Sacraments
The sacraments have provided the major topics of debate within the church for hundreds of years. As such, there are a multitude of different ways to understand the sacraments of the church, and I do not intend (nor could I) go into them all here. I hope to simply articulate an understanding that seems to be consistent with the thinking put forward so far in this work and deal with some very broad issues. It seems that, more than anywhere else, it is in a tradition’s sacramental theology that their hidden presuppositions come to light. As such, they are symptoms rather than critical issues in themselves. This is why they are being dealt with in the very last chapter of this work.
Baptism
The first of the two sacraments that we will treat is baptism. It should be noted that the Roman Catholic Church celebrates seven sacraments, but Protestantism has been more or less agreed that there are two (with the exception of some who believe that footwashing should be included as well). Baptism is a profoundly moving ritual as it marks the very beginning of a person’s life of obedience to Christ.
The place we need to look in order to understand the meaning of baptism is in the life of Christ. Back in chapter three, when we were considering various important events in the life of Christ and what meaning they bore for our understanding of the Christian faith, we discussed his baptism in the Jordan. When Jesus was baptized, he was baptized with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. However, Jesus is the sinless one, the one who had no sins of which to repent. We must understand Christ’s baptism as a vicarious act (one done on the behalf of others), on our behalf and in our place, repenting for us because we are not even able to repent correctly. Our repentance, even at our best, is half-hearted and insincere, when compared to the comprehensive sorrow and change of heart demanded by the gospel.
What does this mean for the practice of baptism? It means that it is the sacrament of our justification, that is, it is the sacrament that bears witness to the once-for-all-ness of our salvation. God has accomplished our salvation in such a way that it will not, and indeed, cannot be repeated. It marks a person as partaking in the act of God that was done, not in response to the work of humanity, but prior to any human act, purely out of grace; as Paul says, “while we were yet sinners.” Baptism reminds us in a clear and tangible way that God has taken our place both in life and in death.
This once-for-all character of baptism is why it would be terribly inappropriate to baptize someone more than once. To do so would be to say, effectively, that Christ’s substitution was not good enough, that we need to do it again. Actually, the reason that is often cited to support people being re-baptized are deeply related to the arguments against infant baptism, so it is to this topic that we will turn.
There are those who claim that infant baptism is not legitimate. The argument goes something like this (though there are, of course, variations): Baptism is to be done as part of a public declaration of faith to confirm the faith of the individual. Infants cannot make such a public declaration; in fact, they are not truly aware of what is taking place when they are being baptized and they will certainly not remember it later in life. Therefore, infants should not be baptized.
There is a deep problem with this way of thinking and it lies in its presupposition of the meaning of baptism. Is baptism indeed a response to faith that a person already has? It seems somewhat unlikely. After all, Jesus was baptized on our behalf and in our place long before anyone had saving faith. We see, at the beginning of John chapter four, that the disciples are baptizing people. However, it is clear that it is only after the resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church that people really have faith in the sense that is spoken of in the New Testament. So, if so much baptizing was going on before there was real Christian faith, how can baptism be primarily a response of faith? There are examples in the evangelism of the apostles where people come to faith and then are baptized, and it is true that we have no record of the apostles baptizing anyone against their will, but that does not mean that one must believe before being baptized.
The insistence that the person who receives baptism must have made a personal decision for Christ before doing so owes far more to secular Western philosophy than it does to the New Testament. Baptism becomes a sign, not of what Christ has done but of what we have done. Even if we stress the primacy of grace in our faith, we still end up affirming that baptism is to confirm what already exists, rather than being the sign of God’s grace that precedes all our own choosing of God.
When we remember that baptism is more about what God does than it is about what we do, these questions and problems fall away. It becomes clear that it does not matter if we remember our baptism in the literal sense (we can still “remember our baptisms” and be glad, because we remember that we were baptized, even if we cannot recall the event). After all, the point is that Christ has taken our place and that we cling to that reality. There is no need to attempt to point to the time and day that Christ took our place in our lives because, in point of fact, he took our place when he was born of the virgin Mary, and again when he died and rose again for us and our salvation. The act of substitution took place two thousand years ago. It the reality of the fact that Jesus has taken our place that is primary over even our recognition of it.
Holy Communion
If baptism is the sacrament of our justification, or of the once-for-all aspect of our relationship with Christ, Communion is the sacrament of our sanctification, that is, the ongoing aspect of our Christian lives. We have indeed had our places taken by Christ once and for all and nothing can undo that fact (even if we insist on damning ourselves to hell, it does not change the fact that Christ has taken our place; it simply means that heaven is not the best place for us in that instance. See the discussion of hell in chapter 7). And yet, we are still creatures who have fallen. The kingdom of God has drawn near, it has broken into our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit, and yet, the old age still lingers on. Because of the brokenness of the fallen world, we always have a need to be reminded of the grace that God has for us, to be recalled to repentance of our own ways, and return to the ways of Christ.
When we participate in Holy Communion, we are engaged in the tearing down of idols, but in order to understand this, we need to consider the long history of the Passover. In Exodus 12:1-13, we read of the preparation of lambs to be killed as part of a meal while the Israelites are still captive in Egypt. They are to slaughter a lamb and take its blood and smear it on the doorframes of their house. When the angel of death passed through the land, taking the lives of all the firstborn sons, it would see the blood of the lamb, and it would pass over that house and the children would be safe. This has been carried out year after year in remembrance of how God had delivered them and made a distinction between the people of God and the people who hated God.
We must understand that this was the context for the last supper. Christ and his disciples were sharing the Passover feast. Christ took the symbols of the feast and reinterpreted them so that they bore witness to himself. The bread that was broken was his body, broken for them; the wine that was shared was his blood, shed for them. He was the lamb, the sacrifice, provided by God, so that the people could be saved from death. Christ revealed himself to be both priest and sacrifice, both offerer and offering.
What is interesting is that, though Jesus spoke often about the fact that he would die, he did not always go to great lengths to explain what his death meant. Here, at the last supper, we have Jesus explaining to his disciples that his death was not accidental, nor was it simply tragic, but that it was full of divine meaning. He was not just dying, he was dying for them (and also for us). Had Jesus not spent this time instituting this sacrament that was to be done over and over again in remembrance of him, we would have a drastically inadequate understanding of his death.
A word must be said regarding whether the communion table should be open or closed. Above, the arguments against infant baptism were dismissed as being irrelevant to the real purpose of baptism and that, if we understand the real purpose of baptism, we will not be compelled to deny the baptism of infants while still rejoicing to baptize adults. Similarly, there are some who argue that communion should be closed. This often has an extremely excluding tendency. In practice, this often means that a church that practices closed communion would require one to be a member of their denomination, if not their particular congregation, in order to participate in the sacrament. The argument behind this practice is often to make sure that people are taking the sacrament “worthily” (1 Corinthians 11:27-30).
In spite of the appeal to this way of thinking, a close reading of the letter from which this concern comes reveals that the problem in Corinth was not that sinners or outsiders were participating, but that communion was being used as a tool to foster divisions within the church. Even still, the appeal must be made to the actual practice of Christ. Christ shared his last supper with both Judas and Peter, one who betrayed him to his death and the other who denied him over and over again. If there were ever two people who should not participate in communion, it would be these two. And yet, our Lord does not hesitate to include them in this celebration. If Jesus is willing to have such flagrant sinners dine with him (as he did throughout his earthly ministry), we should be willing to do the same. After all, why should we deny this sign of incredible grace from those who might need it most?
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