Visible Signs of Invisible Grace: Sacraments for the “Low Church” (Part 1)

Keith D. Stanglin

*See parts two, three, and four of this series

INTRODUCTION

In this series of blog posts that addresses evangelical sacramental theology, first I would like to summarize briefly the traditional beliefs and practices with regard to the two sacraments in Churches of Christ (including Christian Churches and Disciples of Christ, all of which I will sometimes refer to with the increasingly outmoded but handy term, “Restorationists”), pointing out the combination of ideas that makes these “Restorationist” churches distinct from most other denominations.[1] 

First, the doctrine and practice of baptism in these Restorationist churches can be summarized in three points, corresponding to the mode, subject, and end of baptism: Baptism is immersion of believers for remission of sins.  As to the mode (immersion) and proper subjects (penitent believers only) of baptism, we are like Baptists and other evangelicals, but unlike the typical practice of Roman Catholicism and most magisterial and mainline Protestant churches.  Eastern Orthodoxy, to my knowledge, is the only major group that still regularly immerses infants.  As to the end or purpose (remission of sins), for Churches of Christ, baptism is sacramental in the sense of being, as George Beasley-Murray put it, “a symbol with power.”[2]  This belief puts Churches of Christ closer to Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Lutheran views, but farther from the typical Reformed and evangelical beliefs.

Second, the doctrine and practice of the Lord’s Supper in Churches of Christ may also be summarized in three points, corresponding roughly to points about frequency and purpose or efficacy: The Lord’s Supper is a weekly, Zwinglian ordinance.  The strict connection between Lord’s Supper and (each and every) Lord’s Day has for two centuries distinguished Churches of Christ from most of our Protestant evangelical neighbors who commune less frequently, but has put us in harmony with Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and (much of) Lutheranism.  The idea that the Lord’s Supper is primarily and almost exclusively a memorial, and that it is simply an ordinance to be obeyed without the conveying of special grace, unites Churches of Christ with most Reformed and evangelical churches, but puts us at odds with the others.  Thus, in sum, Churches of Christ have a high, sacramental view of believers’ baptism and a low, Zwinglian view of weekly Lord’s Supper.

My specific aim in this series of posts is to articulate a view of the two sacraments that raises the bar for the typical “low church.”  These practices of the church are more than simply ordinances, commands to be obeyed in the sense of positive law.  Rather, my thesis is that divine grace is conveyed in the sacraments by the presence of Christ mediated through the Spirit.  This view will challenge the typical evangelical understanding of baptism and both the typical evangelical and Restorationist understanding of the eucharist.  To get a hearing among these churches, the perspective should be faithful to Scripture, which is of prime importance to evangelicals.  Therefore, my first concern in this discussion is biblical faithfulness.  I am concerned, second, to hear the voice of the great tradition of the church (a concern that distinguishes me from some, though not all, Restorationists).  The greatest minds of church history are the common property of all Christians.  A third concern of mine, in line with the early American Restoration Movement, is greater ecumenical understanding, especially in areas of agreement.  The view that I articulate should bring “low church” fellowships into closer conversation with “high church” communions, which have often been scandalized by the evangelical marginalization of the sacraments.  Thus, another conversation partner will be Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order document from Lima, 1982.

SACRAMENTAL EFFICACY

A. Sacraments as Signs of Grace

Peter Lombard, channeling Augustine, writes, “What is a sacrament?  ‘A sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing.’…  Also, a sacrament is a visible form of an invisible grace.”…  “A sacrament bears a likeness of the thing whose sign it is.”…  “…[T]he sacraments were not instituted only for the sake of signifying, but also to sanctify.”[3]  As Martin Luther observes, a sacrament must have a physical, visible sign; an internal, spiritual significance; and an intentional faith that makes it effective.[4]  For Luther, a sacrament is the promise of forgiveness of sins conjoined with a sign, in which case there are properly two sacraments, baptism and eucharist.[5]  In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin opens his discussion of the sacraments with a definition consistent with all of the above.  As did the Lombard, Calvin also quotes Augustine and, incorporating the same three elements of Luther’s definition, Calvin writes that a sacrament is “a testimony of divine grace toward us, confirmed by an outward sign, with mutual attestation of our piety toward him.”[6]  As the form of the promise of God, the sacrament is a “visible word,”[7] accompanied by the promise itself, which is communicated through preaching.

A sacrament, traditionally understood, is not simply any of the many legitimate practices and rituals of the church.  It is a visible sign of invisible grace, practiced by Christ himself and instituted by him for the church, administered by the church, joined with the word of the gospel.  What the sacrament or ordinance or sign signifies is actually linked to the sign.  Grace is truly conveyed at the moment of the sacrament.  Both baptism and eucharist re-present the death and resurrection of Christ and convey the promised benefits to those who participate by faith.  Let us call this a “high” view of the sacraments.

B. From Moment of Grace to Mere Symbol

Whence came the “low” view, the shift in evangelical Protestant sacramental theology?  How did it happen that the church began to think of its sacraments as mere symbols?  How did the sacraments go from being necessary for salvation, to being unnecessary for salvation, to being simply unnecessary or altogether eliminated?  As it goes with so much of history, this also is a story of pendulum swings.  The Roman Church was perceived by Protestant reformers as having, in many ways, a superstitious doctrine and practice of sacraments.  This stems, in part, from a sacramental view of the cosmos in general, namely, that the material world is infused with the divine presence, the transcendent made immanent.  This infusion is reflected, in a special and unique way, in the incarnation.  When God “the Word became flesh” (Jn. 1:14), the divine nature had a new kind of direct contact and relation with the world, and, as a result, human nature was divinized.  Medieval iconodules saw in the incarnation a paradigm for thinking about God’s special presence and power in relics and images.  From an iconoclastic perspective, the sacramental view of the cosmos, when taken to an extreme, can approach panentheism and, when it comes to individual relics and images, can look indistinguishable from idolatry. 

