Eucharistic controversy
‘Twas God the word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it, And what the word did make it, That I believe and take it’. In twenty seven words Queen Elizabeth I devoutly summarises millions of words uttered and written about the presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the eucharist. Her words cleverly duck and dive around how the words of Christ are said over the bread and what actually happens to the bread. The beauty of the sentence is its stress on what the Bible says, capturing an emphasis of the English Reformation, whilst not attempting to reduce the categorical and presumed transformative words of Jesus, ‘This is my body’. The Reformer Martin Luther held to the same biblical faith and fell out with the more radical views of Zwingli and Calvin which disowned any transformation of the eucharistic elements: ‘Since we are confronted by God’s words, “This is my body” – distinct, clear, common, definite words, which certainly are no trope, either in Scripture or in any la