Sacrament

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A sacrament, as defined in Hexam's Concise Dictionary of Religion is what Roman Catholics believe to be "a rite in which God is uniquely active." Augustine of Hippo defined a Christian sacrament as "a visible sign of an invisible reality." The Anglican Book of Common Prayer speaks of them as "an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible Grace." Examples of sacraments would be Baptism and the Eucharist."[1] Therefore a sacrament is a religious symbol or often a rite which conveys divine grace, blessing, or sanctity upon the believer who participates in it, or a tangible symbol which represents an intangible reality. As defined above, an example would be baptism in water, representing (and conveying) the grace of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Forgiveness of Sins, and membership into the Church. Anointing with holy anointing oil is another example which is often synonymous with receiving the Holy Spirit and salvation. Another way of looking at Sacraments is that they are an external and physical sign of the conferral of Sanctifying Grace.[2]

Throughout the Christian faith views concerning which rites are sacramental, that is conferring sanctifying grace, and what it means for an external act to be sacramental vary widely. Other religious traditions also have what might be called "sacraments" in a sense, though not necessarily according to the Christian meaning of the term.

General definitions and terms

The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. –Augsburg Confession[3]

In the majority of Western Christianity, the generally accepted definition of a sacrament is that it is an outward sign that conveys spiritual grace through Christ. Christian churches, denominations, and sects are divided regarding the number and operation of the sacraments. Sacraments are generally held to have been instituted by Jesus Christ, although in some cases this point is debated. They are usually administered by the clergy to a recipient or recipients, and are generally understood to involve visible and invisible components. The invisible component (manifested inwardly) is understood to be brought about by the action of the Holy Spirit, God's grace working in the sacrament's participants, while the visible (or outward) component entails the use of such things as water, oil, and bread and wine that is blessed or consecrated; the laying-on-of-hands; or a particularly significant covenant that is marked by a public benediction (such as with marriage or absolution of sin in the reconciliation of a penitent).

As defined by the Roman Catholic Church, recognised by the Eastern Orthodox churches, Oriental Orthodox, (though these two do not categorically define the number), and Independent Catholic and Old Catholic Church.

The Orthodox Churches (Eastern and Oriental) typically do not limit the number of sacraments, viewing all encounters with reality in life as sacramental in some sense, and their acknowledgement of the number of sacraments at seven as an innovation of convenience not found in the Church Fathers. It came into use, although infrequently, later on from later encounters with the West and its Sacramental Theology.[4] Other denominations and traditions, both in eastern and western Christianity may affirm only Baptism and Eucharist as sacraments, these include many of the Protestant denominations and some of the Old Believers in the Orthodox communion, some of whom reject all sacraments except Baptism.

Some post-Reformation denominations (including Protestants and other Christian denominations who reject that label) do not maintain a sacramental theology, although they may practice the rites themselves. These rites may be variously labelled "traditions" or – in the case of Baptism and the Eucharist ("the Lord's Supper") – "ordinances," since they are seen as having been ordained by Christ to be permanently observed by the church. Protestant denominations, both sacramental and non-sacramental, almost invariably affirm only these two as sacraments, traditions, or ordinances; although they may also practice some or all of the other traditional sacraments as well whilst not acknowledging the action of divine grace in the external form.

Catholic teaching

Enumeration

The Seven Sacraments by Rogier van der Weyden, ca. 1448.

The following are the Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church:[5]

• Baptism (Christening)
• Confirmation (Chrismation)
• Holy Eucharist (or Holy Communion)
• Penance (Confession)
• Anointing of the Sick (known prior to Vatican II as Extreme Unction (or more literally from Latin: Last Anointing); informally, the "Last Rites")
• Holy Orders
• Matrimony

Traditionally the Catholic Church defined sacraments as "An outward sign of inward grace, a sacred and mysterious sign or ceremony, ordained by Christ, by which grace is conveyed to our souls."[6] Regarding the validity of the sacraments, however, The Catholic church teaches that:

