6 “Not I, But Christ” Ceremonially: Sola Fide in Cranmer’s Liturgical Actions and Assisting Tools
UP TO THIS POINT, we have examined liturgical words. However, the words of the liturgy are only a portion of the content being conveyed in a worship service. The actions of the service’s leaders and participants, along with the spaces in which those actions take place and the accompaniment of assisting tools, carry their own doctrinal freight. In fact, as Gordon Jeanes has argued, actions carry the power to reinterpret any verbal liturgical content, resulting in newly created meaning—even meaning contrary to the explicit liturgical text—proving the axiom that a picture is worth a thousand words. The power of ceremonial reinterpretation of the explicit text is precisely the issue at play in the controversies following the ratification of the 1549 Prayer Book. While theoretically more “Protestant,” the 1549 liturgy was still vulnerable to ceremonial reinterpretation in the spirit of the Sarum rite, which is why conservatives like Stephen Gardiner could consent to its use. Ceremony preaches, and Cranmer knew it.
Ramie Targoff observes that the English Reformers inherited from Augustine a skepticism about being able to properly assess internal disposition based on outward action. Grounded in Christ’s teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, this understanding of the mysterious internality of Christian devotion became the reflective backdrop on which Cranmer would stage ceremonial in worship: How do we avoid Christ’s accusation of hypocrisy? How do we engage ceremonial sincerely? We make it plain, clear, and disambiguated, the English Reformers would argue.
Yet these thoughts were not shared merely by the English Reformers. Across the channel, the Continental Reformers understood the doctrinal import of ceremonial. Calvin would argue that ceremonial should clarify, not obscure, the gospel: “Shall no ceremonies then . . . be given to the ignorant to help them in their inexperience? I do not say that. For I feel that this kind of help is very useful to them. I only contend that the means ought to show Christ, not to hide him. Therefore, God has given us a few ceremonies, not at all irksome, to show Christ present.” Melanchthon stated similarly, “When traditions obscure faith . . . they should be violated.” Vilmos Vajta summarizes Luther’s take with particular respect to the ceremonies of Holy Communion, but applicable to all liturgical ceremonial:
Jesus had observed such stark simplicity at the institution of the mass, because he meant to abolish ceremonial laws completely and to preserve the unity of his church through the gospel alone. This shows that Luther’s criticism of outward ceremonies sprang not, as has been charged so often, from indifference toward liturgical forms, but from his concern for the Christian conscience cramped and threatened by ceremonial laws. . . . Where the ceremonial laws tried to supplant the gospel (Christ’s original institution), they had “intruded into heaven,” where they had no right, and must be ejected.
We carefully observe here not a kind of “ceremonial iconoclasm” but a strong prioritization of the clarity of the gospel over ceremonial tradition. This was certainly Cranmer’s opinion. Cranmer’s brief explanation at the beginning of the prayer books (“Of Ceremonies, Why Some Be Abolished and Some Retained”) shares the ultimate concern with Luther that the excess of ceremonies ultimately served to “burden men’s consciences without any cause” precisely because “they did more to confound and darken, then declare and set forth Christ’s benefits unto us.” Even before the dawn of the prayer books, Cranmer relayed to Henry the content of a sermon he preached in Canterbury in 1536:
I spoke as well of the ceremonies of the Church . . . that they ought neither to be rejected or despised, nor yet to be observed, with this opinion, that they of themselves make men holy, or that they remit sin. For seeing that our sins be remitted by the death of our Savior Christ Jesus, I said it was too much injury to Christ to impute the remission of our sins to any laws or ceremonies of man’s making.
Cranmer’s 1549 injunctions for his visitation to Norwich—which, far from an isolated incident would be a pacesetter for future enforcement throughout England—reveal a concern for ceremonial not simply because ceremonial is inherently bad (an iconoclastic perspective), but because, in Cranmer’s words, people are led to “put their trust” in such things. Therefore, headed into 1552, the Archbishop-Reformer was convinced that sola fide had more ground to plow. The second Prayer Book of Edward VI would thus seek to filter even ceremony—rubrics, language, actions, furniture, architecture—through its fine-meshed evangelical gold-pan.
SOLA FIDE AND CONGREGATIONAL PARTICIPATION
The most obvious could be easily missed. Translating the liturgy into English was not merely motivated by the humanist agenda of contextualizing into the vernacular. We detect that Cranmer’s impulse was not only propelled by a desire for the English people to understand the liturgy but to participate in it. In putting the liturgy into the vernacular, Cranmer shifted the center of ceremonial action away from the priests and onto the people, effectively removing the extra middleman between worshipers and God the Father (this theme will appear again and again in Cranmer’s ceremonial changes). By taking the liturgy out of the mouth of the priest and putting it more into the mouths of the people, Cranmer was attempting to pave a more direct access to God through Christ. This ceremonial shift would certainly aid an environment which said no to the not-gospel of human priestly mediators, and yes to the gospel of Christ’s high priestly mediation.
