Does the Augsburg Confession claim that penance is a sacrament properly speaking?
Does the Augsburg Confession claim that penance is a sacrament properly speaking?
§ 22. In addition, Bellarmine accuses us of perjury: that we have departed from the Augsburg Confession, which lists penance among the sacraments (in the Apology, under the title “On the Number and Use of the Sacraments”).6
We respond. The name “sacrament” is attributed to repentance with respect to the purpose which it has in common with the rest which are properly called sacraments, that is, the strengthening of our faith in regard to the forgiveness of sins, for the words read this way: “If we call sacraments those rites which have the commandment of God and to which has been added the promise of grace, it is easy to judge which are properly sacraments, namely, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Absolution.”7 But a little later this follows: “If everything which has God’s command and to which promises have been added should be counted with the sacraments, why do we not add prayer, which can very truly be called a sacrament, for it has God’s command and very many promises,” etc.8 From this passage we draw the following conclusion: Most properly speaking it is not enough for a sacrament to have the command of God and the promise of grace. Yet from this basis it had been asserted that Absolution should be assigned to the sacraments. Therefore the Apology did not want it to be a sacrament most properly speaking.
** It is called a sacrament with regard to the purpose which it has in common with the sacraments but not with regard to its material and form.9 (See the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, p. 202, Leipzig edition of 1606.10) **
Therefore the Apology of the [Augsburg] Confession is aiming at this: that among all the other things that are connected with the true and properly so-called Sacraments—namely, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—Absolution comes closest to their nature, for through it the benefits of Christ are dispensed to those who repent and truly believe according to God’s command, the promises of the Gospel are applied to them specifically, and the free forgiveness of sins is announced to them. But what it still lacks to fit the formal and specific definition of a sacrament shall be explained at once [§ 23].
Therefore observe that the Apology counts Absolution among the Sacraments far differently from the way the Papists do. They indeed claim that the word of absolution confers sacramental power upon the actions of a repentant person so that they effectively come together to cause and earn the remission of sins and constitute along with Absolution a complete sacrament, something which did not even enter the mind of the authors and confessors of the Augsburg Confession. Bellarmine himself (De poenit., bk. 1, ch. 16) disapproves of the opinion of Scotus and his associates who argue that Absolution alone constitutes the essence of this sacrament and that the action of the repentant person is not a part of the sacrament but a disposition for receiving the sacrament.