Sacred Actions In The Reformation Churches

Protestant emphasis on the Word of God affected the role played by sacraments in Christian life. The more extreme Protestants (Zwinglian Reformed and Anabaptists) generally rejected the idea that God's grace was mediated to people through created things employed in sacraments. Although Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans retained a place for sacraments, they insisted that sacramental practice be reformed according to the Word of God. They insisted that the New Testament authorized only two sacraments: baptism and the Lord's Supper. An emphasis on Word is also evident in the increased importance that all Protestants attached to preaching.

The Reformation understanding and practice of worship began with a sweeping critique of the sacraments and liturgical ceremonies of the medieval church. The central teaching of the Reformers, justification by faith alone (sola fide), was a rejection of all human works as the ground of salvation, including the actions of worship insofar as they are purely human traditions and not commanded by God in the Scriptures. For the Reformers, the Word of God rather than sacred action was the essence of Christian worship. Consequently, the actions of worship were the source of controversy with the Roman church and in turn generated disputes that seriously divided the various parties of the Reformation. The Reformers generally agreed with Martin Luther's (1483–1546) formulation of the problem, forcefully stated in the 1520 treatise, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. Luther focused his attack on the sacramental system of the Roman church. His criticism, however, comprehended the outward and visible rites and ceremonies of the liturgical order as a whole: "?[W]e owe everything to faith alone and nothing to rituals?" (Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan [St. Louis: Concordia, 1968], 36:64). The inherited practice of liturgy and sacrament in Luther's view had become perverted into a human work performed by a priest for the dispensation of divine grace. The action of worship had been profoundly misconceived as a meritorious, sacrificial (with regard to the Mass), priestly action. From this fundamental misconception, all manner of practical abuses in the church's worship arose, principally those related to the sacrifice of the Mass (the offertory and canon of the Mass, Masses without communicants, private Masses, the buying and selling of Masses for various intentions). Luther's proposals regarding the essential nature of worship were also widely received by other Reformers, at least in broad outline. Instead of the human actions of worship, Luther stressed the divine saving action in Jesus Christ proclaimed through the Word of God and received by faith. Worship is not a meritorious work but a dynamic exercise of faith in response to the Word. The sacraments (only the two instituted by Christ, baptism and Lord's Supper; not the seven of ecclesiastical tradition) are not, as the scholastic theologians taught, efficacious signs (efficacia signa) that operate by the performance of the ritual action (ex opere operato) but words of promise attached to the signs of water, bread, and wine made effective by faith. The Mass is not a sacrifice offered to God but a gift apprehended by faith and received in Communion. Finally, worship is not the action of a priest mediating the church's prayer and God's grace but an activity of the common priesthood of all believers in relation to the service of designated ministers of the Word. Luther recognized that this critique of inherited conceptions and practices called for far-reaching liturgical reforms. Concerning the Mass, he counseled that "?it would be necessary to abolish most of the books now in vogue, and to alter almost the entire external form of the churches and introduce, or rather reintroduce, a totally different kind of ceremonies?" (Luther's Works, 36:36)—new liturgical books, space, and actions. Although the various traditions emerging from the Reformation—Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Anglican, Separatist, and Puritan—developed distinctive liturgical practices, there are a number of common characteristics and tendencies. Preaching became an essential and, inevitably, the central action of worship. The Scriptures were read in a language that could be understood and then proclaimed in the living Word of the sermon. The restoration of the reading of Scripture and preaching as central activities in Christian worship, so critical to the reforming principle that "?faith comes from hearing?" (fides ex auditu; Rom. 10:17), has often obscured the extent to which the Reformation was equally a movement of sacramental renewal. Whether the Lord's Supper was celebrated weekly, monthly, or quarterly, people in Reformation churches generally participated in Communion much more frequently than the customary annual Communion of the medieval church. The conduct of the Lord's Supper focused on the acts of hearing Christ's words in the institution narrative and receiving Communion, including the cup previously denied to the people. For the most