SACRAMENTAL

SPIRITUALITY
SPIRITUALITY
 SECULAR
 NATURAL
 COMMUNAL
 SOCIAL
 ESCHATOLOGICAL
The Early Development of Sacramental
Theology
 The term “Sacrament” is not found in the Bible.
 Gk “mysterion”(mystery – Mark 1:4) refers to the saving
work of God in general. It implies acts in which God
discloses Godself to us. It is never used to refer to what we
regard now as “sacrament”.
 However, in the history of the early Church, there is clear
connection between the mystery of God’s saving work in
Christ and the “sacraments” of baptism and eucharist.
The Early Development of Sacramental
Theology
 Most significant advances took place in Roman
North Africa. The Church in this region was
subjected to difficult circumstances, including
persecution. But the church showed strong sense of
solidarity among the faithful. The sacraments were
one vital aspect of this strategy of solidarity.
Early Church Fathers: Tertullian
 The use of the Latin term sacramentum to translate the Greek word
“mysterion”.
 The use of the word “sacrament” in the plural. He used the term to refer both to
the mystery of God’s salvation (singular) and to the symbols or rites associated
with the celebration of this salvation.
 The exploitation of the theological significance of the parallel between
sacraments and military oaths. In Latin use, Sacramentum meant a “sacred
oath”, referring to the oath of allegiance and loyalty that was required of
Roman soldiers. Tertullian utilized the term to refer to the Christian
commitment and loyalty within the Church in period of intense persecution.
However, it lacks the rich depth which mysterion signifies. It is much more
legalistic and lacks the cosmic dimension of the personal self-giving that
mysterion implies. It is, though the word the Western church chose form the 3 rd
century onward.
Early Church Fathers: Augustine
 Development during the Donatist controversy
 His reflections centered on the relationship between a sign (signum)
and the things that it signifies (res) (ex. smoke and fire).
 “sacred signs” bridge the gap between God and us, physical
doorways or gates to spiritual realities.
 Sacrament - “visible forms of invisible grace” yet sacraments do not
merely signify grace. They evoke or enable what they signify. They
are not just symbol because they became channels of what they
represent.
Foundational “Sacraments”
 According to Dwight Vogel, the term refers not to baptism and eucharist, but
to physical realities that help us understand what undergirds not only
baptism and eucharist but sacramental living in general.
 Theodore Runyon: the world is the original sacrament of God’s grace.
Creation itself is an act of grace, essentially good and not evil, and through
the creation we can glimpse the Creator. ‘
 Creation has also the potential to carry a sense of that which is beyond it.
Water, oil, bread and wine can be seen as “vehicles of grace – elements
whose significance is profound for those who look with eyes of faith.
 Paul Tillich: “the universal religious basis is the experience of the Holy
within the finite”.
Foundational “Sacraments”
 Edward Schillebeeckx: “the man Jesus, as the personal visible realization of the divine grace
of redemption, is the sacrament, the primordial sacrament.”
 Dwight Vogel: Christian sacramental living needs to be based on this fundamental
recognition of Jesus as the primordial sacrament of God’s grace for us.
 The Church itself as a sacrament of salvation. The Christian community is also a
sacrament of grace and a sacrament of Christ’s presence. The Body of Christ in which
Christ’s real presence is in the koinonia.
 Karl Rahner ties all three perspective together: “Sacraments point not just to things through
which the Holy can be revealed. Rather, all of nature and history reveal the cosmic grace of
God to which the individual sacraments are witnesses and expressions. God’s grace is
bringing wholeness and salvation at the roots of human experience…God’s cosmic, essential
grace is visible in many ways, but supremely in Jesus Christ, the primordial sacrament, and
in the living Church, the presently visible, ministering, caring, serving body of Christ.”
 Creation,Jesus Christ and the Church are foundational
theologically, for a recognition of their sacramentality
undergirds depth understandings of the sacramental acts of
the Church.
 James White: God’s self-giving is the basis of the
Christian sacraments.
Becoming sacraments of Sacraments of
The Sacrament
 Jesus Christ, (The Sacrament) instituted the Sacraments of baptism and
eucharist. In receiving them, we are shaped, transformed, and nurtured to become
living sacraments of God’s grace. Through the sacraments, the power of God is
at work within us, teaching us all to live all of life eucharistically (In the
framework of thanksgiving), and to understand our discipleship as living out our
Baptismal Covenant.
