The Thirty-Nine Articles, Grace, and the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper

By Robin G. Jordan

In a previous article, “The Thirty-Nine Articles and Anglican Comprehensiveness,” I took a look at the problem of comprehensiveness in the Anglican Church in North America and its ministry partner, the Anglican Mission in the Americas. In this article I take a further look at specific areas affected—the Articles’ teaching on grace and the Lord’s Supper.

In the Thirty-Nine Articles grace is used to refer to the favour of God. It is also used to refer to the divine regenerating and inspiring influence. A large part of the following discussion of the Articles is taken from the late Philip Edgcumbe Hughes’ Thirty Nine Articles A Restatement in Today’s English, which Dr. Hughes designed “to clarify the language and meaning of the Articles for the benefit of the modern reader.” As Dr. Hughes notes in the preface, they are “a classical statement of Anglican doctrine.” Dr Hughes believed that the rediscovery of the Articles in present day, “after a period of neglect and depreciation,” would “do much to strengthen the Church in its teaching and witness.”

Article 10 teaches that we have no power of our own to turn and dispose ourselves to believe and call upon God, much less to do good works pleasing and acceptable to God, “unless the grace of God is first given through Christ in order that we may have a good will, and that same grace continues at work within us to maintain that good will.” By “the grace of God,” Article 10 means the divine regenerating and inspiring influence of God. In giving that grace to us God is also showing his grace, his favor, toward us.

Article 13 teaches that works done before receiving the grace of Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit are not pleasing to God, because they do not spring from faith in Jesus Christ. They do not as some claim make us fit to receive grace. They are also not deserving of grace. As they are not done as God has willed and commanded them to be done, they actually have the nature of sin.

Article 16 teaches that “after we have received the Holy Spirit, it is possible for us to turn away from the grace we have experienced and to fall into sin, and it is possible for us who have fallen to rise again and amend our lives by the grace of God.” Articles 13 and 16 appear to use grace in a dual sense, both as God’s favour and his divine regenerating and inspiring influence.

Article 17 teaches that those on whom God bestows his blessing of predestination to life God calls according to his purpose by the Holy Spirit working in them in God’s good time. Through grace, God’s divine regenerating and inspiring influence, “they obey this calling and are freely justified by God.” “They become the sons of God by adoption (Romans 3:24; 8:15f).” “They are conformed to the image of his only Son Jesus Christ.” “They lead holy lives that are given to good works to the glory of God; and at last, by God’s mercy, they attain everlasting bliss (Romans 8:29f; Ephesians 2:8-10).”

Article 25 describes the sacraments as “trustworthy witnesses and effectual signs of God’s grace and goodwill toward us.” By “grace,” Article 25 means God’s favour. By “effectual,” Article 25 means that the sacraments as signs of God’s favour and goodwill answer their purpose. By the sacraments, Article 25 goes on explain, “God works invisibly in us, both arousing and also strengthen and confirming our faith in him.” Through the sacraments God not only shows his grace, his favour, but also he gives exercise to his grace, his divine regenerating and inspiring influence.

Article 25 stresses that Christ did not appoint the sacraments to be a public spectacle or to be paraded for adoration, but to be used with due discipline. The sacraments “have a beneficial effect or working only in those who receive them worthily.” “On the other hand, those who receive them unworthily bring condemnation on themselves, as the apostle Paul teaches (1 Corinthians 11:27ff).”

Article 26 teaches that the wickedness of ministers preaching the Word of God and administering the sacraments does not take away the effect of Christ’s ordinance. In the case of those who receive the sacraments rightly and with faith the grace of God’s gifts is not diminished. On account of Christ’s institution and promise they are effectual although evil men minister them. They answer their purpose.

Article 28 teaches that the Lord’s Supper is the sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death. For those who rightly, worthily, and with faith receive it the bread is a partaking of the body of Christ and the cup is a partaking of the blood of Christ.

