material principle of the Reformation, and, besides, the English negotiators were patent- ly continually looking over their shoulders at the spectre of the king to whom they would have to render an account and who was celebrated for his adherence to the traditional concept of merit. As far as we know, Cranmer did not broach the delicate matter of soh fide with his king until Henry was safely on his deathbed. All the more remarkable, then, is the matter-of-fact agreement reached between the English and the Germans con- cerning the Real Presence. The sixth of the Wittenberg Articles presents us with a slight amplification of Augustana X, being a straightforward avowal of the Real Presence in the Lutheran sense. ' What Henry VIII would concede in his foreign dealings he was by no means prepared t o tolerate on the home front. The Wittenberg Articles content themselves with confessing the real presence, exhibition and distribution of the sacred ~ o d y and Blood in the Holy Supper, while refraining from propounding the novel theory of tranxbstantiation as the sole way in which this mystery may be understood. The so-called Supreme Head of the Church of England was a n unreflective traditionalist in matters of faith, being minded t o preserve the whole body of late mediaeval religion with the single exception of the papal supremacy. That the religion of the ruled should perfectly mir- ror that of their ruler was a principle that held good also outside the German Empire, with the resuIt that Henry VIII obliged his subjects to conform to his own belief in transubstantiation. Failure to comply with the royal wishes led a steady stream of men and women to the stake, and we witness the pathetic spec- tacle of Thomas Cranmer, who by the end of Henry's reign had not only ceased to hold transubstantiation but had also passed beyond a temporary espousal of Lutheran eucharistic theology to embrace radical Swiss views of the Holy Supper, prosecuting and condemning brave spirits who were prepared to state publicly what he, the archbishop, believed privately. The death of Henry VIII in January of 1547 freed Thomas Crmmer t o undertake the reformation of the Church of England in earnest. By the end o f the reign of the boy-king, Ed- ward VI, in the summer o f 1553, the archbishop had piloted through both the convocations and parliament a series of momentous changes in the liturgy and confessional formulae of 1 68 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY the English Church which patently relegated the sixth of the Wittenberg Articles of 1536 to the status of a dead letter. Dr. Peter Brooks has afforded us a lucid and convincing account of the progression of Archbishop Cranmer's eucharistic beliefs during the reign of Henry and his son, injecting a welcome ele- ment of clarity and certainty into an area which has been hotly contested in Anglican scholarship during the last century and a half. Along with Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, Thomas Cranmer holds a prime place of honour among the architects of Anglican Christendom; so that the archbishop's beliefs concerning the nature of our Lord's presence in the Holy Supper cannot be a matter of indifference to the schools of divinity that compete for predominance within the Anglican Church. We may broadly say that the Anglican Evangelicals are happy with the most un- forced construction that can be placed on Cranmer's statements, namely, that he was a convinced proponent of the Swiss Reformed understanding of the eucharist. The Anglo-Catholic party stemming from the Oxford Movement of the last century, on the other hand, has often been obliged to argue with a straight face that black is white in order to rescue the archbishop by hook or by crook from the charge that he was a Zwinglian. Dr. C. W. Dugmore, for example, will concede that Cranmer now and then fell under the baleful influence of the continental Reformed theologians who flooded the realm in the years following Charles V's victory over the League of Schmalkalden. In the end, though, it is an article of faith for Dugmore that Cranmer - and, along with him, the gifted Bishop Ridley of London - was deep down a good chap who held some sort of Real Presence d ~ c t r i n e . ~ Despite such special pleading, the facts of the case are highly embarrassing for the Anglo-Catholic cause. Even though Ridley of London had won him over to the Swiss understanding of the Holy Supper before the old king's death, the cautious Cranmer resolved to make haste slowly, with the corollary that his first essay in a complete English liturgy has often been judged as a remarkably Lutheran piece of work. "The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Commu- nion commonly called the Mass" of the Book of Common Prayer of 1549' suppresses the understanding of the Holy Sup- per as a propitiatory sacrifice offered by the priest for the living and the dead, and is clearly congruous with the Lutheran understanding of the Real Presence. Traditional vestments arc retained for a celebration in which the verba testamenti are prefaced by the following consecration epiclesis: "Heare us (0 Wittenberg and Canterbury 169 merciful father) we beseech thee; and with thy holy spirite and Worde, vouchsafe to blesse and sanctifie these thy gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, tlirit they maie be unto us the bodye and bloude of thy moste derely beloued sonne Jesus christe." The host is delivered to the communicant with the words, "The body of our Lorde Jesus Christe whiche was geuen for thee, preserue thy bodye and soule unto euerlasting lyfe"; and a similar formula attends the administration of the chalice. Clearly, the Prayer Book of 1549 was intended by its chief author as a halfway measure of merely temporary duration. The more vocal partisans of the Swiss theology lost no time in point- ing out the deficiencies of the communion liturgy in com- parison with the allegedly more perfect rites of Geneva and Zurich, and the archbishop pointedly requested critiques of his work from two distinguished continental theologians who at that time were occupying the Regius Chairs of Divinity at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Luther's death had released Martin Bucer at Cambridge from any restraints that might have been imposed by the lingering memory of the Wit- tenberg Concord of 1536; so that he and his Oxford colleague, Peter Martyr Vermigli, made plain to the archbishop their dissatisfaction with the strongly Lutheran doctrine of consecra- tion characteristic of the rite of 1549. Presently the old guard of Henrician Catholics exchanged the luxury of their episcopal palaces for less comfortable lodgings in the Tower, thereby assisting Cranmer to gain the necessary majorities in Convoca- tion and the House of Lords for the consummation of his scheme of reformation. In 1552 Convocation approved the For- ty-Two Articles of Religion, and a revised Prayer Book was issued with the sanction of both Convocation and Parliament. The eucharistic doctrine of the new liturgy stands in stark con- trast to that of the old. Traditional vestments are abolished, their place being taken by the simple surplice; the consecration e~iclesis is reduced to ambiguity; and the elements are delivered to the accompaniment of the following formula: "Take and eate this, in remembraunce that Christ dyed for thee, and feede on him in thy hearte by faythe, with thanksgeuing. Drinke this in remembraunce that Christ's bloude was shed for thee, and be thankefull." The contemporaneous Forty-Two Articles surely offer an authoritative commentary on the liturgy of 1552.6 In the relevant article, I Cor. 10:16 is remoulded in such a way that, while the English Church clearly parts company with the crassest statements of the early Zwingli, participation in the sacred body and blood is restricted to the believing communi- cant. Notwithstanding this opening invocation of I Cor. 10: 16, though, all talk of participation in the sacred body and blood here must be meant metaphorically, for the article goes on to assail not only the theory of transubstantiation but also the doc- trine of the Real Presence itself in ringing tones of condemna- tion. Reformed Christology rears its head in the following sentences: "Forasmuch as the truth of man's nature requireth, that the body of one, and the self same man, cannot be at one time in divers places, but must needs be in some one certain place; therefore the body of Christ cannot be present at one time in many and divers places. And because (as holy scripture doth teach) Christ was taken up into heaven, and there shall continue until the end of the world: a faithful man ought not, either to believe, o r openly to confess the real and bodily presence (as they term it) of Christ's flesh and blood in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper." "As they term it" - the third person nominative plural pronoun clearly embraces Lutherans as well as Romans. An identical Christology found its way into t h e rubrics of the 1552 Communion Service, being inserted at the last minute o n the orders of the Privy Council and speedily printed in black. The notorious Black Rubric defends against John Knox the custom of kneeling to receive the Blessed Sacrament "for the sygnificacion of the humble and grateful1 acknowledgyng of the benefites of Chryst, geuen unto the woorthye receiuer." At the same time, since "the naturall body and blood of our sauiour Christ ... are in heauen and not here," there can be no question of "anye real1 and essencial presence" of His "naturall fleshe and bloude" in the elements. The swift capitulation of the English Church to the Swiss Reformed camp on matters eucharistic once the restraining hand of Henry VIII was taken away demands explanation. Fac- tors other than the persuasiveness of the continental Reformed and their English allies played their part here. We do well to remember that burning for alleged heresy was not first intro - duced to England by Mary I as the secular arm of the beginning Counter-Reformation. On the contrary, the burning of con- demned heretics was a regular feature of fifteenth-century England, and Henry VIII and his father encouraged this process well before the European Reformation began. In the late four- teenth and early fifteenth centuries it had seemed as though the fol]owers of John Wycliffe might even take over the English state. This danger soon passed, but Wycliffe's characteristic Wittenberg and Canterbury 17 1 tenets passed in vulgarised form to the lower classes, and the so-called Lollards came to represent a religious underground