4 “Not I, But Christ” Structurally: Sola Fide in Cranmer’s Liturgical Form
WE BEGIN PART TWO utilizing an admittedly broad brush as we paint two portraits of Cranmer’s successive Edwardian liturgies: the 1549 Book of Common Prayer applied sola fide to the content of the liturgy, while the 1552 Prayer Book applied sola fide more thoroughly to the liturgy’s structure. This observation alone speaks into contemporary conversations about “gospel-centered worship,” where the lion’s share of the dialogue tends to be about the content of our worship services—song lyrics, prayers, and preaching all centered on Jesus Christ and his finished work. Less often do we hear talk of how the structure of a worship service is or is not “in line with the truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:14). Yet when it came to fidelity to the gospel, the structure of the liturgy seems to have been just as important as the content in Cranmer’s construction of the Book of Common Prayer. What we will observe is that the grammatical rules of sola fide may have been what necessitated for Cranmer a restructuring of the liturgy’s order. In other words, the gospel had something to say to (and in) worship’s sequence of events.
What we are attempting to argue is that the structure of a worship service—i.e., the ordering of events in how a worshiper approaches God—either proclaims the gospel or mutes (and therefore loses) the gospel, and that justification by faith alone norms whether that gospel-proclamation has been a success or a failure. Whether or not Cranmer would have articulated what was just said in that way, we will now observe that this appears to be his method for liturgical redaction to such a degree that J. I. Packer could call the 1552 Prayer Book “the gospel of justification in liturgical form.”
“NOT I, BUT CHRIST” STRUCTURALLY: MORNING PRAYER (1552)
The Morning and Evening Prayer services were Cranmer’s liturgical answer to the Sarum Breviary. That rite of Salisbury was his baseline and reference point. Condensing the eight Daily Offices of Sarum into two, what we observe in Cranmer’s work is not merely redaction-as-shortening. Instead, the Archbishop takes the opportunity to restructure. Observe the morning Hours set side-by-side with Cranmer’s rite (see 
MORNING PRAYER, 1552
(Matins—before daybreak)
The Lord’s Prayer
Hail Mary
Opening Sentence*
Exhortation*
O Lord, open thou our lips . . . O God,
make speed . . . Gloria
Alleluia, or Praise be
Invitatory
Response
Venite
Confession
Absolution
The Lord’s Prayer
O Lord, open thou our lips . . . O God,
make speed . . . Gloria
Venite
Hymn
Psalms + Gloriae
Psalms + Gloriae
Benedictions
Lessons
Homily
Responsories
Te Deum (on Sunday)
Lesson
Te Deum or Benedicite
Lesson
Benedictus or Jubilate
Apostles’ Creed
(Lauds—at daybreak)
The Lord be with you . . .
Lesser Litany
O God, make speed . . . Gloria
Alleluia, or Praise be
Psalms
Jubilate (on Sunday) + Gloriae
Canticle
Benedicite (on Sunday)
Short Chapter
Hymn
Benedictus
Suffrages
Collect for the Day
Collect for Peace
The Lord’s Prayer
Suffrages
Collect of the Day
Collect for Peace
Collect for Grace
(Prime—at c. 6 a.m.)
The Lord’s Prayer
O God, make speed . . . Gloria
Alleluia, or Praise be
Hymn
Psalms + Gloria
Athanasian Creed
Short Chapter
The Lord be with you
Lesser Litany
The Lord’s Prayer
Apostles’ Creed
Suffrages
Confession
Absolution
Collect for Grace
Prayers for the Intercession of Virgin and Saints
Benediction
* = new additions to the liturgy
bold = significant structural shift
Figure 4.1. Sarum Breviary and 1552 Morning Prayer
Structurally, there are two significant changes. First, Morning Prayer begins not with the Lord’s Prayer, but with an opening Scripture sentence. By itself, this is not structurally significant, except when we note what sentences were chosen by Cranmer. Each sentence is either a call to repentance (Ezek 18:21-22; Ps 51:17; Joel 2:13; Mt 3:2), a confession of total depravity and utter helplessness (Ps 51:3; Dan 9:9-10; Ps 143:2; 1 Jn 1:8), or a desperate plea for mercy in the face of sin (Ps 51:9; Jer 10:24; Lk 15:18-19). If the grammar of sola fide distinguishes false good works and self-righteousness from faith and the righteousness of Christ, perhaps we are witnessing the sifting, right at the top of the liturgy. Cranmer makes this work explicit in the exhortation to follow, which says that we should “acknowledge” our “sin and wickedness, and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father.” Exposing sin and separating it out (negating the “I”) is the sifting work of sola fide in operation, that faith and Christ might shine alone in the gold-pan.
