Contradiction in Thomas Cranmer’s use of Cyril of Alexandria
Thomas Cranmer’s use of the theology of the incarnation and the Eucharist in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria for the purposes of appropriating a Reformed eucharistic theologyFootnote 1 has recently been defended by Ashley Null.Footnote 2 Cyril Richardson, Gordon Jeanes and Brian Douglas,Footnote 3 in opposition to Null, argue that Cranmer in developing a Reformed eucharistic theology expresses a contradiction between the soteriological implications of the incarnation and sacramental theology where Cranmer affirms that the believer is united to the whole Christ, both human and divine, in the incarnation, but only the divine in the Eucharist. This article argues that Cranmer’s Reformed doctrine, and Null’s defence of that doctrine, is not a viable appropriation of Cyril’s eucharistic doctrine.
Null in his defence of Cranmer argues that Richardson, Jeanes and Douglas have failed to appreciate Cranmer’s debt to Cyril of Alexandria’s eucharistic teaching,Footnote 4 but this article will argue that such a conclusion cannot be sustained since Cranmer’s assurance that he had found the evidence he needed in Cyril to deny a corporal presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not viable since it does not accurately reflect Cyril’s eucharistic theology.
Cranmer speaking of the way Christ is united to people corporally says, ‘And although Cyril says that Christ is united unto us corporally by the mystical benediction, yet in that place the materialFootnote 5 benediction may well be understood of his incarnation,’Footnote 6 suggesting that for Cyril any material benediction is to the incarnation and not the Eucharist. Null asks in relation to Cranmer’s eucharistic theology how ‘it was possible to have only a spiritual presence of Christ in the faithful, yet for it still to be right to teach that a believer was united to the whole Christ?’Footnote 7 both human and divine in the soteriological impacts of the incarnation. For Null, the answer ‘lies in Cranmer’s appropriation of Cyril’s Christology.’Footnote 8 Null’s reasoning here is to ask how Cranmer could be so sure that Cyril did not mean ‘corporally’ as a bodily indwelling in the Eucharist although he was prepared to acknowledge a corporal presence of Christ in the incarnation. His underwhelming answer is that ‘by the reign of Edward VI Cranmer had concluded such a concept [that is, bodily indwelling in the Eucharist] violated Cyril’s teaching on the communicatio idiomatum [communication or exchange of properties].’Footnote 9 It is difficult to reach this conclusion since Cyril’s use of both a corporal and spiritual sense of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, and in the incarnation, is an inherent part of his theology which both Cranmer and Null seem unwilling to admit.
Cranmer’s Emphasis in Writing
Null admits that Cranmer’s emphasis in his writing on the Eucharist was the construction of a Reformed agenda,Footnote 10 which distances any bodily or spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist from the elements of bread and wine. Null gives evidence of the effect of various Reformers on Cranmer,Footnote 11 noting Oecolampadius, Bucer and Melanchthon, as well as study of patristic Fathers like Cyril, but also Augustine and Chrysostom,Footnote 12 which he argues led Cranmer to the adoption of a Reformed position in relation to the Eucharist centring on a spiritual presence of Christ alone in the ministration of the Eucharist for the communicant but not in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Cranmer appears to ignore Cyril’s argument of the mingling of the divine and the flesh of Christ in the Eucharist although he contradictorily accepts the mingling of the human and the divine in relation to the incarnation. Cranmer is perhaps reacting to the medieval doctrine of transubstantiation and traditional catholic doctrines of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist and so reticent to speak of any mingling in the Eucharist that attributes any real or corporal presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist. Cranmer instead focusses on a spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist in the ministration of the sacrament alone, where such presence is known by the communicant only through faith in a propositional and reflective manner on the completed work of Christ. Any idea that Christ is present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist is denied by Cranmer.