 As we pray during the Great Thanksgiving, we offer ourselves to God as a holy
and living sacrifice.
 Post-communion Prayer: “Eternal God, we give you thanks for this holy mystery
in which you have given yourself to us. Grant that we may go into the world in
the power of your Holy Spirit, so that we may give ourselves to others.”
Biblical Foundations
 As sign-acts, sacraments expresses the encounter between God and
humans. These sign-acts signified sacred things and become ways of
expressing to the senses what no physical sense could perceive, God’s
self-giving. The sacraments call us to “taste, then, and see” (Psalms
34:8), to touch, to hear, even to smell “that the Lord is good”.
 In the sacraments, the physical becomes vehicle or channel od the
spiritual.
 JEWISH MENTALITY – the Jews held in tension the transcendence of
God with God’s concrete involvement in the actual events of human
history. God was mad known through events and OBJECTS that
disclosed the divine will, YET WE NEVER CONFUSED THEM WITH
THE DEITY. Humans, in turn, could respond to God by appropriate
actions.
 Use of certain actions and physical objects as means that
God and humans can use to communicate with each other.
AND YET GOD REMAINS TRANSCENDENT, NEVER
TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE CREATED. They
creature reveals God, but never become identified with the
Creator himself.
 This understanding avoids a false split between the
material and spiritual. Even ordinary objects can be used
to convey God’s love to us.
 Sacramentality is in direct opposition to Gnosticism and
docetism.
Old Testament and Jewish Background

 There are variety of forms of prophetic symbolism in which dramatic actions

signify to humans God’s will and purpose. Jeremiah makes a yoke of iron
and also smashes a pot of clay. Such actions are part of the very events they
anticipate and thus have potency to fulfill God’s will.
 In Judaism, MEAL is understood as a sacred event. Sharing a meal is an
opportunity to worship God and a moment of forming a bond of unity
between partakers. It is not simply a physical necessity but a means of
encountering God as a provider, host and companion.
 Judaism discovered that humans can also use actions to reach God Sacrifice
of food and drink signifies self-offering to God.
 Without this Jewish mentality and practices, the sacramental life of
Christianity would never have been born.
New Testament and Early Christianity
 The earliest Christians were also Jews, and these ways of thinking and doing
comes naturally to them. They were able to use the material as a channel of
the spiritual without confusing the two. Unlike the idolatrous religions
surrounding them, their sense of the transcendent set them free to use the
material in spiritual ways without risk of idolatry.
 Jesus and his disciples used the sacramental patterns of Judaism. The
disciples began baptizing early in Jesus’ ministry (Jn 4.2), following a
custom that had gradually developed of baptizing converts to Judaism. Jesus
himself was baptized.
 They also celebrated the annual Passover Meal, and transformed this familiar
practice in establishing or commemorating a new covenant.
 Debate whether Jesus actually commanded and instituted the sacraments.
 But definitely Jesus himself received baptism and kept the feast. In this sense,
Jesus’ own actions are firmer basis for the sacraments than reports of his
words. In doing what he did, the church simply carried on his sacramental
reality.
 The church continued to repeat Jesus actions from the time of his death on.
Long before the scriptures were put into written form. In short, the sacraments
are older than the written scriptures.
 The church’s acts of obedience to the Master, rather than words of institution,
are our chief evidence for the foundation of the sacraments. Early Christians
celebrated the sacraments in faithful obedience to Jesus’ intentions.
 The New Testament is full of references to what later generations would call
sacraments. The Bible does not give us liturgies or sacramental theologies, but
it lays the foundation on which these can be built.
Definition of a Sacrament
AUGUSTINIAN (Saint Augustine of Hippo)
UNDERSTANDING:
 A sacrament is a sign (signum). Signs, when applied to divine things, are
called a sacrament.
 The sign must bear some relation to the thing that is signified (res) (bread
and wine do body and blood). “If sacraments did not bear some resemblance
to the things of which they are the sacraments, they would not be sacraments
at all.”
 Augustine distinguished between the visible sacrament itself and the power
of a sacrament. Apart from the invisible grace the sacraments has no power
of itself; only this invisible power or force can give effect.