With this move comes the residual effect, no less in line with the grammar of sola fide, of allowing for fewer ceremonial opportunities for people to place their trust in the meritorious actions of a human priest and instead fix their eyes on Christ. For instance, what was once a priest’s private pre-service prayer in Latin—the Collect for Purity—became the minister’s public words in English at the start of the Communion liturgy. It would be important for Cranmer that priests not engage in what would appear to the people as quiet, secretive, and mysterious liturgical action. Therefore, in 1552, we observe a host of rubrical notes dedicated to the clarity of the minister’s words. In the Communion liturgy, the minister is to “rehearse distinctly” the Ten Commandments. Morning Prayer emphasizes at the beginning that “the minister shall so turn him, as ye people may best hear,” and several times later notes that the minister should lead the liturgy “with a loud voice.” This too accounts for why Cranmer sought to downplay the role of the choir specifically and music generally in the worship service. In his day, these ensembles and compositions created an unhelpful and ambiguous layer of mystery. The musical rubrics are scant in 1552, but we do find Morning Prayer encouraging the people to sing “in a plain tune after the manner of distinct reading.” But even in 1549, we find rubrics which encourage priests to “sing plainly and distinctly” as opposed to singing with lots of flourish or employing complex musical forms, which would obscure the texts of the prayers. Audibility and visibility were important precisely so the Word would be freed to do its work in the liturgy and so sinful imaginations might not be tempted to fill up ambiguous ceremonial spaces with a mysterious wonderment about what the priest was doing. Ironically, the audibility and visibility of the minister’s words and actions would serve to get him out of the way, as it were, and shorten the “ceremonial distance” between the laity and Christ himself. Cranmer’s net effect with these changes was to create “hearing aids” for the gospel.
SOLA FIDE AND ARCHITECTURE AND ARTIFACTS
Liturgical theologian Nathan Jennings observes the inevitability of worshipers’ culture-creation in the form of architecture and artifacts, which in turn shapes the worshipers:
The physical reality arises in such a way as to incorporate the surrounding environment topologically while arranging a continuously growing material culture. That is to say, material culture becomes a kind of feedback loop within its initially formative dynamic. Thus, for example, liturgists are familiar with the old dictum, “the architecture always wins.”
In this “feedback loop,” architecture and furniture carry a special power to “ceremonially catechize” believers. Evidence Eamon Duffy’s report about mixed-messaging in the English churches at the time of the Reformation: “Even after the iconoclastic hammers and scraping-tools of . . . Protestantism had done their worst, enough of the old imagery and old resonances remained in the churches in which the new religion was preached to complicate, even, in the eyes of some, to compromise, the new teachings.” Duffy would identify architectural messaging quite contrary to the gospel:
There was about late medieval religion a moralistic strain, which could be oppressive. Churches contained not only the chancel-arch representation of the Day of Doom, with its threat of a terrifying reckoning down to the last farthing, but wall-paintings and windows illustrating the deadly sins, the works of mercy, the Commandments, Christ wounded by Sabbath-breaking, the figures of the three living and the three dead, or the related danse macabre.
Christ depicted as apocalyptic Judge was a common scene above or behind the rood screens, to the end that Duffy could say, “The whole machinery of late medieval piety was designed to shield the soul from Christ’s doomsday anger.” Medieval worshipers caught up in this “machinery” would be hard pressed to find any motivation for faithful obedience other than guilt and fear. This is why Reformers such as Luther would identify the entire divine service as an attempted good work, with architecture aiding and abetting that gospel-veiled vision. The grammatical rules of sola fide would expose in this messaging a failure to distinguish law from gospel: only the gospel can give and produce what the law demands. And yet, the architecture itself preached very little gospel alongside its amplification of the law’s totalizing demand. It is far too simplistic therefore to coldly stamp “iconoclasm” onto the actions of the Reformers in their architectural reforms. The grammar of sola fide clarified that the gospel was at stake in these changes, for the very Word (the law) that would declare Christ as Judge, striking terror into the hearts of humanity, would follow with the shocking revelation (the gospel) that the Judge has become the judged, for our sake, and for our comfort.
When we take a closer look at the layout and the furniture, we find the filter of sola fide sifting and separating in Cranmer’s liturgy. We look, for instance, at the layout and positioning of the Communion table. So as to not confuse Communion with a sacrificial mass, the table must not look like a sacrificial altar. We thus find in Cranmer’s 1552 rubrics no mention of a frontal, but instead a “fair white linen cloth.” Moreover, this table preferably “shall stand in the body of the Church” (i.e., on the floor where the pews are), “or in the chancel.” In not a few instances, altars were completely demolished, which included the removal of altar steps and the leveling of chancels. One such instance is recorded at All Hallows Staining between 1550 and 1551, upon the visitation of Gloucester’s bishop, John Hooper. Similar articles are recorded for Salisbury Bishop John Salcot’s visitation in 1553. Architecturally, this all brings the experience of the body and blood of Christ much closer to the people. No longer must they take a great “upward journey” to receive the Supper (perhaps a ceremonial nod to the great effort one must make to receive the grace of God). Rather, Christ comes to the worshiper, where they are, “even while we were yet sinners” (Rom 5:8). We see in this architectural move a grammatical parsing: we arrive at the table not because we have so much journeyed to Christ, but he has journeyed to us—we arrive at the table not by works, but by faith.
Per the injunctions of Edward VI in 1547, images and art were removed from public worship spaces, and as MacCulloch chronicles, the royal visitations which enforced these injunctions often went beyond the injunctions themselves. It is important to our discussion to note that the walls were not simply whitewashed. Often in place of images were clear verses of Scripture, which, as we will note later, were viewed as the “reliquary” of the Holy Spirit—offering direct access to God through Christ, and eliminating the gospel-obscuring intermediaries of priests, saints, and their icons and images.
