ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY CUENet TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 3 PROFESSOR ROLAND F. ZIEGLER SEGMENT NOS. 1 THROUGH 10 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 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. *** No. 1 Good day, Prof. Ziegler. My name is David. I am looking forward to enjoying one of your classes again. I know that we are going to be speaking today about the means of grace and the sacraments. So I�ll start off with the most basic question: How do you define �the means of grace� and why are they in one group? >>PROFESSOR ROLAND ZIEGLER: Thank you, David, for that question. Yeah, defining your terms is always a good way to start actually. Because otherwise you presuppose things. And then you kind of swim around. What do we mean when we say means of grace? Well, obviously means of grace define those things -- let's just say things for now -- through which according to Scripture grace comes to us or grace is mediated. And we ask the question: What do we mean when we say grace? When we say grace, we don't say what you say of course before a meal. But we talk about God's favor on account of grace. In the words of Aaronitic benediction, God makes his face shine upon us and gives us peace. That's what grace is. Grace is God's peace. And that means grace is the end of the enmity between God and man. It pardons man and forgives his sins. The foundation for this pardon, for this peace, is Christ's substitutionary sacrifice on the cross. Through his death there is forgiveness of sins. Through his death, there is peace. The means of grace are, therefore, channels through which the favor and peace come to us. Or to put it differently, they are the ways through which we are connected with Christ's work. How does grace come to us according to Scripture or to put it differently, what brings us forgiveness of sins and pardon? What does connect us with the Word of Christ? What does save us since when God pardons us that equates salvation from God's judgement? And when we look at Scripture, we find that certain things stick out. Certain acts are called salvific like baptism when in I Peter 3:21 it says: Baptism which corresponds to this now saves you. So baptism is salvific. It is done for the forgiveness of sins. Or Titus 3 Verse 5 where Paul writes: Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. So baptism is one of those things through which God saves us, through which he pardons us, through which he forgives us our sin or again through which his grace comes to us. Also the Lord's Supper of course is one of those things. In the Words of Institution we read in Matthew 26:28 where Jesus says: For this is the blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins. And there is another thing which is a channel of grace when Paul talks about his preaching in Romans 1:16. He says: For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. To the Jew first. And also to the Greek. So we have baptism, the Lord's Supper and the Gospel which is preached as means through which forgiveness of sins come through which peace and salvation comes. So means of grace is a term, a draw, a pigeonhole to put these three very different actions in one category. They are very different: Baptism, Lord's Supper, preaching. But they are one in what they accomplish, what they give. The term sacrament is a non-biblical term that originally meant something quite strange to us, if we give sacrament. It meant the pledge to a flag or a deposit in a temple and only later on it was used to denote the sacred rites in Christianity. The first one to use the term was the church father ***Tertalion who invented a lot of our language, of theological language. The bridge was that he saw baptism and the Lord's Supper as the pledges of God toward us. So it's the pledge of God toward us through which he assures us of our salvation. Now, over time the most accepted definition in western Christianity was that a sacrament is an element connected with a word instituted by Christ which confers grace. The church father Augustine used a phrase that was later on used by -- over and over again you read it, for example, in the Large Catechism. And that is ***ekita valum pavintum. It means the Word comes to the element and makes it a sacrament. So Luther loved that sentence. And he said: Augustine has hardly said anything but this one sentence. So from Augustine then it came to Lutheranism. And it also -- Lutherans loved the sentence and used it quite often. In the later course of history, Roman Catholicism defined that there were seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Lord's Supper, ordination, confession, marriage and the extreme unction. It was first formally defined in the 15th Century at the Council of Ferrara Florence in the defeat for the Armenians. There was a long time a wavering. And in the Orthodox church even though most count seven sacraments you can also find that there are more or less. Now, if we look at these seven sacraments, we see that not all of them have a material object. So the Roman Catholic church says: Well, element can be also something else. What's the element in confession? Well, it is the contrition of the penitent. It's a strange way for us to talk about an element. And we don't have to delve into that right now. But just so that you're aware. And these seven sacraments, that's still the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. That was where the Reformation then started. And with the re-evaluation of many concepts in the Roman Catholic Church also the question of what is a sacrament