Epiclesis! Epiclesis!
Is the “epiclesis” a big deal? The Church of England forefathers thought so and they were willing to die for their views. Even though we live in an age when theology doesn’t seem to matter as much, it still behooves us to know the foundations of our faith. What is the epiclesis? It’s the prayer that some Anglican ministers pray in Holy Communion asking (invoking) the Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify the bread and wine to be for us the body and blood of our Lord: “So now, O merciful Father, in your great goodness, we ask you to bless and sanctify, with your Word and Holy Spirit these gifts of bread and wine… that we may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.”
The pre-Reformation churches in the East and West all marked the “moment of change,” the “moment of consecration” when ordinary bread and wine were changed by the words and actions of a priest into the actual, corporeal body and blood of Christ. In the Western church it was the “words of institution,” and in the Eastern church is was the epiclesis. So when the priest lifted up the host after the Great Thanksgiving prayer (the Elevation), he was lifting up Jesus for everyone to see and adore. The problem is that Protestants in general and Anglicans in particular do not hold to this (ex opere operato) theory that Jesus is always and automatically communicated in the sacrament completely independent of faith, even to the mouse beneath the communion table nibbling on the crumbs.
The driving doctrine of the 16th century Reformation was justification by faith, and evangelicals (later called Protestants) were then set to the task of determining how this central teaching of the Old and New Testaments was to be worked out in the church’s understanding of the sacraments. During the 1530s Archbishop Thomas Cranmer came to embrace justification by faith, and following this, as Ashley Null said, “the question that would occupy Cranmer for the remainder of his life was how exactly the sacraments of the church fit into this new narrative.” Dom Gregory Dix famously said of Cranmer’s liturgy that it is “the only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to the doctrine of ‘justification by faith alone’.”
Cranmer included an epiclesis in his first Book of Common Prayer (1549), but it was a mistake that he soon regretted and changed. The first Prayer Book, by every estimation, was an attempt to gradually wean people from Medieval Catholicism to a revolutionary new way of living and worshipping that is biblically faithful, pastorally generous, and liturgically accessible and beautiful. But as soon as it hit the newsstands, feedback began to pour in that this first edition was not Protestant enough. Cranmer agreed. It was Martin Bucer who pointed out that there are no instances in the Bible of the Spirit being invoked on inanimate objects: only upon people. “The BCP of 1549 was an interim solution which immediately caused Cranmer to feel obligated in discussions with Martyr, Bucer, Hooper, and others like John Laski and Pollanus to search for a fruitful and uncompromising Biblical result” (Samuel Leuenberger). The result he looked for was the revision in 1552: Archbishop Cranmer’s “immortal bequest.” The 1552 Book of Common Prayer discarded the epiclesis altogether and changed everything else that distracted from the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The 1552 Prayer Book has come down the centuries in its 1662 iteration as the standard Anglican Prayer Book for theology and worship - without an epiclesis.
So how is it that the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), that receives the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as its standard for doctrine, discipline, and worship, has an epiclesis plain-as-day - the same Medieval prayer and understandings that the English reformers so opposed? It goes back to King Charles I, Archbishop William Laud, and Samuel Seabury. The King and his archbishop wanted Scotland to have Anglican forms of worship so they corralled the Scottish bishops and helped them write the Book of Common Prayer for Scotland (1637). The Scottish people hated it and it was never adopted - that is, not until after the Glorious Revolution (1688), after Charles was dethroned and beheaded. At that time, the Church of Scotland having turned decidedly Presbyterian, Anglicans in Scotland formed the Scottish Episcopal Church that picked up and began using the 1637 Prayer Book that was filled with high church leanings of King Charles and William Laud (including an epiclesis in the Holy Communion prayer). Even though Anglicans used the 1662 Church of England Prayer Book for roughly 200 years in America before there were indigenous bishops, when Samuel Seabury went to Scotland to be consecrated the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he conceded to the Scottish bishops that he would try hard to incorporate the Scottish Episcopal rite of 1637 into the American liturgy. When it came time for America’s first Prayer Book (1789) Bishop Seabury remembered his promises and, with some doing, persuaded the new franchise of the Church of England to go high church and include the epiclesis. The epiclesis, although not strictly-speaking “Anglican,” has been in every American Prayer Book revision since 1789. When it was announced that the ACNA was adopting their own Prayer Book based on the 1662 Book, I was pleased to see some positive changes towards restoring our Anglican heritage, but then disappointed to see the epiclesis still there. Oh well, that just means that I need to do the mental gymnastics when we arrive at that point in the service to remind myself that this doesn’t mark a “moment of change,” not historically. And that the real presence of Christ is even greater than that: not located in the bread and wine, but in the hearts of those who receive the grace of the sacrament by faith.
“They [Roman Catholics] say, that Christ is received in the mouth and entereth in with the bread and wine: we say, that he is received in the heart, and entereth in by faith. ”
“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. ”
“The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament…only in the very heart and soul of him which receiveth. ”
“What overwhelmed Cranmer was God’s love for him in Christ, and once that love seized him, the Archbishop became fiercely committed to the clear proclamation of that good news. In other words, Cranmer’s vision for liturgical renewal was intensely fixated on the gospel. His evangelical convictions drove his liturgical decisions.”