Article 28 emphasizes that transubstantiation—“the teaching that substance of the bread and wine is changed in the actual flesh and blood of Christ”—in the Lord’s Supper not only cannot be proved by Holy Scripture (and therefore nobody should be required to believe this doctrine as an article of the Christian faith, or to regard it as necessary for salvation, as the Council of Trent maintained) but it is also contradictory to the plain words of Scripture, overthrows the nature of a sacrament, and has given rise to numerous superstitions.

Article 28 further teaches that in the Lord’s Supper “the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten only in a heavenly or spiritual manner, and faith is the means by which the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Lord’s Supper.”

Article 28 goes on to emphasize that Christ did not command the Lord’s Supper to be reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

Article 29 stresses that while wicked persons and all in whom a vital faith is not present, physically and visibly press the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ with their teeth (as Saint Augustine says), they are in no sense partakers of Christ. “On the contrary, they eat and drink the sign or sacrament of so great a reality to their own condemnation.”

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was the principal author of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Bishop Matthew Parker who revised the Articles was a devoted pupil of Cranmer. Both held that God is absolutely free and sovereign in his bestowal of the blessing of predestination to life. He is bound in no way to bestow this blessing. Those on whom God bestows this blessing neither merit nor deserve the grace, or favour, that God shows them. The English Reformers shared this view of predestination and election with their Swiss counterparts.

Expositors of the Thirty-Nine Articles who offer a different interpretation of Article 17 must disconnect the Articles from their historical context and disregard Cranmer’s writings and the received opinions of the Church of England regarding the meaning of each Article.

Article 17, however, does appear to admit to more than one explanation as to the state of unregenerate persons. One explanation is that God chooses some for salvation while passing others by. Another explanation is that God chooses some for salvation and others for damnation. Both explanations are found in Reformed theology. The first explanation is associated with the Zurich Reformer Henry Bullinger; the second explanation is associated with the Genevan Reformer John Calvin and his disciple Theodore Beza.

With its rejection of the teaching of transubstantiation Article 28 also rejects the belief that “Christ’s real presence is located in the consecrated elements on the altar wherever and whenever on earth the sacrament is celebrated.” The rejection of a localized real presence in the elements is a position that Cranmer and the English Reformers share with the Swiss Reformers—with Bullinger, Calvin, and others.

For Cranmer eating and receiving Christ in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not physical but spiritual. It was “not in the mouth but in the heart of all who believe the promise of which the sacrament is a visible word.” This view is clearly reflected in the Communion Office of the 1552 Prayer Book. The distribution of the communion elements immediately follows their consecration. No devotions suggestive that Christ is present in the bread and wine come between the consecration and the distribution. The words of distribution with which the bread and wine are delivered make no reference to the body and blood of Christ. At the delivery of the bread the words of distribution exhort the communicant to feed upon Christ in his heart by faith with thanksgiving.

Cranmer speaks of three different kinds of eating, two of which are referred to in the rubrics of the Form for the Visitation of the Sick in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer—“spiritual eating alone” and “spiritual and sacramental eating together.” Both form an integral part of the eucharistic doctrine of the classical Anglican Prayer Book.

The addition of the 1549 words of distribution to the 1552 words of distribution in the 1559 Prayer Book and their retention in the 1604 and 1662 Prayer Books do not significantly change the eucharistic doctrine of the classical Anglican Prayer Book. The 1549 words of distribution take the form of a prayer. “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” “The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” According to the received opinions of the Church of England these words do not imply that Christ is present in the bread and wine.

According to the same opinions the Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and its predecessors, the 1552, 1559, and 1604 Prayer Books, admit a doctrine of “the presence of Christ, by his divine spirit, at the ordinance of the Holy Communion, in a manner even more special than He is present wherever two or three are gathered together in His Name to worship Him.” This doctrine of the objective presence, or of the real spiritual presence of Christ in his divinity, was the accepted doctrine of the Church of England well into the nineteenth century.