Null acknowledges Cranmer’s debt to Cyril on the incarnation and states that: ‘Cyril stressed that the two natures of the Incarnate Word were undivided’ and so ‘Cranmer argued that being united to Christ by his spiritual power at work within the faithful was to be united to the whole, undivided Christ in some mystical fashion.’Footnote 13 This suggests, that in relation to the soteriological significance of the incarnation, the faithful believer was united to the whole Christ and received the blessings of eternal life: both Christ’s human body as the flesh given on the cross and Christ’s divinity, united in the incarnate Christ. In relation to the Eucharist, however, Cranmer denies any corporal or real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements of bread and wine, although he does see a real presence of Christ in the faithful communicant in the ministration of the sacrament of the Eucharist, apart from and distinct from the eucharistic elements of bread and wine. It is this distinction in relation to the Eucharist which leads to a contradiction in Cranmer’s thinking between the human and the divine natures of Christ in the incarnation on the one hand and in the Eucharist on the other. Such a distinction is not present in the writings of Cyril and so Cranmer’s debt to Cyril is a selective one which he has appropriated to suit his own Reformed agenda.
Cranmer’s Empirical Distinction Between a ‘Real Presence’ and a ‘Corporal Presence’
The distinction between a ‘real presence’ and a ‘corporal presence’ is not a distinction Cranmer makes, since he operated in an empirical framework of sacramental theology, where ‘real’ means ‘corporal’. Null also speaks empirically of the time ‘when Jesus’ humanity ascended to Heaven to be seated at the right hand of God’ while affirming that ‘his divinity still filled the whole earth.’Footnote 14 This empirical methodology in Cranmer was pointed out some years ago by Cyril Richardson, who argued that Cranmer was a nominalist, in the popular sense, where things, such as bread and wine, were self-enclosed and could not instantiate Christ’s body and blood in any real way in the Eucharist. For Richardson, this was ‘a kind of common-sense British empiricism,’Footnote 15 which had nothing to do with the sort of metaphysical refinements of continental nominalists which had no real interest for Cranmer. Richardson argues that this led Cranmer to express a traditional realism in relation to the incarnation which included both the divine and human natures of Christ, but that in relation to the Eucharist, Cranmer was a nominalist, in this blunt and common-sense manner, arguing against transubstantiation to establish a Reformed position on the Eucharist.Footnote 16
Cranmer argued that Christ’s presence could not be in the elements, corporally or spiritually, since he was corporally and bodily present in heaven alone, and so he says: ‘Christ is with us spiritually present, is eaten and drunken of us, and dwelleth within us, although corporally he be departed out of this world, and is ascended up into heaven.’Footnote 17 For Cranmer, there was more a sense of the communicant ascending to Christ than Christ coming down to them. He therefore says:
As we see with our eyes and eat with our mouths very bread, and see also and drink very wine, so we lift our hearts unto heaven, and with our faith we see Christ crucified with our spiritual eyes, and eat his flesh thrust through with the spear, and drink his blood springing out of his side with our spiritual mouths of faith. … So that although we see and eat sensibly very bread and very wine, and spiritually eat and drink Christ’s very flesh and blood, yet may we not rest there, but lift up our minds to the deity, without the which his flesh availeth nothing, as he saith himself.Footnote 18
The realist sounding language of eating speared flesh and drinking blood from Christ’s side is only heavenly and spiritual and so not on earth. Any eating and drinking on earth are distinct from the lifting of the mind to the deity in a way that is propositional and reflective as an act of memory and thanksgiving for the work of Christ without any realist presence of Christ in the elements on earth.
In order to support what is a contradiction in his eucharistic thinking and in the way he uses Cyril’s eucharistic theology, Cranmer argues that there is a diversity between the divine and human natures of Christ, saying that: ‘All the old writers that speak of the diversity of Christ’s substantial presence and absence, declare this diversity to be in the diversity of his two natures, (that in the nature of his humanity he is gone hence, and present in the nature of his divinity,) and not that in divers respects and qualities of one nature he is both present and absent.’Footnote 19 This means for Cranmer that in the Eucharist: ‘The presence [of Christ] must be understanded of his divinity, and the absence of his humanity.’Footnote 20 Any concept of the presence of Christ in the world or more specifically in the Eucharist can only be according to his divinity and not his humanity. Such a conclusion is difficult to reach on the basis of Cyril’s eucharistic theology as will be set out later in this article.