in fifteenth-century and early Tudor England of unknown quanti- ty but certain menace to the authorities. Now John Wycliffe, who died in 1384, anticipated many of the tenets of "Protestant- ism." He had no inkling of the material principle of the Refor- mation, and - what is significant for our present purposes - he was the first major figure in the Latin Church of the West to offer a sch~larly rejection of the dogma of the Real Presence since Berengar of Tours back in the eleventh century. Wycliffe was given his recompense by Luther in the great Confession concerning Christ's Supper of 1528.' The Englishman's argu- ment went as follows: Aristotle teaches - and who shall gainsay him? - that in any meaningful statement the subject and the predicate must be of identical content. In this case, our Lord's words over bread and wine on the night that He was betrayed are puzzling, not to say downright odd. The mainline scholastics were bound by the dogmatic definitions of the church to uphold the full reality of the divinely uttered predicate. Whatever else is present in the Sacrament, the sacred body and blood must be present. In this case, the subject - that is, "this" bread and "this" cup - must be interpreted in such a way as to do no violence to the predicate. The mainline scholastics were obliged to engage in all kinds of contortions to avoid interpreting the eucharistic words as simply propounding the obvious tautology that Christ's body and blood are Christ's Body and Blood. Wycliffe, on the other hand, harboured certain doubts concern- ing the papal supremacy and was in the process of switching over to a sola scriptura theology which would no longer be beholden to the constraints of tradition. Accordingly, he took the liberty of interpreting the eucharistic words from the other end. Plainly, Christ referred to real bread and real wine; therefore - since He too must be a good Aristotelian - He could not possibly have meant the predicate nouns "My body" and "My blood" in their straightforward sense. In this way, Wycliffe anticipated the Reformed symbolical understand- ing of the Lord's Supper. Significantly, he identified the theory of transubstantiation as the point where Antichrist had made terrible inroads into the Christian Church. His Lollards followed him here, one of the chief planks in their platform be- ing the denial and indeed the ridiculing of the mystery of the Real Presence. The significance of the Lollards in the English Reformation is this: they provided a ready-made constituency 172 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY for the reception into English religion of the tenets of the swiss Reformation. More especially, they supplied fertile soil for the development in England of a eucharistic theology which is the polar opposite of the one enshrined in the Book of Concord. Depending on his brand of churchmanship, the Anglican is apt to regard the Prayer Book and Articles of 1552 as either the high water mark or the low water mark of English religion. For the purposes of forming a balanced judgment on the intercom- munion arrangements now coming into effect between wide segments of Lutheran and Anglican Christendom in Europe and North America, we must realise that the Anglican understand- ing of the Holy Supper did not reach definitive form in 1552. Three further episodes in the Anglican development fitly merit our attention before we dwell in greater detail on the recent hap- penings in Lutheran-Episcopal dialogue. In the first place, we must consider the effects of the personal intervention of Elizabeth I on Anglican eucharistic doctrine. The queen, on her accession in 1558, favoured the reintroduc- tion of the liturgy of 1549, and she is known to have expressed her predilection for what she termed the "Augustanean Confes- ~ i o n . " ~ Zwingli's successors in Zurich were for a time greatly fearful lest England migZ;t swing into the Lutheran camp, and Bullinger wrote that "the possibility of English adoption of the Augsburg confession 'gives vexation LO all the purer churches and would infect them all with its lea~en." '~ Alas, Elizabeth could count on no strong body of support for her own religious designs within the nation. With one single exception, her sister's bishops deserted her, and the exiles returning from southern Germany and Switzerland, along with the Protestants who had lain low during Mary's reign, were solid supporters of the 1552 settlement, which was now sealed with its author's blood. The queen was obliged to settle for the Prayer Book of 1552, but not before she had wrung from the radical Protestants certain minor but significant changes. First, the Black Rubric was omitted, and the 1549 formula of distribution was prefaced to the Zwing- lian words of 1552. Se~ondly, the queen insisted on the inser- tion of rubrics into the 1559 Book of Common Prayer which en- couraged the crucifixes to remain in the churches and the tradi- tional vestments to remain on the backs of the clergy. Outside her own private chapel, Elizabeth was not obeyed, but her Per- sonal intervention in the early days of her reign' did provide a loophole for higher eucharistic doctrine and practice which the Anglo-Catholics three centuries later would gratefully exploit. Wittenberg and Canterbury 173 Liturgy having been fixed in 