Thomas Cranmer’s Eucharistic theology has been the source of no small amount of scholarship and dispute. I argue that these disputes are in part due to the fact that Cranmer wavers between describing two distinct realities and that these realities are not necessarily coincidental. There is the reality of the consecrated elements, which he understands figuratively as being the body and blood of Christ. But Cranmer also describes a second reality, which is the direct connection between the soul of the recipient and the actual body and blood of Christ. I highlight the latter reality by recourse to recent work on the notion of the spiritual senses in the Christian theological tradition.

This essay demonstrates how Louis-Marie Chauvet’s sacramental theology both coheres with the sacramentology of the Anglican divines and challenges the multitude of sacramental expressions within Anglicanism today. After giving a brief background to the sacramental controversies inherited by both Chauvet and Richard Hooker, the first section of this essay argues that key similarities exist between unitive Anglican sacramental concepts and core components of Louis-Marie Chauvet’s fundamental theology as outlined in his monograph Symbol and Sacrament. After demonstrating that, through these similarities, Chauvet’s theology should be seen as a fruitful conversation partner with Anglican sacramentology, the second section of the essay will focus on two concepts within Symbol and Sacrament (the Eucharist as stumbling block and ritual as symbolic rupture) that hold the potential to enrich sacramentology within Anglicanism today.

This article explores some of the hermeneutical resources of the two official books of homilies, authorized to be preached in the BCP communion service. The historical contexts and successive editions of the books are explained, and a focused reading is offered of the key texts relevant to the interpretation of Scripture. Some consideration is given to other related texts that highlight Cranmer’s hermeneutical approach. It is suggested that Cranmer’s use of Scripture is not in practice the approach he commends in the first homily, but is driven by concerns with attaining the ‘right’ doctrine of justification. A key issue is the interplay between readerly character, deferral to wise readers, and the pressure of the text against particular traditions. It is argued that the Books of Homilies here offer rich material for reflection upon the nature of Christian hermeneutics in one particular ecclesial tradition, and indicate an Anglican approach to Scripture that has much to offer.

This article aims to provide an introductory historical sketch of the origins of the Church of England as a background for canon law in the present-day Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. Written by a specialist for non-specialists, it summarises the widely held view among ecclesiastical historians that if the Church of England could ever be said to have had a ‘normative’ period, it is not to be found in its formative years in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, and that, in particular, the origins of the Church of England and of what we now call ‘Anglicanism’ are not the same thing.