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3 Sacraments of the Word Sacraments are external actions to which, according to a maxim of Augustine, the word comes so that the actions become themselves "visible words" of the gospel. The word comes to the action as the command that it be done; and the word comes to the action as a promise of the gospel made about and by the action. Just so, the mandated and promise-bearing rite itself speaks, and speaks in a way essential to the gospel, as the gospel's necessary externality. The great problem of sacramentology has been and is to grasp what sacraments say and what sacraments do as a unity. COMMANDS Conjunction with the word is posited in the very notion of "sacraments." Every religion has various rites, responding to its particular communal needs. Chris­ tianity is no exception. The theological notion of "sacraments" was created by Augustine's interpretation of Christianity's rites as forms of the word. Augustine's famous maxim must be cited at the beginning of any treatise on sacraments: "The word comes to the element; and so there is a sacrament, that is, a sort of visible word."1 The gospel, God's self-revelation in the words of human messengers, does not remain purely verbal but picks up actions and things ("elements") of the objective ("visible") world and addresses us with and by these to be also a more-than-verbal communication. It is this event, said Augustine, that is fundamentally afoot in the ritual life of the church. Augustine's maxim has been so universally used as the first premise by Western sacramental theology that it must be regarded as primary sacramen­ tal dogma of the Western church.2 With this interpretation, a common factor was discovered in a variety of rites, and a word was specified for them in respect of that factor. The word itself, sacramentum, had been adapted by Tertullian, two centuries before Augustine, from the standard religious terminology of Roman antiquity, where it meant any publicly binding religious act. Tertullian had baptism and the 291 1 0 / THE MEANS OF GRACE Supper mostly in mind, but the word could be and for centuries was applied to any public rite that resembled baptism and the Supper in attachment to the gospel. The Eastern church never created such a term. What the West calls a sacrament the East calls a mystery, but it has never restricted "mystery" to this use.3 The connection of the word "sacrament" to the rites has several aspects, which will be discussed serially in this and the following two sections. We begin in this section with the simplest aspect: Sacraments are commanded. Sacraments may be initially characterized simply as actions,4 which together with more purely verbal preaching and teaching make up the life of the church. That the gospel would have had to embody itself somehow, we will argue later. Now we make a more primal observation: The church initiates its neophytes by washing them, celebrates meals of bread and loving-cup, and performs a variety of other actions because it apprehends authoritative com­ mands to do these things. Moreover, the church has always been aware of this connection; the notion of divine mandate in some form or other has been a constant of the theology of the sacraments, perhaps especially emphasized by the Reformed tradition.5 The church itself, in its own self-conception, was created by the risen Lord's missionary command: "Go . . . . make disciples . . ." (Matt. 28:19-20). Or we may say the church is created by the obligation to bring the world a cer­ tain message, the "gospel," to proclaim abroad: "this Jesus . . . God raised up" (Acts 2:23). The church knows itself to be a community under command, a community with a mission. The mandated mission-action is first a verbal action: "Go . . . , make disciples . . . . teaching. . . . " The gospel is precisely a specific message, something to be uttered. But it is an observable fact about the mission man­ date, both at the beginning and thereafter, that it regularly involves com­ mands of more-than-verbal actions. The passage in Matthew reads more fully: "Go . . . , make disciples . . . , baptizing . . . and teaching. . . . " Thus it belonged to what Paul "received" as the gospel, that the Lord had taken bread, given thanks, and said, "Do this . . ." (1 Cor. 11:23-25). And the connection has continued, mandating actions great and trivial. In the Epistle ofJames we read: "Is any among you sick? Let him call for the...

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