Substance in Cranmer’s terms is an empirical concept, rather than a metaphysical one. Signs, such as bread and wine, for Cranmer are ‘dumb’ and ‘insensible and lifeless’ and so ‘no more it is possible that a spiritless creature [the elements] should receive any spiritual sanctification or holiness,’Footnote 21 in the sense that it could convey any corporal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He can therefore say ‘that all men know that bread is not Christ’s body, the one having sense and reason, the other none at all.’ This is very different in Cyril who speaks of a corporal and spiritual presence of Christ in the elements that are life-giving. There is no sense for Cranmer of either a spiritual or corporal presence in the bread and wine. To support this conclusion, he says that: ‘The bread, a vain token, but sheweth and preacheth to the godly receiver, what God worketh in him by his almighty power secretly and invisibly. And therefore as the bread is outwardly eaten indeed in the Lord’s supper, so is the very body of Christ inwardly by faith eaten indeed of all them that come.’Footnote 22 For Cranmer ‘the very body’ is received inwardly by faith alone in the ministration of the Eucharist, but this applies only to use by people (the ministration) and not to the bread and wine which can only be ‘outwardly eaten’ with no participation or identity of the signs in what they signify.
Null in speaking about how Cyril addresses the corporal presence of Christ in Christians and in the sacrament makes the comment that this ‘proved a challenge to Cranmer,’Footnote 23 and Cranmer answered the problem by saying that Cyril never explained the presence of Christ’s corporal flesh in the sacrament.Footnote 24 Further, Null says that ‘arguing from Cyril’s own principles, Cranmer provided his own answer, namely, that a “corporal” presence was the presence of the natural properties of Christ’s body in those who received Communion.’Footnote 25 It is difficult to reach this conclusion, however, on the basis of the evidence from Cyril presented below where Cyril makes specific reference to the ‘sacramental gifts’ and the way they are ‘hallowed participants in the holy flesh and precious blood of Christ’. Whereas Cranmer argues that the elements or sacramental gifts are ‘dumb’, ‘insensible and lifeless’, Cyril argues that they have the power to hallow the participants and are ‘life-giving’. Further Cyril makes the case for the vitalizing flesh to have no separation from the Word, and in fact speaks of ‘the real flesh of the Word’. Cranmer’s explanation is inadequate and suggests he appropriated Cyril’s teaching to establish a particular Reformed agenda which distances any idea of a corporal or spiritual presence of Christ from the earthly eucharistic elements. Null defending Cranmer says that: ‘In Cyril’s writings Cranmer has at last found the strong patristic argument he needed to embrace Reformed sacramental theology.’Footnote 26 This article argues that Cranmer’s answer to his problem is based on insufficient or selective evidence from Cyril in the service of a particular Reformed agenda and this conclusion appears to be perpetuated by Null.
Richardson’s Assessment of Cranmer: A Contradiction
RichardsonFootnote 27 noted the contradiction of Cranmer’s appropriation, in maintaining two positions simultaneously. Cranmer’s commitment to the Reformed agenda in an empirical framework, including justification by faith alone, led him to the view that the Eucharist was a source of sanctification where ‘the sacrament’s proper focus was not the transformation of the elements, but of the human will, by means of union with Christ through spirit-empowered faith.’Footnote 28 Indeed Richardson made the observation that for Cranmer, ‘God works with his sacraments, but not in them.’Footnote 29 As Richardson observes, ‘he [Cranmer] saw no contradiction between his thinking on the Eucharist (which was dominated by this popular Nominalism) and his thinking on the Incarnation (which was traditionally realist).’Footnote 30 Gordon Jeanes agrees, questioning why Cranmer adopted such a contradictory approach to eucharistic theology,Footnote 31 as does Brian Douglas in his assessment of Cranmer’s eucharistic theology.Footnote 32 These conclusions have drawn opposing comments from Ashley Null, who sees the continuation of Richardson’s view, by both Jeanes and Douglas, as problematic, in that they, in Null’s view, fail to see how Cranmer employed, or ‘appropriated’ Cyril of Alexandria’s work in the development of his own eucharistic theology. Cyril’s eucharistic theology will now be reviewed.
