What are sacraments?

To some degree, all Christians believe Jesus Christ instituted “practices” that the Church would perform as part of her mission on Earth. When understood to be practices with a supernatural, sacred and salvific properties, roughly speaking, these practices are called sacraments. For example, Baptism is one such sacrament although many denominations would regard baptism as merely symbolic rather than supernatural. Like all the sacraments, Jesus instituted baptism commissioning his disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 28:19. As one discovers with the sacraments, there is a proper application that validates it: in the case of Baptism, it must involve water and must be Trinitarian.

Some mainstream Protestant denominations recognize a few sacraments, usually two—baptism and communion — while many evangelical Bible churches do not recognize a “sacramental economy” at all.

Conversely, the Catholic Church recognizes seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, holy communion (Eucharist), penance, anointing of the sick, holy matrimony, and holy orders. According to the Catechism: [1131] “The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.”

Although there is much to understand about the sacraments, their purpose, their symbolism, their prefiguration in the Old Testament, their application and salvific significance, the first thing to understand about the sacraments is: did Jesus really institute them. Although the Church claims that the sacramental system was passed on from the beginning through Sacred Tradition, we can still see evidence of the sacramental system in Sacred Scripture:

• Water baptism. We saw the commissioning of this in Matthew 28:19.
• Confirmation (anointing, baptism of the Holy Spirit, usually with oil or laying on of hands by apostle). Along with baptism, the two sacraments are considered part of Christian initiation. Jesus modeled the combination of baptism and confirmation in Matthew 3:13-17. Of course we see in the Acts of the Apostles many places where the baptism of the Holy Spirit was administered. Indeed, the word “Christian” is from the word “Christ” which means anointed.
• The Eucharist (the Most Blessed Sacrament) was instituted at the Last Supper and prefigured in the Old Testament as well as vividly in John 6 where many disciples left Jesus on the “hard teaching” of eating Jesus’ body and blood for eternal life. One writer called these disciples “Proto-Protestants”. 1 Corinthians 11:23-33 also talks about the institution of the Eucharist, the sign of the New Covenant.
• Penance, (or Confession, Reconciliation, Conversion). In John 19:20-23 we see the apostles are given the authority by Jesus to forgive sin—but why? It’s interesting the disciples had the authority to heal, cast out evil spirits, preach, etc. beforehand, but this authority was provided AFTER the resurrection. This authority, according to the Church, has been passed down through apostolic succession and evolved in format. So when one goes to confession (with the required disposition), the priest has the authority to forgive any grave sin and reinstate the baptized to the sacramental community of the Church. Protestants argue that you don’t need to go to someone to have your sins forgiven but that God can forgive you your sins directly. Catholics do not deny that this is possible but also argue that the ordinary way (the way we know about and the way Christ instituted) is through the sacrament of reconciliation.
• Anointing of the Sick. This is quite vividly described in the book of James. Because it involves the forgiveness of sin, only a priest (called an elder in James) may administer it. Likewise, Mark 6:12-13 talks about the disciple’s ministry of anointing the sick.
• Marriage is a sacrament. Not everyone participates in this sacrament administered by the authority of a priest. The Catholic Church understands marriage to be between one man and one woman, indissoluble. That is why divorce and same-sex marriage will never be condoned in the Catholic Church for, as a sacrament, no one has the authority to change it up—not even the Pope. Marriage was instituted in Genesis and validated by Christ in Matthew 19:1-12.
• Holy Orders. This is the ordination of men to the priesthood. Not everyone receives this sacrament, e.g., women cannot be priests. Paul and the disciples represented this priesthood as did the tribe of Levi in the old testament. When Jesus chose twelve men, he modeled this sacrament.

Analysis

As one apologist put it, Sacraments are the opposite of Magick (in the spiritual sense not in the Las Vegas sense). Whereas Magick manipulates the properties of the spiritual world to affect something in the physical world, sacraments manipulate the properties of the physical world (bread, oil, wine, hands) to affect something in the spiritual world (salvation, atonement).

The large paradigm shift here has to do with what the Church does or is supposed to do. According to Catholics it administers the sacraments with the appropriate authority. Compare this to a Bible church that predominantly preaches the gospel and studies the bible—all good things that the Church applauds.  But without Bibles, Christianity is merely disadvantaged. Without sacraments and liturgy, there is no Christianity at all. Think about what Christians were doing the first one thousand years before Guttenberg made Bibles readily available through the printing press and Luther conjured the sola scriptura philosophy. They were celebrating the sacraments instituted by Christ.  Catholics still do–all seven.