Recalling Bishop Hoadly & His Eucharistic Theology

Last updated on: November 1, 2011 at 3:02 pm by James Ford

Recalling Bishop Hoadly & His Eucharistic Theology 2011-11-01T15:02:59-07:00 James Ford

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According to Wikipedia, on this day “A sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.”

Seeing this sparked my heart.

As a Unitarian seminarian taking a class in Eucharistic theology with the great Anglican theologian Louis Weil, I despaired until I discovered the good bishop.

Now, the bishop was an unabashed careerist and unashamed Erastian. The queen once observed the bishop would make a wonderful Archbishop of Cantebury, if only he were a Christian. Probably not a good man…

But he also had a powerful Eucharistic theology, declaring it a memorial service and extolling the power of memory. It worked for me & I followed where he led in a way that allowed me to honor the tradition that informed the class while also finding value in the Christian communion service.

An unsigned article at the Anglican Eucharistic Theology site says of the bishop and his understanding of the Eucharist:

“Benjamin Hoadly, a Latitudinarian, published a work anonymously in 1735 entitled A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Hoadly’s work was a response to what was seen as the exaggerated stress of many of the high church devotional manuals of the period, on the need for preparation and devotion before communion (Dugmore, 1942: 122). These manuals included Horneck’s The Crucified Jesus, The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice (see Case Stidy 1.27), and the Week’s Preparation (see Case Study 2.1) (Stone, 1909: II, 495). Hoadly distanced himself in his work however, from any notion of realism, arguing that an act done in remembrance of Christ required that Christ be bodily absent and that a memorial could not be a sacrifice. He stated this as follows:

“The very Essence of this Institution being Remembrance of a past Transaction, and this Remembrance necessarily excluding the Corporal presence of what is remember’d, it follows that, as the only Sacrifice and the only Sacrificer in the Christian Dispensation are remember’d, and therefore not present in the Lord’s Supper, so the only Christian Altar (the Cross upon which Christ suffer’d) being also by consequence to be remember’d, it cannot be present in this Rite, because that presence would destroy the very Notion of Remembrance.” (Hoadly, 1735: 54).

“Hoadly is here separating sign and signified and thereby affirming a nominalist conception of the Eucharist. Hoadly’s emphasis on a ‘past transaction’ separates the action of the Eucharist from the historic presence and sacrifice of Christ. Christ can only be remembered and not be present in the Eucharist in any realist way, since ‘presence’ for Hoadly has nothing to do with ‘remembrance’. For Hoadly the Eucharist was a “meeting together for religious worship and eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Christ’s body and blood” (Dugmore, 1942: 159). The status of the bread and wine therefore is that they are not to be taken “as Things in themselves, in Remembrance of which They were ordained to be received” (Hoadly, 1735: 29) but “considered and taken as Memorials of the Body and Blood of Christ our Master” such that they “lead Us, by their peculiar Tendency, to all such Thoughts and Practices, as are indeed the Improvement and Health of our Souls” (Hoadly, 1735: 162). The Eucharist was therefore able, through its celebration, to lead the people in the growth of faith, but it was no more than this, since “The whole Tenor and Form of this Institution, is in the Figurative way of speaking” (Hoadly, 1735: 17). The presence of Christ with people therefore was not intrinsic to the Eucharist, but rather to the activity of assembling in his name as his followers and disciples. Hoadly explains this by saying:

“Christians, meeting together for religious worship, and eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Christ’s body and blood, and in honour of Him, do hereby publicly acknowledge Him to be their Master, and themselves to be His disciples; and by doing this in an assembly own themselves, with all other Christians, to be one body or society under Him the Head; and consequently profess themselves to be under His government and influence, to have communion or fellowship with Him as Head, and with all their brethren as fellow-members of that same body of which He is the Head.” (Hoadly, 1735: 58).

“In a fuller passage Hoadly discusses what happens in the Eucharist. He says:

“As bread and wine, taken at an ordinary meal, are the food of our bodies, so bread and wine, taken in a serious and religious remembrance of Christ as our Master, may (in a figurative, spiritual, or religious sense) be styled the food of our souls, or the nourishment of us considered as Christians; as the receiving them duly implies in it our believing and receiving the whole doctrine of Christ, which is the food of the Christian life; and leads our thoughts to all such obligations and engagements on our part, and all such promises on God’s part, as are most useful and sufficient for improvement in all that is worthy of a Christian. And Almighty God on His part requiring and accepting our due performance of this part of our duty, does by this assure us who come to profess ourselves the disciples of Christ that we are in His favour. Or, in other words, the Lord’s Supper, being instituted as the memorial of His goodness towards us in Christ Jesus, may justly be looked upon as a token and pledge to assure us of what it calls to our remembrance, namely, that God is ready to pardon and bless us upon the terms proposed by His Son; and consequently that we are received by Him as the disciples of Christ, members of His body the Church, and heirs of happiness promised to Christians, if we be not wanting to ourselves in other parts of our duty.” (Hoadly, 1735: 130-131).

“Stone argues that Hoadly’s theology of the Eucharist was Zwinglian, in that Christ’s words at the institution were seen to be purely figurative, where Christ was bodily absent and that the memorial was not a sacrifice (Stone, 1909: II, 489). By this analysis Hoadly’s theology of the Eucharist is nominalist, with a separation of sign and signified. It seems that Hoadly’s theology of the Eucharist accords in general terms with Stone’s analysis. The Eucharist for Hoadly is a meeting only, which like other religious meetings, puts people in mind of the sacrifice of Christ, which is a past and completed event, in no way present in any realist sense in the Eucharist. The words ‘figurative’ and ‘spiritual’ as Hoadly applies them to the Eucharist have no realist connotations, and suggest only a bringing to mind of the past and completed event of the cross, whereby those who receive become more fully aware of what Christ’s death on the cross means. It is concluded therefore that Hoadly presents a nominalist conception of the Eucharist, with sign and signified seen as self-enclosed and separated.”

Works for me…

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