and how many sacraments are there was discussed anew. Luther used the traditional criteria for what is a sacrament. The promise of grace, the institution by Christ, a visible element. And using that he looked at these seven sacraments. And his first major writing on the seven sacraments was on the Babylonian captivity of the church where he went through the seven sacraments. And using that kind of yardstick, he came to the conclusion that there really are only two, maybe three, sacraments. He rejected marriage, ordination, extreme unction, and Confirmation as sacraments because there is no institution by Christ. There's no words said by Christ and there is no promise of grace attached to them. It was easy that baptism and the Lord's Supper would be sacraments. Because you have the institution, the promise of grace and you have the element. Now, what about confession and absolution? That was a more difficult question. And the Lutherans in the time of Luther but even later wavered a little bit on that. Because on the one hand you have the promise of grace. And you have the institution by Christ. Christ commissions his apostles that to whom they forgive their sins, they will be forgiven. And whomsoever they retain their sins, they will be retained. But there is no element. And so Luther in the Babylonian captivity says: Well, maybe you can count confession and absolution as a sacrament. Maybe not. But later on in his Catechisms in 1529 he talked only about two sacraments. And that was what then became the standard tradition in the Lutheran Church. This became the standard tradition even though in the apology of the Augsburg Confession in the 13th article you have a discussion of what a sacrament is. In there Melancthon talks a little bit differently about what a sacrament is. Because Melancthon defines a sacrament as a rite with a promise. So he uses a term right, a thing which you do. Now that's an interesting statement because it a avoids to talk about the element. It sees the sacraments first and foremost as actions. Therefore, Melancthon could include without any problems confession and absolution as a sacrament. And he can even say: Well you could call ordination a sacrament if you understand it that at the heart of ordination is the promise of the Word. And he quotes then Romans 1:16 with it. He can go even further and say: Well, if we look at rites, things, that are instituted by God, you could even say of course marriage, that is instituted by God, or the civil authorities, that is government, because the government is instituted by Christ could be called a sacrament. And even arms giving because God actually instituted or commanded the giving of arms. So here in Melancthon's discussion in Apology 13, sacraments becomes wider and wider and wider. And if you go this route, the problem is almost everything can be a sacrament. And if everything is a sacrament, nothing is a sacrament. So the Lutherans followed Luther's definition and the ***catechal tradition in the Small Catechism than actually the Apology. But one of the things you find among Lutherans recurring from time to time is: Well, how many sacraments are there? And then you can debate all night long: Well, is ordination a sacrament? I think it's a little bit inane because again you have to first say: What is a sacrament? Define your terms. What do you mean by sacrament? If you define an element connected with the promise of grace instituted by Christ, then ordination is not a sacrament. And even confession and absolution is not a sacrament. That doesn't mean these things aren't important or that, well, you don't need to do them or even that they don't confer grace, that is the forgiveness of sins does not come through them. So you don't have to have the term sacrament to make something really special and holy. Sacrament is a church term. It's a convenient term used to group things. It's not in itself something holy. The actions or the things which are called sacraments are holy. And there are many other things that are holy. Again, marriage is holy. Why? Well, not because it's instituted by Christ and when you marry you get the forgiveness of sins. But because God instituted it at the beginning and there is a blessing on it for the forgiveness of sins. That's not the blessing. But there is the blessing that God put on the beginning of this union. And therefore, marriage is more than just something you do out of convenience, some civil contract or whatever. You do not detract anything from the sanctity of marriage by not calling it a sacrament. The same thing with confession and absolution. It is important. Of course. It is holy. It gives grace. But that doesn't make it a sacrament. Even people in dogmatics say it's really idle to talk about -- talk about how many sacraments there are because it's not a scriptural term. It all depends on how you want to define it. If you want to have 53 sacraments, be my guest. It's just confusing. So why don't we stick to the Lutheran tradition saying: Okay, baptism and Lord's Supper are special acts which we call sacraments. So the sacraments and the Word are taken together because they have the same effects. They are both called the means of grace because they both confer God's grace. Sometimes this sameness is expressed by calling the sacraments a visible word or the sacraments are called an audible sacrament to make clear that these really belong together. There is a closeness and a nearness that is due to the fact that they confer grace. When I hear the Word, I get forgiveness of grace. When I receive the sacraments, I receive grace. So this terminology of the