Sacred Actions In The Medieval And Reformation Eras

The Middle Ages witnessed some far-reaching developments in the theology and practice of the sacraments. This article traces these developments and explains the nature of the Reformation debate which arose out of them.

Medieval Christian culture was a highly ritualized culture in which all actions of social, political, and economic life (e.g., marriage negotiations, choosing and crowning kings, setting off for war, the exchange of gifts) were charged with symbolic meaning. Nearly all early medieval theologians were monks, or they were monks who became bishops. They were thus rooted in the life of daily worship. From the thirteenth century onward, theology and pastoral practice became increasingly systematized under the influence of university, scholastic theology, carried on predominantly by members of mendicant religious orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinian Friars) and other non-monastic clergy. The growing gap between ongoing popular belief in the power of sacred ritual and the increasingly complex efforts to explain logically how God acted in the sacraments eventually led to wholesale attacks on the very idea of God working through created means, beginning with the late medieval Hussite and Wycliffite movements and continuing in the more radical forms of Protestantism (Zwinglian and Anabaptist iconoclasm). The Growing Role of the Clergy Fairly early in the medieval era a way of receiving the sacraments different than that of the early church came into existence and slowly gained ground. This was the instrumental view, which considered the liturgical acts as means used by God, acting through the mediation of the ordained minister, to give grace to people. In this perspective Christians came to liturgy to receive sacraments, to be freed from their sins, to be blessed. This receptive approach to the role of the faithful coincided with their increasing exclusion from active participation in sacramental liturgy. Throughout much of the first millennium, the people's sense of involvement in the Christ-mystery through sacramental ritual remained quite strong, though with diminishing understanding of the mystery. For a variety of reasons, many of them having to do with the unsettled social situation of those days, the bulk of Christians received rudimentary religious instruction at best. This, plus the fact that Latin remained the liturgical language while it was gradually becoming foreign to most people, meant that the level of theological insight into the reality of sacramental liturgy was minimal. So, by the ninth century and thereafter, we find explanations of the liturgy, very many of them allegorical, which reflect the community's loss of understanding. As the faithful had less and less of a role in the liturgical actions, as the language became strange to them, and as the celebrant was situated at the far end of a sanctuary to perform the sacred act, the sacraments and particularly the Mass became a spectacle which people attended. Obviously, this meant that the intrinsic significance of the sacramental liturgies no longer interacted with the significance of people's lives, except for the general outlook that something was given people through sacraments that enabled them to persevere amidst conflict with "?the world, the flesh, and the devil?" and so to reach their heavenly destiny. Later Theological Debates In the twelfth century, a key development in the understanding and the practice of sacraments took place. As part of the overall intellectual struggle to understand things more clearly, there was an effort to clarify the nature of sacraments, if possible to arrive at a definition of sacrament that would permit people to say what was or was not a sacrament. This proved very difficult for an intrinsic reason: Because the Christian sacraments cannot really be fitted into a category—technically speaking, they are analogous realities—no strict definition of sacrament is possible. However, there was one element common to all Christian sacraments: By that point in history all of them, including marriage, involved a liturgical ceremony. As a result, it was the ritual action, for example, the wedding ceremony, that by itself was identified as the sacrament, and the focus of understanding Christian sacramentality became more limited than it had been in earlier periods of the church. Because of an increasing awareness of the decline of liturgy, the late Middle Ages witnessed movements for reform, but these were not sufficient to ward off the explosive reaction of the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century. On the positive side, the Reformation drew attention to the role of personal faith and the active participation of the faithful in sacramental liturgy; on the negative side, many of the Reformation churches downgraded the role of ritual and tended to substitute reflection on the Bible for sacramental celebration. The Roman Catholic reaction to these Protestant tenets came with the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which provided the first systematized official statement about Christian sacraments. The teaching of Trent is of special importance because it has provided the framework and basic doctrinal positions for Catholic teaching about sacraments up to the twentieth century. While the decrees of the council regarding sacraments need to be carefully studied and explained in the light of their historical context, a few of the leading notions can be mentioned here. In the section that provides the general statements about Christian sacraments, the council insisted that Christ himself is the one who instituted the sacraments, though no explanation was given about the manner in which this took place—a later section specifically on the Mass linked the institution of Eucharist with the action of Jesus at the Supper and with his death. Countering the Protestant contention that sacrament could be applied in the true sense only to baptism and the Lord's Supper, Trent insisted that five other instances of liturgical celebration (confirmation, reconciliation, ordination, anointing of the sick, and marriage) were truly sacraments. The heart of the debate between Catholics and Protestants dealt, however, with the efficacy of sacramental actions, specifically of baptism and Eucharist. Consistent with their basic teaching about justification, namely that sinners though forgiven become just only in the next life, the Reformers looked on sacramental liturgies as proclaiming Christ's promise of human salvation but not yet transforming the people by grace. What liturgy did was to announce the gospel message so that people's faith might be aroused and increased; sacraments did not give grace, they only promised it. Opposing this view, the Council of Trent insisted on the intrinsic grace-giving power of sacraments. "?Sacraments contain and give grace.?" While its decrees took explicit account of the need for proper dispositions, including faith, in those who receive sacraments, the council viewed the sacramental liturgies as possessing in themselves a saving power that derives from the death of Christ. When properly performed by a celebrant who has the basic intention of accomplishing what the church intends in its sacramental acts, a sacrament has ex opere operato the power of conferring grace. The term ex opere operato has been a key element in Roman Catholic sacramental teaching and in much Protestant disagreement with that teaching. If understood accurately, it refers to the belief that whenever the essential elements of the rite are carried out by a minister with a serious intention, the action, because it involves the agency of the risen Christ and his Spirit, possesses intrinsically the power of transforming people by grace. Unfortunately, the term has often been misunderstood to imply that sacramental effectiveness is automatic and independent of the care or understanding with which it is enacted or of the faith or devotion of those involved. Clearly, such was not the intention of the Council of Trent, nor do its decrees suggest such an interpretation. Little changed in either official teaching or in popular attitudes regarding sacramental liturgies between the Council of Trent and the mid-twentieth century. However, the experience of the two great world wars and the convoking of the Second Vatican Council have opened up a new epoch in the life of Christianity and have led to a deepened interest in the role of liturgy in Christian life and to a creative development of sacramental theology.