Thomas Cranmer and the True Presence of Christ: Reformation Day — The Eve of All Saints’ Day — Reflections on the Lord’s Supper

A Reformer’s Courage and His Pastoral Heart 

Every year on October 31, the Eve of All Saints’ Day, Christians across the world remember the Reformation—the day Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses were posted at Wittenberg and the gospel of grace once again sounded clearly in Christ’s Church. In England that same gospel found a clear voice in Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury and chief architect of the English Reformation.

Burned at the stake in Oxford for his confession of Christ’s one sufficient sacrifice, Cranmer is rightly remembered as a martyr. Yet his true legacy is not fire and ashes—it is grace and gratitude.

As Dr Ashley Null writes,

“The good news of salvation by transforming grace alone was what Cranmer sought to sum up in his most famous compositions for the new English liturgy he devised—Holy Communion’s Comfortable Words. Here is the gospel according to Reformation Anglicanism.” (Divine Allurement, p. 5)

For Cranmer, liturgy was theology prayed in the vernacular—Scripture ordered for the worship of God and the edification of His people. It was theology you could pray and understand, so that ordinary believers might hear, confess, and receive the gospel (See: Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love [Oxford University Press, 2001]. Null offers a comprehensive theological study of Cranmer’s intentions in shaping the liturgy and doctrine.).

The Reformation of Worship and Doctrine

Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer was the book that changed England—translating worship into the language of the people, shaping a nation’s faith, and weaving Reformation theology into the daily prayers of ordinary believers. The following year, his Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ (1550) provided the theological foundation that would shape the more clearly Reformed 1552 Book of Common Prayer, setting forth a distinctly evangelical understanding of Christ’s real, spiritual presence in the Eucharist.

In this work, Cranmer addressed King Edward VI, the young Protestant monarch whose short reign allowed England’s Reformation to flourish. His purpose was to answer Stephen Gardiner, the Roman Catholic bishop of Winchester, who insisted that Christ’s natural body was “really and corporally present” in the consecrated elements.

Cranmer replied not with novelty but with Scripture and the Fathers. Book III of his Defence teacheth “the manner how Christ is present in His holy Supper.” Here we see his mature doctrine: Christ is truly present—yet not locally, corporally, or naturally, but spiritually and effectually, received by faith.

The Sacrament of Faith, Not of Ritual

Cranmer rejected the medieval notion that the Mass itself could take away sin merely by being performed. He wrote:

“The papists have transformed this most holy sacrament into a vain and untrue sacrifice, making it a mean to take away sins by the work wrought, and not by the faith of Christ’s death.” (p. 166)

For Cranmer, the true power of the sacrament lies not in the priest’s action but in faith in the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. The bread and wine are holy because they are set apart for a divine use, not because they are transformed in substance. Faith—not ritual—unites the believer to Christ and His benefits.

How Christ Is Present in the Lord’s Supper

Against every charge that he denied Christ’s presence, Cranmer wrote:

“We do not say that Christ is absent, but that He is present spiritually to the faith of the godly, and corporally in heaven. For Christ’s flesh and blood remain in heaven, and in our hearts by faith we ascend up into heaven, to eat Him there.” (p. 187)

He surveys the ancient Fathers—Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Gelasius, Origen, Basil, Cyril, and Hilary—to show that none of them taught a local or natural presence in the bread and wine. Their language of “corporaliter” or “naturaliter” meant truly or effectually, not physically:

“When Cyril saith that Christ dwelleth corporally in us, he meaneth not locally or fleshly, but that He worketh in us effectually, truly, and indeed, to our everlasting redemption.” (p. 178)

The bread and wine therefore remain what they are, yet they become holy signs by divine appointment:

“After the consecration, it is still bread and wine, but being separated to a holy use by the words of Christ, it is called His body and blood, as the sign is called by the name of the thing which it signifieth.” (p. 182)

Cranmer explains consecration not as change of substance but as change of use:

“Consecration is but a separation of the thing from a common to a holy use… even as water in baptism, being sanctified by God’s word, is not turned into the substance of Christ’s blood, but is made a figure thereof.” (pp. 181–182)

Faith as the Mouth of the Soul

Drawing upon Augustine, Cranmer distinguishes between the sacramentum (the outward sign) and the res sacramenti (the thing signified). All receive the sign; only believers receive the thing itself:

“They eat and drink the bread and wine, but the very flesh and blood of Christ they neither eat nor drink.” (p. 170)

The reason is faith:

“Whosoever worthily eateth, eateth spiritually Christ’s flesh and blood, and hath by them everlasting life; and whosoever eateth unworthily, eateth and drinketh his own damnation.” (p. 195)

Later Reformed writers would say, “Faith is the mouth of the soul,” but Cranmer had already expressed the same truth: that by faith the believer truly receives Christ Himself. The Supper is therefore not bare remembrance but a real participation in the virtue and benefit of Christ’s passion, mediated by the Holy Spirit.