1559, the doctrine of the Elizabethan Church was fixed at the Convocation ~f 1563. The Thirty-Nine Articles were now drawn up, with the nature of our Lord's eucharistic presence being defined in Articles XXVIII and XXIX. The most obvious interpretation of the latter is that it denies that unbelievers partaking of the Holy Supper receive the sacred body and blood. This article was the cause of great distress to Bishop Richard Cheyney, who was much disapproved of by his brother bishops on account of his Lutheran propen- sities, nor did it sit well with Bishop Edmund Guest. Now Elizabeth herself is credited with having authored the following rhyming verses: "He was the Word that spake it: He took the bread and brake it: And what that Word did make it, I do believe and take it."Io After Convocation drew up the Articles, the queen gave her imprimatur by issuing them in the guise of a royal proclamation. In fact, only thirty-eight articles received Elizabeth's nihil obstat, Article XXIX being simply omitted. In 1571, though, when the Articles were set forth in their definitive and enduring form, Article XXIX reappeared. Bishop Cheyney realised what this meant, refused to ratify the article, and was promptly excommunicated. The interpretation properly given to Article XXVIII is of crucial importance in the context of the recent agreements. The Christological section found in the parallel article of 1552 is quietly dropped, a decision which, when taken in tandem with the removal of the Black Rubric from the liturgy, may be taken as pointing in a hopeful direction. As in 1552, the revised ver- sion of 1563 and 1 571 alludes near its outset to I Cor . 10: 16: "to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, 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." "Rightly, worthily, and with faith" - a doubt-beget- ting element of subjectivism creeps in here. WouId it be fanciful to see, in this intimation that Almighty God is not objectively present in the fullness of His perfect work and sacramental gift unless "I" deign subjectively to perceive the fact, the first stir- rings of Kantianism? The second paragraph of Article XXVIII contains an unmistakable rejection of transubstantiation, which is denounced as not only unscriptural but also in- congruous with the Augustinian definition of a sacrament. And that nagging subjective strain recurs in the third paragraph, whose wording seems explicitly to exclude the manducotio oralis. "The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the 1 74 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY 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." Admittedly, the first sentence of the third paragraph could be construed to express the dogma of the Real Presence. At all events, its author, Bishop Guest, did precisely this in 1566. Upon Bishop Cheyney's complaint that the state- ment that the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten "only after an heavenly and spiritual manner" tended to exclude the Real Presence, Guest replied that his controverted adverb "did not exclude ye presence of Christis body fro the Sacrament but onely ye grossnes and sensebleness in the receavinge there~f . " '~ Even so, the repeated stress on the faith of the communicant as the organ which receives the sacred Body and blood would justify one's placing Article XXVIII in the mainstream of Reformed thinking. We may, of course, doubt whether the sharp demarcation between Lutheran and Reformed theology would have appeared so clear-cut to those who took part in the Convocation of 1563. The teaching of the Invuriuta had not yet been underscored by the final decision of Article VII of the For- mula of Concord, and many observers of the contemporary German scene may have been expecting the Philippists to emerge victorious within Lutheranism. The Thirty-Nine Articles themselves cannot be allowed to have the last word on what is and is not Anglican doctrine. All confessional documents are to be interpreted within the lively context of their actual exposition in the ongoing history of the church which first formulated them. If Bishop Guest's private interpretation of Article XXVIII were to find strong corrobora- tion in the Anglican theology of the ensuing centuries, then we should perhaps be obliged to list Anglican Christendom as une- quivocally teaching the Real Presence. While conceding that the Elizabethan Settlement had left the door open for an escape from Reformed eucharistic theology, we are compelled regret- fully to note that hardly anyone availed himself of this loophole before the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century. Reasons of space require me to gather together the lessons of three centuries in four observations. First, Richard Hooker, who died in 1600, is often claimed as the father of distinctively Anglican theology; indeed he is sometimes presented as a forefather of Anglo-Catholicism. Selective quotation can make Hooker sound like a solid ad- vocate of the Real Presence, but an awareness of the larger pic- ture leads to the irrefutable conclusion that Hooker was a Wittenberg and Canterbury 175 Calvinist in his understanding of the Lord's Supper. Hooker devotes much energy to attacking the Christology of the For- mula of Concord, and he is unsparing in his criticism of