part, congregational participation was a hallmark of worship in the churches of the Reformation; in the singing of hymns or metrical psalms and in the use of a vernacular liturgy, the people took a more active role in the actions of worship. A tendency to reduce the amount of ceremony and to replace it with didactic prayers and exhortations accompanied this reforming concentration upon the participation of the congregation in the essential actions of Word and sacrament. The divisions within the Reformation over the actions of worship primarily concerned two things: (1) the relation of worship, in particular the sacraments, to God's saving action in Jesus Christ, and (2) the role of the Scriptures in determining liturgical practice. A brief survey will clarify how the Reformation generated a number of distinctive liturgical traditions. Lutheran The Lutheran conviction that God's Spirit creates faith through concrete means, specifically, through preaching and the sacraments, had direct implications for the actions of worship. The primacy given to the external Word (verbum externum) located God's saving activity precisely in the context of worship and gave significance to the outward conduct of the central liturgical actions. The gospel message of the Scriptures was heard in the living voice of a preacher; the infant was immersed (dipped) in the water of baptism; the words of institution at the heart of the Lord's Supper were publicly proclaimed by the minister, not silently prayed by a priest; and the bread and cup were received in the Communion of the people, not observed from afar. The church was, in Luther's words, a "?mouth-house?" (Mundhaus) for the act of proclaiming God's Word and the arena for the embodiment of that saving Word in the sacraments. The other actions of worship surrounding and supporting the central, biblically mandated actions of Word and sacrament, were understood to be nonessentials (adiaphora), purely human traditions, and thus matters of freedom unless they contradicted the doctrine of justification by faith. As a result, the liturgical orders of the Lutheran churches in Germany and Scandinavia exhibited diversity in rite and ceremony. The practice of worship tended to be conservative in its treatment of the liturgical tradition, rich in music, especially the singing of hymns, and tolerant of artistic images. An evangelical Mass with preaching and Communion was the model for worship on Sundays and festivals, following the proposals of Luther in the Formula missae (1523) and Deutsch Messe (1526). However provision did have to be made for something less than a full celebration when there were no communicants to complete the action. Reformed Two divergent understandings of the external actions of worship, one from Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) and the other from John Calvin (1509–1564), shaped the liturgies of the Reformed churches. The Zurich Reformer held that "?no external element or action can purify the soul?" (On Baptism, in Zwingli and Bullinger, ed. G.W. Bromiley [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1979], 156), and consequently the sacraments and ceremonies of worship had limited theological significance. The spiritual worship of Christians was to focus on the activity of God's Word in preaching; the sacramental actions of worship did, however, stimulate the memory of Jesus Christ and provided for the witness, thanksgiving, and fellowship of the congregation. In contrast, Calvin held a view somewhat like Luther's. Calvin located God's saving action in direct relation to the external signs of worship as well as the preaching of the Word. In the sacraments, God conforms divine mercy to human capacity and there "?imparts spiritual things under visible ones?" (Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), 4.14.3 [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1960], 1278). Calvin developed a rich conception of the sacramental sign that embraced the whole liturgical action and presented a dynamic understanding of how the Holy Spirit uses such signs as instruments, together with the Word, to draw people into communion with God in Christ. Reformed worship rejected most of the rites and ceremonies of the medieval church in favor of a liturgical simplicity that was thought to reflect the practice of the New Testament and the early church. Church buildings were purged of their images, and music was limited to the singing of metrical psalms. The confession of sin and acts of moral discipline attained particular prominence in Reformed worship. Despite Calvin's efforts to retain the basic structure of the Mass in a weekly service of Word and sacrament, Zwingli's preaching service, modeled after the medieval prone, prevailed among Reformed churches and enforced in practice his conception of spiritual worship. Zwingli's quarterly celebration of the Lord's Supper also became the Reformed standard. In contrast to Lutheran practice, where individuals communed as they desired, the Reformed practice of communion involved the entire congregation, either seated at the table(s) or in the pews. Anabaptist The various Anabaptist groups, located principally in