To illustrate this mystery, Cranmer gives one of his most beautiful analogies:

“Even as the iron, when it is in the fire, remaineth still iron, and yet hath the virtue of the fire; so the bread remaineth bread, but to them that receive worthily, it hath the virtue of Christ’s body.” (pp. 189–190)

The Communion of Saints and the Heavenly Feast

Here Cranmer’s theology meets the joy of All Saints’ Day, which we celebrate tomorrow, November 1. He writes:

“We be all one body with Christ, and every one members one of another, because all men that truly believe, be partakers of one bread and one cup.” (p. 177)

In the Supper we share a real communion—not only with Christ our Head but with all His members in heaven and on earth. Because His body is in heaven, our fellowship is heavenly. The saints above and believers below feed on the same Lord. Cranmer’s doctrine thus fulfilleth the ancient confession: “I believe in the Communion of Saints.”

“Christ is in heaven, and spiritually is present in the faithful by grace; we ascend in mind by faith, and eat Him there.” (p. 187)

This is precisely the reality All Saints’ Day proclaims: the Church militant and the Church triumphant united in one body through the risen, ascended Christ.

Reformation Day: Grace and Gratitude

Cranmer’s theology of the Supper cannot be separated from his broader Reformation mission—to bring the English people from fear to faith, from works to grace, from superstition to thanksgiving. His Comfortable Words summarize the entire gospel:

“Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to Him…”

On this Reformation Day—the Eve of All Saints’ Day—we remember not only the courage that led him to the stake but the comfort that led him to Christ. His final confession before the flames still echoes his doctrine of the Supper: “I trust to be saved by none other means but only by the mercy of God and the merits of the blood of His only Son, Jesus Christ.”

Witness Unto Death: Cranmer’s Martyrdom and the Confession He Would Not Deny

Under Mary I (1553–1558), England returned to Roman obedience and Cranmer was imprisoned at Oxford. Pressured into several written recantations, he was nevertheless condemned for denying transubstantiation and for his Reformation teaching. On the morning of his execution at St Mary’s, Oxford (March 21, 1556), Cranmer publicly repudiated his recantations, declaring:

“And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished: for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned.” (Foxe’s Acts and Monuments)

He also cried:

“And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy, and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine.” (Foxe’s Acts and Monuments)

Dragged to the stake on Broad Street, he held his right hand in the flames first—“that unworthy hand”—before commending his spirit to Jesus: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” (Foxe’s Acts and Monuments; Britannica, “Thomas Cranmer”).

The doctrine for which he died—the true, spiritual presence of Christ, received by faith through the Holy Spirit—was the same doctrine he had preached, written, and confessed to his final breath.

Why It Still Matters

Cranmer’s teaching safeguards both mystery and assurance. The Supper is no empty symbol, for Christ is truly present by the Spirit. Yet it is no magical sacrifice, for Christ’s once-for-all oblation is perfect and complete. Here faith feeds, grace strengthens, and gratitude abounds.

As we mark Reformation Day (October 31, the Eve of All Saints’ Day) and prepare to celebrate All Saints’ Day tomorrow, Cranmer invites us to lift our hearts to the same heavenly feast that nourished the saints and martyrs before us:

“By the marvellous working of God in the hearts of them that receive, through His most Holy Spirit, the faithful be made one with Christ, and thereby receive life everlasting.” (p. 187)

So come hungry, not terrified. Come believing, not doubting. Come to the Table where the risen Christ meets His Church, and where, with all saints and angels, we give thanks for “the good news of salvation by transforming grace alone.”

Works Cited

Ashley Null, Divine Allurement: Cranmer’s Comfortable Words (2017), p. 5.

Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Thomas Cranmer, A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ (1550; ed. 1907), Book III.

Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563); Encyclopædia Britannica, “Thomas Cranmer.”

© John Fonville, Reformation Day (Eve of All Saints’ Day), October 31, 2025