POLL: Do you consider the Eucharistic ritual food itself to be/have Christ's body?

[rakovsky]

In my last thread, I tried to define Anglicanism's teaching specifically and ask how exactly Anglicans think on the topic of the Eucharistic elements:
http://www.christianforums.com/thre...ngle-anglican-position.7937857/#post-69404644

On that thread, about half of Anglican respondents picked other, some noting that my definitions were too narrow (eg. the Catholic and Lutheran ones). So in this poll I made more general categories, noting the distinction that the Episcopal Church website used about an "objective" presence vs. a purely "subjective" one.

The Articles of Religion state:

XXVIII. Of the Lord's Supper

The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death: insomuch that 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.

Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.

The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

XXIX. Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord's Supper

The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ: but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing.

The Articles are citing Augustine's words below about John 6:63:

But He instructed them, and saith unto them, 'It is the Spirit that quickeneth, but the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.' Understand spiritually what I have said; ye are not to eat this body which ye see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth." (Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 99:8)​

For words by Augustine that are taken by some to mean the real presence in the bread, see eg.:

"What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that THE BREAD IS THE BODY OF CHRIST AND THE CHALICE THE BLOOD OF CHRIST." (Sermons 272)

"How this ['And he was carried in his own hands'] should be understood literally of David, we cannot discover; but we can discover how it is meant of Christ. FOR CHRIST WAS CARRIED IN HIS OWN HANDS, WHEN, REFERRING TO HIS OWN BODY, HE SAID: 'THIS IS MY BODY.' FOR HE CARRIED THAT BODY IN HIS HANDS." (Psalms 33:1:10)

The Episcopal Church website states:

Receptionism

The belief that the eucharistic elements of bread and wine are unchanged during the prayer of consecration but that the faithful believer receives the body and blood of Christ in receiving communion. This was the prevailing eucharistic theology in the Reformation era of Anglicanism. The Articles of Religion state that the bread and wine of the eucharist are the body and blood of Christ "to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same. . . ." Article XXVIII, Of the Lord's Supper (BCP, p. 873). Thomas Cranmer held a receptionist understanding of the eucharist, which informed his work on the 1549 and 1552 Prayer Books. This historic receptionistic language is still retained in Eucharistic Prayer I of Rite 1. However, Anglican eucharistic theology has tended to hold in balance both an objective change of some kind in the eucharistic elements to become the body and blood of Christ and the subjective faith of the believer who receives the sacrament. The words of administration of the 1559 Prayer Book joined language from the 1549 BCP that identified the sacrament as the body and blood of Christ with more receptionistic language from the 1552 BCP that urged the communicant to receive the sacrament "in remembrance" of Christ's sacrifice. This combination was continued in the 1662 BCP, and in subsequent American Prayer Books (see BCP, p. 338). The balance of objective and subjective theologies of the eucharist is also presented by the Catechism, which states that "The inward and spiritual grace in the Holy Communion is the Body and Blood of Christ given to his people, and received by faith" (BCP, p. 859). The receptionistic language of Eucharistic Prayer I in Rite 1 is not found in the other eucharistic prayers of the BCP.
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/receptionism

The famous Anglican author C.S. Lewis ruled out both Transubstantiation and a purely symbolic view of the ritual food itself on the table:

I don’t know and can’t imagine what the disciples understood our Lord to mean when, His body still unbroken and His blood unshed, He handed them the bread and wine, saying they were His body and blood…I find ‘substance’ (in Aristotle’s sense), when stripped of its own accidents and endowed with the accidents of some other substance, an object I cannot think…On the other hand, I get no better with those who tell me that the elements are mere bread and mere wine, used symbolically to remind me of the death of Christ. They are, on the natural level, such a very odd symbol of that…and I cannot see why this particular reminder – a hundred other things may, psychologically, remind me of Christ’s death, equally, or perhaps more – should be so uniquely important as all Christendom (and my own heart) unhesitatingly declare…Yet I find no difficulty in believing that the veil between the worlds, nowhere else (for me) so opaque to the intellect, is nowhere else so thin and permeable to divine operation. Here a hand from the hidden country touches not only my soul but my body. Here the prig, the don, the modern , in me have no privilege over the savage or the child. Here is big medicine and strong magic…the command, after all, was Take, eat: not Take, understand.

Note also that "real presence" has been used as a term by Lutherans and Calvinists to mean very different things. Lutherans use it when referring to the real presence directly on earth and in the bread, Calvinists use it to mean that Jesus' body up in heaven is "really" "present to" believers' spirits. The Church of England's 1938 report uses it in the former sense of present in the bread:

As regards the manner of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, the Report lists three ways that this has been seen over time to occur: real presence; receptionism and virtualism. Real presence “teaches that the bread and wine in some sense really or actually become through consecration the Lord’s Body and Blood” (DCE, 1938: 168) with the manner of the presence being spiritual and not fleshy. Receptionism is the “teaching that, though the Body and Blood of the Lord are really received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper, yet their presence is real in the hearts of the recipients only, and not in the elements prior to reception” (DCE, 1938: 169). Christ’s body and blood are present only in a figure with the presence of Christ associated with the reception and not the elements. Christ is said to be present in the Eucharist, not in the elements, but as the unseen host, present only to those who receive him with faith. Virtualism ... “maintains” ... bread and the wine therefore... become... in spiritual power, virtue and effect. This means that through consecration the bread and wine are endowed with spiritual power or virtue which make them the sacramental body and blood of Christ...

http://anglicaneucharistictheology...._Doctrine_in_the_Church_of_England,_1938.html

When I said in the poll "ritual effect as a tool", I am referring to Virtualism. For example the Presbyterian Hedrick told me that in Calvinism the bread is a tool or instrument for achieving union with Christ's body that is up in heaven, and in this instrumental, practical sense it's Christ's body.

