The Multiple Functions of the Sacraments
The Multiple Functions of the Sacraments
In the course of the history of Christian theology, a number of understandings of the role of the sacraments have developed. In what follows, we shall consider the four most significant views of the function of the sacraments. It must be stressed that these are not mutually incompatible. The view that sacraments convey grace is not, for example, inconsistent with the related view that sacraments reassure believers of the promises of God. The debate has tended to center on which of the functions are essential to a right understanding of the sacraments. Most theologians develop overall approaches to the sacraments which incorporate most of these themes, even if they may differ on where emphasis is placed.
Sacraments Convey Grace
We noted earlier the insistence on the part of medieval writers that sacraments convey the grace that they signify. Traces of this view may be found in the late first and early second centuries. Ignatius of Antioch (c.35–c.110) declared that the Eucharist was “the medicine of immortality and an antidote, so that we should not die, but live for ever in Jesus Christ.” The idea is clearly that the Eucharist does not merely signify eternal life but is somehow instrumental in effecting it. The idea was developed subsequently by many writers, especially Ambrose of Milan (c.337–97). Writing in the fourth century, Ambrose argued that in baptism the Holy Spirit “coming upon the font or upon those who are to be baptized, effects the reality of regeneration.”
An important distinction, stemming from Augustine, relates to this point. Augustine distinguishes the sacrament from the “force [virtus] of the sacrament.” The former is merely a sign, whereas the latter produces the effect to which the sign points. It is clear that a major function of the sacraments, in the thought of Augustine and his medieval successors, is that of the efficacious bestowal of grace.
Medieval writers sympathetic to Duns Scotus (1266–1308) argued that it was not strictly proper to speak of the sacraments causing grace. The fourteenth-century writer Peter of Aquila (1300–61) put this point as follows:
When Peter Lombard states that the sacraments effect what they signify, this must not be understood to mean that the sacraments themselves cause grace, in the strict sense of the word. Rather, God effects grace at the presence of the sacraments.
The sacraments are thus seen as causes in the sense of a causa sine qua non – that is, an indispensable precondition – rather than as causes in the stricter sense of the word. The idea that grace is “caused” does not mean that the sacrament effects grace by itself, without reference to God's initiative and action. Catholic theology has always insisted that God is to be seen as the agent, the remote efficient cause, and the final cause of grace (to use the classical categories of causality) in any legitimate theory of sacramental causality.
Such views were rejected by the Protestant reformers, who found themselves embarrassed by Augustine's insistence upon the efficacious nature of the sacraments, especially baptism. Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) is an example of a sixteenth-century Protestant writer who is critical of Augustine at this point:
Augustine grievously erred in this doctrine, in ascribing too much to baptism. He does not acknowledge that it is merely an outward symbol of regeneration, but holds that, by the very act of being baptized, we are regenerated and adopted, and enter into the family of Christ.
The efficacious nature of the sacraments was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent, which criticized the Protestant tendency (as seen, for example, in Vermigli) to treat sacraments as mere signs, but not causes, of grace:
If anyone says that the sacraments of the new law do not contain the grace that they signify, or that they do not confer that grace upon those who do not place obstacles in its path (as though they were only outward signs of grace or righteousness, received through faith, and certain marks of Christian profession by which believers are, at the human level, distinguished from nonbelievers), let them be condemned.
Trent prefers to speak of the sacraments “conferring” grace (rather than “causing” grace), thus allowing the Scotist position, noted above, to be maintained.
Sacraments Strengthen Faith
This understanding of the role of the sacraments is found throughout Christian history. It became of especial importance during the sixteenth-century Reformation, partly on account of the importance placed by leading Protestant thinkers upon the idea of trust (fiducia) as a defining characteristic of justifying faith. For the first generation of reformers, the sacraments were God's response to human weakness. Knowing our difficulty in receiving and responding to divine promises, the Word of God has been supplemented with visible and tangible signs of the gracious favor. The sacraments represent the promises of God, mediated through objects of the everyday world.
In his Propositions on the Mass (1521), the German Lutheran theologian Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) stressed that sacraments are primarily a gracious divine accommodation to human weakness. In a series of 65 propositions, Melanchthon put forward what he regarded as a reliable and responsible approach to the place of the sacraments in Christian spirituality. “Signs are the means by which we may be both reminded and reassured of the word of faith.”
In an ideal world, Melanchthon suggests, human beings would be prepared to trust God on the basis of the Word alone. However, one of the weaknesses of fallen human nature is its need for signs (Melanchthon appeals to the Old Testament story of Gideon as he makes this point). For Melanchthon, sacraments are signs: “What some call sacraments, we call signs – or, if you prefer, sacramental signs.” These sacramental signs enhance our trust in God. “In order to mitigate this distrust in the human heart, God has added signs to the word.” Sacraments are thus signs of the grace of God, added to the promises of grace in order to reassure and strengthen the faith of fallen human beings.