Visible Word or the audible sacrament tries to emphasize that Word and sacraments belong together and are both gracious communications from God. So we have these different channels through which we receive grace. The question which often comes up in that context is: Well, why do we have these different channels? Why do we have the Word and the sacrament and baptism? There is a certain minimalistic streak in everybody that tries to get away with the least. Strangely enough instead of rejoicing that God pours out his grace in many specific ways, the question is: Do I really have to do that? The law question. "Do I really have to do it?" The students ask, "Will that be in the test?" Well, at that moment they do not enjoy the lecture. They don't find pleasure in the material. They are all anxious: Will it be in the test? That's the situation of the law. So some Christians have this feeling: Well, do I have to go to Communion? Well, if I -- how often do I have to go to Communion? Well, if I receive the forgiveness of sins at the beginning of the service, do I have to receive the forgiveness of sins afterwards in the Lord's Supper? Isn't that a little bit much? Isn't that kind of like having two pieces of cheesecake and whipped cream and kind of a heavy syrup fruit salad? Well, if you realize forgiveness of sin is something of which you can never have too much where you can overeat yourself where you have to then go on a diet, whatever that might be in that case, then you realize no, you can never have too much. It is rather God's good pleasure that he gives us these different means. That he comes to us and touches us in different ways. We do not deduce the necessity of the means of grace, of each individual means of grace from some overarching principle. The means of grace each rests on its institution. So that we baptize is not derived from some kind of general need. It is derived from Christ's command. "Go ye therefore and baptize." That we celebrate the Lord's Supper is not: Oh, well, we should have some kind of nourishment on the way. But it is because Christ said: Do this. That we preach the Word is not that we have loquacious people in the world and they need an occasion to live out their tendency. No. It's because Christ commissions his church in Matthew 28: Go ye therefore and teach and preach the Gospel. To all nations in Mark 16. So these all rest on an institution by Christ. And only in hindsight, so to speak, we try to make sense out of it. And we ask ourselves: Do we need them? Well, first if you ask that question you should say: Hmmm, well, if Christ actually instituted all of these means through which his grace comes to us and Christ knows us quite well and he knows God quite well, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt that actually we do need it. Just this kind of humility. We say if Christ says it and institutes it, there is a need on our part. We might not always see that need. But you have, again, to remember that one of the effects of sin is actually that we don't see our needs in the right way. That we have problems. That we think we are okay. And you're okay. But actually we are not okay. And neither are you. So once you are hit by the law, once you realize that you are a sinner, once you realize your daily failings are not only daily by continually -- continually we fall short of what God wants from us. That God offers us forgiveness of sins in many ways. It's really not a luxury, it's not superfluous. But it is a necessity. It is a gracious condescension to us. The hunger for the Lord's supper, the hunger for the preaching of the Word comes only when you realize your need. As long as you're in the mind set of: Do I have to go? Do I have to have that? Well, you know, Jesus didn't come for the healthy. He came for the sick. If you think you don't need it, stay away. Don't do it just to obey a commandment. But realize that something is wrong with you. I always like the questions and answers for those who want to go to the sacrament because it goes through this kind of whole thinking. Well, what do you do if you feel no need for the Lord's Supper? And then even though it's not written directly by Luther it was kind of accepted by Luther's writings. And it's: Well, consider that Christ had to die for your sins. And if you still don't think that you have any sin, then put your hand on your bosom and feel if you have still flesh and blood and believe the Word of God that as long as you live in this life, you are sinful. And if you don't feel anything then just realize that this is sin, too. This is your numbness really for your state. And confess your numbness and ask Christ to make you sensitive to your sin and give you a hunger for his Word and sacrament. So the Word and the sacraments are gracious institutions by Christ that give to us the grace, the favor of God, the forgiveness of sins. Each rests on his own institution. They are quite different. But they agree in the one thing: They are channels of God's grace. And they bring what Christ has earned for us on the cross to us now. So they bridge the time between us and the cross. We don't have to go back to the cross. And we can't go back to the cross. They ask in Scripture: Were you there when you crucified my Lord? And it's like: Of course I wasn't there. And I can't be there. I can't be standing at the side of the cross and then from his pierced side flows from the blood and then cleanses me. I can't do that. And I don't have to. Because Christ comes to me in his Word, in the sacraments. And there I am cleansed through his blood. And there what was gained on the cross becomes mine.