Welcome
Welcome to this site. It is called ‘Anglican Eucharistic Theology’ because that is what it tries to explore. The site provides access to some of the experience or phenomena of the Anglican Eucharistic Tradition through the presentation of case studies.
The Case Studies can be accessed by clicking on the hyperlinks below which will take you directly to the chosen case study.
Section 1: The Period of the Reformation - up until 1662
1.2 The Book of Common Prayer, 1549 and 1552
1.34 Scottish Prayer Book of 1637
1.38 The Articles Concerning the Eucharist
1.39 The 1559 Book of Common Prayer
1.40 The 1662 Book of Common Prayer
1.41 Liturgies other than the Book of Common Prayer
Section 2: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
2.1 A Week’s Preparation Towards the Worthy Receiving of the Lord’s Supper
2.17 The Scottish Liturgy of 1764
2.19 The New Week’s Preparation for a Worthy Receiving of the Lord’s Supper
2.20 The Whole Duty of the Communicant
2.26 Catechism of the 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension
Section 3: The Nineteenth Century
3.1 William James Early Bennett
3.15 Richard Frederick Littledale
3.16 Frederick Denison Maurice
3.18 Memorial to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1867
3.30 The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist
Section 4: The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
4.2 Conference Held at Fulham Palace, October, 1900
4.4 Doctrine in the Church of England, 1938
4.8 William Henry Griffith Thomas
4.13 William Charles Edward Newbolt
4.22 Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC)
4.23 David Brown and Ann Loades
4.32 International Anglican Liturgical Consultation (IALC)
4.41 Catherine Pickstock and John Milbank
4.43 Donald William Bradley Robinson
4.44 John Arthur Thomas Robinson
4.49 The Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia
4.51 Thinking About the Eucharist –
Papers by Members of the Church of England Doctrine Commission, 1972
4.54 Anglican Eucharistic Liturgies of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
A bibliography citing the references for the cases studies and other references related to Anglican eucharistic theology can be accessed by clicking here.
The material placed here was generated as part of a PhD thesis (click here to access the thesis) I completed between 2001 and 2006. The Case Studies (essentially working documents) were not included in the thesis but were presented on a CD for reference purposes for use by the examiners. In that thesis I examined the diversity of Anglican eucharistic theology, extracting the essences or themes from the Case Studies and making recommendations for theological education. I drew heavily on the insights of contemporary philosophy as well.
I used a phenomenological approach to examine the Anglican eucharistic tradition from the Reformation to the present and produced a large amount of case study material, including case studies on the two Archbishops of Canterbury whose pictures appear above. I intend to share this case material on the net since I believe this could assist a dialogue process among members of the Anglican Communion.
I argued in the thesis that the way forward for Anglican theological education is a dialogue approach (based on the theory of communicative action as set out by the contemporary German philosopher Jurgen Habermas). I have also argued that often Anglican eucharistic theology is too closely tied to the particular technical and hermeneutic interests of the various church parties within the Anglican tradition (e.g. Anglican Evangelicals or Anglican Catholics) and that it is these narrow interests that have sometimes limited critical interest in theological education and in the Anglican eucharistic tradition.
The major conclusion of the thesis on the basis of the case study work is that the Anglican eucharistic tradition is multiform - that it is not found in one uniform lifeworld or expression. I also concluded that the multiformity of the Anglican eucharistic tradition centres around the philosophical assumptions of realism and nominalism to the moderate degree. The work of several contemporary philosophers has been used to assist in the critical discussion of these philosophical assumptions and their application to the Anglican eucharistic tradition. Significant use of the work of David Armstrong (formerly Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia) is made in developing a model of eucharistic theology based on the distinction between realism and nominalism to the moderate and immoderate degrees. Information regarding these philosophical issues can be accessed by clicking on the link ‘Philosophy Pages’ in the navigation bar above.
It is my belief that dialogue among the participants of the Anglican tradition regarding eucharistic theology leads to an ideal communicative community based on the intersubjectivity of what Habermas (1984 and 1989) calls communicative action. Such a dialogue approach has the potential to emancipate the Anglican eucharistic tradition from the narrow confines of technical and hermeneutic interests and to engage the tradition in a more critical reflection.
I hope this material will be of use to a wide audience and would be happy to enter into dialogue with anyone who has something to say about Anglican eucharistic theology or this site. You can contact me using the link below.
Thank you for visiting the site.
Brian Douglas
Two Archbishops of Canterbury
The Reformation
Archbishop of Canterbury
Thomas Cranmer, 1489-1556
and
The present
Archbishop of Canterbury,
Rowan Williams, born 1950