the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence. Hooker alleges that there are but three possible expositions of the dominical ut- terance, "This is My body," namely, the Lutheran, the Roman, and one other. Hooker paraphrases the Lutheran interpretation of "This is My body" as follows: "this is in itself before par- ticipation really and truly the natural substance of My Body by reason of the coexistence which My omnipotent Body hath with the sanctified element of bread." Hooker, who took pains to be well informed, understood the Lutherans of the last decade of the sixteenth century to teach that the presence of the sacred body and blood in the Holy Supper is not restricted to the mo- ment of their distribution. Hooker finds the Lutheran exposi- tion unconvincing, and puts into our Lord's mouth another, to Hooker more cogent, interpretation: "this hallowed food, through concurrence of divine power, is in verity and truth unto faithful receivers instrumentally a cause of that mystical par- ticipation, whereby, as I make Myself wholly theirs, so I give them in hand an actual possession of all such saving grace as My sacrificed Body can yield, and as their souls do presently need, this is to them and in them My Body."I3 2 his paraphrase, urges Hooker, offers the clearestaand simplest interpretation of our Lord's words. Secondly, Hooker's Calvinising eucharistic theology was con- tinued in the seventeenth century by those classical Anglicans who, like him, were far from inclined to Calvinism in other areas of theology. Admittedly, one does stumble across in- dividual theologians whose belief and expression are very much in the vicinity of the Real Presence. Even so, encounters with strongly realist language often turn out in the end to be disap- pointing. Seventeenth century writers - and here the name of Bishop John Cosin leaps to mind - are apt to begin with fulsome confessions of the Real Presence and to end with heated and indignant denials of the rnanducatio impiorum. One is struck by the fact that the space in between is usually taken up with lengthy and fearsome denunciations of transubstantiation. The seventeenth century Anglican obsession with transubstan- tiation is a sure indicator of an underlying aversion not merely to a particular theory but to the res of the Real Presence itself. Thirdly, when we turn to the definitive revision of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, we hit upon a certain discord in its 176 CONCORDIA TH EOLOGlCAL QUARTERLY treatment of matters relating to the Real Presence. On the one hand, secular considerations led to the reintroduction of the Black Rubric, much to the distress of Archbishop Juxon, the prelate who had attended Charles I on the scaffold. Even here the evidence, as is so typical of Anglicanism, is not entirely clear-cut. In 1552, the Black Rubric denied "anye reall and essential presence ,..of Christ's natural1 fleshe and bloude" in the Sacrament; now, in 1662, the revised Black Rubric contents itself with rejecting "any Corporal Presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood" in the consecrated elements. With such a definition, theologians could quibble interminably about the precise significance of the Black Rubric, but the reiteration here of Reformed Christology is an ominous pointer to its Reformed character. O n the other hand, we must take into account the in- troduction into the Communion Office of 1662 of a novel rubric dealing with consecrated but unconsumed elements: "...if any remain of that which was consecrated, it shall not be carried out of the Church, but the Priest, and such other of the Com- municants as he shall then call unto him, shall immediately after the Blessing, reverently eat and drink the same." This directive would seem more consonant with Luther's understanding of consecration than with what we have so far encountered of Anglican eucharistic teaching. If this is so, then we have here an instance of felicitous inconsistency on the part of seventeenth century Anglicanism. Can we suppress the question whether much Lutheran practice in this matter betrays an infelicitous in- consistency o n our part? Fourthly, in the century and a half between the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the rise of the Oxford Movement, we find no evidence that the Real Presence was taught in the Church of England. The Norwegian scholar, Alf Haerdelin, has distinguished between three conceptions of the eucharistic presence held in the Church of England during this period." First, there was the Zwinglian notion of the Real Absence, to which Haerdelin gives the label "memorialism. " Notwithstand- ing its popularity, pure Zwinglianism was usually recognised as inconsistent with the plain sense of the Anglican formularies. In second place there was "receptionism," a teaching not identical with the view of some Lutherans that the Real Presence is tem- porally limited to the moment of distribution. The Anglican receptionists were in fact Calvinists, men who located the Real Presence not in the elements but in faith's participation in the sacred body and blood at the same time as the elements are ex- Wittenberg and Canterbury 177 ternally received. As in the case of Calvin himself, one finds it difficult to see how the high-flown language used here about