In A Catechism, which was commissioned by Convocation in 1563 and authorized by Convocation in 1571, Alexander Nowell explains the reformed Church of England’s understanding of how Christ’s Body and Blood are given in the Lord’s Supper.

In both the sacraments the substances of the outward things are not changed; but the word of God and heavenly grace coming to them, there is such efficacy, that … when we rightly receive the Lord’s Supper, with the very divine nourishment of his body and blood, most full of health and immortality, given to us by the work of the Holy Ghost, and received of us by faith, as the mouth of our soul [my emphasis], we are continually fed and sustained to eternal life, growing together in them both into one body with Christ.

Christ’s people are joined to him by the Holy Spirit. It is by the operation of the Holy Spirit that those who worthily, rightly and with faith receive the bread and the wine, receive the Body and Blood of Christ. The sacraments section added to the Prayer Book Catechism in 1604 is adapted from Nowell’s Catechism.

Benchmark Anglican divine Richard Hooker wrote these words, which at one time were well known in the Church of England.

The real Presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not to be sought for in the sacrament (that is, the outward sign or elements), but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament. The sacraments (elements) are not really, nor do really contain in themselves, that grace which with them or by them it pleaseth God to bestow.

Bishop Lancelot Andrews rejected the doctrine of Christ’s substantive presence in the elements as creating a Christ made of bread; “a Deity made from the flour-mill, hiding there under the species.” Bishop John Cosin taught that “the Body and Blood is neither sensibly present, nor otherwise at all present, but only to those that are duly prepared to receive them, and in the very act of receiving them.”

Bishop Jeremy Taylor wrote this warning:

We give no Divine honour to the signs; we do not call the sacrament our God. Christ left us symbols and sacraments of that natural body, not to be, or to convey, that natural body to us, but to do more and better for us, to convey all the blessings and grace procured for us by the breaking of that body and the effusion of that blood. If you can believe the bread, when it is blessed by the priest, is God Almighty, you can, if you please, believe anything else.

In the twenty-first century a number of Anglo-Catholic writers have in their reappraisal of the seventeenth century High Churchmen classify them as not true Catholics on the grounds that they rejected the doctrines of Papal supremacy and transubstantiation and taught a receptionist view of the sacrament of the Eucharist. These doctrinal positions of the Caroline divines were, however, consistent with the Thirty-Nine Articles.

In the nineteenth century the Ritualists, the precursors of today’s Anglo-Catholics, would revive the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Church of England, tying Christ’s presence to the elements, both in his divine and human nature. They would follow in the footsteps of John Henry Newman, and claim that that Article 25 rejects only certain popular Medieval misconceptions of the doctrine of transubstantiation. They would further claim that the Thirty-Nine Articles positively sanctioned their ex opere operato view of the efficacy of the sacraments and their view of the real presence. Through their lectures, publications, and sermons they propagated their doctrines and practices and carved out a niche for themselves in the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. The evangelicals in the United Kingdom would uphold the received opinions of the Church of England regarding the doctrine of the Articles and the Prayer Book, and defend them against the Ritualists’ reinterpretation of the formularies.

It was a different story in the United States. The Protestant Episcopal Church had not required its clergy to subscribe to the denomination’s 1801 revision of the Articles or to accept its authority. The Ritualist movement would flourish in the fertile soil of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Anglo-Catholicism of the Ritualists and latitudinarianism of the Broad Churchmen would become the two dominant theologies in the American Church. Traditional evangelicalism, which in the first half of the nineteenth century appeared to be gaining the ascendancy in the American Church, would disappear within thirty years after the death of Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine and the withdrawal of Bishop George David Cummins. As I have written elsewhere, these two church parties would join forces to remove the Articles from the American Prayer Book.

