Sacraments

[LutheranHawkeye]

Why are holy matrimony, confirmation, and confession and absolution not considered sacraments? I know sacrament means mystery or instituted by God I think...but aren't all of those included? And that brings me to my next point. Since we don't call them sacraments we call them rites. HELP IM CONFUSED

 

[seajoy]

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[WildStrawberry]

The way I understand it, Sacraments are Means of Grace that have been instituted by God.

So, Baptism and Holy Communion are Means of Grace whereas marriage and confirmations are rites that are done in the church for other reasons.

Or am I confused?

Kae

 

[PreachersWife2004]

Kae has it correctly. The sacraments are means of grace. Marriage isn't a means of grace, but it was instituted by God. Confirmation isn't a biblical practice and is uneccesary for salvation - it just helps people to understand church doctrine and what a church believes in.

 

[DaRev]

A sacrament is defined as follows:
1) Instituted by Christ
2) Forgives sins
3) Involves a physical element (means)

Marriage does not forgive sins and does not have a physical element, thus not a sacrament.
Confirmation is not instituted by Christ, does not forgive sins, and does not have a physical element, thus it is not a sacrament.

Confession & Absolution is sometimes considered a sacrament because it is instituted by Christ and does certainly forgive sins, but it does not involve a physical means. But since Absolution is a direct tie back to our baptism, it has been considered the third sacrament.

 

[seajoy]

A sacrament is defined as follows:
1) Instituted by Christ

Guess I did have one right.

 

[DaRev]

Guess I did have one right.

 

[BigNorsk]

The most important thing in a sacrament is the promise of God's grace. This promise is given as instituted by Christ with an earthly element or elements.

The orthodox took a mystery and any place there is a mystery they then apply what is known about any mystery, and the Catholics followed.

But if you take for instance the anointing of the sick. We are not told it saves people, it's purpose was healing. One could argue that Christ instituted healing of the sick though we don't really see him anointing to do it, but we see that healing of the sick is not connected with salvation. So it is not a sacrament. there is no pledge of salvation by God attached.

So you can go through each of the rites and see what is and isn't a sacrament.

Marriage of course was a sacrament in the Catholic church because the Vulgate called it a sacrament by name. Translating the passage where "the two shall become one, and this is a great mystery", as "a great sacrament."

Our use of the word is actually different than Catholics and indeed different than the original meaning.

The original meaning was the pledge a Roman soldier made. We take it as the pledge of God. Zwingli went back to the original meaning and thought if a sacrament is our pledge then of course there could be no grace attached because that would be salvation through our works. Luther would have of course agreed if it was our pledge in view, but it wasn't. How they could talk so much and never get past that they were using the word in a meaning flipped from the other, I don't know. Neither were noted as great compromisers.

Sometimes when we talk with others who claim that Lutherans teach salvation by works what is happening is that they think a sacrament is something we do, our pledge, and not understand that we are teaching that a sacrament is the promise of God, his work.

Marv