Eucharistic difference between Anglican/Catholic

  • Thread starter Thread starter f_william
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Contarini said:
No. But the presence of the Divinity of Christ isn’t controversial, and we all agree that His body is present as dead flesh, so His soul is present wherever the Body and Blood are present.

I have never understood why Catholics feel the need to say “Soul and Divinity,” when that isn’t the controversial part. I suspect that the phrasing developed precisely in order to refute the charge of cannibalism, to emphasize that the whole living, glorified Christ is present and not just “flesh.” But the fact that Anglicans and other sacramental Protestants don’t use that phrasing certainly doesn’t indicate a lack of belief that the soul and divinity of Christ are present–simply that the body and blood are what the debates are about.

Edwin
Click to expand...
That ought to have been, of course, “is not present as dead flesh.”

Starrsmother, I’m not sure which denominations you have in mind. The “Restorationist” tradition from which your husband comes has weekly communion, but as you observed tends to play down the ritual element and generally doesn’t believe it to the the body and blood, although my first experience with them (at a matriculation ceremony for the Christian-church college I attended) involved the speaker pointing to the communion rail and saying “this is where you will find strength” in connection with an anecdote about blood transfusion, and my parents were quite shocked because it sounded, in their ears, so Catholic.

Lutherans believe the Eucharist to be the Body and Blood. Some Lutherans have weekly communion, others don’t. When I lived in Germany for three months in a heavily Lutheran area, I found that the churches in town all had monthly communion, but on different weeks of the month, so that if you wanted to you could receive communion every week. Instead, I went to the larger town nearby where there was a “high church” parish that had weekly communion.

Anglicans in my experience pretty uniformly have weekly communion, but this wasn’t always so and I believe in some parts of the world, including England, isn’t always so even today.

The other more sacramental Protestant churches, such as Methodists and to some extent Presbyterians, usually have monthly communion, but sometimes it’s less often, and some Methodist congregations have weekly communion (though usually not at the main service–this is also a practice found in some more low-church Anglican parishes in the U.S., and i think it’s more common in England).

Edwin
 
Indifferently said:
Seems like a lot of people here subscribe to the heresy of Eutyches. Jesus Christ’s body and blood are in heaven.
Click to expand...
In their natural dimensions, yes.

And it’s funny that the Church that condemned Eutyches didn’t draw the conclusions Calvinists say they should have done. ST. John Chrysostom certainly didn’t deny the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and he leaned if anything toward the “Antiochian” side of the spectrum.

The Christological heresy here is found not on our side but on the Reformed side. Calvinism is a form of quasi-Nestorianism, separating out Jesus’ divinity from His humanity in a way that Christological orthodoxy does not allow. This may be why the Reformed tradition has persistently given rise to heresies denying the divinity of Christ, and in more modern times to classical Protestant liberal theology, which psychologizes and qualifies Christ’s divnity through a radical “Christology from below.”

Edwin
 
GKC said:
I didn’t make a very good protestant, either. For that matter, I’m not a very good Anglo-Catholic.

On the other hand, I attend the 1030 Mass at my parish, every Sunday. Where I receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord.

GKC
Click to expand...
👍

I’ve thought of you as a cradle Anglican; were you Protestant at one time?
 
Eucharistic adoration seems to be the practice among many Anglicans, as least in my experience. But I have come to understand that the Episcopal/ Anglican parishes in my area of the country tend to be either Anglo-Catholic or strongly liturgical so adoring the Body and Blood of Christ may be expressed differently among Anglicans in other parts of the world.

To a Lutheran worshipping at an Episcopal Eucharist, it seems pretty clear that the Real Presence is believed. What is interesting and somewhat sad, is that some Lutheran parishes which clearly state belief in the Real Presence show little adoration other than the elevation. I’ve seen people go up to the altar with chewing gum in their mouths, waving at others in the nave or young people winking at each other while kneeling at the altar rail, not bowing or crossing themselves when taking holy Communion. Lutherans can learn much from Anglicans about reverence.
 
EvangelCatholic said:
Eucharistic adoration seems to be the practice among many Anglicans, as least in my experience. But I have come to understand that the Episcopal/ Anglican parishes in my area of the country tend to be either Anglo-Catholic or strongly liturgical so adoring the Body and Blood of Christ may be expressed differently among Anglicans in other parts of the world.

To a Lutheran worshipping at an Episcopal Eucharist, it seems pretty clear that the Real Presence is believed. What is interesting and somewhat sad, is that some Lutheran parishes which clearly state belief in the Real Presence show little adoration other than the elevation. I’ve seen people go up to the altar with chewing gum in their mouths, waving at others in the nave or young people winking at each other while kneeling at the altar rail, not bowing or crossing themselves when taking holy Communion. Lutherans can learn much from Anglicans about reverence.
Click to expand...
Your first para is correct, for Anglicanism, generally. Pick a topic; Anglicans are motley.

My Anglo-Catholic parish has not had a Eucharistic adoration in a number of years, since the death of our previous, hyper Anglo-Catholic rector. But the treatment of the Sacrament is still that of the Real Presence, with all that implies.

GKC
 
Indifferently said:
The restoration of Charles II and the subsequent Prayer Book (still the Church of England’s Prayer Book to this day) does include the Black Rubric, which states the following:
Whereas it is ordained in this office for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper, that the Communicants should receive the same kneeling; (which order is well meant, for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgement of the benefits of Christ therein given to all worthy Receivers, and for the avoiding of such profanation and disorder in the holy Communion, as might otherwise ensue) yet, lest the same kneeling should by any persons, either out of ignorance and infirmity, or out of malice and obstinacy, be misconstrued and depraved: It is here declared, that thereby no Adoration is intended, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine there bodily received, or unto any Corporal Presence of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood. For the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored; ( for that were Idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians) and 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.
So the 1662 Prayer Book is plain. Though sacramentally speaking the consecrated Bread and Wine now make us partakers, by the Holy Spirit and in faith, of the Body and Blood of Christ, they still remain in their natural substances, and so worshipping them is - again, according to the Church of England’s doctrine as expressed in her authoritative liturgy - idolatry.

You say that this is more apparently about Calvin and Calvinism. As far as I know, Calvin was never a member of the Church of England.
Click to expand...
But a few Calvinists have been members of the CofE and in the past had an undeserved influence.
As for the 1662 Bcp I have never even seen it, it is a British book. The last BCP I used when still Anglican was issued in 1979. Not a trace of the ‘black rubric’ is found in it.

The 39 articles which you seem so attached to, appear in the historic documents appendix and are binding on no one.
 
andrewstx said:
But a few Calvinists have been members of the CofE and in the past had an undeserved influence.
As for the 1662 Bcp I have never even seen it, it is a British book. The last BCP I used when still Anglican was issued in 1979. Not a trace of the ‘black rubric’ is found in it.

The 39 articles which you seem so attached to, appear in the historic documents appendix and are binding on no one.
Click to expand...
And that’s just the thing. Indifferently is trying to define “pure” Anglicanism as his particular streak, while in truth, Anglicanism covers a wide spectrum, pretty much from Papism to Wiccan. The absence of the Black Rubric from the Episcopal BCP, or even the current CoE’s Common Worship tells us that Anglicanism is much more tolerant of diverse, theologies than he would let on. It’s fine to be Calvinist in theology as an Anglican, but also fine to be Catholic.
 
porthos11 said:
And that’s just the thing. Indifferently is trying to define “pure” Anglicanism as his particular streak, while in truth, Anglicanism covers a wide spectrum, pretty much from Papism to Wiccan. The absence of the Black Rubric from the Episcopal BCP, or even the current CoE’s Common Worship tells us that Anglicanism is much more tolerant of diverse, theologies than he would let on. It’s fine to be Calvinist in theology as an Anglican, but also fine to be Catholic.
Click to expand...
I agree. I had my doubts about Wicca, but then I remember there were a Wiccan couple of clergy not too long ago.

My opinion is that if you show up occasionally, pay your pledge, and show good taste, you can be an Anglican in good standing.
 
andrewstx said:
I agree. I had my doubts about Wicca, but then I remember there were a Wiccan couple of clergy not too long ago.
Click to expand...
They were disciplined and later left the Episcopal Church.

But people ignore that little fact. What are facts to get in the way of a good stereotype?🤷

In answer to your earlier posts: Indifferently is a member of the C of E, not the Episcopal Church.

Your statement about Calvinism radically underplays its significance. Indifferently is right in his description of Elizabethan Anglicanism as essentially Reformed in doctrine. We could say that it wasn’t Calvinist, because it didn’t follow Calvin’s model of Reformed theology in particular, especially with regard to polity and liturgy. But it was within the broad Reformed family. Indifferently regards that paradigm as more normative than many Anglicans do, but a lot of folks are in denial about the Reformed roots of post-Reformation Anglicanism, and I understand why he tends to overstate things a bit in reaction.

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
In their natural dimensions, yes.
The Christological heresy here is found not on our side but on the Reformed side. Calvinism is a form of quasi-Nestorianism, separating out Jesus’ divinity from His humanity in a way that Christological orthodoxy does not allow. This may be why the Reformed tradition has persistently given rise to heresies denying the divinity of Christ, and in more modern times to classical Protestant liberal theology, which psychologizes and qualifies Christ’s divnity through a radical “Christology from below.”

Edwin
Click to expand...
Well the Reformed confessions are not guilty of what you are claiming. Reformed Christians do not deny the divinity of Christ. Moreover, there is no evidence of Nestorian heresy in any Reformed work I know of. The Reformed churches that subscribe to their own confessions neither conflate nor separate the divinity and humanity of Christ. Please provide some evidence for this claim.
 
Indifferently said:
Well the Reformed confessions are not guilty of what you are claiming. Reformed Christians do not deny the divinity of Christ.
Click to expand...
Of course not. But in Reformed theology Jesus saves us primarily according to His humanity, not His divinity, and there is no real communication of attributes (hence the denial of the Real Presence in the sense affirmed by Catholics and Lutherans, and your historically incoherent claim that the Real Presence is Eutychian).
Moreover, there is no evidence of Nestorian heresy in any Reformed work I know of. The Reformed churches that subscribe to their own confessions neither conflate nor separate the divinity and humanity of Christ. Please provide some evidence for this claim.
Click to expand...
Calvin understood the “communicatio idiomatum” as verbal rather than real. See his discussion in Institutes, Book 2, chap. 14. Note that I didn’t say he was a Nestorian–he rejects Nestorianism explicitly. But his Christology is “quasi-Nestorian” in its denial of a real communication of attributes, and that’s how he comes to deny the Real Presence in its fully orthodox sense, as you do. You went so far as to say that the Real Presence is Eutychian. Only someone who was in some sense a Nestorian would say that.

Edwin
 
GKC said:
I missed this, EC, sorry.

Yes, I was raised Baptist.

Started to move in college, driven by reading.

GKC
Click to expand...
Interesting. A loss for the Baptists.

Who knows what more surprises will emerge?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top