participation in the sacred body and blood can be taken other than metaphorically. The greatest advocate of receptionism was Daniel Waterland, an eighteenth century Oxford Professor of Divinity, who deserves grateful commemoration for his learned and devout defence of the doctrines of the Trinity and the deity of our Lord against Arian subversion. Nor may Waterland be regarded as simply a private theologian who spoke for no one but himself: his great work, A Review of the Doctrine of the Holy Eu~harist , '~ was reissued in I880 with the imprimatur of the archbishops of Canterbury and York. In other words, Calvinist receptionism was, only a century ago, officially regarded as the public eucharistic teaching of the Church of England and, by implication, of the worldwide Anglican Com- munion of Churches. The third brand of eucharistic teaching Haerdelin calls "virtuaIism." The high church divines of this period who were not receptionists taught that, while the sacred body and blood are not present in the elements in their substance and reality, nevertheless the "spirit, power and effect" of Christ's body and blood are communicated to the faithful through the instrumentality of the consecrated bread and wine, which can therefore be dubbed the Lord's body and blood, as it were, honoris causa. The Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century can be credited with having restored the Real Presence to the teaching and life of the English Church. John Keble and Edmund Bouverie Pusey campaigned with great courage and deep scholarship for what they called the doctrine of the "Real Ob- jective Presence" of Christ's body and blood in the consecrated elements. It is noteworthy that both men had no truck with the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, and that each of them acknowledged the substantial identity of his eucharistic teaching with the statements of the Lutheran Confessions concerning the Real Presence. Keble and Pusey purposely adopted a dual ap- proach in demonstrating the legitimacy of the Real Presence in the Church of England. On the one hand, they took the Anglican appeal to antiquity, enunciated by Jewel and Hooker in the sixteenth century, at face value. Patristic perspectives were pushed through the loopholes left open by Queen Elizabeth I, with the result that the maximum and not the minimum content was discovered in the Anglican formularies. At the same time, we dare not minirnise in any way the 178 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY thoroughly Scriptural basis established by both men for the Real Presence. Keble's beautiful writing On Eucharistical Adoration is written by an unwavering lover of Christ and Scripture. Both Keble and Pusey held fast to the end of their days to the historic Christian understanding of their Bible. Pusey's successor, Lid- don, considered it a terrible betrayal of the Oxford Movement when, in the closing years of the nineteenth century, certain young high churchmen began to embrace the historical critical method. In the last century and a half, the Oxford Movement has succeeded in transforming the whole face of the Church of England. During this period countless thousands of Anglican laypeople have been taught the Real Presence in the classical sense, and not a few clergymen have invoked the name of Mar- tin Luther in their battle with sceptical Zwinglians in the pew. One must not suppose, though, that the eucharistic teaching of Keble and Pusey has reigned or reigns unchallenged in the Church of England. No more than one third of the parishes in the Church of England stand firmly in the tradition of the Ox- ford Movement, and one of the major trends of recent decades has been the reinvigoration and numerical growth of the Evangelical wing of the Anglican Church. The Oxford Move- ment made it possible for the recent ARCIC "Final Report" to set forth the Real Presence as the common teaching of the Roman and Anglican Churches. But one section of the Anglican Church cannot with impunity speak for the whole, so that John Stott in 1982 composed a robust critiqueI6 of the ARCIC "Final Report" on behalf of the "Church of England Evangelical Council." Mr. Stott laments the unwillingness of the central authorities of the Roman Church to adopt the notion of "trans-signification" which has been propounded by certain post-Vatican Two Dutch Roman theologians of the wilder sort. For his part, Stott invokes the "well known dictum" of Richard Hooker that "the real presence of Christ's most blessed body and blood is not to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament." In 1981, another leading spokesman of the Anglican Evangelicals, Roger Bec kwith, of Latimer House, Oxford, delivered himself of the following pungent critique of the christological and eucharistic sections of the Formula of Concord: "The Formula of Concord . . . on which the dogmatic treatises of the so-called Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century were based, is a most dangerous document, in which the doctrine of the incarnation is restated with the primary purpose, not of Wittenberg and Canterbury 179 stating it more biblically, but of justifying Luther's questionable belief in the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the eucharistic elements. The main fault of Lutheran