'The matter of eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner', Hooker, and John 6

Gardiner insisted that John 6 referred to the Eucharist: this discourse "set forth the doctrine of the mystery of the eating of Christ's flesh and drinking his blood in the sacrament, which must needs be understanded of a corporal eating". Cranmer, in his Answer to Gardiner (1551), explicitly denied that Our Lord's words, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you", are an account of the Supper:

The spiritual eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood by faith, by digesting his death in our minds, as our only price, ransom, and redemption from eternal damnation, is the cause wherefore Christ said, that if we eat not his flesh, and drink not his blood, we have not life in us: and if we eat his flesh, and drink his blood, we have everlasting life. And if Christ had never ordained the sacrament, yet should we have eaten his flesh and drunken his blood, and have had thereby everlasting life, as all the faithful did before the sacrament was ordained, and do daily, when they receive not the sacrament. And so did the holy men that wandered in the wilderness, and in all their lifetime very seldom received the sacrament, and many holy martyrs, either exiled or kept in prison, did daily feed of the food of Christ's body, and drank daily the blood that sprang out of his side, (or else they could not have had everlasting life, as Christ himself said in the Gospel of St. John) and yet they were not suffered with other Christian people to have the use of the sacrament. 

It was a standard Swiss Reformed understanding, highlighting the fact that the Bread of Life discourse stands apart from the narratives of the Institution of the Eucharist:

And that in the sixth of John, Christ spake neither of corporal nor sacramental eating of his flesh, the time manifestly showeth. For Christ spake of the same present time that was then, saying, The bread which I will give is my flesh: and, He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him, and hath everlasting life. At which time the sacramental bread was not yet Christ's flesh, for the sacrament was not then yet ordained; and yet at that time all that believed in Christ did eat his flesh and drink his blood, or else they could not have dwelled in Christ, nor Christ in them.

How can a denial that Cranmer teaches a 'low' sacramental theology be reconciled with his rejection of John 6 as referring to the Lord's Supper? To begin with, we recall that Cranmer robustly insists throughout his Answer to Gardiner that "Christ giveth himself to be truly eaten" in this Sacrament. This eating, he continues, "all is spiritually with faith, not with mouth" - which is precisely what he says John 6 declares. As Cranmer concludes this passage in response to Gardiner on John 6, he states that the Bread of Life discourse refers to "spiritual eating by faith": this is exactly how he describes our partaking of Christ in the Supper.

What, then, is the relationship in Cranmer's thought between the Supper and John 6? Perhaps we might put it this way: for Cranmer, John 6 is not about the Eucharist, but the Eucharist is about John 6. We get something of an idea of this in Cranmer's own words, also from this passage:

And therefore to answer you plainly, the same flesh that was given in Christ's last supper, was given also upon the cross, and is given daily in the ministration of the sacrament. But although it be but one thing, yet it was diversely given. For upon the cross Christ was carnally given to suffer and to die: at his last supper he was spiritually given in a promise of his death, and in the sacrament he is daily given in remembrance of his death. And yet it is all but one Christ that was promised to die, that died in deed, and whose death is remembered; that is to say, the very same Christ, the eternal Word that was made flesh. 

To spiritually feed on the Lord's Body and Blood is our salvation; it is life in Christ. This is particularly tasted and experienced in the Supper of the Lord. And so, John 6 is not about the Eucharist, but the Eucharist is about John 6. As Cranmer states:

For I do not bring forth St. John for the matter of the real presence of Christ in the sacrament ... but I bring St. John for the matter of eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood.

At this point, I want to turn to Hooker as a perhaps rather unlikely ally of Cranmer on this matter. Hooker, after all, opens his account 'Of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ' by quoting John 6:52 (LEP V.67.1). Could there be any clearer indication of the difference between Cranmer and Hooker? However, prior to turning the Sacrament, Hooker, in his great reflection on our participation in Christ, expounds the nature of this communion:

It is too cold an interpretation, whereby some men expounde our beinge in Christ to importe nothinge els, but onlie that the selfe same nature, which maketh us to be men, is in him, and maketh him man as wee are. For what man in the world is there which hath not so farre forth communion with Jesus Christ? It is not this that can sustaine the waight of such sentenses as speake of the mysterie of our coherence with Jesus Christ ... His bodie crucified and his blood shed for the life of the world, are the true elementes of that heavenlie beinge, which maketh us such as him selfe is of whome wee com (V.56.7).

As Hooker continues by stating that "to the Church [Christ] is both life and light eternall by begine made the Sonne of man for us", he references in a footnote John 6:57 - "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me". It is this, our participation in Christ, after John 6, which then establishes the context for understanding the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. John 6 is not about the Eucharist, but the Eucharist is about John 6. 

This is particularly significant when read alongside Hooker's conventionally Reformed belief that our partaking of Christ is not "a literall corporall and orall manducation of the verie substance of his flesh and blood". He here quotes that favourite Reformed text from John 6, verse 63:

the wordes which he spake were spirit, that is to saie they had a reference to a mysticall participation, which mysticall participation giveth life (V.67.9). 

Such mystical participation - "the mysterie of our coherence with Jesus Christ" - is, as Hooker has wonderfully expounded at length in chapter 56 of Book V, our very salvation. This mystical participation (John 6) is not the Eucharist, but the Eucharist is a means of us being renewed "while wee are on earth" in this mystical participation (V.56.11).

That there are differences between Cranmer and Hooker is, of course, accepted. Hooker's eucharistic eirenicism, after all, emerged from the stability and confidence of the Elizabethan Settlement, a quite different context to the bitter struggles of Edward's reign. But, in terms of the fundamentals of eucharistic doctrine, the differences are a matter of emphasis, little more. Not only do Cranmer and Hooker both obviously stand within the family of Swiss eucharistic theologies, they also set forth a similar reading of how the Eucharist relates to John 6. This view of the relationship between John 6 and the Sacrament cannot be described as 'low', for it is dependent upon and flows from a gloriously rich understanding of the Bread of Life discourse as proclaiming our saving participation in Christ - which is set before us and of which we spiritually partake in the Supper of the Lord.