Martin Luther and the Seven Sacraments

A Contemporary Protestant Reappraisal

Brewer, Brian C.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781493410866
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This introduction to Martin Luther's sacramental theology addresses a central question in the life of the church and in ecumenical dialogue. Although Luther famously reduced the sacraments from seven to two (baptism and the Lord's Supper), he didn't completely dismiss the others. Instead, he positively recast them as practices in the church. This book explores the medieval church's understanding of the seven sacraments and the Protestant rationale for keeping or eliminating each sacrament. It also explores implications for contemporary theology and worship, helping Protestants imagine ways of reclaiming lost benefits of the seven sacraments.

1
Penance

The Once Third Protestant Sacrament

Repentance opens the heavens, takes us to Paradise, overcomes the devil. Have you sinned? Do not despair! If you sin every day, then offer repentance every day! When there are rotten parts in the old houses, we replace the parts with new ones, and we do not stop caring for the houses. In the same way, you should reason for yourself: if today you have defiled yourself with sin, immediately clean yourself with repentance.

John Chrysostom

Now wherever you see that sins are forgiven or reproved in some persons, be it publicly or privately, you may know that God’s people are there.

Martin Luther

MOST READERS ARE KEENLY AWARE that the vast majority of Christians in the Protestant tradition observe two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and not the seven sacraments held within Catholicism. One might begin a review of Protestant sacramentalism by outlining the two sacraments that Western Christians hold in common. But Martin Luther’s Reformation project was not initiated by his interpretation of baptism or even the Lord’s Supper, though he critiqued the abuses of the Mass early in his theological career. Instead, the movement that ultimately developed into Protestant Christianity began over a disagreement on another of the traditional seven sacraments—a rite that Luther, at least at first, wanted to retain as a sacrament for the church, a rite that he debated, sometimes with opponents, sometimes seemingly even with himself. It was Luther’s initial Reformation design “to reform penance, not to abolish it.”1 Consequently, this book begins by outlining the history and development of confession and penance through the centuries and then sketches the reason why this ongoing practice for confession ultimately once became the third Protestant sacrament, an act that Luther initially retained as sacramental along with baptism and the Supper. Finally, as in each following chapter, this one addresses how the discussed discipline might be more properly understood and faithfully observed among Protestant Christians today.

Christian Confession in Scripture and the Origins of Penance

A man sits at his desk in the quietness of the midafternoon work week. Over lunch, feeling guilt for returning to an old habit, he silently prays to God for forgiveness and strength not to make that sin his way of life again. A woman slips down the nave of her parish, making her way to the wooden confessional, a kind of closet set to the side of the church pews, where she, weighed with remorse, speaks to her priest through a small, covered window, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” It may come as a surprise to Protestants and Catholics alike that neither picture fully represents the ancient practice of Christian confession; both scenes contain elements faithful to their original respective traditions but are also products of streamlining the practice through the centuries.

What is clear is that, from the New Testament and other early Christian documents, Christians have always practiced the confession of sins, first upon initial profession of faith and subsequently through the life of discipleship. New believers repent of their iniquity while making their new beliefs public through baptism. Such a practice can be found even before Christ with the preaching of John the Baptist (Matt. 3:6), and repeated again in the early Christian tradition through the preaching of Peter: “Repent, and be baptized . . . in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38 NIV). Thus initial repentance was linked to one’s initiation into the church through the waters of baptism. As Allan Fitzgerald observes: “At the beginning of Christianity, penance was not a set of procedures for remitting the serious sinner to the community. It was, first and foremost, part of a process of conversion from a world described as ‘perverse’ (Acts 2:40 [NET]), learning how to be part of a holy people (Eph. 5:27), forgiven for past sins and thus capable of a different way of living (1 Pet. 2:12).”2

The message of repentance and reconciliation resounded throughout the New Testament. Perhaps the most prominent parable of Jesus is that of the reconciliation of a prodigal son to his father (Luke 15). Jesus’s injunction to his disciples to forgive others “not seven times, but . . . seventy-seven times” (Matt. 18:22) demonstrates the abounding grace that Christians are to show to others. Echoing Psalm 14, Paul reminds the church of the universality of human fallenness, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), while 1 John promises Christians who acknowledge their iniquity: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1:8–10).

Important to the development of repentance and reconciliation in Scripture is the communal accountability each believer bears. Jesus is recorded as admonishing the would-be Christian congregation:

If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matt. 18:15–17)

Jesus is recorded as establishing the principle of binding and loosing as a responsibility of the entire congregation for one another. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (v. 20). The fact that in this passage Jesus established what became known as the church’s “power of the keys” became a point of contention by the advent of the Reformation. For just two chapters earlier, Jesus appeared to commission Peter with the power of the keys, telling him, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:19). Whether one interprets this power as being vested in an individual “head” of the church or within the congregation came to affect ecclesiological differences between Catholics and Protestants. Regardless, what seems clear is that the church is empowered in some capacity for fraternal admonition and church discipline regarding the management of sin and repentance. In his resurrected body, Jesus again gave this power by breathing on the disciples and saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:22–23). On this point, as Liam Kelly observes, these collective passages “are not proof that Jesus [and Paul] initiated some formal ritual celebration of forgiveness, but rather texts that demonstrate that the Church’s subsequent development of the ritual was consistent with Jesus’ attitude to forgiveness.”3 These passages, when taken together, reflect that the early church’s practice of confession was a communal activity, particularly in the case of serious immorality. Such biblical injunctions of the New Testament also provide a framework for the future practice of confession, church discipline, and reconciliation. Regardless, Christian communities did not solidify a consistent ritual for confession within the church in its first two centuries.

The strong tie that several Scripture passages make between baptism and repentance elicited a particular quandary for early Christians: what to do about postbaptismal sin. As Jim Forest explains: “In the first generations of Christianity, conversion was so momentous an event, the community of believers so small, motivation so profound, and preparation for baptism so thorough, that it came as a shock to the community that any member, once baptized, would ever again commit a serious sin.”4 New converts sacrificed the safety of family and often governmentally approved religion to join this new way of living, undergoing an extensive catechesis period of preparation (often two to three years) and awaiting the full induction into the church through baptism, wherein a person ceremonially turned from the devil, renounced sinful living, and anticipated being raised in the newness of life through the baptismal waters. The new inductee was initiated into a disciplined community of converts, in which each person cared for, ministered to, and admonished the others through holy living. Conversion, and ultimately the baptismal ceremony representing it, was seen as fundamentally effecting change in the neophyte such that, through the church’s teaching on discipline and the accountability of the community, the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Penance
• 2. Confirmation
• 3. Marriage
• 4. Ordination
• 5. Extreme Unction
• 6. Baptism
• 7. The Lord’s Supper
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Name Index
• Back Cover