Jewel's richly Reformed sacramental theology: an antidote to a barren Protestantism
Wright's words came to mind when reading the latest online publication from the excellent Anglican.net, Jewel's A Treatise of the Sacraments. It is a wonderful example of the rich sacramental theology of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana. And it is a self-evidently Reformed sacramental theology which Jewel espouses.
Two distinctive Reformed themes appear in Jewel's discussion of the Eucharist. The first is the significance of the Ascension, reflecting Calvin's emphasis on how the sursum corda should shape our understanding of the gift of the Lord in the Sacrament:
The bread is beneath, the body is above: the bread is on the table, the body is in heaven: the bread is in the mouth, the body in the heart. The bread feedeth the outward man, the body feedeth the inward man ... The body then which we eat is in heaven: above all Angels, and Archangels, and powers, and principalities.
The second is the comparison with Baptism, in which the water does not require a change of substance:
In baptism, the nature and substance of water doth remain still: and yet is not it bare water. It is changed, and made the sacrament of our regeneration. It is water consecrated, and made holy by the blood of Christ. They which are washed therein are not washed with water, but in the blood of the unspotted Lamb. One thing is seen, and another understood. We see the water, but we understand the blood of Christ. Even so we see the bread and wine, but with the eyes of our understanding we look beyond these creatures: we reach our spiritual senses into heaven, and behold the ransom and price of our salvation. We do behold in the Sacrament, not what it is, but what it doth signify.
Distinctively Reformed, yes, but it is precisely because of this that Jewel's is a rich sacramental theology. The typically Reformed comparison between Baptism and Eucharist has meaning because of the efficacy of Baptism. Thus Jewel:
Baptism therefore is our regeneration or new birth, whereby we are born anew in Christ, and are made the Sons of God, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven. It is the Sacrament of the remission of sins, and of that washing which we have in the blood of Christ ... For this cause are infants baptized, because they are born in sin, and cannot become spiritual, but by this new birth of the water & the spirit.
What is most striking about Jewel's language concerning Baptism is the chasm between it and much contemporary evangelical Anglican discourse:
Such a change is made in the Sacrament of Baptism. Through the power of God’s working the water is turned into blood. They that be washed in it receive the remission of sins: their robes are made clean in the blood of the Lamb. The water itself is nothing: but by the working of God’s spirit, the death and merits of our Lord and Saviour Christ are thereby assured unto us.
Similarly with his teaching on the Eucharist. Here too, Jewel employs the Reformed language regarding a true feeding upon the Lord in the Sacrament:
We say, and believe, that we receive the body and blood of Christ truly, and not a figure or sign; but even that body which suffered death on the Cross, and that blood which was shed for the forgiveness of sins.
As with Calvin, Jewel affirms that a 'change' occurs in the elements:
We say, they are changed, that they have a dignity and preeminence which they had not before; that they are not now common bread, or common wine, but the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ.
What is the significance of this sacramental theology for contemporary Anglicanism? Against the de-based Zwinglianism which characterises much liberal and evangelical Anglican sacramental teaching - in which Baptism becomes merely a sign of inclusion or is dismissed as having no salvific significance, routinely replaced by a 'dedication' service for a child, and the Eucharist becomes, either, fellowship meal or empty sign - Jewel's presentation of Reformed sacramental theology recalls Anglicanism to a robustly Christocentric sacramental belief and practice.
Furthermore, in doing so it provides for Anglicanism sacramental belief and practice which coheres with Prayer Book and Articles, rather than undermining these by seeking sacramental richness in a theological and liturgical traditions quite different to those native to Anglicanism. If doctrinal coherence is to be restored to Anglicanism, this will require a sacramental theology at once catholic and reformed - and, yes, Anglicanism in its history has known such a consensus in sacramental theology.
Catholic, in its robust affirmation of the reality of the grace bestowed in the sacraments:
They are not bare signs: it were blasphemy so to say. The grace of God doth always work with his Sacraments.
Reformed, in the vibrancy of its conviction that the sacraments are received by faith:
Our faith, in which we are Baptized, and our continuance in the profession which we have made, establisheth in us this grace which we receive;
By the hand of faith we reach unto him, and by the mouth of faith we receive his body.
That which I will utter herein shall not be of myself, but of the fathers of the Church.