Second, and more surprising to those who would have been familiar with the flow of the Daily Office, Confession and Absolution are moved from the end of the series of morning prayers (Prime) to its beginning. Whereas medieval theology might stress the need to confess the day’s sins committed later in the day, we could interpret Cranmer’s approach as a statement that we woke up sinners. Behind such a move would be the Reformation debate over what was called “concupiscence”—a word utilized heavily by Augustine to describe those internal disordered desires, “the puddly concupiscence of the flesh (limosa concupiscentia carnis),” from which all sins spring. The sixteenth-century debate was whether the concupiscence, which led to sinful acts, was sin itself. In other words, was sin merely restricted to deeds, or was it also the condition of the heart? The Continental Reformers argued the latter, as did the English Reformers, spelled out clearly in Article VIII of the Forty-Two Articles of Religion: “Concupiscence, and lust hath of it self the nature of sinne.” Morning Prayer’s opening Confession and Absolution was a significant move therefore, potentially offering liturgical shape to the Reformation’s understanding that concupiscence itself required repentance.
If the above reasoning holds, what we are observing is an implicit critique of the Sarum rite—namely, that it confused faith and works and commingled law and gospel. Sarum Matins begins not with an acknowledgment of sin but with human works: the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, and other psalms and statements of praise. The grammar of sola fide demands that works like these flow out of (rather than prepare for) repentance. Structurally in Sarum, faith is not set apart from works. What is needed, Cranmer possibly observed, is the structural application of the distinction between law and gospel, in order that the people of God might not be led to believe that God is approached by the merits of one’s own piety. Justification by faith alone calls this kind of approach a not-gospel. That the gospel might be made clear, there must be a structural movement from the “not I” clarified by the law to the “but Christ” revealed by the gospel. In Morning Prayer, this is accomplished in two cycles (see
CYCLE 1
LAW
(“not I”)
Opening Sentence*
Exhortation*
Confession
GOSPEL
(“but Christ”)
Absolution
(responding faith in prayer and praise)
The Lord’s Prayer
O Lord, open thou our lips
O God, make speed . . . Gloria
Venite
Psalms + Gloriae
CYCLE 2
LAW & GOSPEL
(“not I, but Christ”)
Lesson
Te Deum or Benedicite
Lesson
Benedictus or Jubilate
(responding faith in prayer and praise)
* = new additions to the liturgy
Apostles’ Creed
The Lord be with you . . .
Lesser Litany (Kyrie)
The Lord’s Prayer
Suffrages
Collect of the Day
Collect for Peace
Collect for Grace
Figure 4.2. The law-gospel structure of Morning Prayer (1552)
We see here in Confession, Absolution, and what follows that once God declares forgiveness by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, immediate access to the Father is granted. The believer is brought straight into the throne room. Meritorious requirements for entry are not assumed (Sarum’s structure), but instead, “faith comes by hearing” (Rom 10:17), the pronouncement of the Absolution (cycle 1), and the reading of the Scriptures (cycle 2).