Definition of a Sacrament
HUGH OF ST VICTOR (1096-1141):
4 ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS TO THE DEFINITION OF A
SACRAMENT
 1. a physical or material element (water of baptism, bread and wine of the
eucharist)
 2. likeness to the thing that is signified, so that it can represent the thing
signified. Thus, the Eucharistic wine can be argued to have a “likeness” to
the blood of Christ, allowing it to represent that blood in a sacramental
context.
 3. Authorization to signify the thing in question to represent the spiritual
reality which it points, ex. The institution at the hands of Jesus himself.
 4. an efficacity, by which the sacraments is capable of conferring the
benefits which it signifies to those who partake it.
Definition of a Sacrament
MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY
 Puts distinction between “sacraments of the Old Covenant” (i.e. circumcision) and the
“sacraments of the New Covenant”.
 Sacraments of the Old Covenant merely signified spiritual realities, whereas the
sacraments of New Covenant actualized what they signified.
 Bonaventure (1221-1274): Old Law – ointments were figurative and did not heal. The
disease was lethal, but the anointings were superficial. It was only through our Lord
Jesus Christ through his death the sacraments have the power to bring life.
 Peter Lombard: a sacrament bears likeness to a thing of which it is a sign. Something
can be properly called a sacrament if it is a sign of the grace of God and a form of
visible grace, so that it bears its image and exists as its cause. Sacraments were
therefore instituted for the sake of sanctifying, as well as of signifying. Those things
which were instituted for the purpose of signifying alone are nothing more than signs,
and are not sacraments, as in the case of physical sacrifices and ceremonial observances
of the Old Law, which were never be able to make those who offered them righteous.”
Definition of a Sacrament
 No reference to any “physical or material element”.
 Lombard’s definition fits each of the seven sacraments recognized during that time:
baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, penance, marriage, ordination, and extreme unction.
 It was the general understanding in later medieval theology and remained virtually
unchallenged until the time of Reformation.
 It should be noted that during the medieval ages, the number of sacraments remained
varied. From Augustine to the 12th century not much had been settled as far as
sacramental doctrines were concerned. Augustine was even imprecise about the number
of sacraments.
 It was at the Council of Florence (1439) that the final list of 7 sacraments was made.
Three things are necessary for each of these sacraments: the proper matter (objects such
as water), the correct words or the form (i.e. “I baptize you”), and the person of the
designated ministrant, who must have the intention of carrying out what the church
effects through him (doing what the church does in the sacraments such as baptizing).
 According to the Council, three of the seven sacraments – baptism, confirmation, and
ordination – impress indelibly upon the soul of a character, a certain spiritual sign,
distinct from all others, so they are not repeated for the same person.
 POSTIVE EFFECT– clearly defined understanding using Aristotelian philospophy.
 NEGATIVE EFECT – rationalistic, not experiential. In those neat definition about the
operation of grace, there is a tendency of knowing too much, a forgetfulness that one
is dealing with heavenly mysteries, not that which is susceptible to philosophical
solutions. It fails to understand that human knowledge had its limits. Such too neat
sacramental system led roman Catholicism, especially after Reformation, to treating
the sacraments in excessively juridical ways and to overemphasize the question of
validity. The necessary concern with affirming the sacraments’ dependence on God
alone, ex opere operato, could sometimes be diverted from its proper affirmations to a
mechanical concept of grace. Furthermore, the sacramental system was very heavily
to the ministry of the clergy.
Definition of a Sacrament
PROTESTANT REFORMATION
 Martin Luther attacked the Catholic sacramental theology and
practice. He initially recognized three (baptism, Eucharist ad
penance), and sortly afterwards only 2 (baptism and eucharist).
 Luther restricted the name sacrament to “those promises of God
which have signs attached to them”, thereby eliminating penance as
a sacrament.
 2 essential characteristics of a sacrament: 1) Word of God, and 2) an
outward sacramental sign.
 The only true sacraments of the New Testament Church were
baptism and Eucharist.
Definition of a Sacrament
PROTESTANT REFORMATION
 Huldrych Zwingli argued that the term sacrament has the basic
sense of oath.
 Sacrament are those things which God has instituted, commanded
and ordained with the Word, which is a firm and sure as if God had
sworn an oath to this effect.
 Zwingli later come to see the sacraments as signifying the allegiance
of believers to the Church, rather than of God to believers.
 Reacting to the Protestant approach, the Council of Trent responded
by reaffirming the Catholic position outlined by Peter Lombard (7
sacraments)
Sacrament:
A Wesleyan Theological Framework
 John Wesley maintained the classic Augustinian interpretation of a
sacrament as on “outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible
grace”.