The Eucharistic Theology of Cyril of Alexandria
For Cyril, there is a realist linking of the outward elements and the life-giving effect of the Eucharist as a whole. In his Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Cyril states in relation to Luke 22:17-22, that:
He [Christ] is also within us in another way by means of our partaking in the oblation of bloodless offerings, which we celebrate in our churches, having received from Him the saving pattern of the rite, as the blessed Eucharist plainly shows us in the passage which has just been read. For He tells us that ‘He took a cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it with one another.’ … And this act then was a pattern for our use of the prayer which ought to be offered, wherever the grace of the mystical and life-giving oblation is about to be spread before Him by us. … It was fitting, therefore, for Him to be in us both divinely by the Holy Ghost, and also, so to speak, to be mingled with our bodies by His holy flesh and precious blood: which things also we possess as life-giving eucharist, in the form of bread and wine. For lest we should be terrified by seeing (actual) flesh and blood placed upon the holy tables in our Churches, God, humbling Himself to our infirmities, infuses into the things set before us the power of life, and transforms them into the efficacy of His flesh, that we might have them for a life-giving participation, and that the body of (Him who is the) Life may be found in us as life-producing seed. And do not doubt that this is true, since Himself plainly says, ‘This is My body: This is My blood’.Footnote 33
The importance of the outward elements, as bloodless oblations, is emphasised here by Cyril, coming as he argues from the pattern of Christ, such that Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is experienced by people, divinely, in the Eucharist ‘in the form of bread and wine’, transformed into the efficacy of Christ’s flesh and mingled with our bodies by participation in a way that Christ’s flesh and blood is in the elements of the Eucharist and received by the communicant. This occurs spiritually by the power of the Holy Spirit and corporally in the mingling of Christ’s flesh and blood with the bodies of those who receive him. This is a statement of realism where the bread and wine become the instrument of conveying the efficacy of Christ’s flesh, both spiritually and corporally. In this sense as Daniel Keating argues:
Cyril offers a fundamentally sacramental account of our union with Christ. It is pre-eminently through baptism and the Eucharist that the gift of divine life now perfected in the Incarnate and glorified Christ is made available to us. Cyril frequently presents a twofold path for the reception of divine life, captured by the paired terms πνενματικῶς [in a spiritual manner] and σωματικῶς [bodily or corporeally].Footnote 34
In Cyril’s writings, the Eucharist is received both spiritually and corporally. McGuckin details how Cyril taught that Christ had two natures: human and divine, which existed in the incarnation as a single entity while maintaining that each nature was distinct.Footnote 35 McGuckin points out that Cyril’s theology, as part of the Alexandrian tradition ‘was characterised by its realist and dynamic soteriology.’Footnote 36
Cyril insists upon the unity of Christ: both human and divine. As Thomas Weinandy states, for Cyril:
No form of Adoptionism, which allows a merely moral union between the divine Son and the man Jesus, would suffice. The incarnational concept of ‘become’ for Cyril, must convey an ontological union between the Son of God and his humanity, for only within such a union could the Son truly save and so divinize his and our humanity. … This does not mean, for Cyril, that the Word was changed into flesh. … Arguing that ‘become’ demands a real ontological union, Cyril nonetheless adamantly maintained that ‘we do not, of course, say that God the Word who is from the Father was transformed into the nature of flesh, or that flesh changed into the Word. For each remains what it is by nature and Christ is one from both’.Footnote 37
In writing to Nestorius Cyril can therefore say:
What I would say, my good Nestorius, is that although we speak of Christ as man and at the same time God, we are not making a division in so speaking. Rather we know this same Son and God and Word of the Father even before the incarnation, and, after that, we knew him as made man, in our condition, and incarnate.Footnote 38
For Cyril, this comes about not by conjunction or mixing of natures, the view he accuses Nestorius of holding, ‘but by a genuine union, in a manner beyond explanation or understanding. Thus he is thought of as one single being; … For as soon as this union has taken place there is a single nature presented to our minds, the incarnate nature of the Word himself.’Footnote 39 It is this concept of mingling and the sharing of characteristics that is central to Cyril understanding and use of the communicatio idiomatum where there is both a spiritual and corporal presence of Christ for people. For Cyril, there can be no division between the human and divine natures of Christ although each is distinct. McGuckin discusses further this saying that:
In the case of the incarnation, the divine Logos appropriates human nature. The human nature becomes none other than the human nature of the one who is God, and thereby lifted to an extraordinary glory. More than this, it becomes the economic instrument of the divine Logos; that is, the primary way the Logos has chosen to effect the regeneration of the human race, concretely, intimately, and personally. The human nature of the Logos is, therefore, an instrument of the divine energy.Footnote 40
For McGuckin, there is an inherent sacramental realism in Cyril where ‘Christ’s human nature … was used as an instrument within an infinite design’ and where this ‘principle is the flagship of Cyril’s whole argument. There can only be one creative subject, one Logos who has made a human nature his own.’Footnote 41 McGuckin goes on to argue that for Cyril these realist implications of ‘the Logos-acting-in-the-flesh’Footnote 42 extend to the Eucharist itself and to the eucharistic elements, where the extension is real. This has implications for eucharistic theology since Cyril in writing to Calosyrius affirms the power of the consecration, saying:
I hear that they say that the sacred consecration is of no avail unto sanctification if a fragment might remain unto another day. They are insane who say these things. Christ is not altered, nor is his body changed, but the power of the consecration and his life-giving grace is perpetual in his body.Footnote 43
For Cyril, says McGuckin ‘this transformation which happens “naturally” in Christ because the divinity has appropriated a human nature to itself’ and so this ‘makes the flesh of Christ “Life-giving”, replete with all the glory and majesty of the Godhead. Indeed for Cyril, the flesh of Christ is the worthy object of the Christian’s most profound worship and adoration.’ This means that ‘the flesh of Christ is divine flesh, inherently life-giving, though evidently and necessarily human, that is “flesh”, for if it were not given in material fashion, as for example as the Christian’s food in the eucharist, the transforming blessing could not begin to be communicated to material creatures.’Footnote 44 Cyril in his ‘Thesaurus’ addresses this matter, saying:
What then does Christ promise? Nothing corruptible, but rather that Eucharist in the participation of His Holy Flesh and Blood, which restoreth man wholly to incorruption … But since these things are so, let those who have been baptized and have tasted the Divine Grace, know, that if they go sluggishly or hardly at all into the Churches, and for a long time keep away from the Eucharistic gift through Christ, feigning a pernicious reverence, in that they will not partake of Him sacramentally, they exclude themselves from eternal life, in that they decline to be vivified.Footnote 45
The presence of Christ in the Eucharist is corporal but it is not a corruptible flesh. Rather there is participation of the flesh of Christ in the Eucharist and in those who receive it to the extent that they are vivified, participating in his Christ’s flesh and blood in the Eucharist.
McGuckin sees Cyril’s Christology as inherently realist and links it with eucharistic worship where the divine life is a gift to the communicant both spiritually and corporally. McGuckin, reproduces Cyril’s ‘Third Letter to Nestorius’ and ‘Explanation of the Twelve Chapters’,Footnote 46 to demonstrate the closeness of this link in Cyril, saying:
What Christ was and did naturally, he transfers to humankind as an inheritance. This, quite simply, is the reason why the eucharistic elements, unarguably material and unarguably humble, are also, for Cyril, unquestionably divine and adorable. The physical interchange that occurs when the believer communicates with his Lord in the eucharistic mysteries is no less than a metamorphosis – healing and salvation are given. The believer is deified by the encounter, for the encounter brings him into life-giving proximity with the Logos, and this proximity (for all the Alexandrian theologians) was the metaphysical root and sustenance of all being.Footnote 47
McGuckin is suggesting that for Cyril the eucharistic elements are both divine and adorable, in both a spiritual and bodily or corporeal sense, where the very physicality of the interchange is life-giving in the Eucharist in the way it is in the incarnation and its soteriological effects. At the same time, he is nonetheless clear that the divine presence is real and associated with the bread and wine, although at the same time, he states that such a presence is not fleshy in the sense of literal meat and blood. The presence of Christ’s flesh and blood, of which Cyril speaks, is a real presence, where the bread and wine are set before the communicants in such a way that the communicants participate through them in a life-giving experience, without any change in the substance of the bread and wine.