Yet in the Middle Ages, it was not only what was in buildings, but the buildings themselves which would, by their very existence, preach a message contrary to the gospel. Duffy recounts the fifteenth-century surge in church building projects, especially in East Anglia: “The extensive and often sumptuous rebuilding of so many churches of East Anglia in the fifteenth century was an expression not simply of the bourgeois prosperity brought by the wool trade, but of the concern of rich graziers or cloth-merchants to use their wealth as post-mortem fire insurance.” Put plainly, funding these buildings earned the wealthy favor with God. The edifices would therefore stand, after their death, as monuments to their eternal security—“that the soul may be remembered” in a kind of architectural prayer for the dead. And the remaining public saw it this way. Patronized church buildings, then, became the wider culture’s most stunning trophies of works-righteousness. Once we observe this, we can no longer hold one- or even two-dimensional views of the radical moves of architectural reform made in the sixteenth century. Part of the motivation was to clarify for troubled consciences just where our assurance lies—not in memorials and monuments bought with money (and what hope is there for the poor?), but simply in the word of promise of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished for his people.
SOLA FIDE AND LITURGICAL NOMENCLATURE
The grammar of sola fide would reconstruct the architecture and furniture of worship, and, as we have already seen here and there, it would alter ceremonial nomenclature as well, especially in key worship-words around Holy Communion like “priest,” “mass,” “chalice,” and “altar.” In the sixteenth century, the language of “priest” would have been especially challenging to sort out in relationship to the gospel made clear by justification by faith alone. “Priest,” with its Latin counterpart, sacerdos (“one who does the sacred act,” or even “sacrificer”), would be hard to separate conceptually from a sacrificial understanding of the Lord’s Supper. Therefore, though for the Reformers the language of “priest” was scripturally warranted, especially as pertaining to all believers, the concern was over the term’s present association with those ministers who re-sacrificed or re-presented the sacrifice of Jesus through the sacramental act. Undermining both the finished nature of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice and the sole mediatorial work of Christ, “priest” became a term needing clarification and redefinition. So when it came to the liturgy and the shaping of the people, we find that as terms like these obscured the clarity of the gospel, Cranmer favored lessening or eliminating their usage. In 1549, “priest” appears forty-nine times in the Communion liturgy, mostly in the rubrics. In 1552, we find its usage reduced by more than a half, totaling twenty-one appearances. And significantly, Cranmer replaces “priest” with “minister” in a few key moments, such as in the rubric before distributing the elements (see 
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, 1549
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, 1552
Then shall the Priest first receive the Communion in both kinds himself, and next deliver it to other Ministers, if any be there present, (that they may be ready to help the chief Minister,) and after to the people.
Then shall the minister first receive the Communion in both kinds himself, and next deliver it to other ministers, if any be there present (that they may help the chief minister,) and after to the people in their hands kneeling.
Figure 6.1. Cranmer’s 1549 and 1552 distribution rubrics compared
It is important to understand how significant this shift in nomenclature is. “Minister” was, at least by the 1540s, a polemical title. On June 20, 1540, Cranmer had signed a letter to conservative Polish diplomat, Johannes Dantiscus, as “Thomas Ecclesiae Cantuariensis minister” (Thomas minister of the Church of Canterbury). Dantiscus received this signature as a provocation, offering in response choice words critical of the religious changes (toward Protestantism) happening in England.
Parallel to these concerns about “priest,” for the simple reason that the Roman liturgy’s service was known as the “Mass” and therefore carried all the above associations of priestly sacrifice, we see that Cranmer insisted on changing the title of the rite in the Prayer Book. In 1549, it was already knocked down one rung of importance in an almost parenthetical addendum when the service was titled, “The Supper of the Lord and Holy Communion, Commonly Called the Mass.” But by 1552, it was simply “The Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.”
Cranmer would completely excise the use of “chalice” (with its sacerdotal overtones) after the 1549 liturgy, replacing it entirely with “cup” in 1552, with the most striking instance being in the moment of administration where 1549 has the “priest” ministering “the sacrament of the blood” with “the chalice” and now 1552 simply has “the minister that delivereth the cup” speaking the simplified words of administration. Again, along the same lines, “altar” completely disappears from 1552. It is telling how important an issue this particular term was for Cranmer given that in 1549, the usage of “altar” was already considerably down from its use in Sarum (see
SARUM MISSAL
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, 1549
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, 1552
“Altar” used 46 times.
“Altar” used 4 times.
“Altar” used 0 times.
34 times in the Ordinary of the Mass; 12 times in the Canon of the Mass
Figure 6.2. The disappearance of “altar” terminology in Cranmer’s liturgy
Cranmer preferred “table” and “God’s board,” both of which appear liberally in 1549 and 1552. Based on how thorough this change is, we can agree that Cranmer would have shared his friend Nicholas Ridley’s clear articulation of the contrast. In his campaign against altars in London, Ridley claimed:
For the use of an altar is to make a sacrifice upon it; the use of a table is to serve for men to eat upon. Now, when we come unto the Lord’s board, what do we come for? To sacrifice Christ again, and to crucify him again, or to feed upon him that was once only crucified and offered up for us? If we come to feed upon him, spiritually to eat his body, and spiritually to drink his blood (which is the true use of the Lord’s Supper), then no man can deny but the form of a table is more meet for the Lord’s board, than the form of an altar.
