This Anglican sacramental teaching is not a Reformation idea. Archbishop Cranmer reviewed comprehensively the ancient church doctors who held that, Sacramentum est sacrae rei signum - "a sacrament is the sign of a holy thing."

By definition, a sign is not the thing which it signifies. The spiritual feeding signified is infinitely greater than its earthly sign. Anglicans have long held this venerable teaching, made familiar in the Catechism: a sacrament is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."

The Apostle teaches that to use this outward sign without the inward and spiritual feeding upon Christ - that is, without "feeding on him in one's heart by faith" (BCP 1928, p, 82; BCP 1662, p. 256) - condemns the communicant (I Cor. 11:27, 29). It makes a lie of the sacramental sign.

The Rev. John Keble, dean of the Tractarians and father of the Oxford Movement, preached the Anglican and biblical doctrine. He taught expressly and consistently that the sacrament is a sign, and that Christ is received in the sacrament not physically but spiritually, and therefore only by the faithful.

Keble preached thus on the grace received through Holy Communion: "It came not of the outward sign but of the thing signified, i.e., Christ communicating Himself through that outward sign." Sermon for the 6th Sunday After Trinity, "This Life, God's School of Love," from Keble's Sermons for the Christian Year (London: Walter Smith, 1885).

This doctrine, stated in the 39 Articles and the Anglican Catechism, Keble attributes directly to Jesus Christ: "If you ask Him, 'What bread?' He will answer 'My own blessed Body, spiritually, but most really and truly received, by faith, in the Holy Communion.'" Keble's Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent (London: Smith, 1884). A clearer summary of Anglican doctrine of the Supper is hard to find. Again, for the 7th Sunday After Trinity, Keble quotes the English Catechism: "What that bread is, we know: it is 'the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ, verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.'"

These ways of the Spirit defy the crude limitations of physical and mechanistic thinking. God meets us in the physical world. The mortal mind would hold Him there. But He draws the eye of faith upward, away from the outward sign toward what it signifies - Himself, where alone true joys are to be found. He tells us in this context that "the flesh" - the outward sign, in itself - "profiteth nothing" (St. John 6:63).

Queen Elizabeth, Cranmer's goddaughter, held the same as Cranmer and Richard Hooker+: in the rime attributed to her the Communion feast is real, on the authority that Christ so promised - not because the outward sign of bread was physically converted into the greater Fact which it was given to signify.

God rewards faith in Himself, not faith in an object or a physical process. And He withholds the Gift where that faith is absent. At Nazareth He "could not" do any mighty miracle because of their unbelief in Him (St. Mark 6:5, 6; St. Matt. 13:58). A great mystery lies in this reported fact - akin to St. Augustine's teaching that the faithless do not receive the Lord's body in the sacrament. History records real tragedies resulting from blindness to these truths. In such events, the earthly mind draws the eye of faith downward, away from the spiritual Gift, and focuses on the outward object that should signify the Gift:

The Hebrews in I Samuel 4 were losing a battle. They fetched the Ark of the Covenant to the battlefield so that "it may save us," they said. They relied on an object as if it had inherent power, rather than relying on what that object was ordained to signify, namely, God's promise to commune with them at the Ark (Ex. 25:22). This made a lie of the outward sign. They possessed it, but they were void of the Truth which it signified. Before this, they had lost 4,000 men. When they committed that error, they lost another 30,000 men and the enemy captured the Ark. It was right to revere the Ark. But the Hebrews deprived themselves of spiritual strength when they sought it in the outward sign, rather than in God's promise of communion which the Ark should have signified.

The well-intentioned Crusaders fell into the same error. To ensure victory, they carried the True Cross of Christ into battle. It strengthened their courage, and they succeeded - for a time - until Saladin pressed them hard (at Hattin, 1187 A.D.). They rallied to the True Cross, but it failed to "work". They were surrounded, suffered a great slaughter, and the infidel captured the True Cross. Their eye of faith - their reliance - was drawn downward, away from God's saving work on the Cross and the inward and spiritual grace of communion with Him, toward the outward object that evidenced these great spiritual facts. The fateful mistake of thinking that the Cross contained within itself the saving grace which it signifies - thus making it a kind of talisman with inherent power to benefit them - doomed the entire enterprise which they built upon that error.

In accord with Archbishop Cranmer's godly admonitions, while we are engaged in using all the means Christ has ordained for us to come to Him and to receive Him, pray God to keep our eyes and our reliance fixed on Him alone. He Himself is the unspeakable Gift.

---Stephen Cooper is a member of The Church of the Redeemer, Anglican, Fairbanks, Alaska, a Continuing Anglican parish founded in 1980. He is a layman and an attorney, federal prosecutor and former state District Attorney. He was National Chancellor of the American Episcopal Church (under Archbishop Anthony Clavier) from 1987-1988 and Chancellor of the Diocese of the West (AEC and ACA) 1986-1995 and Provincial Chancellor, Province of the West, ACA 1993-1996. He is author of "Reclaiming Our Heritage -- A Call to Return to the Original Mission of the Continuing Church," and of the series "Continuing What? - The English Reformation: Key to the Continuing Church" recently appearing on VOL.