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The 16th century reformers, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in particular, were thus confronted with the task of reforming a eucharistic liturgy which since the Middle Ages had been interpreted in such a way as to relegate sacramental efficacy to the mediatorial role of the ministerial priesthood, even to the point of rendering lay communion unnecessary. So it was that certain external reforms, including not only the recovery of lay communion, but also restoration of the cup to the laity, the translation of the Mass into the vernacular, and the abolition of "private masses," were inevitable. More importantly, the espousal of justification by faith had led as well to the rejection of the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass and its complement doctrine - transubstantiation. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Cranmer's arch-adversary in literary debate during this period, understood the implications of embracing justification sola fide well:

It is evident to anyone that these things are so joined and interdependent that whoever has admitted the doctrine of "only faith" in justification is compelled to reject the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the way we profess it. ¹

Such drastic re-thinking would take liturgical shape in the composition of sacramental rites which assigned the locus of divine activity and grace directly to the heart as a ministry of the Holy Spirit, appropriated through faith in a gospel proclaimed by the Word and exhibited by sacrament. J.I. Packer has noted that Cranmer's main concern was "to do justice to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, as the one who mediates experimental knowledge of the presence, power, and grace of Jesus Christ to the people of God."

And yet one would be inclined to think that as soon as the doctrine of justification by faith had been "re-discovered" that a unified Reformation sacramentology would have followed close behind. But, in reality, nothing was further from the truth. The various "wings" of the Reformation (i.e., Lutheran, Reformed, or Anglican) had little more in common with each other, sacramentally speaking, than their disavowal of the Medieval doctrines of transubstantiation and propitiatory sacrifice. The doctrine of justification "by faith only" may have overthrown the Medieval Mass, but it did not easily suggest a substitute theology of the sacraments. Indeed Luther had contended for the Real Presence of Christ carnaliter (i.e., in the flesh) at the 1529 Marburg colloquy, while his rival, Zwingli of Zurich, denied outright that any objective grace was given at all in the sacraments. (Renaissance humanism had done a great disservice in Swiss Reformed theology.) ²

At the heart of the issue was how far the Reformation churches were going to go in their application of the "by faith only" doctrine. Indeed, this might sound strange to those inclined to think of the doctrine of justification as the "doctrine upon which the Church either stands or falls." But it really is the crux of the problem. So, for example, was the doctrine of justification "by faith only" to become so individualized (as it is in our own day) to render any doctrine of the Church superfluous and unnecessary? Or, as the Prayer Book assumes, should the doctrine of justification be anchored in the faith of the Church as grounded upon God's appointed means of grace, (i.e., the sacraments)? And, of course, a whole spectrum of positions lies in between these two poles.

Our interest for this series of messages is not so much how the other Reformation churches answered this question, but rather how the Anglican tradition has dealt with it. Yet I am convinced that this is where the theology of the Book of Common Prayer is at its best. The conservative nature of the English reformation meant that there was a reluctance to simply strike out completely on innovative paths of understanding with regard to the theology of the Church and the sacraments. Simply put, if the Reformation understanding of justification was to stand it must not only resonate with the message of the Reformers, it must also be consonant with the faith of the universal Church, or (at the very least) not in conflict with it if found to be a relatively new insight into Scripture. This applies not only to justification considered as a separate doctrinal abstraction, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to our whole understanding of soteriology (i.e., doctrine of salvation) as it effects other crucial areas of theology such as the nature of the Church and the sacraments. A carelessly expressed theological premise, particularly a soteriological one, will have an adverse chain-reaction effect on the whole system of Christian teaching. Indeed, it was B.B. Warfield who once haughtily suggested that the Reformation represented the triumph of St. Augustine's doctrine of soteriology over against the dire consequences of his doctrine of the Church. ³ But if the truth were told, an honest reading of St. Augustine would demonstrate that Warfield was sorely ignorant of both.

The first concept is sanctification. Sanctification, for our purposes, simply means to "set apart as holy." ⁴ As it turns out, this is a very biblical definition with numerous examples. For instance, God created mankind in His own image and thus sanctified him - set him apart - from the rest of the living creatures on the earth. God set apart Noah and his family to be saved from the floods which destroyed the rest of the earth. God sanctified Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their seed from the rest of the nations to become a holy nation of priests. God sanctified David and his household as the royal line from which His Christ would come. He sanctified the Virgin Mary to be the vessel from whom the Christ would come. He sanctified the human nature of Christ to be the propitiation for sin. He sanctifies the Church, by calling His elect from out of the nations, to be the Body of Christ.