Ridley and Cranmer testify that a misleading liturgical and ceremonial term can have dire consequences when it comes to the clarity of the gospel for the people of God. “Altar,” according to the straightforward logic, undoes sola fide by reversing giver and recipient. “Altar” makes us the giver of the sacrifice, and God the recipient (approach by works). “Table” makes God the host of a meal and giver of his very life, and us the recipient (approach by faith).
SOLA FIDE AND SPECIAL CEREMONIES
One wonders whether significant recognition has been given to the difference between the ceremonial outlook of the English Reformers and that of subsequent generations of Anglicans—that is, the High Church movement of the seventeenth-century Laudians, or the Oxford movement of the nineteenth-century Tractarians. Such a difference in outlook is not merely about who can best repristinate what is most ancient. Rather, it is far more about an understanding of formation and how people are changed. The post-Reformation movements in favor of more elaborate ceremonial argue that external bodily action could excite and inspire internal desire. As Ramie Targoff points out, this is rooted in Aristotelian philosophy about the nature of habitus and virtue-formation: “These descriptions of the mutual dependence of body and soul in generating pious devotion, likened . . . to the exchange of heat between the skin and its woolen clothing, vividly convey what I have already described as the period’s Aristotelian belief in the power of external gestures and habits to stimulate internal change.” Following Augustine, Luther and Melanchthon fiercely opposed Aristotle on this very point—namely, that external habit has the power to change the heart. But while most of these Reformers, including Cranmer, would argue that outward ceremonial did not carry power to change and form the heart, they would not have opposed all external ritual nor seen it as unbeneficial. Their concern lay particularly with those special ceremonies that did not proclaim the gospel in their symbology but instead undermined the good news. Sola fide would be the grid that helped determine which ceremonies would pass muster.
Because of this, processions and ceremonies of blessing—Rogation processions, bell-ringing, blessings of salt and water every Sunday, blessing of candles at Christmas, and rituals during the baptismal ceremonies—lay particularly in the sights of the English Reformers. Duffy explains the theological significance of the medieval mindset about these special ceremonies:
The world-view enshrined, in which humanity was beleaguered by hostile troops of devils seeking the destruction of body and soul, and to which the appropriate and guaranteed antidote was the incantatory or manual invocation of the cross or names of Christ, is not a construct of the folk imagination. Such ideas were built into the very structure of the liturgy. . . . That was the principal purpose of the processions, to drive out of the parish, with bells and banners and the singing of the litany of the Saints, the spirits “that flye above in the eyer as thyke as motes in the sonne.”
At first glance, it would seem that what the Reformers would be concerned with is simple superstition—too many rituals dedicated to warding off evil spirits. But the concern had more to do with the way sola fide would distinguish divine and human agency. These prayers and actions, as incantations, put the power of agency into the hands of the priests and the people. Here we witness a commingling of faith and works, which the grammar of sola fide insists must be distinguished in order to clarify the gospel against not-gospels. Not only was this underlying popular theology an affront to the supremacy of Christ, it was an unbiblical overestimation of human capability. When the Reformers therefore set out to remove special ceremonies like processions, the blessing of items, and incantatory prayers, they were ultimately attempting to urge people away from a trust in themselves. Duffy himself admits that sola fide lay behind Cranmer’s reforms of special ceremonies: liturgical ritual should be “reminders of the benefits of Christ, and whoever used them for any other purpose ‘grievously offendeth God.’”
Case in point would be Cranmer’s shift in liturgical language around the ceremonial of the white robe given at baptism. The liturgy surrounding the white robe undermined the clarity of the gospel’s assurance. And in this instance, he did not do away with the ceremony, but shifted its significance by changing the language (see
SARUM BAPTISM
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, 1549
N, receive a white robe, holy and unstained, which thou must bring before the tribunal of the Lord Jesus Christ, that thou mayest have eternal life and life for ever and ever.
Take this white vesture for a token of innocency which by God’s grace in this holy sacrament of baptism is given unto thee, and for a sign whereby thou art admonished, so long as thou livest, to give thyself to innocency of living, that, after this transitory life, thou mayest be partaker of the life everlasting.
Figure 6.3. Robing ceremonies in Sarum and the 1549 Book of Common Prayer
Gone from the ceremony is any notion of works-righteousness and that somehow one’s assurance of salvation from the “tribunal of the Lord” is dependent upon what the baptismal candidate must do. With respect to the baptismal liturgy as a whole, whose ritual-evolution had developed elaborate ceremonial over the centuries, we see Cranmer filtering out the following practices from the 1549 liturgy headed into 1552: procession from the church door to the font, signing of the candidate’s forehead and breast, exorcism of unclean spirit, blessing of the font, the specification of dipping three times, clothing with chrisom, and anointing (see
1549
1552
(at the church door)
Exhortation
“Noah” prayer
Naming by godparents
Signing of candidate’s forehead and breast
Prayer for receiving of candidates
Exorcism of unclean spirit
Salutation and gospel (Mark 10)
Exhortation on the gospel
Lord’s Prayer
Apostles’ Creed
Exhortation
“Noah” prayer
Prayer for receiving of candidates
Gospel (Mark 10)
Exhortation on the gospel
Prayer for the Holy Spirit
(processional to the font)
Prayer for the Holy Spirit
(at the font)
Exhortation to godparents
Renunciation of devil, world, and flesh
Affirmation of Apostles’ Creed (by articles)
Blessing of font
Petitions for those to be baptized
Salutation and
Prayer for those to be baptized
Exhortation to godparents
Renunciation of devil, world, and flesh
Affirmation of Apostles’ Creed (entire)
Petitions for candidates
Prayer for candidates
Naming of each candidate
Dipping (three times) of each candidate
Clothing with chrisom
Anointing with prayer
Naming of each candidate
Dipping of each candidate
Signing of the cross, reception into the congregation
Lord’s Prayer
Prayer of thanksgiving
Exhortation to godparents
Exhortation to godparents
Figure 6.4. The structure of Baptism in 1549 and 1552
In all these redactions, and in the ones we shall see below, we must hear Cranmer’s caution clearly, that “although the keeping or omitting of a ceremony (in itself considered) is but a small thing, yet the willful and contemptuous transgression, and breaking of a common order and discipline, is no small offence before God.” Cranmer certainly understood the seriousness of altering ceremonies, and yet his commitment to “declare and set forth Christ’s benefits” through them, in his mind, made the changes necessary.