Lawrence Welch in his treatment of Christology and the Eucharist in the writing of Cyril also argues that ‘Cyril’s soteriological and eucharistic concerns shaped and governed his Christology,’ where salvation is about the union of Christian people to the Father through Christ in the Spirit and where this salvation is communicated through the Eucharist in the power of the Spirit. It was in the Eucharist that Christian people partook in the life-giving flesh of Christ and so ‘Cyril’s understanding of redemption, his understanding of Christian worship, and his Christology are not separated or isolated from one another.’Footnote 48
Cyril’s theology affirms ‘body’ as well as ‘logos’ and sees the unity of the two as essential. Cyril can therefore say in relation to John 1:14 (‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us’ NRSV) that John ‘says not that the Word came into flesh but that it was made [became] flesh.’Footnote 49 In his ‘Thesaurus’ he also says:
But the word ‘was made’ is very justly taken here, not to signify the process from not being to being. (For ‘the Word was in the beginning’). Nor is the change from less to greater. For the Son was Perfect, of a Perfect Father. But, as it were, in comparison of glory and dignity, the appearance was greater and better. For as if a man should be compared with a horse, and should be said to be better than it by those who estimated it, as being a reasonable creature: for that ‘becoming’ (γενέσθαι) does not wholly imply a change of nature, will be evident.Footnote 50
Ruth Siddals has pointed to the importance of the word ‘became’ for Cyril, arguing in the way of Cyril’s use of communicatio idiomatum, that ‘Cyril’s view does not include a direct reference to substance but is appropriate for the Word’ and ‘is instanced in sentences like “A man became a carpenter” and “A man became an apostle” and “A man became a millionaire”. In such examples “became” denotes the acquisition of an accident by a subject … [where there is] a very real kind of change, not in substance and nature, but in circumstance.’Footnote 51 Interpreting further Siddals says, ‘when it comes to interpreting John 1.14 “flesh” can be analyzed in a similar way. It is acquired by the subject Word as an accident, and therefore inheres within the subject, truly belonging to him and occasioning real change, in circumstance, not in substance.’Footnote 52 In the same way, it could be argued that the ‘flesh’ of Christ is present in the bread and wine by way of participation, in that the bread and wine acquire the quality of being the life-giving flesh and blood of Christß.
Cyril also says: ‘For the Son is one and only one, both before his conjunction with the flesh, and when he came with flesh; and by flesh we denote man in his integrity, I mean, consisting of soul and body.’Footnote 53 This suggests that for Cyril the word ‘flesh’ (σάρξ) is used to refer to a complete humanity, body and soul, where there cannot be what Welch calls an ‘unanimated corporeality.’Footnote 54 Flesh though for Cyril does not mean that people eat literal meat or drink literal blood and indeed in speaking with Nestorius about the Eucharist, Cyril says:
Well then, how is it that this is not a matter of cannibalism? In what way is this mystery sublime. … We shall see that the flesh united with him has life-giving power. … For this flesh belongs to the Word. … If you remove the life-giving Word of God from this mystical and real union with the body, if you completely set him apart, how are you to show that the body is still life-giving.Footnote 55
Considering the closeness of the relationship Cyril places on Christology and the Eucharist, Cranmer’s idea of excluding the corporal in the Eucharist, but not in the incarnation, appears to be foreign to Cyril’s thinking.