“NOT I, BUT CHRIST” STRUCTURALLY: HOLY COMMUNION (1552)
If we were to attempt a side-by-side comparison of the Sarum rite with Cranmer’s 1552 Holy Communion liturgy (as we did with the Breviary and Morning Prayer), we would find the two so dissimilar in content and arrangement that parallel placement would do little for analysis such as we are making here. In fact, the dissimilarity has led to much speculation and, in some cases, accusation of either carelessness or ineptitude on Cranmer’s part. For instance, influential turn-of-the-century liturgical scholar Walter Frere believed Cranmer’s liturgy to be “out of joint,” and while Frere points to how Cranmer moved certain prayers to completely different moments in the liturgy, he does not (at least in that essay) stop to ask if there may be a motive behind such extreme shifts. Samuel Leuenberger begins to identify Cranmer’s possible structural motivations when he calls the Communion service “a confrontation of the law and gospel.” Leuenberger does not go on to unpack how law and gospel play out structurally in the liturgy, but he does end up offering a parallel paradigm of what he calls cycles of “sin-grace-faith.” Packer, following Leuenberger, identifies three cycles, and I believe we can expand those cycles out to four when we include the pairing of Sermon and Offertory as a separate cycle. Here we have Leuenberger’s and Packer’s framework transcribed and transposed into the key of sola fide, identifying in particular the distinction between law and gospel at play. With Packer we observe that “Cranmer’s use of this cycle as the basic structural principle for his eucharistic liturgy reflects his conviction that justification by faith, in and through Christ, is what the sacrament is about—the message that it proclaims, and the promise that it seals” (see
LAW
(“not I”)
Collect for Purity
Ten Commandments + Kyrie
The Collects
GOSPEL
(“but Christ”)
Epistle Reading
Gospel Reading
(responding faith)
Nicene Creed
CYCLE 2
LAW & GOSPEL
(“not I, but Christ”)
Sermon (optional)
Homily (prescribed)
(responding faith in self-offering)
Offertory Sentence
Offertory (taking up a collection for the poor)
Prayers for the Whole State of Christ’s Church Militant
CYCLE 3
LAW
(“not I”)
Exhortations for Communion
Invitation
Confession
GOSPEL
(“but Christ”)
Absolution
Comfortable Words
(responding faith)
Sursum Corda
CYCLE 4
LAW
(“not I”)
Proper Preface
Sanctus
Prayer of Humble Access
GOSPEL
(“but Christ”)
Institution
Words of Distribution / Reception by the People
(responding faith in prayer and praise)
Lord’s Prayer
Post-Communion Prayer or (Self-) Oblation
Gloria in Excelsis
Blessing
Figure 4.3. The law-gospel structure of Holy Communion (1552)
Cycle 1: The Collect for Purity Through the Creed. The Communion service begins with the same kind of gravity as Morning Prayer. The Collect for Purity functions as its own kind of Confession of Sin, with the Pauline grammar identifiable by its totalizing and categorical modifiers: “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, and all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts, by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit: that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name: through Christ our Lord.”
And then immediately, without any precedent in the Sarum rite, Cranmer apparently puts forth a confrontation with the law of God in the form of the Decalogue. While other preexisting Reformation rites contain the Ten Commandments, the usage of the Decalogue at the beginning of the liturgy also appears to be unprecedented and therefore a unique innovation of Cranmer. Liturgical historian John Dowden expressed confusion as to why Cranmer would make such a move, preferring some of the German Reformed orders to Cranmer’s placement of the Decalogue. Since then, the trail has largely gone cold, as little interest has been expressed in figuring out why the Archbishop would do something so original here. A satisfying explanation is found in the Pauline grammar. If sola fide indeed distinguishes law from gospel and faith from works, then it makes perfect sense of Cranmer’s placement of the Ten Commandments—that quintessential summary of the totality of the law—alongside penitential phrases which confess one’s total inability to keep it: “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” That faith might stand alone, the “I” must be negated.
Furthermore, especially when we observe Cranmer’s employment of the Decalogue in comparison to other preceding and contemporaneous Reformation church orders, we find the grammatical rules of sola fide operating in Cranmer with a great deal more thoroughness. Martin Bucer’s Strassburg liturgy of 1524 placed the Ten Commandments as an option to be sung in between Scripture lessons, nowhere near Confession and Absolution. More interestingly, Vallerand Poullain’s 1551 liturgy for the Glastonbury Stranger Church (which likely would have been fresh on Cranmer’s mind during his work on the 1552 liturgy) follows the lead of Calvin’s Strassburg liturgy of the early 1540s: it divides the Decalogue, with the first table being spoken before Confession, and the second table after Absolution. It seems that the Archbishop deliberately chose not to construct his liturgy in this more Reformed way, opting for a more starkly (and grammatically) Lutheran approach of not commingling law and gospel, but distinguishing them structurally. So it seems that for Cranmer, the law would not only precede Confession and Absolution. It would be the first word out of the liturgical gate. Then and only then would the hearer be ready to receive the words of comfort that could be found in the Scripture readings to follow. And only after that, structurally, is the worshiper ready to utter the words of faith, “I believe,” in the Creed. Grammatically, each part of speech (law, gospel, faith) falls into its appropriate part of the “liturgical sentence” constructed by justification by faith alone.