SOLA FIDE AND THE CEREMONIAL OF PRIESTS
Given all that has been said, sola fide would insist on a reimagining of the priestly office and a subsequent reshaping of the various liturgies that revolved around that office. In a way, sola fide not only insisted on a liturgical “not I, but Christ” for the worshiper, but also for the worship leader: “Not I, the priest, but Christ, the Priest.” In liturgical instances where priestly ceremonial action would either literally or figuratively position the minister “in between” God and the people, the actions are altered or removed. The omissions are telling of the theology and speak to the kind of formation Cranmer envisioned taking place by (as we said above) getting the priest out of the way of Christ and his Word.
One of the clearest illustrations of this move is 1552’s new instruction that the priest shall lead the beginning of the Communion liturgy “standing at the north side of the Table,” instead of in front of the altar, standing between the people and the elements. This not only meant that “both verbally and visually, the medieval sacrifice had been fully superseded by a community fellowship meal.” It also meant that, given what we noted earlier about the table having been moved into the middle of the chancel or nave, the position of the priest is all the more striking. The north side would have been along the long side of the table, in the middle, rather than at the head. Further, with communicants receiving by surrounding that table, they were situated alongside the priest—equals in Christ, as it were. Approaching God by faith alone involved coming to the table seeking no mediator but Christ alone.
Cranmer also appears to have felt similarly about the act of confession and priestly absolution. The 1549 Prayer Book retains a single rubric in the liturgy for the visitation of the sick: “After which confession, the Priest shall absolve him after this form: and the same form of absolution shall be used in all private confessions.” The 1552 Prayer Book excises that final statement, removing any notion of private confession from England’s liturgies. In the medieval mind, this would have been a significant blow to the perception of the mediatorial role of the priest—no longer were one’s sins forgiven through direct encounter with a minister; one came to corporate worship to hear God’s public declaration of forgiveness. This transition from private to public, and from priestly mediation to direct access, is further shown in the words added to Sarum by Cranmer to the words of forgiveness for Holy Communion originally in 1549 and carried over into 1552 (see
SARUM MISSAL
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, 1549, 1552
Almighty God,
Almighty God,
our heavenly Father,
who of his great mercy
hath promised forgiveness
to all them that with hearty repentance
and true faith turn unto him;
have mercy upon you,
and pardon all your sins, deliver you from all evil, preserve and confirm you in good,
and lead you to everlasting life.
have mercy on you;
pardon and deliver you from all your sins;
confirm and strengthen you in all goodness,
and bring you to everlasting life,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Figure 6.5. The Holy Communion words of forgiveness in Sarum and Cranmer
With the extra language, we witness a shift of emphasis away from the priest’s direct involvement with the act of declaring forgiveness. Instead it is God who has promised forgiveness of sins who will “have mercy on you; pardon and deliver you from all your sins.” Of further significance is the fact that these very words in the Sarum rite are not given publicly to the people but privately to the priest by the other ministers that he might be prepared to serve at the altar. The fact that Cranmer gave away this special priestly act to the people is yet another illustration of attempting to get the priest out of the way of the mediatorial work “through Jesus Christ our Lord” alone, democratizing priesthood among all believers.
A significant moment in the burial rite rubrics serves as yet another example. At the actual moment of burial, when dirt is cast upon the casket, Cranmer makes a significant change (see
BURIAL RITE, 1549
BURIAL RITE, 1552
Then the priest casting earth upon the corpse, shall say:
Then while the earth shall be cast upon the body, by some standing by, the priest shall say:
Figure 6.6. Burial rubrics of 1549 and 1552
Following this rubric is the altered burial prayer, noted above, but here we notice that it is no longer the priest casting the earth upon the body. Instead, “some standing by” take the lead in the burial. Cranmer gives away yet another significant role of the priest to the people.
In baptism (both 1549 and 1552), it is noteworthy that before the priest administers the sacrament, the story from Mark 10 of Jesus welcoming the children is read and exposited. And then, interestingly, one detects in the following priestly actions the same sequence of events in that story of Jesus: the commanding of the children to be brought to him, embracing, laying on of hands, and blessing. In a way, the priest “play-acts” as Christ himself, perhaps therefore becoming quite invisible so that it is, as it were, just Jesus and the children. And, not surprisingly given what we just observed with burial, part of Jesus’ actions (perhaps the part most prone to sacerdotal misinterpretation) taken away from the priest and given to the Godparents: the laying on of hands.
