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General Information
Sacraments are Christian rites that are believed to be outward visible signs of inward spiritual grace to which the promise of Christ is attached. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches accept seven sacraments: Baptism, the Eucharist, Confirmation (or Chrismation), Confession, Anointing of the Sick, marriage, and Holy Orders. The Council of Trent (1545 - 63) declared that all were instituted by Christ. Protestants accept only baptism and the Eucharist as instituted by Christ. The Anglican (Episcopal) church, however, accepts the other five as sacramental rites that evolved in the church. Other churches consider those of the five they observe as ecclesiastical ceremonies.
Christians have differed widely as to the meaning of the sacraments and how God works through them. Catholics, and many Protestants, consider them means of grace through which God bestows spiritual gifts. This view was held by Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Other Protestants, following Ulrich Zwingli, view the sacraments as signs of Christian profession and testimony to grace that has already been given through faith. Some Protestant groups, notably the Quakers and the Salvation Army, do not use sacraments.
L L Mitchell
Bibliography
M Hellwig, The Meaning of the Sacraments (1972); B
Leeming, Principles of Sacramental Theology (1956); J Martos, Doors
to the Sacred (1982); E Russell and J Greenhalgh, eds., Signs of
Faith, Hope, and Love: The Christian Sacraments Today (1988);
Schmemann, Alexander, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and
Orthodoxy (1973).
In the Christian experience, the saving action of Christ is made known and accessible to the church especially through certain liturgical actions such as baptism and the Eucharist. Therefore, these actions came to be known among the Greeks as mysteries, perhaps by analogy to mystery cults.
Charles P. Price
The sacramental principle is another characteristic tenet of Roman Catholicism. The sacramental system worked out especially in the Middle Ages by the schoolmen and subsequently at the Council of Trent envisaged sacraments primarily as causes of grace that could be received independent of the merit of the recipient. Recent Catholic sacramental theology emphasizes their function as signs of faith. Sacraments are said to cause grace insofar as they are intelligible signs of it, and that the fruitfulness, as distinct from the validity, of the sacrament is dependent on the faith and devotion of the recipient. Sacramental rites are now administered in the vernacular, rather than in Latin, to increase the intelligibility of the signs.
Conservative Catholicism connected sacramental theology to Christology, stressing Christ's institution of the sacraments and the power of the sacraments to infuse the grace of Christ, earned on Calvary, to the recipient. The newer emphasis connects the sacraments to ecclesiology. We do not encounter Christ directly, but in the church, which is his body. The church mediates the presence and action of Christ.
The number of sacraments was finally fixed at seven during the medieval period (at the councils of Lyons 1274, Florence 1439, and Trent 1547). In addition Roman Catholicism has innumerable sacramentals, e.g., baptismal water, holy oil, blessed ashes, candles, palms, crucifixes, and statues. Sacramentals are said to cause grace not ex opere operanto like the sacraments, but ex opere operantis, through the faith and devotion of those using them.
The ordained priesthood has three orders: bishops, priests, and deacons. The first and third are offices of the NT church. The office of priest emerged when it was no longer practical to continue recognizing the Jewish priesthood (owing to the destruction of the temple and the great influx of Gentiles into the church) and with the development of a sacrificial understanding of the Lord's Supper.
F S Piggin
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
A religious rite or ceremony instituted or recognized by Jesus Christ. Baptism and the Lord's Supper were given a prominent place in the fellowship of the early church (Acts 2:41 - 42; 10:47; 20:7, 11), along with the proclamation (kerygma) and teaching (didache). Both rites were regarded as means appointed by Jesus Christ to bring the members of the church into communion with his death and resurrection, and thus with himself through the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19 - 20; Acts 2:38; Rom. 6:3 - 5; 1 Cor. 11:23 - 27; Col. 2:11 - 12). They were linked together in our Lord's teaching (Mark 10:38 - 39) and in the mind of the church (1 Cor. 10:1 - 5ff.) as having such significance. They were the visible enactment of the word proclaimed in the kerygma, and their significance must be understood as such.
The proclamation of the gospel in the NT was no mere recital of the events of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the Son of God. It was the representation of these events to the hearers in the power of the Spirit so that through such proclamation they could become related to these events in a living way through faith. In the proclamation of the gospel the once - for - all event continued to be effective for salvation (1 Cor. 1:21; 2 Cor. 5:18 - 19). The word of the kerygma gave men fellowship in the mystery of the kingdom of God brought nigh in Jesus (Matt. 13:1 - 23; Mark 4:11), and the preacher in fulfilling his task was the steward of this mystery (1 Cor. 4:1; Eph. 3:8 - 9; Col. 1:25). The miracles or signs accompanying the proclamation in the early church were the visible aspect of the living power the word derived from its relation to the mystery of the kingdom of God.
It was inevitable, therefore, that baptism and the Lord's Supper, the other visible counterparts of the kerygma, should also come to be regarded as giving fellowship in the same mysterion of the Word made flesh (1 Tim. 3:16), and should be interpreted as themselves partaking in the mystery of the relationship between Christ and his church (Eph. 5:32).
The Greek word mysterion was later often given the Latin sacramentum, and the rites themselves came to be spoken of as sacramenta. The word sacramentum meant both "a thing set apart as sacred" and "a military oath of obedience as administered by the commander." The use of this word for baptism and the Lord's Supper affected the thought about these rites, and they tended to be regarded as conveying grace in themselves, rather than as relating men through faith to Christ.
A sacrament came later to be defined (following Augustine) as a "visible word" or an "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." The similarity between the form of the sacrament and the hidden gift tended to be stressed. Five lesser sacraments became traditional in the church: confirmation, penance, extreme unction, order, matrimony. But the church had always a special place for baptism and the Lord's Supper as the chief mysteries, and at the Reformation these were regarded as the only two that had the authority of our Lord himself, and therefore as the only true sacraments.
Since God in the OT also used visible signs along with the word, these were also regarded as having sacramental significance. Among the OT sacraments the rites of circumcision and the passover were stressed as being the OT counterparts of baptism (Col. 2:11 - 12) and the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 5:7).
R S Wallace
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
Bibliography
Calvin, Institutes 4.14; R Bruce, Sermons upon the
Sacraments; T F Torrance, "Eschatology and the Eucharist," in
Intercommunion; G Bornkamm, T D N T , IV; O C Quick, The
Christian Sacraments; J I Packer, ed., Eucharistic Sacrifice.
sacrament
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