By the second half of the twentieth century two views of the real presence had a substantial following in the Episcopal Church. With the exception of traditionalist Anglo-Catholics Episcopalians shied away from the belief in a substantive or material presence of Christ in the elements. Both schools of thought tied the presence of Christ to the elements. Both posited that Christ is in some way in or with the bread and wine. One school of thought taught that the bread and wine upon consecration became the post-Resurrection glorified body and blood of Christ. The other school of thought taught that Christ was spiritually present in or with the elements and the elements were spiritually Christ’s body and blood. In its position statement on the doctrine of the real presence in the 1960s, the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops sanctioned both views. In its position statement on the admission of baptized children to the Holy Communion the House of Bishops also recognized the ex opere operato view of the efficacy of the sacraments.

How does the doctrine of the Anglican Church in North America and its ministry partner, the Anglican Mission in Americas, measure up to the Thirty-Nine Articles? In its Fundamental Declarations the ACNA does not fully accept the authority of the Articles. In its canons the ACNA tacitly recognizes the doctrine of the seven sacraments and the ex opere operato view of sacramental efficacy. Implicit in its canons is also the doctrine of the tactual transmission of grace in which grace is regarded as a substance that is tied to specific human actions and may be passed from one person to another. This is not how grace is understood in the Articles. Anglo-Catholicism in both its traditionalist and moderate liberal varieties is found in the ACNA. Both take a semi-Pelagian view of man’s ability to cooperate with God in his own salvation. We also find Arminianism and Wesleyan Pentecostalism. Both theological systems bind God to bestowing the blessing of predestination to life upon those whom God foresees as accepting Christ.

The ACNA College of Bishops has not distanced itself from the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops’ position statement on the real presence. The ACNA canons permit the admission of baptized children to the Holy Communion. The practice of eucharistic adoration, while not widespread, is not unknown. The practices of elevating the elements and showing them to the people are common as is the practice of reserving the sacrament.

The Reformed Episcopal Church, one of the founding entities of the ACNA, would adopt the Thirty-Nine Articles in 2005 in place of the Thirty-Five Articles of that body adopted in 1875. Article 27 of the Thirty-Five Articles rejected consubstantiation as well as transubstantiation as “equally productive of idolatrous errors and practices” but otherwise agrees with Article 28 of the Thirty-Nine Articles. What is most significant is that the REC adopted a position statement in 2006, in which it recognized the Anglo-Catholic reinterpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles as being a valid interpretation of the Articles. The revision of the Reformed Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, adopted in 2003, and its modern language version, adopted in 2011, move the Reformed Episcopal Book of Common Prayer away not only from the eucharistic doctrine of the earlier Reformed Episcopal Prayer Books but also the Thirty-Five Articles, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the 1662 Prayer Book, in an Anglo-Catholic direction. They admit these two views of the real presence.

The ACNA may have separated itself from the more radically liberal Episcopal Church but “American Anglicanism” in the ACNA is not far removed from “Contemporary Episcopalianism” in the Episcopal Church. There is no evidence of a movement in the ACNA to bring that body into full conformity with the doctrine of the Articles, even in the REC. ACNA Archbishop Bob Duncan displays no inclination in that direction. On the contrary, his evident tendency is to move away from the Biblical and Reformation teaching of the historic Anglican formularies. As I have noted elsewhere, Archbishop Duncan used Medieval Catholic ceremonial at the consecration of Bishop Foley Beech, anointing Beech’s forehead with blessed oil, a practice that the English Reformers rejected and disavowed as superstitious and unscriptural and Cranmer dropped from the Anglican Ordinal. In at least one of his addresses he has referred to the necessity of regression, of a retrograde movement to an earlier time in the Church, but it is increasingly apparent that he wishes to turn the clock back to a time before the Reformation.

The present situation in the AMiA is not greatly different from that in the ACNA. In the Solemn Declaration submitted in Kampala in 1999 the AMiA states that it subscribes to the teaching of the Thirty-Nine Articles. However, its Official Theological Elucidation of the Solemn Declaration states that Article 25 “does not expressly forbid extra-eucharistic practices that some Anglicans treasure,” taking a position that is contrary to Article 28 and the received opinions of the Church of England. In the same document it also adopts a permissive attitude toward “doctrinal development.”