Most revealing, though, of the significant shift in the mediatorial role of the priesthood would be in the changes from the Ordinal of 1550 to that of 1552. Perhaps we could say, to borrow the language of Roman Catholic theology, that in the baptismal rite, Cranmer was comfortable with the priest play-acting in persona Christi (as Christ), but no such parallel was tolerable in the eucharistic rite, almost certainly because of the Roman Canon’s own shifting between the priest acting in persona Christi and in persona ecclesiae (as the church): Was he acting as Christ to the people, or was he acting as the church to God? While Roman Catholic theologians (such as Aquinas) might be able to parse the role the priest is playing at what moment, experientially for the worshiper, it is hard to discern. It is precisely this lack of clarity in experience that leads to the confusion about whether the priest should be perceived as Christ himself, or as a mediator. Any idea of play-acting in Holy Communion seems therefore abandoned by Cranmer. Packer’s summary observation should now be obvious to us: “All suggestion that clergy were being ordained to a ministry of priestly sacrifice was eliminated from Cranmer’s reformed ordinal.” We notice one significant ceremonial change in 1552 (see
ORDINAL, 1550
ORDINAL, 1552
The Bishop shall deliver to every one of them, the Bible in the one hand, and the Chalice or cup with the bread, in the other hand, and saying:
The Bishop shall deliver to every one of them, the Bible in his hand, saying:
Figure 6.7. The rubrics for the ordination of a priest in 1550 and 1552
The 1550 ordinal already makes a significant departure from the received medieval tradition by emphasizing the Bible alongside (even ahead of) the chalice, but by 1552, the Bible is the only item given to the minister to symbolize his ministry. Once the Bible is given, the priest is told by the bishop, “Take thou authority to preach the word of God, and to minister the holy Sacraments in this congregation.” This would stand in contrast to the vision of the priesthood cast in previous ordination liturgies, which “were so full of sacrificial language that there was little which [Cranmer] could have adopted as it stood without implying ideas about the ordained ministry [as the sacrificial priesthood].” The message could not be clearer: over against a sacerdotal understanding of the priestly call, the primary task of the minister is to proclaim the Word of God—to herald Jesus Christ and his gospel.
The ordinal also presents changes in priestly dress, which we recognize from across the Prayer Book as significant of this understanding of the priesthood as revised by a commitment to sola fide. The reference of the priestly candidate being presented in an alb in 1550 is removed in 1552, with no mention of dress. Similarly, we see a shift in the vestments for Holy Communion. In 1549, the priest is to don “a white alb plain, with a vestment or cope,” with assisting ministers wearing “albs with tunacles.” By 1552, no requirement is made at all. A clear move is made to disassociate ceremonial vestments with the sacrificial priesthood. Additionally, the Ordinal made no mention of nor provision for the “minor orders,” despite an Act of Parliament in 1549–1550 allowing for those rites of ordination to be drawn up.
The clarification given by sola fide would extend even to the actual ritual and ceremonial acts of the priest during the service. Sacramentals, that is, items and actions thought to have mystical significance associated with divine presence akin to the sacraments themselves (holy water, signs of the cross, the blessing of items, etc.), are brought under severe scrutiny by Cranmer. And this was done precisely because the medieval understanding was that sacramentals such as these were utilized and enacted to “prepare the soul to receive grace.” In other words, some ceremonial acts were understood by medieval Christianity as meritorious works. One scholar explains: “Worthy reception of sacramental grants remission of venial sin along with spiritual or material graces. . . . At the turn of the 16th century, these rituals remained popular and were considered an important aspect of Christian devotion.” The Ten Articles of 1536 bear witness to this perspective when, even while speaking in favor of retaining certain “customs, rites and ceremonies,” they punctuate this particular section on the sacramental with this clear final line: “But none of these ceremonies have power to remit sin, but only to stir and lift up our minds unto God, by whom only our sins be forgiven.” As we have seen time and again, Cranmer’s concern is not about superstition as superstition, but because the superstition is soteriological in nature. These sacramentals are untenable because they obscure the gospel by causing people not to hope in Christ as their minds are stirred and lifted to God, but to hope in the ceremonial actions performed and ceremonial items handled by the priest. Remission of sin, according to the grammar of the gospel, is the property of grace alone through faith alone.
With Luther, for instance, we find Cranmer eliminating the blessing and consecration of the baptismal water, “because all that was needed was the Divine Word, and a petition for consecration suggested lack of faith in the power of God’s Word; ultimately, it was to distrust God.” Likewise, making the sign of the cross over the bread and the wine during the eucharistic prayer would also be concerning, as Leuenberger explains that for the medieval worshiper, the priest’s making the sign of the cross effectively
produced the presence of Jesus. This can easily lead to a calculated attitude on the part of the churchgoer by which his concentration on Jesus in the course of the liturgy is important only at brief, defined points in the course of the liturgy, in which the attention-awakening factor can be a gesture like the making of the sign of the cross over the elements. An attitude is often produced by this thinking that the churchgoer supposes, based on some particularly executed form with its associated gesture, that special blessings have been freely conferred upon him completely unconnected with any faithlike attitude upon his part.