Cycle 2: The sermon, offertory, and prayers. As we will see in 
If it is true that Cranmer sought to unmoor the Offertory from its potential Pelagianism by removing any ceremonial offering of bread and wine, the Offertory’s function within the structure of the liturgy changes. It becomes clearer then, when we view Cranmer’s overall Communion liturgy through the historic two-fold structure of the “Liturgy of the Word” and the “Liturgy of the Upper Room,” that the grammar of sola fide places the Offertory (the responding fruit of self-offering) at the end of the Liturgy of the Word (the Ante-Communion liturgy), not the beginning of the Liturgy of the Upper Room (the Communion liturgy proper). If it were viewed as the latter, it would structurally confuse the distinction of faith and works, because the Offertory in that schema could be experienced as a “paying in” before receiving the grace of the table. And this construal seems corroborated in some of the simple changes we will now observe.
Though this sequence of Sermon, Offertory, Prayers, and Communion liturgy proper was present in the Sarum rite, Cranmer introduced a few important structural and conceptual tweaks which lead us to believe that he was aware of how sola fide could be confused or lost in this liturgical moment. Most tellingly, in a break with Roman tradition, the Offertory is reimagined not as a place where the bread and wine are presented and offered with ceremonial crossings, kissings, censings, and washings, but as a place where people take up a financial collection for the poor and for the ministry of the parish. In 1547, the newly crowned Edward VI issued a series of injunctions, including instructions about the installation and use of the poor-men’s box. It is clear from those injunctions that the practice of giving alms was particularly intended to replace the kind of devotional giving associated with currying favor with God—paying for pardons, the well-being of the deceased, and the like. The poor-men’s box “was an official reminder that people’s charity was to be directed not to masses or graven images, but to needy people made in God’s image.” The rubrics around the Offertory, unlike Sarum, make no mention of bread and wine. Instead: “After such sermon, homily, or exhortation, the Curate shall . . . earnestly exhort [the people] to remember the poor, saying one or more of these Sentences following.” And what are the sentences Cranmer adds here? They are short Scripture passages that encourage people unto “good works” (Mt 5:16), storing up “treasure in heaven” (Mt 6:19-20), contributing to the ministry of the gospel (1 Cor 9:13-14), and indeed giving to the poor (Lk 19:8; Ps 41:1). None of the sentences has any sacramental reference or overtone. The Offertory collection ritual is completed with this rubric: “Then shall the church wardens, or some other by them appointed, gather the devotion of the people, and put the same into the poor men’s box.” The grammar of sola fide structurally distinguishes faith and works by sequestering works to after the word of law and gospel in the Sermon. And the first “good works” to flow forth are the Offertory and then the Prayer “for the whole state of Christ’s Church militant here in earth.”
That Cranmer probably viewed the Offertory as the ending response to the Sermon and Liturgy of the Word (and not as the beginning of the Communion liturgy proper) is also shown in the fact that the Archbishop places the Exhortations, which are the first liturgical mention of the Lord’s Supper, after the sequence of the Offertory and intercessory prayers. Structurally, it appears that the Archbishop is drawing a clean boundary-line with the Offertory and prayers, so as to avoid any confusion that grace is somehow purchased or earned.