 

[PloverWing]

The paragraph from C. S. Lewis that you quoted is about right for me. I think that God's presence in the Eucharist is objectively there, in the sense that God is actually doing something, and it's not just me thinking about God. But any theory more specific than this is going beyond what we can possibly know.

 

[SingingOnTheWay]

I put that I believe in the real presence, and I do, but I don't like to define it. For me the mystery and reverence lies in this thought (though not this thought alone): Paul says we are now Christ's Body in this world. When we take in Christ's Body and Blood in the form of the bread and wine we are spiritually feeding that oneness, just as blood sustains our bodies now, and we are taking His sacrifice that we remember with this act as nourishment, since our salvation and our oneness hang on it. It is not that we are rebreaking His Body so much as in the breaking He enabled us to become His Body.

That's the kind of things going through my head at Eucharist.

 

[graceandpeace]

It's a mystery. That's really what it comes down to in the end. I believe God is doing something with the bread & wine in the same way He is doing something with the water in baptism. I don't understand & I don't always believe, but it's a mystery professed all the same.

 

[rakovsky]

Thanks for your answers so far!

 

[Deegie]

I believe that you have set up a false dichotomy. You seem to be implying that Christ's presence in the Eucharist must either be "real" and physical OR symbolic. Cannot the spiritual be just as real as the physical?

 

[Feuerbach]

So this time I answered "Anglican - Other." I almost answered "no" but the use of the term 'objective' within the "yes" answer threw me. Christ is objectively present in Holy Communion, in a spiritual but not carnal manner, and is received inwardly by faith as is taught in Articles 28 & 29 and the Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer (1928).

 

[Albion]

Good question, Deegie. That question or point has been offered again and again in various ways, and you can see that it's the most common reply even when it has to be answered via "Other."

Yet the choices offered, in all these polls and proposals for debate, continue to channel the selections towards views that are atypical of Anglicans.

 

[rakovsky]

I believe that you have set up a false dichotomy. You seem to be implying that Christ's presence in the Eucharist must either be "real" and physical OR symbolic. Cannot the spiritual be just as real as the physical?

Hello, Deegie!
Yes, something can be real and symbolic at the same time, according to Eusebius. I would expect Catholics, Lutherans, and Orthodox to answer that it's both.
Someone who thinks that would still answer "Yes" to the question "Do you consider the Eucharistic ritual food itself to be/have Christ's body?"
The person who believes it's both symbol would not answer "No, it is only a symbol or ritual in effect".

 

[rakovsky]

Good question, Deegie. That question or point has been offered again and again in various ways, and you can see that it's the most common reply even when it has to be answered via "Other."

Yet the choices offered, in all these polls and proposals for debate, continue to channel the selections towards views that are atypical of Anglicans.

Hello, Albion!

How would you recommend asking the question to narrow down the choices about the bread itself as the Church of England Report proposed: 1. Real Presence in the food, 2. Virtual effect, 3. Receptionism

 

[rakovsky]

So this time I answered "Anglican - Other." I almost answered "no" but the use of the term 'objective' within the "yes" answer threw me. Christ is objectively present in Holy Communion, in a spiritual but not carnal manner, and is received inwardly by faith as is taught in Articles 28 & 29 and the Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer (1928).

Hello, Feuerbach.
Would you say that Christ is objectively present in the ritual food itself, ie.:

Do you consider the Eucharistic ritual food itself to be/have Christ's body?
Would you answer: "It objectively spiritually has and/or is Christ's real, actual body."

Anglican eucharistic theology

Pneumatic presence
Low-church Anglicans reject belief in a real objective presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and accordingly, usually any belief in the reservation and adoration of the sacrament.
Cranmer wrote on the Eucharist in his treatise On the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Lord's Supper that Christians truly receive Christ's "self-same" Body and Blood at Communion—but in "an heavenly and spiritual manner".
This is in agreement with the continental Reformed view found in Chapter XXI of the Second Helvetic Confession:

There is also a spiritual eating of Christ's body; not such that we think that thereby the food itself is to be changed into spirit, but whereby the body and blood of the Lord, while remaining in their own essence and property, are spiritually communicated to us, certainly not in a corporeal but in a spiritual way,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_eucharistic_theology#Pneumatic_presence

Albion suggested for the poll:

Perhaps you mean "objective" presence, i.e. literal, carnal, physical presence.

