"More or less the doctrine of Calvin": Browne on Article 28 and the Calvinists who forget Calvin

The Bread and Cup are His Body and Blood, because they are causes instrumental upon the receipt whereof the participation of His Body and Blood ensueth - Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity V.67.5.

In 1855, in a profound break with the Old High Church tradition, Keble - in On Eucharistical Adoration - rejected Hooker's Eucharistic doctrine.  The Old High Church tradition had, in continuity with Hooker, affirmed Virtualism.  For Keble, a more 'advanced' Eucharistic doctrine was required:

Hooker himself, after deprecating "the exercise of our curious and subtile wits" on the holy Eucharist, propounds in the very next paragraph an explanation of the words of institution, which, whether it be more or less correct than the Roman, is surely not less "curious" or scholastic ... Hooker was biassed by his respect for Calvin and some of his school, in whose opinions he had been educated, and by sympathy with the most suffering portion of the foreign Reformers, so as instinctively and unconsciously to hide his eyes from the unquestionable consent of antiquity, and to make allowances which, logically carried out, would lead to conclusions such as the ancient Church never could have endured. 

Such a rejection of Hooker would have been unimaginable to the Old High Church tradition.   Despite the caution of On Eucharistical Adoration - and some significant continuities with the High Church tradition - it set the scene for the emergence of Eucharistic doctrine and practice amongst advanced Anglo-catholics and Ritualists strange and foreign to the High Church tradition.  The pre-1833 coherence of Anglicanism (evident in shared liturgical practice and Eucharistic teaching) was shattered, as Ritualists became Tridentine and neo-Puritans became Zwinglians. 

Yet, the older tradition - while it certainly ceased to be dominant - did not entirely disappear.  Nockles describes E.H. Browne - Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge 1854-64, Bishop of Ely 1864-73 - as an "old High Churchman".  In 1854 he published his An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles.  His treatment of Article 28 was a robust, confident restatement of the teaching of the High Church tradition, challenging both neo-Tridentine and neo-Zwinglian expressions in later 19th century Anglicanism.

He began by setting out the "four principal opinions" regarding the Eucharist - Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation, what he termed the Zwinglian "denial of any special presence altogether", and "the real spiritual presence".  It is the latter which he identifies as "the Anglican doctrine":

The doctrine of a real spiritual presence is the Anglican doctrine, and was more or less the doctrine of Calvin and of many foreign reformers. It teaches that Christ is really received by faithful comnlunicants in the Lord's Supper, but that there is no gross or carnal, but only a spiritual and heavenly presence there; not the less real, however, for being spiritual. It teaches, therefore, that the bread and wine are received naturally; but the Body and Blood of Christ are received spiritually. 

He followed this with words from Taylor:

The result of which doctrine is this: it is bread, and it is Christ's Body. It is bread in substance, Christ in the Sacrament; and Christ is as really given to all that are truly disposed, as the symbols are: each as they can; Christ as Christ can be given; the bread and the wine as they can; and to the same real purposes to which they were designed; and Christ does as really nourish and sanctify the soul, as the elements the body.

It is quite striking to see a theologian in the High Church tradition, three decades after the beginning of the Oxford Movement, without any embarrassment, point to Calvin as articulating "the Anglican doctrine" of the Eucharist.  What is more, in stating the fundamental coherence between Taylor and Calvin, Browne was emphasising a consistent High Church critique of the Tractarians and their successors - as Nockles describes it, "the Tractarian fault of citing the Caroline Divines selectively and out of context".

Nor is this only a passing, introductory reference to Calvin.  Browne goes on to expound Calvin's teaching in some detail, including extracts from the Institutes:

Calvin took a middle course between Luther and Zwingli. With the former he acknowledged a real presence of Christ in His Supper; with the latter he denied a corporal or material presence. Having stated the view of the Sacramentarians, that to eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of Christ is merely to believe on Him, he says, 'But to me Christ appears to have intended something more express and sublime in that famous discourse of His, where He commends to us the eating of His Flesh; namely, that by a real participation of Him we be quickened; which He therefore designated under the words eating and drinking, lest any should think that the life we derive from Him is received by simple cognition. For as, not the sight, but the eating of the bread, gives nourishment to the body, so it is needful that, for the soul to be wholly partaker of Christ, it should be quickened by His virtue to life eternal.' The elements, according to him, receive the name of Christ's Body and Blood, 'because they are, as it were, instruments whereby Christ distributes them to us.' And,' if we believe the truth of God, we must believe that there is an inward substance of the Sacrament in the Lord's Supper joined to the outward signs: and so that, as the bread is given by the hands, the Body of Christ is also communicated, that we be partakers of Him.'  

The significance of Calvin's teaching for Browne is that is a retrieval of the Eucharistic doctrine of the Fathers, which "clearly distinguishes between the natural Body and Blood of Christ, which were crucified and shed, and the spiritual Body and Blood of Christ, which are eaten and drunken by the faithful".  Browne also points to Bertram/Ratramnus and Berengar as bearers of this teaching in the medieval Latin West:

Bertram's statements are clear for the spiritual, and against the carnal presence in the Eucharist. 'The change,' he says, 'is not wrought corporally, but spiritually, and figuratively'. 

