The Michael Ramsey Lecture

The Michael Ramsey Lecture

Little St Mary’s, Cambridge

Wednesday 7th November 2001

Michael Ramsey on the Eucharist

1 Introduction

There is little doubt that for Michael Ramsey, the eucharist was central to his life. He valued a daily celebration wherever he lived; and while he regularly presided at grand scale occasions that are the regular diet of episcopal ministry, he was probably just as at home (if not more so) in the quiet of a chapel or a retreat centre. Yet apart from Louis Weil’s essay on the place of Liturgy in Ramsey’s thought in the collection edited by Robin Gill and Lorna Kendall, no extended exposition and appraisal of Ramsey on the eucharist has so far appeared. In one sense, that is hardly a surprise, for there are so many other facets to Ramsey’s contribution, ecclesiological, ecumenical, devotional, and social. In any case, Ramsey did not set out to be a ‘theologian of the eucharist’ by writing in a major way on the subject, like, for example, Charles Gore, Dom Gregory Dix or E.L.Mascall. But the eucharist seeps through so much of what Ramsey wrote, taught and preached. Some kind of study is yet to be done. Awaiting that more significant work, I would like to look at some of Michael Ramsey’s writings with a view to building up some sort of picture of how his thought coheres, what were the main influences, and what kind of lasting contribution (if any) he has made to the way we view the eucharist today. I propose to do this under four main headings: eucharistic theology; his critique of Charles Gore; eucharistic practice; and devotion. Needless to say, with someone like Ramsey, the four are never entirely distinct, but we have to start somewhere.

2 Doctrine.

In 1936, Ramsey had been Sub-Warden at Lincoln Theological College for six years when he published his first book, The Gospel and the Catholic Church. Intended to expound the nature of the Church ‘as a part of the Gospel of Christ crucified’, it is the statement of Ramsey’s whole approach to theology, and it altered little over the ensuing years. Among those whom he thanks in the preface, the final name singled out for particular gratitude is Father Gabriel Hebert, S.S.M., of Kelham. Hebert's highly influential Liturgy and Society had appeared the previous year. Lincoln and Kelham are not many miles from each other and it is clear that this theological friendship was of lasting importance.

Ramsey devoted a whole chapter to Liturgy, most of which is on the history and theology of the eucharist. Characteristically of the whole book, he begins with the New Testament, carefully distinguishing between the text and its use by the Church, in a style that might be called a ‘biblical catholicism’:

‘If the meaning of Christian prayer is...to be found not in the Lord’s Prayer alone, but in that Prayer as interpreted in the light of the whole of the New Testament, so also the meaning of the Christian Eucharist is to be found not in the last supper alone but in the last supper as interpreted by the whole of the ‘Yea’ and ‘Amen’ of worship in the New Testament.’

Ramsey looks at the New Testament narratives of the institution, noting their variants, and using them to link the eucharist with the meaning of the death of Christ and the new covenant as the formation of a new community - gospel and church. The interpretations given by Paul and John only serve to make these connections stronger:

‘They make explicit what is there from the beginning; for if the power of the Christ’s death creates the rite and is present in it, then there is in it also the whole New Testament revelation of Father, Son, and Spirit and of the Church which is His Body. And of the creation made by Him. Custom, interpretation, language varies. Sometimes the emphasis is upon the Eucharist and the Cross, sometimes upon the Eucharist and the Incarnation or the heavenly Priesthood; variety of language about the rite is no stranger than variety about Christ Himself. But underlying the language there is something greater than the language can express, and something which is creating language and thought and worship.’