This leads us also to consider the ritualistic actions of the priest which Cranmer would pull out of the liturgy, such as the lifting up of the elements at various points in the Holy Communion liturgy. Cranmer’s concern seemed to be that fixation on the elements themselves took one’s gaze away from Christ, the object of faith. Cranmer articulates that this was precisely what he had in mind by drawing liturgical attention to the sursum corda over against the priestly action of lifting the elements. Following fifth-century church father Theodoret of Cyrrhus, the sursum corda was a liturgical and ceremonial signal to lift one’s spiritual gaze above the elements, to Christ himself. As Cranmer said,
Theodoret showeth us that the cause thereof was this, that we should not have so much respect to the bread and wine as we should have to Christ himself, in whom we believe with our hearts, and feel and taste him by our faith. . . . These things we ought to remember and resolve in our minds, and to lift up our hearts from the bread and wine unto Christ that sitteth above.
Similarly in his Ordinal, Cranmer sought to downplay any prayers associated with the laying on of hands that could be conceived as bestowing the power of the Holy Spirit through the recital of a formulaic prayer. In those rites, compared with his sources, Cranmer often chose to use the language of an ordained person being “admitted” rather than “consecrated,” and receiving “authority” rather than “power.”
With the other Reformers, Cranmer’s concern was that fixation on the stuff of the liturgy—the items, the elements, and the priestly actions which drew attention to them—only served to veil the gospel. Cranmer’s desire was that every ceremonial act and item serve as a hearing aid for the gospel, so that faith would not be in priests or their ability to perform certain rituals with precision, but in Christ alone.
SOLA FIDE AND CONSECRATION, RECEPTION, AND BLESSING OF THE ELEMENTS
Special final attention must be given to the unique editing of the shape and wording of the Communion liturgy proper. Cranmer’s redaction of the Canon of the Mass here serves to illustrate the way all the above sections come together. It is the Holy Communion liturgy which most clearly illustrates how ceremonial—that is, the way ritual is enacted—carries theological and thus formational power. We have clearly seen from the above how cognizant Cranmer was of the doctrinal impact of the ceremonial. Cranmer seems to have believed that actions speak louder than words, and that seeing is believing. Therefore, the ceremonial consecration of the bread and the wine appears to have been the epicenter of liturgical redaction according to the grammar of sola fide.
In the medieval Roman rite, all priestly action, all liturgical momentum, and all assisting tools drove toward the liturgical climax of the consecration of the bread and wine, for it would be in that moment that the dramatic change would occur: ordinary bread would become Christ’s true, substantial body; ordinary wine would become Christ’s true, substantial blood. As we have pointed out, all the ceremonial surrounding this climax served to obscure, rather than proclaim, the gospel. The growth of ceremonial around Communion over time would lead Luther to conclude, “The chief thing in the mass has been forgotten, and nothing is remembered except the additions of men!” In the ceremonial, the priest—not Christ—became the means of mediation. In the ceremonial, our present offering—not Christ’s once-for-all offering—became the foregrounded means of expiation. In the ceremonial, our devotions, incantations, and sacramentals—not Christ’s finished work—became the means of harnessing divine power. Sola fide would offer a decisive no to these not-gospels. Therefore, a climactic consecration that effected a transubstantiation of the elements was no longer tenable.
The clearest thing for Cranmer to do was to remove and displace those consecratory prayers which, by their words and rituals (fraction, elevation, signs of the cross), would draw any attention to the elements. It is not too strong to say that, in Cranmer’s view, no ritualistic consecration should take place at all. This is evidenced by the 1552 rubric (shocking to medieval sensibilities) that allowed for the curate after the service to take any remaining bread and wine home to “have it to his own use.” The bread and wine remained bread and wine. But this excision served a double-purpose. Not only did it remove the consecratory spectacle from view, it also dramatically shortened the Communion liturgy as a whole. In this way, it would function similarly to how Cranmer shortened the Daily Offices: there would simply be less for the worshiper to do before receiving the grace of God. In fact, it would have been nearly startling (as grace always is) to the observant worshiper that the “liturgical distance” between the words of institution (“In the same night that he was betrayed”) and the reception of the elements was cut down to nothing. “Drink it in remembrance of me” was followed by the people coming forward and receiving. In fact, even the absence of one little word should not be missed: the words of institution end with no “Amen.” Figuratively, Cranmer would have no comma, no punctuation, no separation between the gracious words of Christ through Paul, and the spiritual feeding upon that very Word by faith through reception. It would be all one, continuous, prayerful act. “Amen” would only make an appearance after the post-Communion prayer. Colin Buchanan’s influential booklet, What Did Cranmer Think He Was Doing?, illustrates visually the experiential shift and resulting theological impact (see
SARUM MASS
SARUM-PLUS-1548
BCP 1549
BCP 1552
Figure 6.8. Theological-experiential shifts in consecration and reception through successive liturgical revisions (Colin Buchanan)
It is critical to understand that in the medieval way of thinking, consecration and reception would have been extremely unlikely bedfellows, if not diametrically opposed. The whole thrust of medieval eucharistic practice drove toward consecration particularly because the principal act of the worshiper was not reception, but adoration of the Host. It is telling that, when medieval mass books instructed the laity to pray vernacular “levation prayers” during the elevation of the host, “the most common and distinctive feature of levation prayers is the inclusion of a vocative ‘hailing’ in the opening salutation: ‘Hail,’ ‘Ave,’ or ‘Welcome.’” It is clear that the medieval worshiper was led not so much to focus on the sacrifice of Christ on their behalf, but to worship Christ as present among them in the sacrament. In other words, the posture was not one of thankfulness and gratitude (dispositions of reception), but awe and wonder (dispositions of adoration). Eamon Duffy describes the postconsecratory moment in the medieval rite, known as the “pax,” when “the priest kissed the corporas on which the Host rested, and the lip of the chalice, and then the paxbred, a disk or tablet on which was carved or painted a sacred emblem.” This pax was then taken to the congregation, outside the rood screen, where some (not all) were to kiss the pax. This action was, in Duffy’s words, “clearly a substitute for the reception of communion.” It would have indeed therefore been shocking in Cranmer’s liturgy not only that the priest’s elevation and reception were ceremonially uneventful, but that the people actually ate the bread. The climactic shift of emphasis could not have been more dramatic, which raises the question: Why? The Archbishop himself answers:
Our Saviour Christ hath not only set forth these things most plainly in his holy word, that we may hear them with our ears; but he hath also ordained one visible sacrament of . . . spiritual nourishment in bread and wine, to the intent that, as much as is possible for man, we may see Christ with our eyes, smell him at our nose, taste him with our mouths, grope him with our hands, and perceive him with all our senses. For as the word of God preached putteth Christ into our ears; so likewise these elements of . . . bread, and wine, joined to God’s word, do after a sacramental manner put Christ into our eyes, mouths, hands, and all our senses.
