Customer Reviews

Signs of God's Promise: Thomas Cranmer's Sacramental Theology and the Book of Common Prayer

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As a graduate student, I don't have a lot of time for additional reading beyond what is assigned to me. Nonetheless, when I received Gordon Jeanes' book, I read through it in a mere three days. Simply stated, I found the book as fascinating and as detailed as I found it exciting. Regrettably, the search function here on amazon.com does not let the reader see the praise that Diarmaid MacCulloch and Bryan D. Spinks have given Jeanes's volume, which appears on the back cover of the book.

MacCulloch writes:

"Thanks to Gordon Jeanes, we have at last a reliable and comprehensive guide to Cranmer's theological motives in reshaping the practice of baptism and eucharist, the basis of all later Anglican sacramental liturgies. This work will be of lasting value."

Spinks agrees:

"It has become increasingly clear that the time has arrived for a fresh study of Cranmer's sacramental theology and its relation to the liturgical rites which were mainly his work. This is precisely what Gordon Jeanes has accomplished. A concise introduction brings the reader up to speed with current Cranmer studies, and sets the scene for the examination of his sacramental theology and liturgical work. Jeanes discusses the understanding of the medieval Western rites on the eve of the Reformation and sheds light on mid-sixteenth century English liturgical understanding. Cranmer's developing theology during the reign of Henry VIII, reform under Edward, and Cranmer's mature theology are expounded in depth. This study is a welcomed addition to both Cranmer studies and sixteenth-century English liturgical and sacramental theology."

Little that I myself have to say will likely carry greater weight than the opinions of these two scholars. Nonetheless, I would like to say that Jeanes has probably written the book on Cranmer's liturgical thought, and that this volume will likely become the foundation of all future studies of Cranmer's liturgical theology. On the one hand, Jeanes has here a tremendous level of detail - far more than any previous study of Cranmer, rooting the Archbishop in the various other liturgical and theological developments of early modern England. Thus, we have a detailed exposition of not only early English Protestant documents such as the King's Book, but medieval liturgical commentaries on the Mass, and Lutheran and Anglican Catechisms. What I appreciate the most, however, is that Jeanes refuses to leave Cranmer as a figure who can be co-opted by either high- or low-church ecclesiastical factions.

In the closing words of the volume, Jeanes writes with an acute and sensitive level of insight, that "[Cranmer's] concentration on the sacrament as sign rather than as seal of grace may seem weak in the context of his time, but it carried certain particular strengths which must not be ignored. People often talk of someone having a 'high' or 'low' sacramental theology, and it seems that those terms are given according to the prominence of the notion of the efficacy or instrumentality of the sacrament in the grace given to the recipient. Cranmer's sacramental theology would be, on that scale, 'low'. But that is not an adequate achievement of what he has achieved. Rather his theology is coherent, prominent in what in the twentieth century we would call spirituality, and able to speak of the grace of God with a clarity and immediacy lacking in many other theologies of the time. His theology has its weaknesses, but any definition of what a 'high' sacramental theology means has to be able to include Cranmer among its exponents" (290).

I can think of no finer introduction to Thomas Cranmer, the Book of Common Prayer, or classical Anglicanism than what we have been presented with in this fine volume by Gordon Jeanes.

This book is somewhat expensive at $40 for what you get. The author relies quite a bit on Diarmaid MacCulloch's outstanding bio of Cranmer and the extended details of Cranmer's gradual development of his sacramental theology may be interesting to some but comes off as a bit tedious and uninteresting in the way it is here presented. I found it difficult to get through this work, though I am extremely interested in what Cranmer actually thought about the sacraments. Unless you need an extremely dry and detailed elaboration of Cranmer's views on this subject I would not recommend this work. Nor is it particularly insightful. Better to read MacCulloch's outstanding bio, Ashley Null's work on Cranmer that reveals what Cranmer actually thought by way of his annotated works, and a commentary on the historical origin and development of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.