Signs do not justify, as the apostle says: “circumcision counts for nothing” (1 Corinthians 7: 19), so that baptism is nothing, and participation in the Lord's Supper [mensa domini] is nothing, but they are testimonies and “seals” of the divine will toward you which give assurance to your conscience if it doubts God's grace or benevolence toward you. [...] The knowledge of signs is very healthful, and I have no idea whether there is anything else that consoles the conscience and strengthens it more effectively than this use of signs. What some call sacraments, we call signs – or, if you prefer, sacramental signs. [...] Those who have compared these signs with symbols or military passwords are to be commended for doing so, because signs were only marks by which those to whom the divine promises pertained could be known.
Luther made a similar point, defining sacraments as “promises with signs attached to them” or “divinely instituted signs and the promise of forgiveness of sins.” Interestingly, Luther used the term “pledge” to emphasize the security-giving character of the Eucharist. The bread and the wine reassure us of the reality of the divine promise of forgiveness, making it easier for us to accept it and, having accepted it, to hold it firmly.
A related view is associated with the revival of sacramental theology within Catholicism during the twentieth century. The resurgence in Catholic interest in the theology of the sacraments can be traced back to the work of the German Benedictine scholar Odo Casel (1886–1948), who wrote extensively on this matter in the period between the two world wars. This interest was developed and sustained by writers such as Karl Rahner (1904–84) and Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–2009), and found its expression at the Second Vatican Council (1962–5). One of the most notable features of the Council's teaching relates to the sacramental understanding of the church, a matter which has been dealt with in more detail elsewhere (pp. 364–6).
The Second Vatican Council also stressed the importance of sacraments in relation to the growth of faith, in terms of both personal commitment and a proper understanding of Christian faith. Christian theology has always recognized a distinction between the act and content of Christian faith. Two Latin phrases are traditionally used to express this distinction, as follows:
For the Second Vatican Council, sacraments sustain and nourish faith in the sense of both fides qua creditur and fides quae creditur:
Because [sacraments] are signs, they also instruct. They not only presuppose faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it. That is why they are called “sacraments of faith.” They do indeed confer grace, but in addition the very act of celebrating them most effectively disposes the faithful to receive this grace to their profit, to worship God duly, and to practice charity.
Sacraments Enhance Unity and Commitment within the Church
The unity of the church was a source of major concern during the patristic period, especially as division arose in response to the Decian and Diocletian persecutions. Cyprian of Carthage, as we saw earlier (p. 370), laid considerable emphasis upon the unity of the church, and urged its members to work toward greater harmony within, and commitment to, the church. This point was developed by Augustine, with especial reference to the sacraments. For a society to have any degree of cohesion, there must be some act in which all can share which both demonstrates and enhances unity. “In no religion, whether true or false, can people be held together in association, unless they are gathered together with some common share in some visible signs or sacraments.” Although this point was understood by medieval writers, it found its most forceful expression at the time of the Reformation, especially in the writings of Huldrych Zwingli.
Luther asserted that a central function of the sacraments was to reassure believers that they were truly members of the body of Christ and heirs of the kingdom of God. He developed this point at some length in his 1519 treatise The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ, stressing the psychological assurance that it made available to believers:
To receive this sacrament in bread and wine, then, is nothing else than to receive a sure sign of this fellowship and union with Christ and all the saints. It is as if citizens were given a sign, a document, or some other token, to assure them that they are indeed citizens of the city, and members of that particular community. [...] In this sacrament, therefore, we are given a sure sign from God that we are united with Christ and the saints, and have all things in common with them, and that Christ's suffering and life are our own.
This emphasis upon the sacraments as tokens of belonging to the Christian community is, as will become clear presently, perhaps more characteristic of Zwingli than of Luther; nevertheless, it is a significant element of Luther's thought at this point.
For Zwingli, the purpose of the sacraments is primarily to demonstrate that an individual belongs to the community of faith. Baptism represents the public declaration that a child is a member of the household of God. Zwingli pointed out that, in the Old Testament, infant males were circumcised within days of their birth as a sign of their membership of the people of Israel. Circumcision was the rite laid down by the Old Testament covenant to demonstrate that the circumcised child belonged to the covenant community. The child had been born into a community, to which it now belonged – and circumcision was a sign of belonging to this community.
