The Reformation

Issues: Sacraments

Because it's so important, it's worth looking at four sacraments a little more closely.

Baptism

This was an explosive topic; in particular the matter of adult baptism, or "re-baptism." The issue can be stated simply enough: should a Christian be baptized as early as possible in life, or only after a conscious decision on the part of the individual?

The former position, usually called "infant baptism" was the practice in the Catholic Church, and it was followed also by Luther and Calvin and Zwingli. Some followers of Zwingli, though, argued that baptism should happen only once a believer is mature enough to understand the teachings of the Bible should they be baptized into the Church. The implications of each position were profound. In the former, church and society could be one: the whole body of the people, having been baptized as infants, were also the whole body of the Church. Only in such a society would it make sense to argue that Church leaders could legislate, as the Calvinists argued, or as the Zwinglians argued that the magistrates could rule in matters of religion. In the second case, which was held by the Anabaptists, the Church would always be a sect within a larger society, and the usual conclusion was that the Church of true believers should withdraw from that society as much as possible.

As you can see, what might appear to be purely a theological argument led very quickly to matters of practical politics and public policy, as well as practical matters of church governance. Adult baptism drove a divide between the reformers that could not be bridged.

The Mass

A second issue was even more volatile than that of baptism: the Eucharist, also called communion, the central rite of the Catholic Mass. In particular, the issue was the significance of what happened during this rite, which involves the consuming of bread and wine. The ritual is a re-enactment of the last supper Jesus had with his disciples, prior to his arrest and execution. At that supper, recounted in all four of the Gospels as well as in the writings of Paul, Jesus told his disciples to eat the bread and drink the wine "in remembrance of me." Specifically he said "this is my body" in reference to the bread and "this is my blood" in reference to the wine.

From our earliest records we find Christians holding a meal in common at which they ate bread and drank wine "in remembrance." That even early Christians believed that this bread and wine were miraculously transformed into body and blood is attested to by the belief of pagans that the Christians practiced cannibalism. Certainly from the first theological writings about the Mass, the Catholic Church held that a genuine miracle transpired, through the agency of the Holy Ghost and by way of an ordained priest exclusively, by which bread and wine were transformed into flesh and blood.

This was the interpretation that Luther and others attacked vigorously. As in so many other doctrinal areas, though, while all reformers rejected the Catholic version, they could not agree among themselves of an alternative interpretation. Luther held that the bread and wine held a presence of God, that both body and bread were present, that both blood and wine were present. Others argued that the bread was only bread, the wine only wine, and that the partaking was nothing more than a remembrance and not a sacred act at all; that is, not a sacrament.

All agreed, however, that the Eucharist was a central part of the Christian rite, and the inability to agree on its nature and significance undercut several attempts at compromise among the reformers, from the Marburg Colloquy (1529) onward. It defined the dividing line between Zwingli and Luther, most particularly.

Summary

Taken together, the traditional seven sacraments marked the points at which ordinary people interacted with the Church at the most important points of their lives: birth, youth, marriage, mass (and confession), death. By redefining these, the reformers were doing more than doubting papal authority or making Scripture central or even engaging in theological controversy: they were defining an entirely new church.

Ordinary folks didn't engage much in these debates; they were for the learned. Ordinary folks did, however, get married or take communion or see their priest, and so they did engage with the consequences of the debates. In this sense, the arguments over the sacraments affected everyone.