Sacred Actions In The Early Church

Understanding the sacred actions of the early church requires a short language lesson. Two words, the Greek word mysterion, and the Latin word sacramentum, are important to this discussion. This article describes the history of these terms in early Christian thought and gives clues to their meaning and significance for the Christian tradition.

As Christianity penetrated the Graeco-Roman world, it moved from the Greek East to the Latin West. Greek New Testament terms had to be translated into Latin. The mysterion of Christ became the sacramentum of Christ. Mysterion, Mystery: Greek and Biblical Use Christian worship initially developed out of Jewish liturgy. Jesus deliberately placed his institution of the Eucharist into the context of Jewish table ritual. Baptism, anointing, and ordination drew on Jewish precedents. Jesus' saving action was inextricably bound up with the Hebrew understanding of God's saving covenant, for Jesus himself referred to his sacrificial death as the new covenant. The church took root initially in the Greek-speaking communities of the Roman Empire (even in the city of Rome, Christians were Greek-speaking during the first two hundred years). One of the Greek terms used by New Testament writers to describe Christ's sacred action was mysterion. Later Latin writers translated this word as sacramentum. Both mysterion and sacramentum expressed the mystery of Christ and the church's worship of God in Christ by the power of the Spirit. The mysteries, as understood in the Greek mystery religions, were secret rites by which persons were initiated into a given religion. Initiates were expected never to reveal the details of the rite to outsiders; only those who kept the secret were said to be assured of salvation. It may be that this understanding influenced the use of the term mysterion by philosophers who likened their own efforts on the path toward the understanding of truth to the steps of the religious mystics on their path to initiation. Old Testament texts, which were written in the Hellenistic period (Wisdom, Daniel, Tobit, Sirach, 2 Maccabees), used the term mysterion more in its philosophical or profane sense than in its worship sense. The books of Daniel and Wisdom are especially lucid examples. The book of Daniel refers to the eschatological mysterion, that is, what is to happen in the days to come and to be revealed by God alone. Further, the book of Wisdom speaks, on the one hand, of the wicked who knew not the hidden counsels (mysteria) of God; on the other hand, of the mysteries of the one God revealed in the present to all who are open and seek after wisdom, who personified is seen as a mediatrix between God and humanity. The New Testament use of the term mysterion is influenced by Daniel's apocalyptic use of the term and shows a strong eschatological referent by its association with Jesus. Mark 4:11 joins mysterion with Jesus' eschatological proclamation of the basileia (kingdom): "?To you the mystery of the reign of God has been confided.?" In the letters of Paul, especially 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians, the uses of the term mysterion taken from pre-Christian Greek worship and philosophy as well as from the Old Testament, are combined and transformed: The mysterion is essentially the Christ-event itself. Paul's entire purpose is to preach no other wisdom than the apparent contradiction to wisdom, the crucified Christ. In the crucified Christ, the mystery of God is revealed and comprehended, rather than hidden. This is the mystery that is unveiled by the Spirit of God. Paul's theology makes a clean break with any notion of elitist isolation or privatizing of the search for salvation. Rather than a secret to be preserved, the mystery of God which is Christ is proclaimed openly for all. For Paul, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are the revelation and the realization of the will of God to save. The reason why the word mysterion is not used in the New Testament to refer to baptism or the Lord's Supper is to avoid any possible association of the rites of the Christian church with the secret rites of the Greek mystery religions, which were still being practiced at that time. Likewise, the desire to avoid all association with the Old Testament priesthood led to the avoidance of the word priest to refer to ministers; indeed, even though Christ is referred to as a priest, he is not like the Old Testament priests. However, the apologetic and missionary situation of the post-apostolic church soon led it to appropriate the Greek philosophical heritage and the Roman cultural imagery of those to whom the gospel was preached. From the Apostles to Augustine Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, all of whom wrote between a.d. 150 and a.d. 220, are the most notable users of the term mysterion. They used the term in the first instance polemically, in apologetic defenses of the faith against the secret Hellenistic cults (e.g., Justin, Apology, 25, 27, 54, 66; Tertullian, On the Prescription of Heretics, 40), or against the secret teachings of Gnosticism (e.g., Tertullian, On the Soul, 18). However, they also used the term mysterion biblically to defend the unity of both the Old and the New Testaments in the divine plan of salvation. They saw events and institutions of the Old Testament as preproclamation types or images, or even as an anticipation of the salvation reality which appeared in Christ. Thus they returned to Old Testament events and institutions as examples of mysterion (cf. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 24, 40, 44, 111). Within this line of thought, the term could well be applied to certain events in the life of Jesus, especially his birth and crucifixion (Justin, First Apology, 113; Dialogue, 74, 91). Both Justin (First Apology, 66) and Tertullian (Prescription of Heretics, 40) referred to baptism and the Lord's Supper as mysteria. Christ is the mysterion whose reality is never limited to any created thing. Yet, because the Christ can never be separated from the members of the body, Tertullian was able to refer to both Christ and the actions of the body of Christ as mysterion. In short, the relationship between the salvation which has been worked by Christ and its ritual expression in the community of faith is such that, without denying the sinful nature of the baptized community, Christ continues to act and is therefore revealed through his action in the church. In the translation of the Scriptures, Tertullian noted that mysterion had been translated by the Latin word sacramentum. As a lawyer, Tertullian recognized that sacramentum carried the connotation of an oath (in Roman legal terminology), or of personal commitment in response to the initiative of another. By combining the meaning of mysterion with that of sacramentum, Tertullian could explain baptism (and to some degree the Eucharist): From God's side, the sacramenta are the pledges of God, who wills salvation; from the faithful's side, sacramenta are the occasion for the complete response of confidence and commitment to God in Christ (To the Martyrs, 3.1; On Shows, 24.4; On the Chaplet, 11.1; Scorpiace, 4.5; On Idolatry, 19.2). This attempt of Tertullian to make an account of what Christians do when they gather to worship God was one of the seeds of a fuller theological account that would be developed by Augustine and later by other theologians in the Western church over many centuries. Tertullian provided the church with yet more language by which to explain the truth that when the members of Christ's body gather with the intention of continuing to act in his name for the sake of the worship of God and the service of humanity, it is truly Christ who acts in and through the church's actions. Christ baptizes, convenes the church for the Eucharist, forgives through the ministry of the minister, consoles and heals in the sacrament of anointing, calls worship leaders to the church, and loves the church to such an extent that his love is the norm for marriage. From this perspective, one can see why Christ is known as the mysterion/sacramentum of God, why the church in union with Christ is the great mystery, and why the sacraments are not merely acts of the church as though they were radically distinct from Christ's activity. The sacraments are the events in which the members of Christ's body encounter the saving will of God in Christ and respond to that initiative. The church's worship celebration uses material things (water, oil, salt, fire, incense, etc.) or words and gestures in order to reveal and make present the saving words and deeds of Christ.