Cranmer As a Nominalist — sed contra

In the last issue of the Harvard Theological Review, Mr. Eugene McGee has rendered the service of repeating the old caricature of Nominalist Eucharistic theology (this time pinning the donkey's tail on the English reformer Cranmer) and extending this line of argument in such a way that it can be clearly faced and perhaps finally silenced. For, contrary to Mr. McGee's claim, he is not the first to “discover” the Nominalism of Cranmer. Throughout the forties and fifties of this century there raged a controversy over whether Cranmer could be called a Zwinglian and, if so, to what degree. In this controversy were drawn Dom Gregory Dix, G. B. Timms, E. C. Ratcliff, C. C. Richardson, and G. W. Bromiley. In the course of their arguments both Dix and Richardson referred to the Nominalism of Zwingli and Cranmer, who, Dix and Richardson felt, shared essentially the same position. “Cranmer,” Dix said, “was a man of the high Renaissance period, with all its deliberate ‘subjectivism,’ which sought so intently to segregate what was present in the forefront of consciousness as words as the only significant element in human life.” Richardson expanded on this charge. “The philosophic presuppositions of Zwingli's thought on the Eucharist,” he said, “are derived from Nominalism and humanism. Like most of the Reformers Zwingli attacks transubstantiation from a Nominalist point of view.” McGee's exposition bears a striking resemblance to Richardson's development of this thesis, and is to be regarded as its “re-presentation.”