Ratramnus the Ancient Anglican

An attestation to the Anglican view of the Eucharist

My friend Gavin Ortlund recently put out a really good video arguing for the need for evangelicals to recover their own theological heritage. On the whole, it was an excellent appeal to take history seriously; most contemporary evangelicals don’t even know historic evangelical sacramental views.

However, he made an off-hand comment about something like the Zwinglian view being found in Ratramnus (though he agrees the predominant view in church history of the Eucharist is a Real Presence view of some form or another). In this article, I want to show that, actually, Ratramnus was not Zwinglian.

We can define the Zwinglian view as such: Christ, though he communes with his people in some sort through the Lord’s Supper, does not give his true body and blood. The Eucharist is taken to remember the events of Christ’s passion, and commune with Jesus and each other by remembering the passion.

I will argue that Ratramnus was basically a proto-Anglican (hehe) who believed that the substance of our Lord’s body and blood was given through bread and wine. And so while consecrated bread and wine remain truly bread and wine, they are yet changed so as to be “effectual signs” that actually give, to the believer, the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Ratramnus’s Views

Ratramnus, in treating the question for the Frankish King, states the question as such:

“Your excellent Majesty inquires whether the Body and Blood of Christ, which in the Church is taken by the mouth of the faithful, be made so in a mystery or in truth; that is, whether it contains any hidden thing, which lies open to the eye of faith alone; or whether without the veil of any mystery, the sight gazes on that Body outwardly, which the eye of the soul inwardly beholds, so that the whole matter stands forth open and manifest. And, whether it be the very same Body which was born of Mary, suffered, died, and was buried, which rose again, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father.”[1]

So in defining whether the body and blood is present “in truth”, he doesn’t mean “in any sense” (as we will see). The question is whether that which the physical eye beholds is itself the very same body of Christ, or whether the body is present to the eye of faith alone. This reading is confirmed in the next section:

“VII. Figure is a certain outshadowing, which exhibiteth what it meaneth under some sort of veil; for instance, when we would speak of the Word, we say Bread; as in the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that God would give us our daily Bread. Or as Christ in the Gospel saith, “I am the living Bread, which came down from heaven.” Or when He calleth Himself a Vine, and His disciples the Branches; saying, “I am the True Vine, and ye are the Branches.” All these passages express one thing, and hint at another.

VIII. But Truth is the shewing forth of a plain matter, veiled under no shadowy images, but conveyed to us in clear, open, and (to speak more plainly yet) natural significations; as when we say that Christ was born of the Virgin, suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried. Nothing is here shadowed forth under the veil of figure, but the truth of the matter is exhibited in the natural signification of the words; nor must aught else be understood than is expressed. But in the former instances it is not so. For substantially Christ is not Bread, nor is Christ a Vine, nor are the Apostles Branches. So that in this case a Figure is presented in the expression, but in the former Truth, that is, the naked and open signification.”[2]

For Ratramnus, while the bread and wine is outwardly bread and wine, “inwardly” it is made into the body and blood of Christ.[3] He explicitly denies that there is a change of the nature of bread and wine.[4] Nevertheless, he unequivocally declares that the elements have been changed.[5] What is the nature of that change? He writes,

“XVI. Yet because they do confess that they are the Body and Blood of Christ, and that they could not be so, but by a change for the better; and since this change is not corporally but spiritually wrought, it followeth, that we must acknowledge it to be done in a figure, since under the veil of corporeal bread and corporeal wine, the spiritual Body and the spiritual Blood of Christ do exist. Not that two things co-exist diverse between themselves, namely body and spirit, but one and the same thing hath in one respect the nature of bread and wine, in another is the Body and Blood of Christ. As far as they are corporally handled, they are in their nature, corporeal creatures, but in their power, and as they are spiritually made, they are the mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ.”[6]

And then he, like so many Anglican divines later in the Reformation, draws an analogy from the change of the waters in Baptism.[7] Indeed, Ratramnus positively quotes Augustine’s view that the body and blood are eaten in a mystery, yet truly, as his own.[8] If he held something like the Zwinglian view, it would make no sense to affirm a clear change in the elements which can only be wrought by the power of God:

“XLIII. Whence they are called the Body and Blood of Christ, because they are received not as what they outwardly appear, but as they are made inwardly by the operation of the Spirit of God. And as through this invisible power they have a nature far different from that which outwardly appeareth, he maketh a distinction, saying, that bread and wine are for this cause compared to the Lord’s Body and Blood; because as the visible substance of bread and wine doth nourish and make cheerful the outward man, so the Word of God, which is the living Bread, doth refresh the souls of the faithful by the participation of Himself.

XLIV. Now in saying this, he most plainly confesseth, that in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, whatever is outwardly received, is fitted for the refreshing of the body. But the Word of God, which is the invisible Bread, and existeth invisibly in that Sacrament, doth, by the participation of Himself, invisibly feed the souls of the faithful with a quickening virtue.”[9]

Hence, Ratramnus can say,

“That therefore which outwardly appeareth, is not the thing itself, but its image; but that which is perceived and understood by the soul, is the very thing itself.”[10]

This shows us that the view of Ratramnus was more than a mere Zwinglian view.[11] And as the Anglican divines appropriated Ratramnus in their dispute with Roman Catholics, it shows us that the Anglican view of the Eucharist is indeed attested in antiquity and was not, within the first 1000 years of Christianity, considered heretical whatsoever.

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[1] Ratrumnus, The Book of Ratramn on The Body and Blood of The Lord, 3.

[2] Ratrumnus, 4–5.

[3] Ibid., 5

[4] Ibid., 7

[5] Ibid., 8

[6] Ibid., 9

[7] Ibid., 9-10

[8] Ibid., 18-19

[9] Ibid., 23-24

[10] Ibid., 41

[11] Otten, “BETWEEN AUGUSTINIAN SIGN AND CAROLINGIAN REALITY: THE PRESENCE OF AMBROSE AND AUGUSTINE IN THE EUCHARISTIC DEBATE BETWEEN PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS AND RATRAMNUS OF CORBIE”; Phelan, “Horizontal and Vertical Theologies: ‘sacraments’ in the Works of Paschasius Radbertus and Ratramnus of Corbie.”