There is an ecclesial sense of the presence here also, in that the communicants participate spiritually and really in Christ through the ministration of the sacrament, a matter important for Cranmer, but Cyril also states that there is a corporal and spiritual presence of Christ in the bread and wine, a matter not admitted by Cranmer. Cranmer’s view affirms a spiritual presence of Christ in the receiver alone in the ministration of the sacrament and denies any presence of Christ, either spiritually or corporally, in the elements. Cranmer’s argument excludes a fleshy presence in the elements (as does Cyril), as well as excluding a spiritual and corporal presence in the elements. Cyril speaks of a transformation of the elements in a way where ‘the life-giving efficacy of the Eucharist lies in the mystery of the union of the two natures [of Christ].’Footnote 56 For Cyril, the human and divine are mingled in both the incarnation and in the Eucharist. Cranmer’s analysis does not accept this mingling in the Eucharist and so it is difficult to defend an argument, as Null does, that Cyril’s eucharistic theology supports Cranmer’s Reformed eucharistic theology.
Ezra Gebremedhin confirms Cyril’s view and comments that ‘Cyril feels that one cannot separate the divinity and the flesh of Christ in the Eucharist. It is the union of the divinity with the flesh which is decisive for the vivifying virtue of the elements. This fact of union must find its place in the understanding of what occurs in the eating of the consecrated bread and the drinking of the consecrated wine.’Footnote 57 Talk of the Eucharist and the eucharistic elements is predicated on the centrality of the incarnation to Cyril’s thinking where there is ‘the inseparability of the divine and human natures’ and where ‘for Cyril Christ is One precisely because divine and human, Spirit and flesh are united in Him inseparably and harmoniously, without confusion or change. In the same way, reference to Christ’s presence and mode of operation in the Eucharist is to be conceived of as something comprehensive of both pneumatics and somatic modes of operation of Christ in the Eucharist.’Footnote 58 The human and the divine natures of Christ are mingled for Cyril in both the incarnation and the Eucharist in such a way that the mingling of the divinity and the flesh makes the elements life-giving, but the elements do not become literal flesh and blood.
While it may be possible for theological reflection to see the soteriological and sacramental as two distinct theological domains, and so no contradiction in ascribing both the human and divine to one and not the other, as Cranmer and presumably Null accept, this is not Cyril’s view in relation to the Eucharist. Cyril confirms this in ‘De Adoratione in Spiritu et Veritate’, where he says: ‘We live in the time of the Holy Table, i.e. the mystical Table of Christ, whereon we eat the life-giving Bread from Heaven.’Footnote 59
Cyril’s Use of ‘Corporeal’ Presence in the Eucharist
It is important to discuss the way that Cyril uses the word ‘corporeal’ in relation to any presence in the Eucharist. The pneumatic and somatic modes are implied in Cyril’s Commentary on the Gospel According to S. Luke, where in reference to Luke 22:19ff, as quoted above, he speaks of both Christ dwelling spiritually in the faithful through the Eucharist by the Holy Spirit but also speaks of a somatic or bodily participation of Christ in the Eucharist in the bread and wine. This suggests that the somatic or bodily mode of presence is not in opposition to the pneumatic or spiritual mode of presence, but rather that both are essential. Cyril makes this clear in the Commentary on the Gospel According to S. John where he also says:
Is it not that it may make Christ to dwell in us corporeally also by participation and communion in His Holy Flesh? … How are they shown to be embodied? Because, being admitted to share the Holy Eucharist, they become one body with Him. [Quoting John 6:56] For here it is especially to be observed that Christ saith that He shall be in us, not by a certain relation only, as entertained through the affections, but also by a natural participation. … So through the participation of the Body of Christ and of His precious blood, He in us, and we again in Him, are co-united.Footnote 60
For Cyril, there is a natural participation of Christ in the Eucharist, not merely a participation by ‘affections’, thus suggesting the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and in the natural elements of bread and wine. It is telling to note that Null comments in his defence of Cranmer that ‘The archbishop’s patristic studies in Cyril of Alexandria only reinforced his appreciation for the role of the affections in the Christian life.’Footnote 61 In fact Cyril denies above that Christ can be with us ‘through the affections’ alone, but by participation, and went on to state that Christ was with us also ‘by a natural participation’, that is, bodily and in the sacramental gifts and which he qualifies by the word corporeally (σωματιῶς). The appropriation of Cyril’s teaching by Cranmer and approved by Null, to fulfil a Reformed agenda where the affections are privileged, does not do justice to the eucharistic theology expressed by Cyril.