scholasticism derives from this fact, and not from its doctrine of biblical in- spiration or its use of philosophical categories, as is often sup- posed. In consequence, while claiming to be biblical, Lutheran scholasticism became, in its essential character, a new form of traditionalism, and just as vulnerable as the forms existing in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. And when, because of the contradiction at its heart, it collapsed, it was followed by a welter of subjectivism which has continued down to our own day. " l 7 Beckwith's forthright polemic conspires with the evidence which has been presented here to prompt one to regard with a certain scepticism the claim made in the 1981 Report of the Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue in the U .S.A. that "Both com- munions affirm the real presence of Christ's Body and Blood in the Lord's Supper. "I6 In historical perspective, this assertion will not hold water for an instant. Nor does the recent document seek to illustrate its contention that there is a eucharistic "con- vergence" between Lutheran and Anglican Christendom on the basis of the history of the two traditions. Instead, past dif- ferences are frankly acknowledged, and we are informed that neither the systematicians nor the historians but rather the ex- egetes are responsible for overcoming the antitheses of the Reformation era. "Modern New Testament exegesis offers a way to cut through all these dilemmas, inherited as they are largely from the Middle Ages." We are instructed that, "In most contemporary exegesis the words "body" and "blood" are interpreted increasingly not as substances but as saving event. " ' The German Heilsereignis is supplied in brackets, perhaps in an attempt to enhance the respect of the layman for his learned betters. Of course, the whole notion that the sacred body and blood specified in our Lord's words and in St. Paul's authoritative commentary in I Cor. 10:16 are to be interpreted not "ontologically" but "dynamically" is but a by-product of the present fashionable habit of maintaining that the New Testament writers offer not an "onto1ogical" but a "dynamic" Christology. The late Bishop John Robinson found it possible to argue, in his The Human Face of God, that the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews nowhere teaches the divine pre-ex- istence of our blessed Lord. This exegetical fashion, as we all know, is widely emulated in both Lutheran and Anglican 1 80 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY circles. The scholars have their fun, while the Bible-reading and Bible-believing laity, both Anglican and Lutheran alike, look on in perplexity and bewilderment. The intimate connection between Real Presence and incarnation should give us pause for thought. If we stand the Christology richly attested in the Pauline and Johannlne literature on its head by dismissing clear statements concerning our Lord's divine pre-existence as mere Gnostic imagery, then Christ's humanity is no longer the human nature assumed by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, with the corollary that any proclamation concerning Jesus of Nazareth is stripped of universal significance. Indeed, unless it is genuinely rooted in the Holy Trinity, Christology turns into Jesuolatry. Bearing in mind the grave assaults being made to- day, in both Lutheran and Anglican theology, on the classical Christian dogmas of the Blessed Trinity and the deity of our Lord, we cannot for a moment suppose that the current flight from ontoIogical to "dynamic" categories is in the best interests of either side in the Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue. On page 25 of the LED "Report", we read as follows: "Lutherans defended the Real Presence of Christ's body and blood 'in, with, and under' the forms of bread and wine in order to make the christological affirmation that God meets us in the humanity as well as in the divinity of Christ in this means of grace. " Alas, the authors of the "Report" have put the cart before the horse. Of course, we may freely concede that the Real Presence is the focal point of all the great themes of Lutheran Christendom, and beautiful statements of Wilhelm Loehe and Hermann Sasse could be quoted to this effect. It is tiresome to have to argue that Luther's chief motive in confess- ing the Real Presence was his subjection to his Lord Jesus Christ as that Lord speaks clearly and with the whole authority of God in His inspired Word. The proof of this statement can be gathered from Luther's works by the bucketful. And in his ma- jor eucharistic writings of 1525 and 1528, the Reformer offered to his own age and to posterity sparkling exegetical reviews of the eucharistic texts of the New Testament. No one is expected to concur with Luther's exegesis against his conscience; but we may rightfully expect that the exegesis of the Reformer and the Book of Concord be taken seriously on its own terms and not be frivolously dismissed as the injection of systematic insights gained elsewhere into the sacred text. Dr. Tom Hardt has pointed out that, while much attention has been paid to the Lutheran "is," the equally Lutheran Wittenberg and Canterbury 181 "this" has tended to suffer neglect. Of course, the primary Lutheran "this is" statement is the confession