ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUE NET CONFESSIONS CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK CONFESSION 1 QUESTION 54 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 3238 Rose Street Franklin Park, IL 60131 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> I have heard some Lutherans affirm some three sacraments and others affirm two. Why does there appear to be some confusion on this point? Does the Apology help resolve this matter? >>DR. CHARLES P. ARAND: Within our Lutheran church is there a tradition. Most of us learn what a sacrament is from the questions prepared by our senate attached to Luther's catechism. So most of the us learn the classical definition of a sacrament as perhaps containing at least three parts. Namely, there is a command,en institution to do it. There is a promise of the Gospel that is attached to the sacrament. And thirdly, there is a visible element. When you use this definition and its three parts, one then would arrive at the conclusion there are only two sacraments that fit this definition. Namely baptism and the Lord's Supper. Baptism has the command of God it has the promise and forgiveness of sins and it has a visible element mainly the water. The same thing applies to the Lord's Supper it has the institution of Christ the pro mission of remission of sins and its visible elements include the bread and the wine. But interestingly enough many people who read Article 13 of the Apology for the first time are a little surprised if not shocked to see Melanchthon saying "Well, you know, you might consider there being three sacraments namely baptism, the Lord's Supper and absolution." Well, the difficulty lies -- the difficulty of the other two sacraments or three sacraments lies in the fact that the word sacrament is an Ecclesiastical word. It's not a biblical word and therefore the Bible does not provide us with what a definition with what a sacrament is. Instead it presents us with baptism us it presents us with the Lord's Supper it presents us with absolution in the office of *Atite. The word sacrament is a category devised by the church in part to help summarize what it is that these have in common and what is it that makes them different from other forms of the Gospel, especially the oral proclamation of the Gospel. As a result the definition of the sacrament can be determined by the church and has changed from time to time. For example, one of the most common definitions in the middle ages that most Reformers adopted was that which came from Augustine. Namely when you add the word to an element or to a right, it becomes a sacrament. Well, already Luther in the catechism would revise that not only adding word to the right but it has to contain an institution. God has to command it to be done. Well, Melanchthon in Article 13 of the Apology recognizes the different definitions. And he's willing to work with a definition that emphasizes the command of institution of God and the promise of forgiveness or grace. You see, right there, that will rule out a number of the seven sacraments that have been identified by the medieval church. For example, Melanchthon will note, yes, marriage has a command of God and you know what? It even has his promise. But it's not a promise of the forgiveness of sins. It's not a promise of eternal life. Instead it's a promise that God will bless the marriage. Similarly prayer is a command of God and prayer has promises from God but it doesn't have the promise that the act of praying will acquire a forgiveness of sins. And so to go through the sacraments that way and say "Well, does this have a command from God and does it have a promise of forgiveness, if not, it's not a sacrament. But that's the basic definition Melanchthon works with. So, it would certainly include baptism and it would include the Lord's Supper. But for Melanchthon, it could also include absolution. Because in absolution, the pastor says in this steady and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all of your sins. The office of the *Atite has the promise of God regarding the forgiveness of skins. Now, it doesn't have a visible element. I suppose Melanchthon might argue maybe it has a physical element, maybe sound. That sound that strikes the ear rather than sight that strikes the eye. But in the end to be honest it really doesn't matter which definition you go with and it's really not a doctrinal issue that deserves controversy or division within the church whether or not there are two sacraments or three sacraments. We can simply agree on which definition we prefer to work with. And our tradition -- in our tradition we have these two definition. Command, promise of forgiveness and visible element. If you are one with that definition, we have two sacraments if you run with Melanchthon's definition, command the institution of God, promise of forgiveness, then we can certainly include absolution. One of the advantages of doing that might be to highlight the value or the importance, the comfort of absolution. And I suspect when we think of only three sacraments, absolution sort of gets lost in the shuffle. And yet, it's a very important means of grace that actually delivers the forgiveness of sins to us, something perhaps we've lost. That is the importance of absolution. In fact, private absolution within the practice and the history of our church. So we can work with either definition. In one sense the definition is not important. What it is important is what we say about the means of grace and what these individual means of grace accomplish within our lives. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***