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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
It is a well-known fact that many a modern eucharistic prayer shows signs of handling the relationship between Supper and Calvary with due care, even with some creative ambiguity. For some, indeed, the very concept of offering is fraught with problems which can only be faced in liturgical formulae by having recourse to paradox. The bread and wine are on the table, but they are neither ‘offered’ sacrificially, nor are they ‘held back’ from the good purposes of God. The act of memorial is neither a re-enactment of Calvary nor is it an insignificant feature of the Church's life, as if all the eucharistic community did was to bask in the sunshine of Christ's single offering, and that is that. Yet many modern prayers are the direct result of creative movements such as liturgical research, patristic theology, and the rapprochment between the Churches that has been so much part of twentieth-century history.
1 ‘… in spite of a proper caution about speaking too loosely of the elements as ‘offered’ to God in the eucharist, we still need to say that the moment of relinquishing what is ours is crucial in the eucharistic process’, quoted from Williams, Rowan, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982), p. 111.Google Scholar I owe a great deal to the ‘broadened’ view of the eucharist expounded in this book.
2 Vejledning i Den Danske Folkekirkes Gudstjenesteordning (København: Haase, 1955), pp. 70–76Google Scholar (the 1912 rite). For a collection of Lutheran texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Pahl, Irmgard (ed.), Coena Domini I: Die Abendmahlsliturgie der Reformationskirchen im 16/17. Jahrhundert (Spicilegium Friburgense 29) (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1983).Google Scholar The Grundtvig hymn, ‘i al sin glans nu stråler solen’, is to be found in Den Danske Salmebog (København: Haase, 1953)Google Scholar, no. 247, where in stanza 5 there is reference to the eucharist as ‘thanksong's drink-offering’. On Grundtvig's theology, see Allchin, A. M., The Kingdom of Love and Knowledge (London: D.L.T., 1979), pp. 71–89.Google Scholar
3 Text, with comparative notes, in Pahl (ed.), op. cit., pp. 472–478.
4 The Book of Common Order (Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford, 1940), p. 119.Google Scholar This rite also includes two preparatory prayers before the eucharistic rite, one of approach, another offering the bread and cup, p. 117. Both of these are borrowed from the Catholic Apostolic rite, mediated through the Euchologion books of the Scottish Church Service Society. See the important essay by Barkley, J. M., ‘“Pleading His Eternal Sacrifice” in the Reformed Liturgy’, in Spinks, B. D. (ed.), The Sacrifice of Praise: Studies on the themes of thanksgiving and redemption in the central prayers of the eucharistic and baptismal liturgies in honour of Arthur Hubert Couratin (Ephemerides Liturgicae ‘Subsidia’ 18) (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 1981), pp. 123–140Google Scholar, especially pp. 136ff., with discussion on the theology behind ‘plead’, including William Milligan's contribution.
5 See Stevenson, Kenneth W., Eucharist and Offering (New York: Pueblo, 1986), pp. 149ff.Google Scholar
6 See Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 167ff. For the quoted text, see Rattenbury, J. Ernest, The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley (London: Epworth, 1948) p. 233 (number 121, second part of stanza 2).Google Scholar
7 English translation contained in Jasper, R. C. D., Cuming, G. J. (edd.), The Prayers of the Eucharist, Early and Reformed (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980 2), pp. 119–122.Google Scholar
8 Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House/Philadelphia: Board of Publication, Lutheran Church in America, 1978), pp. 109ff.Google Scholar
9 The Book of Common Order (1979) (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press), pp. 7ff., 22ff., 36.Google Scholar
10 See Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 183ff., and nn.
11 The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Seabury, 1979), pp. 361ff.Google Scholar See also H. B. Porter, ‘An American Assembly of Anaphoral Prayers’ in Spinks (ed.), op. cit., pp. 181–196.
12 On the background of this prayer, see Mitchell, Leonel L., ‘The Alexandrian Anaphora of St Basil of Caesarea: Ancient Source of “A Common Eucharistic Prayer”’, Anglican Theological Review 58 (1976), pp. 194–206.Google Scholar
13 The Alternative Service Book (1980), (London: Clowes/SPCK/Cambridge University Press 1980), p. 132Google Scholar; for the offertory-section, see pp. 129f.
