There is no question but that the
evangelical Reformers of the sixteenth century saw themselves as making a
deliberate and conscious move away from the view of the sacraments that had
prevailed in the medieval church. They were in loud agreement that the
sacramental system had become an avenue for the worst tendencies in medieval
Christianity – an expression of a soteriology that made no sense, a celebration
of what seemed to them to be abhorred in Scripture, and even the re-institution
of the very things that the apostles had railed against in the New Testament.
As they were, the sacraments were indicative of an entire theological system
that needed to be dismantled and reconstituted from the ground up. And yet this
proved more elusive to them. The Reformers could not find agreement on a
positive account of the sacraments, especially the Lord’s Supper.
Most famously, Luther and Zwingli
clashed at the Colloquy of Marburg in 1529 – even though they had been called
together by Philip I precisely for the purpose of presenting a united
Protestant front. The division was irreconcilable: in the end Luther simply
refused to acknowledge the validity of Zwingli’s position. The fifteenth point
of the colloquy recognized this sharp difference of opinion:
Fifteenth,
we all believe and hold concerning the Supper of our dear Lord Jesus Christ
that both kinds should be used according to the institution by Christ; also
that the Sacrament of the Altar is a sacrament of the true body and blood of
Jesus Christ and that the spiritual partaking of the same body and blood is
especially necessary for every Christian. Similarly, that the use of the
sacrament, like the word, has been given and ordained by God Almighty in order
that weak consciences may thereby be excited to faith by the Holy Spirit. And
although at this time, we have not reached an agreement as to whether the true
body and blood of Christ are bodily present in the bread and wine,
nevertheless, each side should show Christian love to the other side insofar as
conscience will permit, and both sides should diligently pray to Almighty God
that through his Spirit he might confirm us in the right understanding. Amen
There was substantial and
noteworthy agreement. The Reformers together rejected the understanding of the
Mass as a substitutionary sacrifice in any way making a propitiation that only
belonged to the cross of Christ. They also agreed that the elements should both
be offered to the congregation (the practice of offering communion ‘in one
kind’ was ubiquitous by the time of the Reformation). They were strongly agreed
that to take the Lord’s Supper was something an obedient Christian ought to do.
But they were vociferous in their disagreement about what occurred in the rite itself. Luther wished to
assert that Christ was present at the Lord’s Supper, whereas Zwingli did not.
The other Reformers present at the Marburg Colluquy – among them Martin Bucer,
who would go on to have a significant influence on the English Reformation in
the 1540s and 50s – leaned more to Zwingli’s position while still wanting to affirm
a ‘spiritual presence’.
The English Reformation was
somewhat of a latecomer to this discussion. Even following the break with Rome
in the 1530s, Henry VIII did not permit a significant development of teaching
on the sacraments. The Ten Articles of 1536, though it affirmed justification
by faith alone, also upheld the necessity of baptism, the sacrament of penance
and the substantial, real and corporeal presence of Jesus as the Eucharist
under the form of bread and wine. The text of the Bishop’s Book, designed to accompany the Ten Articles, reads
under
the form and figure of bread and wine, which we there presently do see and
perceive by outward senses, is verily, substantially, and really contained the
very selfsame body and blood of our Saviour Jesu Christ.
This position was affirmed in the
Six Articles of 1539, in which the practice of withholding the cup from the
laity was also defended.
Thus, the Henrician church cannot
claim to have moved to a recognizably Reformed or Lutheran position on the
sacraments. The theological building blocks for a change were nonetheless
beginning to be put into place, since the doctrine of purgatory to which the
mass was linked was being attacked, and since the doctrine of justification by
faith alone did not allow for the same role in the salvation of a person’s soul
as was formerly in operation. Futhermore, despite the official caution of the
leading bishops, more radical views had certainly been circulating in England
for at least two decades before Henry’s death in 1547. William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man had briefly
expounded a view of the meaning and purpose of the sacraments that pre-empted
later Anglican accounts, arguing that the sacraments were chiefly signs of
God’s promises, apprehended by faith as the accompanying word is preached.[1]
[1] William Tyndale and David Daniell, The
Obedience of a Christian Man, Penguin Classics (London ; New York: Penguin,
2000), p. 108-9.
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