As I have written elsewhere, the Articles in the AMiA, while they have formal authority, they are neglected as a living formulary. The AMiA produced a service book that is more Anglo-Catholic in doctrine and practice than the 1928 Prayer Book and the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book upon which it was based. This service book was endorsed by the AMiA’s two senior most bishops. Its eucharistic doctrine is incompatible with that of the Thirty-Nine Articles.

The AMiA also played a key role in the drafting of the revised constitution and canons of the Anglican Church of Rwanda of which it is a missionary jurisdiction. In the revised constitution the Rwandan Church affirms the Thirty-Nine Articles “as adapted through the ages.” In the revised canons, which are heavily indebted to the doctrine, language, norms, and principles of the Roman Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law, the Rwandan Church rejects the teaching of the Articles and adopts the dogmas of the Council of Trent. The form of governance in the Rwandan Church and the AMiA is modeled upon that of the Roman Catholic Church, the AMiA’s Primatial Vicar having the same relationship to the Rwandan Primate as a Roman Catholic archbishop or bishop has to the Roman Pontiff.

How representative these developments are of the doctrinal views of the majority of AMiA congregations and clergy is debatable. They do, however, suggest that congregations and clergy in the AMiA that are Protestant and Reformed in their doctrinal views and uphold the historic Anglican formularies have negligible influence in that body. As in the ACNA there is no discernible movement toward full conformity with the doctrine of the Articles.

To be an ACNA ministry partner an organization must unreservedly subscribe to the ACNA Fundamental Declarations, which include not fully accepting the authority of the Articles. As long as the AMiA maintains this partnership with the ACNA and the ACNA does not move toward greater acceptance of the Articles’ authority, there is little incentive for the AMiA to do the same.

Among the reasons that evangelicals outside North America support the ACNA and the AMiA is that they are, unlike the Episcopal Church, planting new churches. These evangelicals charitably presume that with the planting of these new churches the ACNA and the AMiA are proclaiming the true gospel. But one of the four main functions of the Thirty-Nine Articles is to safeguard the truth of the gospel. The doctrinal positions of the Articles on grace and the Lord’s Supper are related to the historical Anglicanism’s understanding of the New Testament gospel. They reflect that understanding. The failure of the ACNA and the AMiA to give a central place to the Articles in their life and teaching raise the question as to whether they are really proclaiming the true gospel. The absence of any uniformity of doctrine on primary matters in the ACNA and the AMiA, the disparate views of the gospel of the different theological schools of thought represented in the two bodies, and the lack of a definitive statement from either body on the nature of the gospel are clear evidence that the charitable presumption of the evangelicals outside of North America has no real basis. It is wishful thinking on their part.

The GAFCON Theological Group stresses in Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today:

The Jerusalem Declaration calls the Anglican Church back to the Articles as being a faithful testimony to the teaching of the Scripture, excluding erroneous beliefs and practices and giving a distinct shape to Anglican Christianity.

It goes on to emphasize that the Articles remain critically important for the church today.

The reluctance of the ACNA and the AMiA to fully accept the authority of the Articles raises serious doubts about their commitment to Anglican Christianity. They want to use the Anglican brand name but they, like the Episcopal Church, want to define for what it stands, a legacy of the Anglo-Catholic and Latitudinarian influence in the Episcopal Church. How long the ACNA and the AMiA will keep up the show of being Anglican depends upon the advantages and benefits that their leaders see the two bodies gaining from maintaining relationships with Anglicans and Anglican bodies outside of North America. There is an evident desire in some quarters to influence and shape Anglicanism outside of North America, exporting American Anglicanism to the global South as the Episcopal Church would export Contemporary Episcopalianism. How long it will take for their masks to slip and to reveal their true faces is anyone’s guess. By then it may be too late. The damage will have been done and will be beyond repair.