that "this man, Jesus Christ, is saturated with the glory of God, is true God from true God," and that, through incorporation in this God-man by baptism and faith, we may ourselves look to share the glory of God. Dr. Hardt would have us be equally insistent about the "this is" statements in connection with the Holy Sup- per, urging that we face up to what he calls "the Biblical fact that the body and blood of the Creator, sacrificed and smitten, rest on the Christian altar." Hardt rightly protests against any temptation to water down in any way the basic confessional statement as set forth by the Reformer in the Smalcald Articles: "We hold that the bread and wine in the Supper are the true body and blood of Christ. "zo Displaying an admirable deftness in handling the complexities of scholastic thought, Hardt demonstrates that, in exchanging biblical realism for the scholastic slippery slope to rationalism, Luther with his confes- sion of the Real Presence makes the chief proponent of tran- substantiation look like a Semi-Calvinist by comparison. Listening solely and unashamedly to the voice of the Lord Jesus, we realise that the ReaI Presence of His body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar is cause, not for embarrassment, but for exultation. But the whole matter or the Real Presence, which once again becomes acute in the context of the Lutheran- Episcopal Dialogue, is too momentous to be left in the hands of the academic theologians. Indeed, it cannot even be left to the clergy. Rather, it belongs to the whole people of God. The il- lustrious founder of Concordia Theological Seminary once remarked that, for him, "the whole of Lutheranism is contained in the Sacrament of the Altar. Here all of the chief doctrines of Christianity, especially those highlighted by the Reforma- tion, have their focal p ~ i n t . " ~ ' But Wilhelm Loehe the pastor did not stop with this well nigh professorial remark. Instead, with the next breath he went on to urge that the Lutheran doc- trine of the Lord's Supper is not enough. For doctrinal rectitude alone is insufficient and needs to be complemented by a sacramental life. Loehe's words carry conviction, and they make it unmistakably clear to us that the battle for the integrity of Lutheran Christendom, which now rages so desperately, can only be won - and will be won, by the grace of God - in the parochial front line. CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY FOOTNOTES J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (University of California Press, 1%8), p. 1 17, against A.G. Dickens, The Enlgish Reformation (Fontana, 1967). p. 183 Contra Henricum Regem Angliae, 1522 (W A 10, I: 180-222); Ant wort deutsch auf Konig Heinrich Brrch, 1522 (WA 10,I: 227-262). Die Wittenberger Artikel con I536 (Artikel der cristlichen lahr, von welchen die legatten aus Engelland mit dem herrn doctor Martnio gehandelt anno 1536), ed. Georg Mentz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), p.48f. P. N. Brooks, Thomas Cronmer's Doctrine of the Euchartist (New York: Seabury Press, 1x5) ; C. W. Dugmore, The Mass and the English Reformers (London: Macmillan, 1958). Cranmer's liturgies are accessible in The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (London and New York: Everyman's Library, 1968). The XLIl Articles can be found in The Two Liturgies with Other Documents Set Forth by Authorit-Y ~n the Reign of King Edward the Siuth, Parker Society Documents, XX (Cambridge University Press, 1844, pp. 526537. WA : 437-446; L W 294-303. William P. Haugaard: Elizabeth and the English Reformation. The Siruggle for a Stable Settlement of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1%8), p. 109. Haugaard, op-cit., p. 108. E . J . Bicknell, A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (London, New York, and Toronto: Longmans, Green, and Company, second ed., 1935), p. 497. Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press. 1949- 1950). IV, pp . 224-226. Haugaard, op.cit., p. 250f. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity Book V : LXVII, quoted from the Everman Edition (1968). Alf Haerdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist (Upp- sala: Almqvist and WikseUs, 1%5), pp. 125-127. Daniel Waterland: A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist (rep. Ox- ford: The Clarendon Press, 1880). John Stott, Evangelical Anglicans and the ARCIC Final Report: An Assessment and Critique (Bramcote, Notts.: Grove Books, 1982). esp. pp. 4 and 6 8 . R. T. Beckwith: Confessing the Faith in the Church of ~ngland Today (Oxford: Latimer House, 1981), p. 18. Wittenberg and Canterbury 183 18. The Report of the Lutherun-Episcopu Dicrlogue, Second Series, 1976- 1980 (Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1981), p. 16. 19. op.cit., p. 17. 20. BS SA 450, 14-1 5; Tuppert, p. 3 1 1. See Tom G . AS. Hardt, Venerubilis and Adorabilis Eucharistiu (Uppsala: Ljungbergs Boktryckeri Klippan, 197 1); and idem, On the Sacrament of the Alter (available in the library of Concordia Theological Seminary). 21. Johannes Deinze, WiIheIrn Loehes Leben (fourth ed., Neuendettelsau: 1935), 11, p. 523. Dr. John Stephenson holds an MA from Oxford and the PhD from University College, Durham, England. Dr. Stephenson is a visiting professor at Concordia Theological Seminary,