Francis J. Hall, DD on the Eucharist

Prydain ^ | 8/02/2005 | Will

[sionnsar]

We have been discussing Calvin's view of the Eucharist below [in previous posts to the Prydain blog --sionnsar], and I hope to post an addendum to that in the next day or two. But I thought I'd post an excerpt or two from Francis J. Hall's Dogmatic Theology, Volume IX, on the Real Presence. I found this striking when I first read it a number of years ago, because for one thing, I don't see much that I think Calvin would have disagreed with--and yet Francis Hall was what many would call an Anglo-Catholic. Indeed, his Dogmatic Theology is available from the Anglican Province of Christ the King at this link, and some consider the APCK to be quite Anglo-Catholic. But I honestly don't see much in the sections I'll post with which I think Calvin would disagree--particularly if we remember that Calvin actually was a signatory to the Augsburg Confession--a Lutheran confession! But here is the first excerpt, which are negative statements from Hall's Volume IX, pages 141-142:

11. The manner of the presence cannot be defined, although it can be described in the following relative and inadequate ways.
(a) Negatively speaking, it is not natural or physical, for in this mode the body of Christ is present in one place only, in Heaven. Accordingly, the presence is not properly speaking local, as if the Body of Christ moved through space in order to be present in the sacrament. It is indeed present on the altar, but this means simply that it is present in that which is on the altar, by virtue of the identification declared in our Lord's words. And all other phrases that connect the presence with either the locality or the movements of the sacrament must be taken in the same relative sense. The heavenly reality is present in a local sacrament, and in one that is carried about, but in the sense of the sacramental identification declared by Christ. The presence does not imply or involve any earthly localization, circumscription, or spatial movement of the body and blood of Christ.

(b) Negatively again, neither the presence or the identification by which its reality is determined involves any interchange of the properties and functions which naturally belong, on the one hand, to the bread and wine, and, on the other hand, to the body and blood of Christ. Just as the Word became flesh without either humanizing His Godhead or nullifying the properties of flesh, so the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood without ceasing to have the properties of bread and wine and without changing the properties of the body and blood of the Lord. Accordingly, while making due allowance for the license of rhetoric, we may not in sober strictness speak of the body of Christ being broken, divided, immolated, crushed with the teeth, and so on, although we may say these things of the sacrament; and we may not ascribe heavenly qualities to the bread and wine, considered as such, though they may be ascribed to the sacrament, considered with reference to what it has become by Christ's action.

Tomorrow I'll post the positive statements made by Dr. Hall--but as I said, I honestly don't see much in this with which Calvin would disagree, even though Dr. Hall was an Anglo-Catholic and Calvin was one of the magisterial Protestant Reformers. Could Dr. Hall's views be used to forge a common understanding for Anglicans on the Eucharist? Before we carry that any further, I should point out that Dr. Hall would disagree with Calvin on the sacrificial aspects of the Eucharist.