At stake for Cranmer in the ceremonial shift from consecration to reception is the proclamation of the gospel itself. Reception enacts ritualistically what the gospel proclaims theologically—Christ comes to us as an unconditioned, unmerited, categorical gift. We firstly experience this gift by receiving, not adoring. True adoration—worship borne of grace and not of works—follows reception. The grammar of sola fide is no more clearly at work than here.
We now understand why Cranmer thus was compelled to alter the words of distribution from “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1549), to “Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith,” and “Drink this, in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for thee” (1552). Compared to the gospel proclaimed through them (“Christ died for thee,” “Christ’s blood was shed for thee”), the elements are relatively insignificant. In and of themselves, they deserve no reflection or focus. The bread and the wine are not even named. They are simply “this.” For Cranmer, what is important—yes, of life and death importance—is what is going on in “thy heart.”
This is furthermore what is behind the removal of the Benedictus from the end of the Sanctus in 1552. If we were only thinking of Cranmer as a biblicist, we would rightly be puzzled by this removal, for the Benedictus is simply a quotation of the biblical accounts of Jesus’ triumphal entry on Palm Sunday (Mt 21:9; Mk 11:9; Jn 12:13). Cranmer’s concern appears to have been how that verse was misused to assist the vision of the consecratory moment when Jesus “entered into” the elements much as he entered into Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week. The Benedictus had become a ceremonial distraction-point, where worshipers could be led to focus more on adoring the elements themselves than the Christ who would inhabit those very worshipers.
To be clear, therefore, it is not that Cranmer disavowed the idea of consecratory change during Holy Communion. It is rather that, ceremonially, the Archbishop recentered the locale of consecratory change away from the elements and onto the human heart. “Cranmer’s focus was not a change in, or even instrumental use of, the bread and wine, but rather the transformation of the recipients, who by the power of the Spirit were linked afresh to the saving efficacy of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion.”
This shift from transformation of the elements to the transformation of the people is evidenced, as well, in Cranmer’s removal of the epiclesis of 1549. Jeanes insightfully notes a shift in Cranmer’s theology here in relationship to the Archbishop’s interaction with John Damascene. In the 1530s, Cranmer’s underlining and marginalia around Damascene’s treatment of the “word” and the “Holy Ghost” in relationship to the transformation of the bread and wine reveal a view much more in line with the epiclesis of 1549: the Holy Spirit and word sanctify and transform bread and wine. The same passage of Damascene is again invoked by Cranmer in 1550, but this time with a completely different focus. From the Defence:
And as Almighty God by his most mighty word and his Holy Spirit . . . brought forth all creatures in the beginning, and ever sithens hath preserved them; even so by the same word and power he worketh in us, from time to time, this marvellous spiritual generation and wonderful spiritual nourishment and feeding, which is wrought only by God, and is comprehended and received of us by faith.
This observable shift in the object of consecration is precisely what we are recognizing in the structural changes of the eucharistic prayers between 1549 and 1552. Therefore, with tongue only slightly in cheek we could say that Cranmer does believe in transubstantiation at Holy Communion. Except that it is not the bread and wine that are transformed into the body of Christ, but believers. Ashley Null summarizes it best:
Since Cranmer considered the sacraments as “visible words” of God’s biblical promises, the ultimate expression of Cranmer’s vision of God’s gracious love inspiring grateful human love was the 1552 Holy Communion service. In what he intended to be the central act of English worship, Cranmer wove together his great themes of free justification, on-going repentance, communal fellowship, and godly living and placed them in a sacramental setting which clarified God’s incomprehensible sacrificial love for the unworthy as their sole source. Cranmer made the reception of the elements the immediate response to the words of Institution. As a result, receiving the sacramental bread and wine, not their prior consecration, became the liturgy’s climax. Now the sacramental miracle was not changing material elements but reuniting human wills with the divine.