Sunday, June 11, 2006

Jeremy Taylor's Doctrine of Eucharistic Presence


I just came across this very insightful paper on Jeremy Taylor's doctrine of Eucharistic Presence, which argues for a continuity of Anglican thought from Cranmer and Hooker thru Andrewes and Taylor. I'd love to hear some feedback. Enjoy!

http://www.kerygma.org/lee/papers/Taylor.pdf

4 comments:

Steve Blakemore said...

Dan,

Thanks for the link. It helped me think about a couple of things regarding Wesley's views. The concept in Anglicanism of the Spiritual presence was certainly an underpinning of the way that Wesley view the real presence. He argued for the real presence as differentiated from the "physical presence" as follows.

IN the Ascension the humanity of Jesus is united to the Godhead. Hence, the human virtue of Christ's life is united to the Holy Spirit, without being confused. The oneness of the Triune God demanded this thought, he believed. Further, he claimed, therefore, that the Holy Spirit's presence at the liturgy and in or with the Eucharist's bread and wine meant that the power and vitality and virtue of Christ's human life could be communicated to us via the Eucharist. Christ was made to be spiritually and really present. But what was unnecessary was the physical change.

I shall have my Methodist students read the article you posted to so that they can understand the tradition that gave birth to Methodism and which most Methodists have abandoned in favor of memorialism. More's the pity for my tribe as a result.

Dan Dunlap said...

Thanks Pontificator! And congratulations on the three blog awards. They are rightly deserved!

Dan

Anonymous said...

I feel like I have a nice Anglican library now being that I own a complete copy of his works! I like a lot of what he said and not much of it was new to my thinking. Though Andrewes does tend to a more vocal position on eucharistic sacrifice and its propitiatory nature. I'll have to read Ponti's blog article later; it's 12.05 am and 5.30 is just around the corner!

Anonymous said...

This paper provided me with a couple of terrific quotes for a writing project I was working on last year. ( Unless I'm greatly mistaken, Lee Nelson is now a priest serving in the Diocese of Ft. Worth, under Jack Iker ).

Overall ( now that's a pretty decent joke! ), it succeeds handsomely in demonstrating the conceptual overlap between Cranmer and younger Anglican divines, with greater theological acumen.

-Mark