 His theology is influenced by the catholic faith as mediated by Anglicanism,
and by Calvinism and Lutheranism.
 Wesleyan Revival is a both a sacramental and evangelical revival. Wesley
and the Methodists were called sacramentarians because of their emphasis
on the regular reception of the Lord’s Supper, a very rare practice during
those days.
 Wesley balanced his evangelical fervor with a strong sacramental
understanding and praxis.
 Wesley understood Lord’s Supper as the chief means of grace, the richest
legacy which Christ as left for his followers.
 But after his death in 1791, his followers never seem fully to appropriate
and appreciate Wesley’s sacramental vigor. The emphasis is changed, little
by little: the Word preached and heard is now considered as the chief
means of grace.
 The balance was destroyed. Baptismal regeneration is supplanted by
shallow “revivalist” theology. The doctrines of “real presence” and
“eucharistic sacrifice” were sacrificed in the altar of “anti-sacerdotal
evangelicalism” of his followers.
 The focus now is on Wesley’s “Aldersgate experience”. For many
Methodists then (and now) believe that Wesley ceased to be “High
Church” after his “heartwarming experience.”
Sacrament:
A Wesleyan Theological Framework
 John Wesley maintained the classic Augustinian interpretation of a
sacrament as on “outward sign of an inward grace, and a means whereby
we receive the same”.
 His theology is influenced by the catholic faith as mediated by Anglicanism,
and by Calvinism and Lutheranism.
 Wesleyan Revival is a both a sacramental and evangelical revival. Wesley
and the Methodists were called sacramentarians because of their emphasis
on the regular reception of the Lord’s Supper, a very rare practice during
those days.
 Wesley balanced his evangelical fervor with a strong sacramental
understanding and praxis.
 Wesley understood Lord’s Supper as the chief means of grace, the richest
legacy which Christ as left for his followers.
 But after his death in 1791, his followers never seem fully to appropriate
and appreciate Wesley’s sacramental vigor. The emphasis is changed, little
by little: the Word preached and heard is now considered as the chief
means of grace.
 The balance was destroyed. Baptismal regeneration is supplanted by
shallow “revivalist” theology. The doctrines of “real presence” and
“eucharistic sacrifice” were sacrificed in the altar of “anti-sacerdotal
evangelicalism” of his followers.
 The focus now is on Wesley’s “Aldersgate experience”. For many
Methodists then (and now) believe that Wesley ceased to be “High
Church” after his “heartwarming experience.”
Ordo Salutis: Framework of Wesleyan
Sacramental Theology
 Wesley’s theology of ordo salutis (order of salvation) represents
his systematic understanding of the way God dispenses salvation
to humans. The operation of grace is considered within this
frame of reference, to each according to his/her need, expressed
in terms of prevenient, justifying and sanctifying grace.
 The means of grace (including the sacraments) are the ordinary
channels of God’s grace. They function only within the
soteriological framework of the ordo salutis and must be treated
systematically within this structural frame
 John Wesley’s theology is unitive. He has one unified doctrine of the
sacraments, comprising Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which
forms an integral part of the greater unitive strctre
 The theological and practical importance of the sacraments for
Wesley lies in their function: within the framework of the ordo
salutis, they function as (1) effective signs, (2) effective means of
grace, and (3) effective pledges of glory to come, cojoined wit the
added aspect of sacrifice.
Sacramental Efficacy
 From the earliest times, two tendencies in interpreting the sacraments,
particularly its functions have been evident.
 One emphasizes the objective reality of God’s grace in and through the
sacraments. Sacraments are divinely appointed rites that, when properly
administered, convey grace and salvation if there are no impediments.
They are efficacious in themselves (ex opere operato).
 Ignatius of Loyola – Eucharist is the “medicine of immortality”.
 Augustine: the effectiveness of the sacrament does not depend upon the
worthiness of the celebrant.
 Doctrine of Transubstantiation: the substance of the bread and wine is
change into the substance of the body and blood of Christ.
Sacramental Efficacy
 The second tendency emphasizes the importance of our faith
response.
 The sacrament are dramatic signs of the grace of God are effective
not in themselves but only as they are received by faith.
 The sacraments are not so much something done to us as something
that we do: we repent, we confess our faith, and we vow to be
faithful.