But God sets things apart as well as human beings. For instance, God set apart one day in seven to be holy. He set apart and sanctified the Garden of Eden to be the original setting for fellowship between God and man. He set apart the trees of life and the knowledge of good and evil. He set apart the sacrifice of Abel, while he chose not to regard the sacrifice of Cain. God set apart the land of Canaan to be the inheritance of his people Israel and Zion to be His holy city. He set apart the temple mount where His presence resided with His people, as well as the temple itself, the altar, the utensils, and the vestments of the priesthood. He set apart the Jordan and the waters thereof to be the place where His Son would identify himself with the sinful race of man in the washing of St. John's baptism. And yes, God's own Son our Lord Jesus Christ set apart the elements of bread and wine to be that which communicates to us His very body and blood.

The idea of the sanctification of time, space (i.e., location), and material things as the means by which God reveals his nature and communicates his grace to his moral beings is a thoroughly biblical way of approaching the doctrine of the sacraments. And when we stop to think about it, this is precisely what we are doing in worship. What is worship if not the sanctification of time, space, and matter for the service of adoration of the Triune God? Does not our Christian calendar order time in such a way as to rehearse the great themes of redemptive history? Do we not sanctify space for worship in the ordering our churches and arranging our furniture and instruments of worship? Do we not take matter into our hands - water, bread and wine (mundane things in and of themselves) - and set them apart according to the institution of God, that they might convey to us in a tangible way the grace of God in Christ?

Prayer Book worship aspires to be nothing less than the expression of how God Himself has worked in redemptive history. God reveals Himself and communicates His grace in time, in space, and through material things - supremely in the Incarnation. Why would we expect God to do any less in the Church? If true worship involves the setting apart time, space, and material things to God's praise and glory, then we must expect that God in Christ is present with us in time, space, and those material things appointed according to his will. This is what the Church had always and everywhere believed before the Reformation, and this is what the Church of the English Reformation continued to believe, and to put into practice more consistently than any other Reformation tradition.

In fact what we discover is that the concept of sanctification is the very foundation of the Prayer Book's implicit teaching of sacramental efficacy. We see it clearly in the first prayer of Cranmer's baptismal office:

Almighty and everlasting God, which of thy great mercy didst save Noah and his family in the ark from perishing by water, and also didst safely lead the children of Israel, thy people, through the Red Sea, figuring thereby thy holy baptism, and by the baptism of thy well beloved Son, Jesus Christ, didst sanctify the flood of Jordan and all other waters to the mystical washing away of sin: we beseech thee for thy infinite mercies that thou wilt mercifully look upon these children, sanctify them and wash them with thy Holy Ghost, that they, being delivered from thy wrath, may be received into the ark of Christ's church, and being steadfast in faith, joyful through hope, and rooted in charity, may so pass the waves of this troublesome world, that finally they may come to the land of everlasting life, there to reign with thee, world without end...

God sets apart Noah and his family from the destruction of the flood. He safely leads the people Israel through the midst of the Red Sea. God sanctifies the waters of the Jordan in Christ's identification with sinful mankind in baptism (from henceforth sanctifying water for our identification in Christ!). So the Prayer Book implores God to sanctify - set apart as holy - his children, washing away their sins, bestowing upon them the Holy Ghost, and delivering them from wrath. Continuing the "flood imagery," it is through these same waters of baptism, set apart and sanctified for this purpose, that God's children are received into the ark of Christ's church, the mystical Body of Christ.

The second important concept is the counterpart of sanctification: the concept of mystery. Sanctification gives us a concrete idea of what the sacramental action is - namely the setting apart of Divinely ordained means for the communication of spiritual grace. Mystery is the much needed balance to remind us that there are definite limits beyond which we can never really understand how it is that God unites us and sustains us through these means. Indeed, "mystery" and "mystical" were the two terms that Cranmer was most fond to employ in reference to the sacraments. So the Prayer Book describes the consecrated elements of bread and wine as "holy mysteries" and baptism as the "mystical washing away of sin." The language is also applied to the Church, the "mystical Body" of God's Son. What is mystery? Mystery defined is simply "unexplained (or better) inexplicable reality." ⁵

It would be a serious misunderstanding, however, to assume that for classical Anglicanism the concept of mystery is an escape clause. Cranmer and his fellow reformers, not to mention every notable Anglican thinker down through the ages, were quite clear that sacraments are neither acted parables (i.e., the visual aids of grace), nor are they magic. On the other hand, the concept of sacramentality cannot be separated from mystery, for (as Archbishop McAdoo rightly contends) "to exclude mystery is to go beyond Scripture and to evacuate sacramentality of all meaning." ⁶ This is precisely where Rome fell into grievous error. In Rome's attempt to explain ontologically the annihilation of the substance of bread, which was then replaced by the substance of Christ's flesh, they negated mystery and thus negated that which can only be apprehended by faith. ⁷ Hence, according to standard Roman theory, all ate the Body of Christ and drank his Blood whether they believed or not. In contrast, the Church had always affirmed that only by faith in the mystery is it possible for one to truly partake of the sacrament to one's soul's health.