It is at this stage that, having established his main points of reference, the eucharist as an activity of the Church in Christ and through Christ, Ramsey goes on to look at early liturgy and doctrine. He begins with the eucharistic prayer found in the early third century Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome, a document that had recently been identified by Eduard Schwartz (1910) and Dom Hugh Connolly (1916), and which has had a considerable influence on recent liturgical revision. Ramsey sees this prayer as a sample, no more, of what the early Church used, and he is aware of the variety in both East and West in subsequent centuries, a variety he has already shown himself ready to envisage in the New Testament itself. Secondly, Ramsey uses this text, and others, to highlight what he sees as the main features of the eucharist in those early centuries, and he does so using three favourite themes: mystery (which is not mentioned explicitly in Hippolytus, but which is a prominent feature of Eastern theological writing); and fellowship, and sacrifice (which are in Hippolytus). Mystery for Ramsey means ‘a presence of Jesus which faith may receive and which unfaith may reject’. (The reference to ‘unfaith’ may well be an echo of Ramsey’s distress at his brother Frank’s atheism, which left a strong imprint on him.) Fellowship is costly, and this brings Ramsey to quote Augustine, for ‘the Eucharistic Body and the Body the Church are utterly one’. Sacrifice, which he takes longer to expound (because of the difficulties and controversies surrounding it in Eucharistic discourse) is the way the death of Christ is linked to the eucharist: ‘God in Christ offers; the Church His Body beholds the offering in all its costliness, and is drawn into it.’

Ramsey is intent on viewing the eucharist through the eyes of the cross, and in this he was nuancing the teaching he had received from his Cambridge mentor, Edward Hoskyns, for whom the tragedy of the First World War spelt the end of old-style liberalistic idealism, with its basically optimistic view of the world; and through Hoskyns Ramsey imbibed something of the spirit of the teaching of Karl Barth, though Ramsey never follows Barth over eucharistic theology. Indeed, one has to add that overall, Ramsey's cross, however central, is the glorified cross of the Fourth Gospel rather than the crude instrument of crucifixion of the Synoptics, and it is truly costly - 'worship which lifts to heaven is mindful of duty upon earth.'

Significantly, Ramsey is influenced by two prominent Congregationalist theologians, H.T. Andrews and P.T. Forsyth. The former champions the eucharistic elements as vehicles and not emblems, and the latter holds the view that the local Church is a manifestation of the Universal Church; he likes to quote P.T. Forsyth on the cross, and he also pays attention to another Liberal Evangelical of the High Calvinist tradition, the Scots Presbyterian John McLeod Campbell. Ramsey's father was a Congregationalist layman; so this is neither a gesture nor a coincidence. Another significant influence comes in Ramsey's chapter on 'Developments in Catholicism', where he cites a number of writers from a different quarter altogether - the Continental Roman Catholic Liturgical Movement. Such figures as Karl Adam, Bernard Capelle, and Lambert Beauduin are all noted for their patristic emphasis on the broad themes of eucharistic participation, sacrifice, presence and celebration, as part of a wider ecclesiology. Ramsey also shows an interest in the growing importance of examining the Jewish origins of Christian worship. In this, the theological friendship with Hebert is clearly in the background. All in all Ramsey's perspective is what would nowadays be called liturgical theology, where doctrine arises from worship, and where liturgical and devotional prayers hold a special place in resonating and expanding that doctrine.

3 Ramsey’s critique of Charles Gore

We now leap from 1936 to the 1950's. As Bishop of Durham, Ramsey gave the Gore Lecture in 1955 on Charles Gore’s achievement as an Anglican theologian. Then three years later as Archbishop of York, he delivered the Hale Memorial Lectures at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, which were published the following year under the title, From Gore to Temple. Charles Gore had been a dominant influence on a whole generation of aspiring theologians, Ramsey included, and it was natural that he should examine his contribution, first of all in the Gore Lecture (which was by no means always specifically about Gore by this stage), and then in the context of the wider sweep of Anglican theology.

Both the Gore lecture and the Hale Memorial lectures deal with Gore’s classic study of the eucharist which appeared at the conclusion of his time as Canon of Westminster, in 1901, on the eve of his appointment as Bishop of Worcester. Entitled The Body of Christ, it came at the end of a particularly fruitful time in Gore’s writing and teaching career, and was spurred on by an ecumenical conference in Oxford in 1899 on priesthood and eucharist, and a smaller Anglican round-table conference at Fulham Palace in the following year. In the lecture, Ramsey refers to Nairne’s view that ‘Gore did afresh what Hooker had done for an earlier generation.’ Ramsey holds back from quite such a paean of praise, but he is nonetheless deeply impressed by Gore’s theological synthesis (Gore was arguably a more accomplished historical theologian than Ramsey), in all its vigour, striving to discern in the drift of history a coherent view of the eucharist which would at one and the same time be faithful to tradition and to the questions of any age, the Reformation and modern periods included. Inevitably, Gore is drawn to the two historic stumbling blocks, eucharistic sacrifice and eucharistic presence, and it is clear that Ramsey is more impressed by Gore’s achievement with regard to the former than the latter. First on sacrifice:

‘There is the doctrine that the offerings of bread and wine are accepted at the heavenly altar and united to Christ’s heavenly offering, and given back as Christ’s body and blood to be the food of the people. There is the doctrine that, since by consecration the bread and wine become the body and the blood of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ is present in our midst: and it is this which we present before the Father. The two doctrines, Gore suggests, may be complementary: but neither is complete without the corollary that sacrifice is perfected in communion. What Christ does for us, He does in us, making us to be of His very body.’

Then, the eucharistic presence:

‘As to the eucharistic gift, Gore expounds the doctrine of the objective Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, associated with the elements of bread and wine by consecration independently of the faith of the recipient. It is a spiritual presence, not in the sense of a contrast with what is material but in the sense that Spirit uses matter for its ends without being subject to its laws or its logic. Gore excluded extra-liturgical devotion in connection with the Reserved Sacrament, holding that the Real Presence is limited to the liturgy itself or to the subsequent use of the elements in communion.’

The nub of the problem for Ramsey is that he found devotion to the Sacrament outside the eucharist a part of his life, whether kneeling in prayer before an aumbry or a tabernacle, or at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. For Gore, the former might be possible, but the latter could not, hence his insistence that eucharistic sacrifice was consummated in receiving communion, drawing the faithful receiver into union with the heavenly offering of Christ. We can see a slightly different Ramsey at work from the all-embracing, ecumenical visionary of The Gospel and the Catholic Church, where due variety was to be expected, both in style and in detail. Here is a sharper Ramsey, not creating a consensus in the irenic spirit, but responding to a particular thinker, who seemed to be on the right lines with sacrifice, though flawed over presence; and in that connection, he cites Mascall’s critique, that Gore is ready to reject transubstantiation on the grounds of being tied up with an obsolete philosophical framework, whereas he is ready to apply it to ‘a Kantian idealism’, which cannot conceive of things existing apart from the mind of common reason.

In the Hale Memorial lectures, Ramsey reiterates much of what he says in the 1955 Gore lecture regarding the eucharistic sacrifice, but without going into his views about presence, perhaps for lack of space. However, he does make the important point that those who write about eucharistic sacrifice tend ultimately either to locate it in heaven, or to nail it firmly to the cross. It is a pity that Ramsey does not develop this line of thought further, for it is not altogether clear where, in Ramsey’s eyes, Gore belongs.

4 Eucharistic practice: Confirmation, and the Parish Communion.

Mention has already been made of the influences behind Ramsey’s treatment of the eucharist in The Gospel and the Catholic Church, where it is clear that he was much taken with a biblical approach to ecclesiology, the fulness of Catholic tradition, as well as the Liturgical Movement in the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. Part of the thrust of this Movement was about a genuine ‘retour aux sources’, a recovery of the place of the Eastern and Western Fathers in Christian thought and practice. This recovery, as we all know, was to lead to considerable changes in eucharistic liturgy. But it was about more than the eucharist - it concerned patterns of Christian Initiation. For Anglicans, this began to place a strong historical spotlight on the meaning of Confirmation.

In January 1946, Dom Gregory Dix was invited to give a lecture in Oxford, entitled ‘The Theology of Confirmation in relation to Baptism,’ in which he underlined the essential rite of baptism and confirmation in antiquity, and argued for the reintegration of the two parts. Ramsey, at the time Van Mildert Professor at Durham, reviewed the published lecture in Journal of Theological Studies, in which he makes it clear that, while Dix’s basic treatment of a single rite in antiquity was supported by much of the evidence, he could not share Dix’s negative view of the Reformation and he emphasises what he calls ‘conscious and intelligent faith,’ an ingredient in Christian initiation which he clearly regarded as integral. We can see here a traditional Anglican approach which his subsequent experience as a bishop did not alter. Indeed, during one of the Nashotah House teaching trips to the USA in retirement, Ramsey criticised the American Episcopal Church’s abandonment of episcopal confirmation, which so affected Louis Weil, his host, that the two had a private conversation in order to clear the air.