Cycle 3: Exhortations through the Sursum Corda. There is a shift in pastoral tone moving out of the prayers and into the Exhortations. This shift is an indicator of a new cycle of law and gospel, whose pattern again resembles the opening of Morning Prayer. The Exhortations offer grave warnings to not refuse to come to the table, to not make “feigned excuses” that might “offend” and “provoke God’s indignation against you.” They urge self-examination, climaxing in the Invitation, which is a clear call to repentance. The sinner, feeling the weight of the law, is thus driven to Confession, after which the Absolution declares that God does “pardon” (dealing with guilt) and “deliver you” (dealing with spiritual bondage). In line with the grammar of sola fide, too, is the clarity that this forgiveness is “from all your sins”—complete, totalizing, categorical grace. This “all” would stand in contrast to the medieval understanding that full payment for sin was a combination of Christ’s work and our sincere penance. After the continued absolution heard in the Comfortable Words, we see, for the first time, the fruit of faith emerge in the form of the Sursum Corda. The Old Adam, having been killed (“not I”) by the law in Confession and made alive (“but Christ”) by the gospel in Absolution and the Comfortable Words, now speaks as the new creature, able to rise and respond to the call, “Lift up your hearts.” In a way, the Sursum Corda is a “second Offertory,” except this time the faithful response is not a giving of money, but the giving of our very hearts: “We lift them up unto the Lord.” It very much feels like the liturgical equivalent of the great hinge point in Paul’s epistle to the Romans: after eleven chapters of outlining and proclaiming the gospel through the distinguishing grammar of justification, believers are exhorted to present themselves as a θυσίαν ζῶσαν—a sacrifice that is in fact not dead, but living (Rom 12:1). The only response of such a being is the “work” of faith—praise which cries, “Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.”
On the positioning and use of the Comfortable Words and Absolution. The Comfortable Words are a Reformation innovation, appearing in Kirchenordnungen (church orders) composed on the Continent in the 1520s, ’30s, and ’40s. Well attested in his own liturgical work is Cranmer’s use of the 1543 Cologne Kirchenordnung of Archbishop Hermann von Wied. In that liturgy, Hermann included five Scripture sentences: John 3:16; 1 Timothy 1:15; John 3:35-36; Acts 10:43; and 1 John 2:1-2. In 1552 Cranmer removed two of the verses (Jn 3:35-36; Acts 10:43) and added his own original, Matthew 11:28, on the front. Hermann’s liturgy, following suit with Bucer’s liturgies which preceded it, allows the Scripture sentences to be used as alternatives to the Absolution. In a new move, Cranmer relocates the Comfortable Words after the Absolution and makes neither the Absolution nor any of the Comfortable Words optional. Ashley Null believes that this was because Cranmer was giving the Comfortable Words a new function. Rather than being alternative or merely additional words of absolution, they functioned as a liturgical hinge, where Confession and Absolution turned to flow into the Communion liturgy proper. If this is true, Cranmer is portraying God as wooing sinners to him saying, “You’re forgiven, now come to my table.” This idea is corroborated by the fact that Cranmer was likely aware of Zwingli’s 1523 liturgy, Attack on the Canon of the Mass, which employs Matthew 11:28 as a lone sentence, just after the words of institution, and just before the words of administration. It could be that Cranmer’s desire was to combine Zwingli’s emphasis on “Come to me” as a table invitation with Hermann’s connection of the Comfortable Words to Absolution. For our present discussion of the grammar of sola fide, this all tells us that the Comfortable Words most likely are intended to function as something more than an extension of Absolution. They are a springboard into the final law-gospel cycle of the Communion liturgy.
