Chauvet and Anglican Sacramentology

Abstract

This essay demonstrates how Louis-Marie Chauvet’s sacramental theology both coheres with the sacramentology of the Anglican divines and challenges the multitude of sacramental expressions within Anglicanism today. After giving a brief background to the sacramental controversies inherited by both Chauvet and Richard Hooker, the first section of this essay argues that key similarities exist between unitive Anglican sacramental concepts and core components of Louis-Marie Chauvet’s fundamental theology as outlined in his monograph Symbol and Sacrament. After demonstrating that, through these similarities, Chauvet’s theology should be seen as a fruitful conversation partner with Anglican sacramentology, the second section of the essay will focus on two concepts within Symbol and Sacrament (the Eucharist as stumbling block and ritual as symbolic rupture) that hold the potential to enrich sacramentology within Anglicanism today.