If we may presume to employ a simple illustration of this: How shall we define a ten-dollar bill? Defining it substantially (i.e., in terms of its material substance) would require us to see this monetary note as nothing more than a piece of paper with distinct dimensions and a distinct ink impression upon its surfaces. Defined substantially, its value is very small. And yet every American knows that a ten-dollar bill is worth more than the sum total of its material substance. It represents wealth. In someone's wallet or purse it represents a portion of the owner's wealth, so much so that if a person gives another person a ten-dollar bill a REAL transaction or transfer of wealth takes place. Wealth is intangible, and yet there is no denying its reality. In fact, its reality is more significant than the substantial reality of the piece of printed paper that we call a "ten-dollar bill." If I give you that tangible piece of paper, I transfer a portion of my intangible wealth to you. This is because the ten-dollar bill makes tangible that which is by nature intangible - wealth. For that matter, normally speaking, my intangible wealth is only accessible to you through tangible means. So it is with the sacraments: the elements - water, bread, wine - make tangible what is by nature intangible: grace. How this is done is a mystery. So Jeremy Taylor would write in the 17th century:

St. Paul calls it 'bread' even after consecration...by Divine faith, we are taught to express our belief in this mystery in these words: The bread when it is consecrated and made sacramental, is the body of our Lord; and the fraction and distribution of it is the communication of that body, which died for us upon the cross. ⁸

Earlier in the century, Lancelot Andrewes had this to say:

We allow that the elements are changed. But a change of substance we look for, and we find it nowhere...At the coming of the almighty power of the Word, the nature is changed so that what before was the mere element now becomes a divine Sacrament, the substance nevertheless remaining what it was before.⁹

So Cranmer had articulated the same theology of mystery when he affirmed "a sacramental conversion of bread and wine and of a spiritual eating and drinking of the body and blood," and insisted that "Christ's flesh and blood be in the Sacrament truly present, but spiritually and sacramentally." Likewise, Cranmer's fellow-reformer Nicholas Ridley, had long affirmed "such a sacramental mutation I grant to be in the bread and wine, which truly is no small change, but such a change as no mortal man can make, but only the omnipotency of Christ's word...(yet) the bread ceaseth not to be bread." ¹⁰

Sanctification and mystery: Two inseparable safeguards to a biblical sacramentology. Affirming the concept of sanctification, our Prayer Book services affirm the biblical principle that God uses time, space, and matter in the communication of himself to his people. In the concept of mystery, our Prayer Book services firmly remind us that spiritual things are indeed spiritually discerned, apprehended not by reason or observation, but by faith - faith alone - which indeed justifies.

1 Cranmer entered into a literary debate with Stephen Gardiner after the former published his Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Lord's Supper (1550).

2 What would later be dubbed the "Zwinglian" position, advocated even by such notables as Bishop Hooper back in England, defined the role of the sacraments in terms of their ability to excite faith, rather than to confer grace. This was actually a positive modification of Zwingli's position by Henry Bullinger, Zwingli's successor in Zurich.

3 The present author humbly suggests that Warfield was two offices shy of a full Prayer Book.

4 For the sake of clarity it should be noted that the term sanctification is not being used here in the same sense employed in most theology books, where it is understood as the theological complement of justification. Usually justification is defined in terms of a declaration of righteousness apart from works, and sanctification in terms of the process of being MADE righteous, a work of the Holy Spirit subsequent to justification.

5 The definition of H.R. McAdoo in The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Anglican Tradition, (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1995), p. 12. This book was co-written with Kenneth Stevenson.

6 Ibid., p. 13. Dr. Henry McAdoo is the former Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, Ireland.

7 An "ontology" is a theory of being or existence. To attempt to explain something "ontologically" is to seek to explain the nature of something, that is to say, how something "is" or how is can be said to "exist."

8 Jeremy Taylor, The Real Presence and Spiritual (1654). Quoted in McAdoo and Stevenson, pp. 13-14.

9 Lancelot Andrewes, Preces Privitae. Quoted in McAdoo and Stevenson, p. 15.

10 Ibid., p. 15.

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