LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 392

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

392 ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

knowledged above (pp. 3-4) that the Articles do not officially de-
termine an Anglican confessional stance. It is meant rather to illus-
trate the point that language which seems to affirm the Real Pres-
ence of Christ’s body may in fact not do so at all. This is not to
deny that many Anglicans agreeing with the Porvoo Statement and
other ecumenical documents do teach the Real Presence. But it
should be realized that denials of the Lutheran doctrine also exist in
the Church of England, etc. See, e.g., Evangelical Eucharistic
Thought in the Church of England, by Christopher Cocksworth, in
which the Lutheran teaching is called “spatial speculation” and
“scholastic schematizing,” pp. 202-203.

So then, the oral reception of Christ’s body and blood and the
reception by unworthy communicants (manducatio oralis, mandu-
catio indignorum) are expressly rejected in the original Anglican
standards. Yet these are the very points which the Formula of Con-
cord (Art. VII) takes to be the litmus-test distinguishing the con-
fession of Christ’s sacramental presence from its denial. If the body
and blood of Christ are not received with the mouth and also by
the unworthy, then they are simply not in the Sacrament at all in
any honest sense. In other words, the argument was never about
the “how,” or the “mode” of the real presence—as is sometimes
pretended today (see Andrews and Burgess, eds., An Invitation To
Action, 1984:114—115)—but solely and alone about the “that,” the
very fact of that presence. In the Formula of Concord (SD VII:33)
the Church of the Augsburg Confession makes Luther’s judgment
her own:

I reckon them all as belonging together (that is, as Sacramentarians
and enthusiasts), for that is what they are who will not believe that the
Lord’s bread in the Supper is his true, natural body, which the godless
or Judas receive orally as well as Si. Peter and all the saints. Whoever,
I say, will not believe this, will please let me alone and expect no fel-
lowship from me. This is final (Tappert, p. 575).

It is true that “Anglicans of Bntain and Ireland and Lutherans of
the Nordic and Baltic lands have at no time condemned one an-
other as churches and have never formally separated” (Porvoo
Common Statement, p. 16). But this does not mean that these An-
glicans and Lutherans are free now to rush into communion without
further ado. In the first place, even the Book of Concord is at pains
to make clear—in response precisely to the concerns represented
so energetically by the emissaries of Queen Elizabeth I—that its
condemnations are not meant to cover “entire churches inside or
outside the Holy Empire of the German Nation” (Preface, Tappert,
p. 11). Secondly, however, prominent among the positions which
the Formula rejects and condemns because they “are contrary to
the expressed Word of God and cannot coexist with it,” are just
those Calvinistic theories about the Sacrament which the Anglican
Articles embrace.

Although scholars naturally differ on many details, it can hardly
be denied that the Anglican “articles on sacramental matters bore a
Swiss/Calvinist tone, although differing on many points in expres-
sion” (Guy Fitch Lytle Il, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Refor-
mation [1996] 1:82). and that the pivotal figure of Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer was shaped largely by Zwingli-Calvinist influ-
ences: “The Lutheran phase, if there was one, did not last. Cranmer
arrived at an understanding of the Eucharist that excluded the
Lutheran manducatio indignorum [eating by the unworthy] just as
firmly as the Roman church’s transubstantiation. Only faith receives
the body and blood of the Lord; the wicked receive the sign, but not
the thing signified” (B. A. Gerrish, Oxford Encyclopedia 2:78).

At least until the rise of the Tractarian Movement just before
the accession of Queen Victoria (1837) the Anglican Church in-
clined largely to Reformed theology. Dr. Tom Hardt of Stockholm,
in a dialogue in Latvia (Riga, 1996) with Canon Christopher Hill
regarding Porvoo, quoted the famous Anglican Archbishop of Ar-
magh, James Ussher (1581-1656) as having said: “I do profess that
with like affection I should receive the blessed Sacrament at the

2001 Convention Workbook

hands of Dutch ministers if I were in Holland, as I should at the
hands of the French ministers if I were in Charentone” (the leading
Calvinist church in Paris). Hardt also reports that Archbishop Wake
of Canterbury established “in 1717 a formally recognized church
fellowship between the Church of England and the Reformed
Church of Zurich.”