Cyril also, referring to people as the branches and Christ the vine, says: ‘We the branches, inasmuch as we partake in a fellowship with Him that is not merely spiritual but also corporeal,’Footnote 62 whereby Cyril can speak of corporeal as ‘conferring His life on the branches,’Footnote 63 in a way that is real. Cyril’s use of the word ‘corporeal’ needs some careful treatment. In view of what he says in other places,Footnote 64 this does not mean the presence of the literal flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist as real meat and blood on an altar as materials, even though the mingling of the divine and the flesh of Christ is real and actual, and so Cyril speaks in his Commentary on the Gospel According to S. John, of participation instead (‘we partake in a fellowship with Him that is not merely spiritual but also corporeal’), in the sense that the power of Christ is in the elements, such that they are nonetheless transformed into and convey the efficacy of Christ’s live-giving flesh. Cyril’s use of ‘corporeally’ suggests a natural participation of Christ’s flesh and divinity in the elements which confers life on those who receive them.
Cranmer’s Use of Cyril on the Eucharist
Cranmer’s appropriation of Cyril’s writing on the Eucharist led him to favour the idea of spiritual eating, which for Cranmer meant believing or sharing faith. Richardson argued that such spiritual feeding ‘is not participating in the substance of the body of Christ, whether this be mediated through the elements or through the ministration.’Footnote 65 Cranmer had himself suggested that ‘Christ declared that eating of him signified believing,’Footnote 66 which in turn led Cranmer to say that ‘the eating must be meant with the mind, not the mouth, that is to say, by chewing and digesting in our minds,’Footnote 67 such that any eating and drinking of Christ is ‘by a lively faith in heart and mind to chew and digest a thing, being absent.’Footnote 68 For Richardson all this is problematic since any talk of spiritual eating is ‘an unresolved conflict between Nominalist and Realist notions,’ with the result that while Cranmer attacks transubstantiation on nominalist principles, he does not extend those principles to the incarnation or right believing. This leads Richardson to conclude that ‘to speak of the body of Christ as only in heaven, and to give this as the leading reason why it cannot be present in the elements, is inconsistent with a doctrine which speaks of us as being ingrafted into the body, partaking of its immortal nature.’Footnote 69 This inconsistency Richardson argues, is present in Cranmer himself, since he declared that people are ‘knit and unified spiritually to Christ’s flesh and blood, and to his divinity also, that they be fed with them unto everlasting life,’Footnote 70 and that receiving ‘Christ himself, whole body and soul, manhood and Godhead, unto everlasting life,’Footnote 71 suggests we have him in us ‘substantially, pithily and effectively.’Footnote 72 The contradiction remains in that Cranmer’s affirmation of a substantial and effective participation relates only to the incarnation and not the Eucharist. Cyril does not make this distinction as has been discussed above and instead speaks of a unity of the human and the divine for both the incarnation and the Eucharist.
Conclusion
Cranmer has appropriated Cyril in a way that is selective and attuned to a particular Reformation agenda where he seeks to deny any realist identity between the signs of the Eucharist and what they signify, and which seeks to exclude any corporal or spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist. As such Cranmer does not adequately reflect the totality of Cyril’s realist teaching which implies both a spiritual and corporal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Cranmer’s idea of a spiritual presence of Christ in the faithful in the Eucharist, which does not extend to the elements of bread and wine, may well be a Reformed agenda with its own credibility and authenticity, but it cannot be justified by an even-handed reading of Cyril on the Eucharist, based as it is on the mingling of the divine and the human in both the incarnation and the Eucharist.
In addition, Null’s suggestion that scholars such as Richardson, Jeanes and Douglas have failed to appreciate the nature of Cranmer’s appropriation of Cyril cannot be sustained on a comparison between the eucharistic theologies of Cyril and Cranmer. The idea that Cranmer’s doctrine of the Eucharist was justified from Cyril’s eucharistic theology, as both Cranmer and Null argue, and that it is in some sense bequeathed to Anglican eucharistic theology, is not viable.