Switzerland, Germany, Moravia, and the Netherlands, developed further the Zwinglian conception of spiritual worship and sought to establish patterns of worship based solely upon the instruction of the Bible without regard to human traditions. The internal testimony of the Spirit was set in opposition to the external forms of liturgy and sacrament. Anabaptists understood the actions of worship, including the sacraments, primarily as expressions of faith, bonds of communal fellowship, and ethical commitment rather than the means of God's saving activity. Liturgical orders and fixed forms of prayer were generally rejected in favor of the freedom of the local assembly of believers to order its worship according to scriptural testimony. Worship focused on the reading and exposition of the Scriptures, prayer, and the singing of hymns. The biblically mandated actions of baptism (for adult believers only), the Lord's Supper (the norm being an occasional celebration), and even foot washing (among the Anabaptists in the Netherlands known as Mennonites) were carried out by pure assemblies of believers that practiced a rigorous church discipline, which included the use of the ban and a corresponding act of reconciliation with the laying on of hands. Anglican Liturgical practice in the Church of England throughout the Reformation was not governed by a single theological perspective. Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) was a Reformer and archbishop. The liturgical rites of The Book of Common Prayer (BCP), which come from him, are best understood as an attempt to comprehend the positions of various parties within the church. The result was finally more Reformed than Lutheran in its understanding of the actions of worship, including the sacraments (whether Zwinglian or Calvinist is a matter of debate). The rites of the Prayer Book and the conduct of worship were, however, distinctively Anglican in their reform of the inherited tradition. The BCP, first issued in 1549, provided vernacular liturgies for the Church of England based upon the Latin rites but reformed to reflect the theology and practice of the Reformation. The revisions in the 1552 BCP gave the rites a more Protestant cast in their wording and structure and eliminated much of what remained of medieval ceremony and ornament; this book was the basis of subsequent versions, although controversy continued over the outward conduct of worship. Preaching was introduced into the eucharistic liturgy, but it was not a feature of the daily services of morning and evening prayer, where the psalms, readings, canticles, and prayers were considered a sufficient act of worship. The Prayer Book provided for the celebration of the Lord's Supper on every Sunday and feast day; however, because individuals were required to receive Communion only three times a year, a truncated service with occasional celebrations of the Lord's Supper became the norm in many places. Cranmer's prayers in the English vernacular were a significant literary achievement, but, more importantly, they invigorated worship as an act of common prayer. In the English churches, metrical psalmody rather than hymnody became the staple of congregational singing. Separatist and Puritan The rites and ceremonies of the BCP were established by law as the uniform practice of the national church. A number of English Reformers influenced by the Reformed tradition on the continent opposed this arrangement. Whether Separatists, who nurtured holy congregations in opposition to any established church, or Puritans of Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Congregationalist stripe, who sought a purified national church, they were in matters of worship united in two convictions: the reforms of the Prayer Book did not go far enough and the Scriptures were the authoritative source for all practices of worship. These Reformers were Calvinist in their regard for preaching and the sacraments as instruments of God's grace, but they went beyond Calvin and resembled the Anabaptists in their strict biblicism concerning the actions of worship. The Puritan critique of the Prayer Book focused on ceremonial actions and prayer. Puritan Reformers regularly criticized as unbiblical the sign of the cross at baptism, kneeling at the Eucharist, and the ring given at marriage. They also argued against the use of vestments. To Puritan sensibilities, the prayers in the Prayer Book were either too limited or too complex in form and often irrelevant in content. Although there are examples of printed liturgies, the Puritan position gravitated toward the Congregationalist practice of free prayer, something that the Separatists had always insisted upon. Consequently, when the Puritans came to power, they instituted a set of detailed instructions for worship, the Westminster Directory (1644), rather than a new Puritan prayer book. Puritan worship centered on preaching and the worthy reception of Communion whenever the Lord's Supper was celebrated, which was as often as every Lord's Day among some Separatists and Congregationalists. The Puritans rejected hymns of human composition and limited congregational song to metrical versions of biblical Psalms.