Cycle 4: The proper preface to the blessing. When it comes to fidelity to the grammatical structure of justification by faith alone, no other liturgical passage or service in the Prayer Book has undergone such a tedious editorial process. The moves made by Cranmer have baffled and sometimes horrified succeeding generations of liturgists. And yet it is the grammar of sola fide which accounts for why, when compared to the historic liturgy with which he was working, Cranmer’s seems so “out of joint.” At this point, it is worth setting Sarum and 1552 side-by-side (see
HOLY COMMUNION, 1552
Sursum Corda (with salutation)
Proper Preface
Sanctus
Benedictus
(Canon of the Mass)
Sursum Corda (without salutation)
Proper Preface
Sanctus
Prayer of Humble Access
First request for acceptance of the offering “here”
First oblation
Prayer remembering the sufficient oblation of Christ’s once-for-all offering “there”
Intercession for church, and for those present
who offer the sacrifice with second oblation
First commemoration of saints
and intercession for those present
Second request for acceptance of offering
Intercession for peace and salvation
Third request for acceptance of offering
so that the gifts become body/blood
Request for hearing of prayer
so that we be made partakers of body/blood
Institution Narrative (with expanded language)
Anamnesis
Third oblation
Fourth request for acceptance of offering
Fifth [implicit] request for acceptance (through angel)
Intercession for departed
Second commemoration of apostles/martyrs
Intercession for those present
Doxology
Institution Narrative (Scripture text only)
Lord’s Prayer
Embolism
Fraction
Peace/Pax
Agnus Dei
Commixture
Prayer that concerns peace
Priest’s reception/communion
Private thanksgiving and ablutions
People’s reception/communion
Lord’s Prayer*
Self-Oblation
(or)
Post-Communion Prayer
Post-Communion Prayer
Gloria in Excelsis*
Blessing
Dismissal
bold = new additions or significant alterations to language
* = significant structural shift
Figure 4.4. The Sarum Mass and Holy Communion (1552)
From a structural perspective, every move Cranmer makes, either to excise a prayer altogether, to amend it, or to move it to a different location, appears to have been subjected to the grammatical rules of sola fide. The first thing we notice besides the removal of the Benedictus is the addition of a newly composed prayer, the Prayer of Humble Access, just after the Sanctus. The prayer functions as yet another moment of confession. It seems that Cranmer understood the Sanctus as a raw encounter with the holiness of the living God (an encounter with the law). As in Isaiah 6—the passage most likely on Cranmer’s mind—the response to such an encounter is not, per Sarum, our own offering of “gifts,” “presents,” or “unspotted sacrifices” (the first request for acceptance), much less our own “sacrifice of praise” (the second oblation). Rather, with Isaiah, the focus of the Prayer of Humble Access is on our unworthiness and confession of sin. And notice the emphasis on faith and the stark distinguishing between the mercy and grace of God and the unrighteousness of the sinner. This prayer in particular constructs its sentences in order to highlight the distinctions made by sola fide:
Our unrighteousness
We do not presume to come to this thy table (O merciful Lord) trusting in our own righteousness,
God’s mercy
but in thy manifold and great mercies:
Our unworthiness
we be not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table:
God’s mercy
but thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy . . .
Our sinfulness
that our sinful bodies
God’s perfection
may be made clean by his body,
Our sinfulness
and our souls
God’s perfection
washed through his most precious blood . . .
We see here a moment where sola fide is separating and distinguishing, preparing the way for the clarity of what is the gospel (“but Christ”) from that which is not the gospel (“not I”). Contrast this with the language of the second oblation in Sarum:
Remember, O Lord, thy servants . . . N. and N. and all present, whose faith and devotion to thee is known: for whom we offer unto thee, or who themselves offer to thee this sacrifice of praise for themselves, and all theirs for the redemption of their souls, for the hope of their salvation and safety and render their own thanks to thee, the eternal God, the living and the true.
The grammar of justification identifies this confusion of faith and works as a not-gospel. In the face of the holiness of God, Sarum does not urge unequivocal repentance, but mixes in the commendable “devotion” which is “known” by and “offered” unto God. Instead of looking only to the sacrifice of Christ, the liturgy encourages offering the sacrifice of oneself and others before coming to receive the grace of the table. This confusion of faith and works is a not-gospel precisely because, structurally speaking, the grace of the table is no longer a gift (χάρις), but something earned. This self-offering, along with the veneration of the host in these prayers, ends up being the combined offering—“We therefore beseech thee, O Lord, that being appeased thou wouldst accept this oblation of our servitude” (second request for acceptance of offering)—which yields a combined presentation of “both I, and Christ” instead of the radical disjunctive “not I, but Christ.”
