Anglican Eucharistic Theology

Anglican Eucharistic theology is diverse in practice, reflecting the essential comprehensiveness of the tradition. Some High church Anglicans, especially those considered to be Anglo-Catholics, hold beliefs identical with, or similar to, the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. It was first promulgated by Scholastic theologians in the Middle Ages and understands the Eucharist to be a "re-presentation" of Christ's atoning sacrifice, with the elements transubstantiated into Christ's physical as well as spiritual Body and Blood. Low church or Evangelical Anglicans, expressing a view similar to that of the Reformed churches, deny that the presence of Christ is carnal or can be localised in the bread and wine. Instead, they believe that Christ is present in a "heavenly and spiritual manner" only, with the faithful receiving Christ's presence by faith.

While the Thirty-nine Articles and the Homilies rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, at the forty-first meeting of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the United States of America (ARC/USA), on January 6, 1994, the bishops assembled affirmed "that Christ in the eucharist makes himself present sacramentally and truly when under the species of bread and wine these earthy realities are changed into the reality of his body and blood. In English the terms substance, substantial, and substantially have such physical and material overtones that we, adhering to The Final Report, have substituted the word truly for the word substantially..." The bishops concluded "that the eucharist as sacrifice is not an issue that divides our two Churches."

Some Anglicans, however, implicitly or explicitly adopt the eucharistic theology of consubstantiation, associated with the Lollards and, later, with Martin Luther.. Luther's analogy of Christ's presence was that of the heat of a horseshoe thrust into a fire until it is glowing. In the same way, Christ is considered present in the bread and the wine.