Given this history, a few general sentences about the Sacrament,
without specific rejections of erroneous doctrine, cannot create
even a semblance of a responsible basis for Anglican-Lutheran
inter-communion, let alone the ambitious consolidation envisaged
in Porvoo. (Lutheran World Information, no. 16/96, p. 3, exulted:
“Lutheran and Anglican churches in northern Europe are prepar-
ing to declare themselves a regional communion of churches in
which they will share a common sacramental life served by a single
ministry”).

The Porvoo arrangements are part and parcel of a larger, global
strategy, expressly invoked in the concluding pars. 60-61, “Wider Ec-
umenical Commitment.” The North American developments are in-
structive. The official report on the Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue, Sec-
ond Series (1976-1980), explains under “theological methodology”:

Both communions affirm the real presence of Christ’s Body and
Blood in the Lord’s Supper, but they express this faith somewhat dif-
ferently. Lutherans (especially strongly confessional Lutheranism as
represented by the Missouri Synod) tend to assert the Real Presence by
doctrinal statement, as in the classical affirmations of manducatio im-
piorum and manducatio oralis. Although Article XXIX refers to these
questions, and takes a somewhat different stand on them from that of
classical Lutheranism, Anglicans today have no interest in these partic-
ular doctrinal affirmations. Rather, they tend to express their belief in
the Real Presence in ceremonial action, by the reverence with which
they treat the consecrated elements outside of Communion (pp. 16-17).
The actual “Joint Statement on Eucharistic Presence” stated:

. .. For [Lutherans], this implied a two-fold eating of the sacrament,
spiritually and orally (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration
VII:60-61). Anglicans, on the other hand, followed the Reformed em-
phasis on the spiritual eating by faith, thus denying that the wicked and
unbelievers partake of Christ (Articles of Religion 28-29). It was
Richard Hooker (1554 c.a.—1600) who gave Anglicanism its normalive
approach to eucharistic doctrine by teaching that the elements of bread
and wine are the instruments of participation in the body and blood of
Christ. {In more recent times, biblical studies and liturgical renewal have
led Lutherans and Anglicans to recognize a convergence on the essen-
tials of eucharistic faith and practice (pp. 25-26).

If Hooker’s teaching is to be considered Anglicanism’s norma-
tive approach, then the Anglican Church, when it speaks of the ele-
ments as instruments of participation in the body and blood of
Christ, must be understood to mean, with Hooker (and Calvin), that
“Christ is personally present, albeit a part of Christ is corporally ab-
sent” (Phil. Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 1:608, 649). But
there are also many defenders of the Real Presence in Anglicanism.

The grounding of the new “convergence” in “biblical studies” is
particularly troublesome in view of two features expressly adduced
in the “theological methodology” section: (1) “In most contempo-
rary exegesis the words ‘body’ and ‘blood’ are interpreted increas-
ingly not as substances but as saving events (Heilsereignis)” (p.
17). (2) “. . . a renewed emphasis on the pluralism of the biblical
witness and the time-conditioned character of its language and con-
ceptuality (cf. Kasemann among Lutherans and Dennis Nineham
among Anglicans)” (p. 18). On premises like these, consensus
about anything is easily attained, but it is meaningless.

To accept diplomatic treaty-texts like Porvoo as evidence of a
doctrinal consensus and as a proper basis for pulpit and altar fel-
lowship is to surrender the Lutheran confession in general and the
Sacrament of the Altar in particular. One must not blame the An-
glicans here. Porvoo does not in the least compromise their sacra-
mental theology. “The ambiguous wording of the [Book of Com-
mon Prayer] has permitted the coexistence of a variety of doctrines
in the [Church of England]” (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church, 1990:179). Many Anglicans in fact have a better