Structurally for Cranmer, once faith and works have been distinguished, and once the law has been spoken or sung in the Sanctus and confessed in the Prayer of Humble Access, the grace of the gospel is the only thing left to receive. And so Cranmer provides only a brief prayer whose language of offering is reminiscent of Sarum but turns the oblation on its head. We pray, not offering “our” oblation, but remembering Christ’s oblation. And such an offering is not offered “here” (haec), but “there,” on the cross. And after this brief prayer, the worshiper is brought straight to the words of institution, and without pause or even an “Amen” the people come to receive the bread and the wine, along with the gracious words of reception, again highlighting faith alone: “Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith.” Once again, this is contrasted with Sarum, which, after institution does not move straight to reception, but doubles back to more prayers and presentations until the Commixture which offers “a salutary preparation for the meriting and embracing of eternal life,” and the following prayer that concerns peace, which prays “that I may merit to receive through this the remission of all my sins.” Then and only then does reception happen (for the priest). The contrast is stark. For Cranmer, once Christ offers himself by his Word in the institution (“take, eat . . . drink ye all of this”), there is nothing left to do—no prayers, no offerings, no supplications. The only thing left to do is simply receive.
Sola fide insists that any self-offering, any sacrifice of praise, follows, rather than precedes, the work of the Word in law and gospel. So that there might not be any confusion of what prompts and initiates the grace of the table, for Cranmer any prayers which “present” ourselves happen only after God’s grace has been presented to us in Christ. Unlike Sarum, and in contrast to Cranmer’s half-way liturgy of 1549, the post-Communion Prayer and its other option, the Prayer of Self-Oblation, reserve the following language for after reception: “Accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving . . . we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls, and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively Sacrifice unto thee”; and “assist us with thy grace, that we may. . . do all such good works, as thou has prepared for us to walk in.” In other words, these prayers of responsive faith only follow when the gospel has been clearly preached and received at the table, and its clarity for Cranmer would be dependent on the grammatical rules of sola fide. Far from “out of joint,” here we have a liturgy whose broken structural bones have been set right again in order to re-form in the shape of the gospel.
On a final note, we observe what many have called an odd move by Cranmer in taking the Gloria from the beginning of the entire Communion service to here, after the post-Communion Prayer. However, according to the grammatical rules of sola fide, the Gloria is exactly where it should be. Praise and thanksgiving are only possible in response to, rather than prior to, the work of God through his Word. When God has given us his very Son, all that remains to do is simply to thank and praise him. This, too, mirrors the arc of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, which ends its exposition of law and gospel with an effusive doxology (Rom 11:33-36).
Is all this analysis of the possible reasoning behind Cranmer’s significant redaction of the Canon of the Mass speculative? Is there anything in his thinking and writing, besides the edits themselves, that helps us to see the exposition above as a plausible articulation of both his interpretation of the Canon and his potential reasoning for his 1552 alternative? To answer these questions, we need to turn to Cranmer’s writings on sacrifice as it is situated in the context of broader Reformation thinking on the subject.
The theology of sacrifice in Cranmer and the Reformation. At the time of the Reformation, the biblical concept of sacrifice became a particular hotspot where sola fide would operate to make proper distinctions. The distinctions made in these discussions directly inform the structure of sacramental liturgies. They explain both why the Reformers could not tolerate the mass as a sacrifice or re-sacrifice (or even re-presentation of the once-for-all sacrifice) of Christ, and why sacrifice language in the liturgy needed to be reserved for specific moments in the structure of the Communion rite. We first hear Luther insisting on proper distinctions of who is sacrificed. Bryan Spinks summarizes:
[For Luther,] any good work or offering to God which was connected with petition for forgiveness was untenable, because this would imply that Christ’s single sacrifice was not altogether complete for the redemption of men. . . . There was a sacrifice at the Eucharist—of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving; but we do not offer Christ as a sacrifice, because he offers us.
Theologically, according to Luther, there were only two sacrifices identifiable for the Christian—the sacrifice of Christ on the cross (Heb 10:10), and the sacrifice of praise we responsively offer (Heb 13:15). Vilmos Vajta, in his exposition of Luther’s liturgical theology, emphasizes that Luther found it important to distinguish between beneficium and sacrificium—the God who gives blessing, and the God who requires sacrifice. Spinks follows Vajta’s assessment of Luther:
Luther charged the Roman church with having made the mass a human sacrificium directed towards God, whereas the Gospel sacrament is a divine beneficium directed towards humanity, and our offering of praise and life can only be a response to God’s gift. It is this contrast which explains Luther’s violent criticisms of the canon of the mass, and he set about removing features of the human sacrificium and turning the sacrament more clearly into a divine beneficium. For Luther all worship is a beneficium of God.