He references Augustine 36 times, Chrysostom 21, Ambrose 14, Jerome 10, Tertullian 7, Origen 6, Cyprian 6, Nazianzen 3, Nyssa 2. It is, in other words, a profound act of ressourcement, drinking deeply from the well of the Greek and Latin Fathers and their Christocentric sacramental teaching. Such patristic ressourcement would notably enrich a contemporary Anglicanism impoverished in its sacramental belief and practice not least because of a lack of engagement with the Fathers. Sacramental renewal will come through learning from those whom Jewel declares the "Catholike and godly learned Fathers":
Let no man regard me, or my speech: I am only a finger: these are clear and bright stars. I do but show them unto you, and point them, that you may behold them. God give us grace that we may see them truly, and by them be able to guide and to direct our way. Let us lay aside all contention, and quietly hear that shall be spoken.
"We believe no less than you that the presence is real. Concerning the method of the presence, we define nothing rashly, and I add, we do not anxiously inquire, any more than how the blood of Christ washes us in Baptism."
ReplyDelete-Lancelot Andrewes
The striking imagery of baptismal water "turned into blood" demonstrates that the Elizabethans were no less robust in their sacramental theology than the Carolines. Indeed, in this one instance, Jewel exceeds Andrewes.
Yes, it is striking imagery. And the fact that it was a consistent Reformed approach indicates something of the richness of this sacramental teaching.
DeleteYour point about the unity of the Elizabethans and Carolines is so significant: a reminder that the Carolines stand in profound continuity with what went before.
It's a point that bears repeating. The idea that the "avant garde conformists" of the 17th C made a significant shift away from the reformed religion of their predecessors has purchase among polemicists of both low church and Anglo-Catholic sensibilitites. For the the latter, it's a vindication of their own move away from the Tudor formularies, which presume two sacraments, three creeds, four, or four-six general councils and the fathers of the first five-six centuries, towards a non-Reformed catholicism of seven sacraments, seven councils and the tradition of the undivided Church. The Low churchman concedes the point, more or less, and then uses it as a bludgeon against the Laudians, who were, in fact, no less Reformed and Protestant than Cranmer, Jewel and Hooker.
DeleteI strongly agree, on both counts. On one hand, a non-Reformed Catholicism. On the other, an impoverished Reformed understanding, bereft of the witness of the Fathers.
DeleteTo Jewel's vivid description of water turning into blood, we might add Bramhall's point to De la Militiere about the Fathers' use of rhetoric when they wrote and preached about the sacraments:
ReplyDelete"Yet all the time we find as different expressions among those primitive Fathers, as among our modern writers at this day; some calling the Sacraments 'the Sign of Christ's Body,' 'the Figure of his Body,' 'the symbol of his body,' 'the Mystery of his Body'; saying 'that the Elements do not recede from their first nature'; others naming it 'the true Body and Blood of Christ,' changed, not in shape, but in nature'; yea, doubting not to say that in this Sacrament 'we see Christ,' 'we touch Christ,' 'we eat Christ,' that we fasten our teeth in his very flesh and make our tongues red in his blood'...The Fathers do not say that such expressions are true, not only sacramentally or figuratively (as they made Berengarius both say and accurse all others that held otherwise),-but also properly and in the things themselves. The Fathers never meant by these forms of speech to determine the manner of the presence (which was not dreamt of in their days), but to raise the devotion of their hearers and readers, to advertise the people of God that they should not rest in the external symbols, or signs, but principally be intent upon the invisible grace; which was both lawful and commendable for them to do. Leave us their primitive liberty, and we will not refrain from the like expressions."
But, in this, Bramhall was merely following the precedent established a century before by Cranmer in his appeal to a general council:
"And I protest and openly confess, that in all my doctrine and preaching, both of the Sacrament and of other my doctrine, whatsoever it be, not only I mean and judge those things as the catholic church and the most holy fathers of old, with one accord, have meant and judged; but also I would gladly use the same words that they used, and not use my own words, but to set my hand to all and singular their speeches, phrases, ways and forms of speech, which they do use in their treatises upon the sacrament, and to keep still their interpretation."
Excellent quotes. Again, that profound continuity before Cranmer and Laudians - a shared 'high Reformed', deeply Augustinian understanding of the gift of the Lord in the Eucharist.
DeleteWishing you a blessed Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.
ReplyDelete