It had been a long-standing tradition within Christian theology to see baptism as the Christian equivalent of circumcision. Developing this idea, Zwingli argued that baptism is the New Testament equivalent of the Old Testament rite of circumcision. It is gentler than circumcision, in that it involves no pain or shedding of blood, and more inclusive, in that it embraces both male and female infants. Further, Zwingli stressed that baptism was the sign of belonging to a community – the church. The fact that the child was not conscious of this belonging was irrelevant: it was a member of the Christian community, and baptism was the public demonstration of this membership. The contrast with Luther on this point will be obvious.
In a similar way, attendance at the Eucharist represents a continuing public declaration of loyalty to the church. Zwingli developed this meaning of the Eucharist with a military analogy drawn from his experience as an army chaplain for the Swiss Confederacy:
If a man sews on a white cross, he proclaims that he wishes to be a confederate. And if he makes the pilgrimage to Nähenfels and gives God praise and thanksgiving for the victory vouchsafed to our forefathers, he testifies that he is a confederate indeed. Similarly, whoever receives the mark of baptism is the one who is resolved to hear what God says to him, to learn the divine precepts, and to live his life in accordance with them. And whoever in the congregation gives thanks to God in the remembrance or supper testifies to the fact that he rejoices in the death of Christ from the depths of his heart, and thanks him for it.
The reference is to the victory of the inhabitants of the Swiss cantons of Glarus, Schwyz, and Uri over the Habsburgs on April 9, 1388, near Nähenfels (also known as Näfels) in the canton of Glarus. This victory is usually regarded as marking the beginning of the Swiss (or Helvetic) Confederation, and it was commemorated by a pilgrimage to the site of the battle on the first Thursday in April.
Zwingli makes two points. First, the Swiss soldier wears a white cross (now incorporated into the Swiss national flag, of course) as a Pflichtszeichen (sign of commitment) demonstrating publicly his allegiance to the Confederacy. Similarly, the Christian demonstrates his allegiance to the church publicly, initially by baptism and subsequently by participating in the Eucharist. Baptism is the “visible entry and sealing into Christ.”
Second, the historical event which brought the Confederacy into being is commemorated as a token of allegiance to that same Confederacy. Similarly, the Christian commemorates the historical event which brought the Christian church into being (the death of Jesus Christ) as a token of his commitment to that church. The Eucharist is thus both a memorial of the historical event leading to the establishment of the Christian church and a public demonstration of the believer's allegiance to that church and its members. This is related to Zwingli's memorialist approach to the Eucharist, which we shall explore further later (p. 400).
Sacraments Reassure us of God's Promises Toward Us
Once more, this function is especially associated with the reformers, who laid particular emphasis upon faith as the human correlative to the promises of God. The reformers were deeply aware of the weakness of fallen human nature, and knew that it required considerable reassurance concerning God's love and commitment. Luther regarded the death of Christ as a token of both the trustworthiness and the enormous price of the grace of God. Luther developed this point by using the idea of a “testament,” understood in the sense of a “last will and testament.” This point is taken to its full extent in his 1520 work The Babylonian Captivity of the Christian Church:
A testament is, without doubt, a promise made by someone who is about to die, in which a bequest is identified and heirs are appointed. A testament, therefore, involves first, the death of the testator; and second, the promise of an inheritance and the identification of the heirs. [...] Christ testifies concerning his death when he says: “This is my body, which is given, this is my blood, which is poured out” (Luke 22: 19–20). He names and designates the bequest when he says “for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26: 28). And he appoints the heirs when he says “For you (Luke 22: 19–20; 1 Corinthians 11: 24), and for many” (Matthew 26: 28; Mark 14: 24), that is, for those who accept and believe the promise of the testator.
Luther's insight here is that a testament involves promises which become operational only after the death of the person who made those promises in the first place. The liturgy of the Eucharist thus makes three vitally important points:
The Eucharist thus dramatically proclaims that the promises of grace and forgiveness are now in effect. It is “a promise of the forgiveness of sins made to us by God, and such a promise as has been confirmed by the death of the son of God.” By proclaiming the death of Christ, the community of faith affirms that the precious promises of forgiveness and eternal life are now effective for those with faith. As Luther puts this point:
So you see that what we call the mass is a promise of the forgiveness of sins, made to us by God, and such a promise as has been confirmed by the death of the Son of God. For a promise and a testament differ only in that a testament involves the death of the one who makes it. A testator is someone who promises and is about to die, while someone who promises (if I may put it thus) is a testator who is not about to die. This testament of Christ is foreshadowed in all the promises of God from the beginning of the world; indeed, whatever value those ancient promises possessed derived totally from this new promise that was to come in Christ. [...] Now God made a testament; therefore, it was necessary that he should die. But God could not die unless he became a human. Thus the incarnation and the death of Christ are both to be understood as being in this one enormously rich word, “testament.”