All sacraments must have proper matter, form, and intention. The form is the sacramental sign, the verbal and physical liturgical action, e.g. the "this is my body" spoken during communion. The matter is the part of the sacrament to which something is done, the physical objects, e.g. the waters of baptism (although not all physical objects used in administering a sacrament are considered essential matter). Intention means that the priest or minister must have the willful intention to do what the Church does (facere quod facit ecclesia). Note that a minister does not have to believe personally all that the Church believes for the sacraments to be valid; he simply has to intend to do what the Church does. This means that if a person pours water over your head, reciting the words spoken at baptism, but is doing so only to demonstrate how to baptize, that baptism is not valid. Also, a child who is pretending to baptize another child would not confer a valid baptism upon that child, because his intention is to play, not to baptize. The importance of intention also shows that while the sacraments are effectual in and of themselves, they are not magic whereby God works against our will.

Sacraments are effective ex opere operato, i.e. effective on account of the work itself. As expressed by professors of sacred theology, the phrase conveys the fact that the sacrament signifies what it accomplishes, and it accomplishes by signifying. During the 4th century some otherwise orthodox Christians asserted that the effectiveness of the sacraments depended on the holiness of the minister. In other words, if the presbyter baptizing was in a state of sin, his baptisms didn't "take." These Christians eventually broke off from the wider Catholic Church, and were called "Donatists." The Donatists, situated primarily in North Africa, asserted that bishops consecrated by sinful bishops weren't really bishops at all. St. Augustine and others spilled a lot of ink to refute this position regarding sacraments, which is characterized in the Latin as ex opere operantis, i.e. sacraments are effective on account of the one doing the work. While the Church calls her priests (and all Christians) to high standards of holiness, the sacraments are effective independent of a minister's holiness because a perfect God is ultimately providing the sacramental grace, not the imperfect human minister.[7]

Eastern and Oriental Orthodox teaching

The seven sacraments are also accepted by Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, but these traditions do not limit the number of sacraments to seven, holding that anything the Church does as Church is in some sense sacramental. Some lists of the sacraments taken from the Church Fathers include the Consecration of a Church, Monastic Tonsure, and the Burial of the Dead.[8] More specifically, for the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christian the term sacrament is a term which seeks to classify something that may, according to Orthodox thought, be impossible to classify. The Orthodox communion's preferred term is Sacred Mystery. While the Catholic Church has attempted to dogmatically define the sacraments, and discover the precise moment when the act results in the manifestation of the grace of God, the Orthodox communion has refrained from attempting to determine absolutely the exact form, number and effect of the sacraments, accepting that simply that these elements are unknowable to all except God. According to Orthodox thinking God touches mankind through material means such as water, wine, bread, oil, incense, candles, altars, icons, etc. How God does this is a mystery. On a broad level, the mysteries are an affirmation of the goodness of created matter, and are an emphatic declaration of what that matter was originally created to be.

Despite this broad view, Orthodox divines do write about there being seven "principal" mysteries. On a specific level, while not systematically limiting the mysteries to seven, the most profound Mystery is the Eucharist or Synaxis, in which the partakers, by participation in the liturgy and receiving the consecrated bread and wine (understood to have become the body and blood of Christ itself) directly communicate with God. In this sense, there is no substantial difference from the practice of other churches of the Catholic patrimony.[9] The emphasis on mystery is, however, characteristic of Orthodox theology, and is often called apophatic, meaning that any and all positive statements about God and other theological matters must be balanced by negative statements. For example, while it is correct and appropriate to say that "God exists", or even that "God is the only Being which truly exists", such statements must be understood to also convey the idea that God transcends what is usually meant by the term "to exist."^{[citation needed]}

Anglican teaching

As befits its prevailing self-identity as a via media or "middle path" of Western Christianity, Anglican sacramental theology expresses elements in keeping with its status as a church in the Catholic tradition, and a church of the Reformation. With respect to sacramental theology, that Catholic heritage is perhaps most strongly asserted in the importance Anglicanism places on the sacraments as a means of grace, sanctification, and salvation as expressed in the church's liturgy. Anglican and Roman Catholic theologians participating in an Anglican/Roman Catholic Joint Preparatory Commission declared that they had "reached substantial agreement on the doctrine of the Eucharist".[10]