Alongside Calvin, Browne places the English Reformers.  Again, the contrast with the successors of the Tractarians is striking.  By the late 1830s, the coldness of the Tractarians towards the English Reformation was becoming evident.  Later Anglo-catholics and Ritualists showed little caution in identifying with Froude's 1838 remark: "I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more" (quoted by Herring).  Such a stance was incomprehensible to the Old High Church tradition, with its understanding that the purpose of the English Reformation was - as Nockles states - "to conserve and restore".  This led to a native pride in the witness and teaching of the English Reformers.  For Browne, therefore, affirming the eucharistic teaching of the English Reformers was essential:

both Cranmer and Ridley, to whom we are chiefly indebted for our formularies, maintained a doctrine nearly identical with that maintained by Calvin, and before him by Bertram. With the latter Ridley expresses his entire accordance. He constantly declares that, whilst he rejects all presence of the natural Body and Blood, in the way of transubstantiation, he yet acknowledges a real presence of Christ, spiritually and by grace, to be received by the faithful in the Communion of the Eucharist. Cranmer has by some been thought to incline nearer to Zwinglianism; yet, if fair allowance be made for hasty expressions in the irritation of controversy, it will probably appear that he, like Ridley, followed the doctrine of the ancient Church, and held a real reception of Christ spiritually. 

That reference to following "the doctrine of the ancient Church" captures the understanding of the English Reformation as an act of ressourcement, in union with Calvin's retrieval of patristic Eucharistic doctrine.

While Browne robustly and enthusiastically endorses Calvin's Eucharistic doctrine - the standard High Church understanding - he is not, of course, uncritical of wider aspects of Calvin's teaching.  We get a sense of this in a very perceptive comment:

Some perhaps who have followed Calvin in his predestinarian theory, have followed not him, but Zwingli, upon the Sacraments. And this too may have been the bent of those who afterwards more especially followed Arminius, both here and on the Continent. 

Browne does not expand on this statement, but the implication is clear - that Calvin's Eucharistic teaching is to be found not amongst those who call themselves Calvinists, but in the Anglican High Church tradition.  And - ironically - those who call themselves Calvinists tend to share the 'low', rationalist account of the Eucharist with the disciples of the rationalist theology of the Remonstrants.  We might be tempted to suggest that the description also has relevance in contemporary Anglicanism, with the Evangelical and Broad Church traditions as followers of Zwingli when it comes to the Eucharist.  Of course, it does beg the question where we are to find Calvin's rich Eucharistic teaching in contemporary Anglicanism.

Finally, what of the closing paragraph of Article 28, concerning adoration of the Sacrament?  Browne considers this worthy of only a footnote - because, he states, the response should be obvious: 

The latter part of the Article has perhaps been insufficiently treated. It is, however, but a simple corollary. Elevating the Host resulted from a belief in transubstantiation. If that doctrine be rejected, we shall not believe the wafer to have been really transformed into Christ's Body, and so shall not worship it, nor elevate it for worship. There is evidently no Scriptural authority for the elevation of the Host, the command being, 'Take, eat' ... there is no trace of its existence before the 11th or 12th centuries: and no certain documents refer to it till about A.D. 1200. 

The contrast with the advanced Anglo-catholics and Ritualists is, of course, stark.  Directorium Anglicanum - the Ritualist manual published in 1858 - attempted to present Elevation as permissible according to the Book of Common Prayer.  The practice was becoming the norm in Ritualist parishes.  By relegating it to a footnote, Browne is making clear that such alien practices are entirely removed from "Anglican doctrine" on the Eucharist, doctrine taught by the Old High Church tradition.  His emphasis on the origin of the practice in the medieval Latin West points to how it embodies a different Eucharistic theology and practice to that of the patristic churches.  Above all, Elevation and associated practices obscured the gift of the Eucharist, a gift received in eating and drinking - in words from Hooker quoted by Browne, "this Sacrament is a real and true participation of Christ, who thereby imparteth Himself ... to everyone that receiveth Him".

There is a sense in which Browne's Exposition was a restatement of a passing tradition, as the Reformed Catholicism for which the Old High Church tradition stood was overwhelmed by quasi-Tridentine and neo-Puritan expressions within Anglicanism, expressions which established dominant theological and liturgical landscapes for Anglo-catholics and Evangelical Anglicans over the next century.  The result of this, however, has been a profound incoherence within Anglican life and witness - an unsustainable, confusing plurality in Anglican teaching and worship, undermining common prayer and shared teaching.

Amidst the challenges of mission, evangelisation and nurturing disciples in (apparently) secular cultures, the Old High Church tradition - of which Browne's reading of the Articles of Religion is an example - could contribute to Anglican renewal, renewing and restoring common practices and shared teaching. In particular, amidst the obvious weaknesses in contemporary Anglican Eucharistic teaching and practice - with the success of the Parish Communion resulting in a neo-Zwinglian, community-focussed approach to the Sacrament, with Evangelical Anglicans having a thoroughly impoverished Eucharistic theology and practice - the Old High Church tradition's rich Eucharistic theology offers a mean of deepening the contemporary Anglican encounter with the Crucified and Risen Lord in these holy mysteries.