 

[Albion]

It may be that the problem stems from your interest in making the answers conform to a statement from The Episcopal Church's website, from C. S. Lewis, from the CofE in 1938, from Lutheran or Calvinist sources, or to some saint or theologian's POV.

I'd recommend just asking Anglicans here--and no one else--what their belief is.

That would seem to be the objective in all of this, although what the members say and believe is constantly resisted.

But on second thought, it's already been answered. Most believe either that the Real Presence is spiritual or that we cannot define it (which to me, seem approximately the same).

 

[Feuerbach]

It may be that the problem stems from your interest in making the answers conform to a statement from The Episcopal Church's website, from C. S. Lewis, from the CofE in 1938, from Lutheran or Calvinist sources, or to some saint or theologian's POV.

I'd recommend just asking Anglicans here--and no one else--what their belief is.

That would seem to be the objective in all of this, although what the members say and believe is constantly resisted.

But on second thought, it's already been answered. Most believe either that the Real Presence is spiritual or that we cannot define it (which to me, seem approximately the same).

 

[rakovsky]

Most believe either that the Real Presence is spiritual or that we cannot define it (which to me, seem approximately the same).

The last poll was 3 vs 3 on whether the real presence is specifically in the bread (eg. RC/Lutheran view), with the remainder not picking a definition.
This time it's 2 to 1 saying the real presence is specifically in the bread, with the remainder saying Other.
That is not "Most believe either that the Real Presence is spiritual or that we cannot define it"

Let me know if you can provide a more succinct question for a poll.

 

[Feuerbach]

Let me know if you can provide a more succinct question for a poll.

To what end? I am not trying to be rude, but I am curious about what the purpose is to all this? If it was to find out what Anglicans believe, it would seem we've all answered as we are able. You are also aware of various Episcopal and CoE statements. So, is there something you're looking for here?

 

[graceandpeace]

But on second thought, it's already been answered. Most believe either that the Real Presence is spiritual or that we cannot define it (which to me, seem approximately the same).

^This.

I call it a mystery because I wouldn't say the Eucharist is just a symbol - I acknowledge something is happening there, I just can't explain it.

 

[rakovsky]

^This.

I call it a mystery because I wouldn't say the Eucharist is just a symbol - I acknowledge something is happening there, I just can't explain it.

I understand. That is why I included in #2: "and/or in ritual effect as a tool".

Cranmer and Calvin would agree that something happens during the Eucharist. They just didn't think that Christ was actually in the bread in particular.

 

[graceandpeace]

I understand. That is why I included in #2: "and/or in ritual effect as a tool".

Cranmer and Calvin would agree that something happens during the Eucharist. They just didn't think that Christ was actually in the bread in particular.

What exactly are you looking for?

 

[rakovsky]

"ritual effect as a tool." I don't even know what that means.

What exactly are you looking for?

In writing that answer I was looking for the meaning of virtualism, as the Church of England Report defined it:
"The bread and the wine therefore do not become the body and blood of Christ in substance... but in spiritual power, virtue and effect. "

The Report said:

As regards the manner of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, the Report lists three ways that this has been seen over time to occur: real presence; receptionism and virtualism. Real presence “teaches that the bread and wine in some sense really or actually become through consecration the Lord’s Body and Blood” (DCE, 1938: 168) with the manner of the presence being spiritual and not fleshy.
Receptionism is the “teaching that, though the Body and Blood of the Lord are really received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper, yet their presence is real in the hearts of the recipients only, and not in the elements prior to reception” (DCE, 1938: 169). Christ’s body and blood are present only in a figure with the presence of Christ associated with the reception and not the elements. Christ is said to be present in the Eucharist, not in the elements, but as the unseen host, present only to those who receive him with faith.
Virtualism is described as being intermediate between real presence and receptionism. The virtualist “maintains that a spiritual change in the elements themselves is effected through consecration” (DCE, 1938: 170). The bread and the wine therefore do not become the body and blood of Christ in substance(as if they were being identified with the natural body and blood of Christ on the cross) but in spiritual power, virtue and effect. This means that through consecration the bread and wine are endowed with spiritual power or virtue which make them the sacramental body and blood of Christ, but not the natural body and blood of Christ.

http://anglicaneucharistictheology...._Doctrine_in_the_Church_of_England,_1938.html

The Christian Faith: AN INTRODUCTION TO DOGMATIC THEOLOGY - By CLAUDE BEAUFORT MOSS, D.D.LONDONdefines this as:

VIRTUALISM, the theory held by Cranmer and Waterland, is the theory that what we receive is not the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ but its virtue or power.
We receive the outward sign and the effect but not the Body and Blood themselves.
This theory has been held by many in the Anglican Communion but does not seem to be consistent with the teaching of the Church Catechism that the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper, still less with the word "given" in Article 28.

 

[Padres1969]

Still sticking with the "other" option. For me the Eucharist does contain Christ's Real Presence after consecration. But what form that presence takes is a mystery of faith.

If I had to pick one of your options, option one is closest, but I prefer to think of the Eucharist mystery as just that, a mystery well above any human being's pay grade.