14 See Buxton, Richard F., Eucharist and Institution Narrative (Alcuin Club Collections 58) (Great Wakering: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1976), pp. 110–132, 145–176.Google Scholar
15 At The Lord's Table: A Communion Service Book for Use by the Minister (Supplemental Worship Resources 9) (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), p. 24Google Scholar; The Book of Services (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1986), pp. 16f.Google Scholar
16 See Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 198ff.
17 Eucharistic Prayer of Hippolytus: Text for Consultation (Washington D.C.: International Commission on English in the Liturgy, 1983).Google Scholar See also Eucharistic Prayer of Saint Basil: Text for Consultation (Washington: International Commission on English in the Liturgy, 1985).Google Scholar
18 See discussion in Hanson, R. P. C., Eucharistic Offering in the Early Church (Grove Liturgical Study 19) (Bramcote: Grove, 1979).Google Scholar
19 ‘This is novel and can hardly be said to retain “a most definitely character”. One who has some acquaintance with the medieval and reformation history of eucharistic controversy will recognize the inadequacy of such a position, and may be forgiven his disappointment that its tendentiousness has got into a Catholic formulary precisely at a time when it could have been diagnosed and avoided most easily’, p. 9 in ‘Thoughts on the New Eucharistic Prayers’, Worship 43 (1969), pp. 2–12 (whole article).Google Scholar
20 Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper 111) (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar
21 See Thurian, Max (ed.), Ecumenical Perspectives on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper 116) (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1983), pp. 241ff.Google Scholar
22 Schulz, F., Die Lima Liturgie (Kassel: Stauda, 1983)Google Scholar, and ‘Zur Rezeption der “Lima-Liturgie”’, Studia Liturgica 17 (1987), pp. 151–156.Google Scholar
23 Thurian, Max, L'Eucharistie — mémorial du seigneur, sacrifice d'action de grâce et d'intercession (Neuchâtel: Delachaux/Niestlé, 1959).Google Scholar
24 See Eucharistie à Taizé (Taizé: Presses de Taizé, 1963).Google Scholar
25 See above n. 5.
26 Power, David N., The Sacrifice We Offer: the Tridentine Dogma and Its Reinterpretation (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1987). Review by the writer forthcoming in Theology.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., p. 43. Power also criticises the offending part of Roman EP IV: ‘The Roman Church … indulges in a misinterpretation of its own earliest traditions when in the composition of new eucharistic prayers it presents the section after the supper narrative as an offering of Christ himself, or of his body and blood.’ (p. 180).
28 Ibid., p. 182. By no coincidence(?), this anaphora is the earliest to contain a prayer for the celebrant himself, in the first person singular, noted in Stevenson op. cit., p. 44).
29 Ibid., passim, but see pp. 92f. This distinction of the role of priest and congregation is a feature of the teaching of Pope John Paul II, pp. 21–23.
30 Spinks, B. D., From the Lord and “The Best Reformed Churches”: A Study of the eucharistic liturgy in the English Puritan and Separatist traditions 1550–1633 (Ephemerides Liturgicae ‘Subsidia’ 33) (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 1984)Google Scholar; and Freedom or Order: The Eucharistic Liturgy in English Congregationalism 1645–1980 (Pittsburgh Theological Monographs, New Series 8) (Allison Park: Pickwick Publications, 1984).Google Scholar Review of the former, by the writer, in Journal of Theological Studies 39.1 (1988), pp. 312–314. Review of the latter, by the writer, in Scottish Journal of Theology 39 (1986), pp. 418–421.
31 Spinks, B. D., ‘Eucharistic Offering in the East Syrian Anaphoras’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 50 (1984), pp. 347–371.Google Scholar
32 Spinks, B. D., News of Liturgy 130 (October 1985), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar See also Heron, Alasdair, Table and Tradition: Towards an Ecumenical Understanding of the Eucharist (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1983), pp. 168ff.Google Scholar, where Heron questions Calvin. See review by the writer, Scottish Journal of Theology 38 (1985), pp. 244–6.
33 See Stevenson, op. cit., passim.
34 Text drafted for the Church of England Liturgical Commission. Cf. Power's treatment of this theme: ‘the prayer of remembrance, which is known as a prayer of thanksgiving and praise, is also a prayer for forgiveness, reconciliation and nourishment. It is the pleading (my italics) of the blood of Christ for mercy, the church's part in the intercession that Christ makes at God's right hand’ (The Sacrifice We Offer, p. 185).
35 See important discussion of this theme by Caro, J. M. Sanchez, Eucaristía e Historia de la Salvación (Madrid: La Editorial Catolica, 1983).Google Scholar
36 See Taft, Robert F., The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and other Preanaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200) (Roma: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1975).Google Scholar See also Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 222ff.
37 See Gudtjänstording: I Ritual (Lund: Berlingska Bokytryckeriet, 1976), pp. 25ff.Google Scholar; see, especially the anamnesis of the first eucharistic prayer (p. 28), ‘Se till det fullkomliga och eviga offer med vilket du i Kristus har försonat oss med dig själv’ (= ‘Look on the perfect and eternal sacrifice with which you in Christ have brought us together in unity with yourself’). This clause is part of the anamnesis.
38 E.g. in review of Stevenson, , Eucharist and Offering, in News of Liturgy 147 (March, 1987), pp. 4–6.Google Scholar
39 See Eucharist and Offering, pp. 218–236.
40 See Fuller, Reginald H., Preaching the New Lectionary: The Word of God for the Church Today (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1982), p. 154.Google Scholar