A Case Study in Complexity: The Functions of the Eucharist
Our discussion in this section has emphasized the many functions of the sacraments. It will be helpful to end this section by exploring the many functions of the Eucharist in Christian thought, integrating some of the themes developed in our discussion to date. The Eucharist – or mass, holy communion, or Lord's Supper – is an action carried out in the present, with past and future dimensions, as can be seen in Figure 16.2. In what follows, we shall explore these dimensions in more detail.
Figure 16.2 The theological functions of the Eucharist.
Recollection: Looking Backward
First, the Eucharist invites Christians to look backward into the past and recalls the saving acts of God in general and, above all, the cross and resurrection of Christ. The general principle of recalling God's saving acts is firmly established in the Old Testament. For example, many of the psalms (such as Psalm 136) invite Israel to remember God's past actions in delivering the people from Egypt and leading them into the promised land. The basic theme is simple: the God who acted faithfully in the past may be relied upon to do the same in the present and the future.
The recollection of the past also emphasizes the continuity between the church and Israel, the new and old covenants. It has often been pointed out that the Eucharist can be seen (though the parallel is not exact) as the Christian equivalent of the Passover – the great annual Jewish festival recalling the events of the Exodus from Egypt. The Passover festival was celebrated with a meal. According to the synoptic gospels, the “Last Supper” was a Passover meal, suggesting that Jesus wished his followers to make a connection between the past act of delivering Israel from Egypt and the greater act of deliverance that was about to take place.
Figure 16.3 The Last Supper as depicted by Leonardo da Vinci (1498).
Source: © The Gallery Collection/Corbis.
The central items of the Eucharist are bread and wine, which are held to recollect the breaking of Christ's body and the shedding of his blood on the cross. These items played a central role in the Last Supper. Here is Luke's account of what happened on that occasion (Luke 22: 19–20):
Then [Jesus] took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
The Eucharist is thus an invitation to look backward, recalling all that God has done. It recalls the great acts of divine redemption in the past, such as Israel's deliverance from captivity in Egypt – but, above all, the death of Jesus Christ, which is recalled by the liturgy, which incorporates biblical accounts of the Last Supper.
Anticipation: Looking Forward
Having invited Christians to look backward in remembrance, the Eucharist then points to the future, inviting Christians to anticipate what has yet to happen. This theme is deeply embedded in the New Testament. For example, Paul's account of the Eucharist makes specific reference to its anticipation of the return of Christ in the future (1 Corinthians 11: 23–6):
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
This theme of anticipation is also focused on another biblical theme – the hope of the New Jerusalem. The vision of the New Jerusalem offered by the book of Revelation, the last book in the Christian Bible, speaks of “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19: 9). The reference here is to Jesus Christ as the “lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29). It is important to see the Eucharist as a present foretaste of this future event. For this reason, the Second Vatican Council referred to the Eucharist as a “foretaste of the heavenly banquet.” This point is made particularly clearly by Theodore of Mopsuestia (c.350–428), a writer standing within the Antiochene school of biblical interpretation. For Theodore, the Eucharist allows us to glimpse the realities of heaven and anticipate our future presence there:
Every time that the liturgy of this awesome sacrifice is performed, which is the clear image of the heavenly realities, we should imagine that we are in heaven. [...] Faith enables us to picture in our minds those heavenly realities, as we remind ourselves that the same Christ who is now in heaven is [also present] under these symbols. So when faith enables our eyes to contemplate what now takes place, we are brought again to see his death, resurrection, and ascension, which have already taken place for our sakes.
Affirming Individual Faith
We have already seen (pp. 389–90) that sacraments affirm the present faith of individual believers. This process of affirmation takes place through the mind and imagination. The believer, who is located in the present, is able to reflect on what God has done in the past, anticipate what God will do in the future, and deepen his or her faith and trust in God as a consequence.
Affirming Corporate Belonging
As noted earlier (pp. 390–1), sacraments can be regarded as strengthening the mutual commitment and support of members of the Christian community. In a sense, this can be seen as the original meaning of the word sacramentum – a solemn oath of obedience and commitment.
The important point to appreciate in considering all of the functions in this case study is that different theologians place their emphases at different points. Some want to emphasize the Eucharist as a memorial of what God has done in the past. Others want to stress its potential to enhance unity and commitment within the church. Yet all these elements are present; the question concerns which is to be accentuated.
In considering these four aspects of the Eucharist, readers will have noticed that we have not addressed what is possibly the most interesting, and certainly the most debated, of its aspects – namely, the real presence. In what way, if any, does the Eucharist make Christ present to believers? We shall consider the debates over this question in what follows.