To the mind of most reformers, this sacramental view had been taken to an extreme in the late medieval Western church, and idolatry was the result.  In an effort to correct the error, the Reformation tended to remove the material from the liturgy and the sacred from the material cosmos.  For many reformers, this de-sacralization of the cosmos meant the removal of special divine presence not only from relics and images, but even from the sacraments of baptism and holy communion. 

With regard to the sacraments, there had always been a distinction between the sign (signum) and the thing or reality signified (res significata), that is, between the visible matter and form, on the one hand, and the grace to which the signs pointed, on the other.  This common distinction, however, became a separation in the thought of Ulrich Zwingli.  Whatever the reason, Zwingli, more than almost anyone before him, separated the sacramental sign from the thing signified.  We can call this the “Zwinglian separation.”  What Zwingli separated, the Enlightenment, for reasons of its own, attempted to divorce entirely: “symbol and reality have been broken apart.”[8]

Although this separation was not persuasive to Martin Luther or ultimately to Lutheran orthodoxy, it does reflect well the anti-institutional impulse of the Protestant Reformations as a whole, including the Lutheran branch.  The Protestant critique of the Roman Church’s sacraments, begun in earnest in 1520 with Luther’s Babylonian Captivity of the Church, led to the reduction from seven sacraments to two, as well as to the eventual demotion of the two that remained.  Just as Scripture alone is sufficient without the teaching magisterium of the church, so also justification and absolution are available by personal faith alone without the need for grace dispensed through the church’s sacraments.  The emphasis on faith, Scripture, and the priesthood of all believers ended up marginalizing the institutional church, which, as the mystical body of Christ, is itself the true sacrament.  Relationship with God became predominantly personal and individual, not something experienced primarily in the gathered church or mediated through its sacraments.

As a result, the Sunday service was no longer centered around a Mass, mumbled by a priest in a language that the people, and perhaps even the priest himself, could not understand.  The clergy, whose primary task had been to administer seven sacraments, was now given the principal task of preaching.  With Reformed and radical Protestants, for the first time in the history of the church, there could be a Lord’s Day service without the Lord’s Supper.  In the absence of holy communion, preaching became the new sacrament, the conditio sine qua non and central component of the worship assembly, in the words of the Westminster divines, “effectual to salvation.”[9]  Of course, preaching was not intended to supplant sacraments, and this result was not a necessary consequence; the word simply could have been joined more deliberately to the sacraments.  But supplant it did, at least for many Protestants, who began to focus on internals and preaching to the exclusion of externals and the sacraments.  The baptistery and table (or altar) were no longer front and center, but the pulpit would soon, literally, take center stage.

Evangelicalism has been the proper heir to Zwinglianism, perpetuating the separation between the sign and the thing signified.  In some fellowships—namely, Quakers and the Salvation Army—the unnecessary role of the sacraments has been taken to the logical conclusion, and so they are not practiced at all.  After all, if the inward reality of grace is conveyed ordinarily apart from the outward sign, then the outward sign retains symbolic import, at best, and, at worst, it can be distracting and divisive.  Most evangelical churches, though, continue to practice the sacraments of baptism and eucharist.  When I say “low church,” I affectionately mean the type of evangelicalism that practices the sacraments but has a very low or non-sacramental view of them, as opposed to an ecclesiology that views the church as the means of grace.  Such “low” churches, which I take to be the majority of self-described evangelicals, generally insist that baptism has nothing whatsoever to do with the conversion process and that the eucharist, infrequently practiced, is a mere symbol of Christ’s body and blood.  As Ronald Byars characterized this way of looking at the sacraments, they are, in the minds of many Christians, “justasymbol.”[10]  This low-church mindset tends to promote what John Webster called “sacramental minimalism.”  Webster noted that such sacramental minimalism “has attached itself to some bits of the evangelical tradition.”[11]  At least as regards North American evangelicalism and its various exports, the suggestion that “some bits” of evangelicalism have been infiltrated with sacramental minimalism is vastly understated.  As will be demonstrated, even when some evangelical theologians acknowledge the sacraments as “means of grace,” they often do not intend to indicate the uniqueness of the sacraments, but instead list them alongside other Christian practices, such as prayer, discipline, spiritual gifts, and evangelism.[12]

See Part 2 of this series

See part 3 of this series

See part 4 of this series

[1] These posts are adapted from my essay, “Visible Signs of Invisible Grace: Sacraments for the ‘Low Church,’” in Distinguishing the Church: Explorations in Word, Sacrament, and Discipline, ed. Greg Peters and Matt Jenson (Eugene: Pickwick, 2019), 69-92.

[2] G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (1962; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 263.

[3] Peter Lombard, The Sentences, 4 vols., trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2007–10), IV.i.1 and 4.

[4] Martin Luther, “The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ, and the Brotherhoods,” in Luther’s Works, American edition, 55 vols., ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955–86), 35:45.

[5] Martin Luther, “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” LW 36:124.

[6] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), IV.xiv.1.

[7] Inst. IV.xiv.6, quoting Augustine on the Gospel of John.

[8] Ronald P. Byars, The Sacraments in Biblical Perspective, Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 11.

[9] See “Westminster Larger Catechism (1647),” Q&A 154-55, in Reformed Confessions of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries in English Translation: Volume 4, 1600–1693 (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 340.

[10] Byars, Sacraments, 10.

[11] John Webster, “On Evangelical Ecclesiology,” in Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 187.

[12] E.g., Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 950-61.