Cranmer, following the lead of his influential colleague, Peter Martyr, shared this perspective. We observe how the language of the post-Communion Prayer may be indebted to Peter Martyr, as he articulated his understanding of the “Word-centered union of sacrament and sacrifice” and its resulting centrality of the Lord’s Supper as a Holy Communion. What we see in Martyr’s sacramental theology is the kind of distinctions that sola fide makes. According to Martyr’s liturgical theology, what is offered by God in the sacrament is himself, Christ, reconciliation, grace, and remission of sin; what is offered by us in sacrifice is thanksgiving, alms, prayers, singing, preaching, obedience to God’s Word, and love of neighbor. These distinctions sound strikingly similar to Cranmer’s theology of sacrifice articulated in his 1550 Defence. There, he distinguishes between Christ’s sacrificial offering as “propitiatory and merciful” and our offering as a response of praise and thanksgiving. In Cranmer’s words, “The first kind of sacrifice Christ offered to God for us; the second kind we ourselves offer to God by Christ.” A year later, Cranmer would again reiterate in another sacramental tome: “[Christ’s] sacrifice was the redemption of the world, ours is not so: his was death, ours is but a remembrance thereof: his was the taking away the sins of the world; ours is a praising and thanking for the same: and therefore his was satisfactory, ours is gratulatory.”
It is this stark division of sacrificial labor (identical to Luther’s construal) which would compel Cranmer to erect the same theological partitions in his 1552 liturgy. It explains why any self-oblation or “sacrifice of praise” would fall after reception, not before it, as we noted above. Structurally then, this is why, as Andrew Atherstone put it, “Cranmer was careful not to use the language of ‘sacrifice’ or ‘offering’ until after communion. The Prayer of Self-Oblation is deliberately placed after we receive from God, not before.” In sum, the theology of sacrifice at the time of the Reformation became a particularly poignant place where the distinctions made by sola fide would clarify and name the gospel against not-gospels, and this in turn demanded a restructuring of the liturgy.
“NOT I, BUT CHRIST” STRUCTURALLY: BAPTISM (1552)
Space does not allow for a full treatment of how Cranmer appears to have applied the same structural “gospel-logic” to the baptism rite as he had to Morning Prayer and Holy Communion. We will simply highlight the observation of Stephen Sykes in his analysis of the structure of the 1552 baptism liturgy. He notes that the “basic pattern” present in Morning and Evening Prayer is replicated in baptism. According to Sykes, the liturgy’s structure
comprises two main elements, those of Word and Sacrament, prefaced and followed by brief transitional statements and prayers. Between the reading of the Gospel (from Mark 10), and the actual Baptism of the child, are a set of promises made by the godparents in the name of the child, which constitute a kind of hinge in the service on which entry into the grace of Baptism turns. These promises are the human response to God’s promises declared in the Gospel. The whole service therefore has the form of a covenant between God and the child, initiated from God’s side.
Again we see, as we have observed with other exegetes of Cranmer’s liturgies, that though Sykes does not use the language of justification, or law, or gospel, the structure of the baptism service is inevitably parsed according to the grammar of sola fide. Our works are clearly set apart from God’s, and clearly the action is “initiated from God’s side.” God’s promises must be spoken first; then and only then do parents and godparents make promises that are “the human response to God’s promises declared in the gospel.” This movement constitutes a cycle of law, gospel, and responding faith, similar to what we saw above. After that movement, the administration of baptism begins another cycle, where the ritual of baptism itself is a proclamation of law and gospel (burial and resurrection), with the responding faith demonstrative in the Lord’s Prayer, and prayer of thanksgiving.
We have walked through two of Cranmer’s most significant liturgies (Morning Prayer, Holy Communion), and briefly overviewed a third prominent rite (baptism), having discerned a common structural motif. This repeated theme leads us to the conclusion that for Cranmer, the shape of liturgy must conform to the shape of the gospel. Structural exposition such as this may not seem like an intuitive starting place. Oftentimes, liturgical analysis begins with the words of the liturgy, which is precisely where we will turn in the 