What Is a Sacrament? An Action That Is Supposed to Do Something

The classical formulation describes a sacrament as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, which sounds like a compromise and conceals the argument. The question is whether the sign conveys what it signifies or points to something that happens independently. The Catholic and Orthodox position holds that the action is effective in itself when properly performed, which is expressed in the principle that the sacrament works by the fact of being done rather than depending on the worthiness of the minister, a doctrine settled in response to a fourth-century controversy about clergy who had renounced their faith under persecution. Reformed traditions generally hold that the elements signify and that the effect depends on the faith of the recipient. Lutheran and Anglican positions occupy middle ground with their own formulations. Those differences are not about vocabulary, since they determine who may perform a sacrament, whether it can be repeated, and what has happened if the recipient did not believe.

The number itself became a point of division and the disagreement is informative:

• •Catholic and Orthodox traditions recognise seven, comprising baptism, confirmation or chrismation, eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, ordination and marriage
• •The number was fixed in the western church during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and confirmed at the Council of Trent
• •Most Protestant traditions recognise two, baptism and the eucharist, on the grounds that only those were instituted directly by Christ in scripture
• •Some traditions recognise none in this sense, including Quakers, who hold that all life is sacramental and that no particular action is set apart
• •Other traditions use different frameworks entirely, so mapping the category onto Judaism, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism is a comparative exercise rather than a translation
• •Ordinances is the preferred term in several Protestant traditions, chosen specifically to avoid the claim that the action effects anything

The sharpest disagreement concerns bread and wine and what happens to them. Transubstantiation, defined in the western church and articulated using Aristotelian categories, holds that the substance becomes the body and blood while the appearances remain. Lutheran teaching holds that the body and blood are present in, with and under the elements without the bread ceasing to be bread. Reformed teaching, following Calvin, holds that the faithful receive Christ spiritually while the elements remain bread and wine. The memorialist position, associated with Zwingli and widespread in evangelical traditions, holds that the action commemorates and nothing is changed. Those positions were genuinely lethal in the sixteenth century, with people executed by several sides over them, and they remain the principal barrier to shared communion between denominations. Ecumenical dialogue has produced documents narrowing the language substantially without resolving the underlying question, which is whether an action changes anything or represents something.

The argument is a specific instance of a general question about what actions do, and it has secular parallels worth noticing. A marriage ceremony either creates a legal status or records one, and jurisdictions differ on which, with consequences for what happens when the ceremony was defective. A signature either constitutes agreement or evidences it. A naming, a swearing-in, a coronation and a graduation all raise the same question, and the philosophical vocabulary for it, distinguishing utterances that perform from those that describe, was developed in the twentieth century and applies directly. What the theological argument adds is a long and careful examination of the conditions under which such an action succeeds, including who may perform it, what form is required, what intention is needed and what happens when one of those fails. Legal systems have worked through comparable questions independently and arrived at recognisably similar structures.

The claim is that a physical action effects a change rather than representing one, and whether it does has divided traditions since the Reformation and remains the barrier to shared communion. Catholic and Orthodox practice recognises seven, most Protestant traditions two, and Quakers none in this sense. The underlying question, whether an action does something or signifies it, has direct legal parallels.