Transubstantiation...not

Anglicans believe that Christ is fully offered in the sacrament of Holy Communion (“effectual signs of grace”); it’s far more than a memorial or symbolic meal. We understand that real presence is his spiritual presence spiritually experienced in the believer’s heart when they receive Christ again by faith with thanksgiving. Jesus is spiritually present everywhere (“I am with you always”), of course, but after his Ascension he is bodily in heaven where he sits at the right hand of God the Father until the day he will return (“I will return in the same way”). At the Last Supper when Jesus said “This is my body,” he was not at that very moment giving up his bodily existence to be relocated in the bread and wine, or that his body is magically duplicated to be in both his physical body and in the elements of communion at the same time. Jesus is not corporeally present “in” the bread and wine as if he rushes down from heaven to enter into our mouths and then into our stomachs.

It is not “Jesus” sitting on the altar because of some words said or some actions performed over bread and wine by a sacrificing priest. No! It’s far more glorious than that! The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper unites us again to Christ – “…be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.” This is the union with Christ, the spiritual “commingling” of which Cyril of Alexandria (375-444) writes. His real presence is in the hearts of those who expect and welcome him by faith, and this unites us to the whole Christ (body and spirit) as we are raised again to be joined in the Heavenly Places (Ephesians 1:3 for example).

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the architect of Anglican sacramental theology, wrote extensively about this in “A Defense of the True and Catholike Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ” (1550). He devoted the third of four books to the question of real presence citing the church fathers at length.

Cranmer wrote: “They [Roman Catholics] say, that Christ is received in the mouth and entereth in with the bread and wine: we say, that he is received in the heart, and entereth in by faith” (Book III, Ch. II). “Cranmer’s focus was not a change in, or even instrumental use of, the bread and wine,” wrote Ashley Null, “but rather the transformation of the recipients, who by the power of the Spirit were linked afresh to the saving efficacy of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion” (“Cranmer and the Sacraments”).

Richard Hooker, an Elizabethan theologian, was more nuanced than Cranmer, but his eucharistic doctrine was essentially the same. He taught that Christ is dynamically present in the liturgical action rather than statically located in the consecrated bread and wine in a moment of consecration (marked by bells, parading and venerating the sacrament, elevating it as to announce that God has now taken up residence, genuflecting, and the like).

“The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament…only in the very heart and soul of him which receiveth” (Hooker Laws, V.67.6).

Obviously, many have rushed to other understandings of “real presence” than those found in Anglican formularies. Some even hold to a functionally Roman Catholic understanding without considering how this adversely affects our view of other foundational, biblical teachings. The Church of England has a view of real presence in Holy Communion that is based on God’s promise for union with Christ in the hearts of believers, “that He may dwell in us and we in Him.”

Jesus is not resacrificed on an altar by a priest who is holier than normal Christians (because he is like the Old Testament priests, possessing an indelible priestly character, and who now serves as the intermediary between God and his people). And the people do not gaze on bread that has, moments before, turned into Jesus. No, that is Roman Catholic understanding. We understand that Christians, by faith, are powerfully reunited to Jesus in Holy Communion. The transformation of the human heart by faith is a far greater miracle than bread automatically becoming Jesus that requires no faith whatsoever (ex opere operato).

Anglicans understand that Jesus’ once and for all sacrifice on the cross is the only and completely sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world, and the sacrament of the Communion table offers Christ, spiritually present, to those who receive the grace of the sacrament by faith. By faith we are reunited to Christ (reunion!), and even to the whole Christ, body and spirit, as we are raised again to be with him and to live with him in the Heavenly Places. We “feed on him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving.”

Dean Chuck Collins is a Reform theologian who frequently contributes to Virtueonline

TRANSUBSTANTIATION…NOT

By Chuck Collins
www.virtueonline.org
November 13, 2024

Transubstantiation is “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions” (Articles of Religion, Article 28).

Roman Catholics teach that the substance of the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ, even though, to the onlooker, it still looks like bread and wine (Catholic Catechism, 1379). The Fourth Lateran Council that began November 11, 1215 was the first time the word “transubstantiation” was officially used to describe what Roman Catholics understand happens in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

So why did the 16th century reformers adamantly disagree with this view, many even to the point of being willing to die for their beliefs? Why do Anglicans specifically oppose transubstantiation in our confessional statement? Because how we view the “real presence” of Christ in the eucharist is the hinge for every other biblical core value that was recovered at the time of the English Reformation: the supreme authority of Holy Scripture, the priesthood of all believers, and the central biblical doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone.