FAITH AND FELLOWSHIP ARE TWO GREAT WORDS FOR PERSONAL RELIGION: FAITH IN A HIGHER WORLD, UNSEEN BUT real, the world of highest power and of supreme value; fellowship with that world, a living fellowship in which we receive life from this higher source and give to it our life in return. But it is not easy to see this world of the spirit, to live with it and for it and by its power. It is here that symbol and sacrament enter in as means of grace. Their service is fourfold. They help us to see — to apprehend the spiritual in its reality and its meaning. They help us to enter into communion with the unseen God. They serve Christ's followers by aiding them in their common worship and uniting them with the Church of all lands and the Church of the ages. In symbols like that of the cross, and especially in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, they bring before us God's redemptive work in the past and our hope for the future.

The Use of Symbol

The use of symbol extends far beyond religion. Wherever man deals with the world of higher meanings and values, he is driven to use the symbolic. He employs the world of sense to set forth what is beyond sense. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, all seek through sight and sound to disclose the world of higher meaning and beauty. Action also enters in as seen in drama, in religion, and in social intercourse.

The symbol is especially significant in religion. Here we use the term in its broad sense as including not only objects but actions, words, and narratives of common happenings like the parables of Jesus. ¹ The picture form of Jesus' teaching is uniquely significant here. He brought to men the highest truths of God and the loftiest ideals of life, the world to which men are so often blind. But he did this by constant reference to the world about them. Rain and sunshine, birds and flowers, seed and salt and light, men at work and children at play, all these he used to set forth his message. His whole life, indeed, was a visible setting forth in daily action of the deep things of God and man, culminating in the last week with the king entering his city on an ass, the master taking a last meal with his disciples, washing their feet in humble service, solemnly breaking bread and pouring out wine, wearing a crown thrust on him in derision, dying upon a cross between malefactors. Here is truth set forth simply, profoundly, convincingly, bringing vision, moving to repentance and faith. Here in living word and deed is the supreme illustration of the symbol as a means of grace, a way for the bringing of truth and life.

There are wide differences of opinion as to the value of symbol as a means of grace in worship. The symbolic in religion has constantly suffered abuse. As a conveyor of truth it has often been literalized or allegorized. In worship it has led to the idolatry of the object and a mechanical view of the working of grace: so in the use of the cross, of images, of acts and postures, and of special words in prayer. Even the Lord's Prayer may be used in magical and mechanical manner. Hence in large circles, though in varying degree, Protestantism reacted from the use of the symbolic as it did from the special observance of holy days.

But symbolic form or picture speech can never be wholly eliminated from religion. They are the inevitable form of religious thought and speech and devotion. Whether we stand or kneel or prostrate ourselves before God, we seek in posture to express the attitude of spirit and to gain aid in devotion. So in most churches we rise when we would voice our praise and kneel or bow in prayer. One church may set in central place before the congregation a pulpit with its Bible; another may give that place to cross and communion table or altar. In both cases there is symbolic significance and aid in worship. The cross is the central symbol for Christianity, and those who would not set it up as object use it in hymns of worship.

It remains to note the use of symbol in the language of religion. If God is "the wholly other," then all symbol and analogy would be excluded in setting forth our conception of God, for all these imply a certain likeness or kinship. But then there could be no doctrine of God except in purely negative form: "Whatever you say, I tell you flat: God is not that." In the Bible, New Testament as well as Old, there is constant use of symbol and analogy to set forth the nature of God. In the Old Testament he is pictured as creator, king, captain, lord, ruler, judge. More intimately conceived, he is shield, defense, refuge, hiding place, guide, shepherd; and in a few places he is called Father. All these, including the favorite New Testament word of Father, are symbols taken from the analogy of human relations and experience.

Sacraments

The sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper hold a unique place in the life and worship of the church. They are outstanding examples of the use of symbol, the symbol of object and of action. With the exception of the Friends all Christian bodies agree in their use, though there are wide differences as to form of celebration and even more as to their significance.

Some important points of general agreement may be noted first, though even here there are differences in the form of statement. The sacraments are symbols, alike of object and action. In this symbolic action both God and man are involved. Like all Christian symbols they set forth the truth; a sacrament is verbum visible. It is a means through which God gives his grace to men. The action symbol concerns both God and man, God's gift and man's response, though in Roman Catholic teaching the latter at times seems almost wholly to disappear. They are historical, commonly considered to have been established by Christ himself; in any case they belong to the historic Church from its beginnings. They are sacraments of the Church; they are administered by the Church and involve our relation to the Church.

Within this framework, however, radical differences appear. To be saved means to be cleansed from sin and renewed in life. For evangelical thought the movement is in the personal-ethical sphere, and that applies to the sacraments. They are no more and no less than a setting forth of the gospel itself, of God's love and the summons to man to respond in faith and obedience. And they bring the same gift that is promised when men receive the gospel: God's gift of himself in love and fellowship and as the power of a new life. There is no special "sacramental grace" differing from other forms of grace. Sacramentarianism sees in salvation a divine deed which transforms the essence, or substance, of sinful and corruptible human nature by the infusion of the divine essence which is holy and incorruptible. In baptism there is removed the corrupt and sinful nature (original sin), and in the mass man receives the divine nature through the transformed elements of the bread and wine. Here the categories are not personal and ethical, and the sacraments are viewed as instruments of a special kind of grace which is essential to salvation.

How is the grace of God given men through the sacraments? The evangelical answer is twofold: All grace is from God who "is at work in you, both to will and to work" (Phil. 2:13). But his action is that of Person coming to person and demanding a personal response. In Roman teaching the action of the sacraments is direct and necessary. Some would call this objective—so in the criticism by Gustaf Aulen in The Faith of the Christian Church. The Protestant conception, however, is certainly not subjective; for it stands for a real grace that is conferred by God. The contrast is best seen as that of the personal-ethical to the impersonal, physical, and mechanical. The Catholic Encyclopedia declares that "the expressions used by St. Thomas seem clearly to indicate that the sacraments act after the manner of physical causes," belonging to the physical rather than the moral order. ² It is difficult to avoid this interpretation of Catholic teaching. That is the meaning of the accepted phrase ex opere operato. Grace is "conferred through the act performed." The sacramental action in and by itself is decisive. The sacraments "contain the grace which they signify." ³

The Roman Church apparently feels the difficulties of this position. So there are many who adopt "the system of instrumental moral causality." The real position is seen when the question is raised as to what is required in the attitude of the recipient. If there be a "moral causality" here, then a moral response would be requisite. So it is asserted that in the case of adults there must be the "intention" of receiving the sacrament. The Council of Trent, however, declared that the grace was conferred "on those who do not place an obstacle thereunto." Even this minimal requirement has to be given up in the case of the eucharist. Since "in whatever state the recipient may be it is always the body and blood of Christ," not even the intention of receiving is necessary. This clearly reduces sacramental action to the physical or mechanical.

Protestantism has not been entirely free from this nonethical, impersonal conception. Calvin's doctrine of election, foreordination, and irresistible grace presents a grace that works with necessity and that cannot be lost. From his high church heritage John Wesley retained, even in later years, the idea of the baptismal regeneration of infants despite its inconsistency with his general position. ⁴ Nor was Luther consistent here. Assuming that the New Testament commanded infant baptism, and holding to the necessity of faith, he asserted that, since God commanded the former, he would supply the infant with the latter, a conclusion which robs faith in such case of its Pauline-Reformation meaning.

The question of authority also needs consideration here. The Council of Trent declared that the seven sacraments of the Roman Church were instituted by Christ, though there have not been lacking those who held to a "mediate" institution in line with Cardinal Newman's principle of development. In any case the Church is accepted here as final authority. Protestantism has commonly held that its two sacraments were established by Christ. Modern historical criticism raises questions here. Only Matt. 28:19 ascribes to Jesus a command to baptize. Do these words belong to the original Gospel text? And if that be granted, does it follow that they are authentic words of Jesus? How then could we explain the earliest practice of the Church which seems to have been baptism in the name of Christ rather than with the trinitarian formula of Matt. 28:19? Similar questions are raised by scholars in relation to the Lord's Supper. Did Jesus look forward to a continued celebration of a memorial supper? Paul, indeed, indicates this (1 Cor. 11:24-25). But Luke alone of the Gospels cites the words, "Do this in remembrance of me" (22:19); and he uses them only in connection with the bread. Further, some ancient manuscripts omit them from Luke, the Revised Standard Version following these. (It might well be noted here that this is but one of a number of points at which differences appear in the way in which the Gospels and Paul report the Last Supper and the words of Jesus.)

The historical-critical conclusion, however, will be decisive only to those for whom biblical authority is of the legalistic-literalistic type. The early Church apparently was not deterred by lack of specific commands, for it seems to have practiced baptism and the Lord's Supper from the beginning. Nor should the Church today wait upon historical evidence as to the institution. Here no more than in the field of ethics do we depend upon specific rules. We need to ask other questions: Do these rites truly set forth the gospel faith? Do they reflect the spirit of Christ and the heart of his teaching? Do they minister to the spiritual life of God's people and rightly present the nature and claim of the Church? In all this, too, we may rightly give weight to the fact that in these rites we are joined with the Church of the ages and that the Church through the ages has found here a source of help and an effective proclamation of its message. ⁵ Here, as elsewhere, we recognize the fact of a continuing work of Christ in revelation and redemption through the Holy Spirit within the Christian fellowship.

It remains to point out how close the sacraments are, alike in materials and action, to our everyday life. Water and washing, food and drink, fellowship at table, these belong to daily living. And this has a significance which is not often considered. This is God's world; there is in it nothing common or unclean. The common meal may become a sacrament of fellowship with God as among men. "The trivial round, the common task" are not merely the way of duty; they are ways of fellowship with God in faith and love and service, and so means of grace. But this wider meaning of the sacramental does not detract from the special significance of the historic sacraments which we are now to consider.

Baptism

Baptism was the early and universal practice of the Church. It was the rite in which converts declared their faith and allegiance and by which they were received into the Christian fellowship. But it conveyed other meanings to the early Christians. Water was the symbol of cleansing, and that was the work of the Spirit that was poured out upon those who believed. For Paul it is in addition the symbol of union with Christ in death and resurrection. Paul's emphasis here is plainly ethical rather than mystical. In baptism (here plainly immersion) the believer is "buried into death" that, raised from death with Christ, he may walk in newness of life. Baptismal action voices the assurance that "if we have died with Christ, ... we shall also live with him." It is a summons: "Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6:3-11). Here is clear illustration of the way in which divine and human, religious assurance and moral demand, belong together in the sacraments as in the whole doctrine of salvation.

The meaning of baptism for the Church can be indicated in a few words, following these general lines. There is here the act of an individual who, repenting, makes confession of faith in Christ and gives himself to God. But it is no merely individual matter. It is a Church rite. By this rite the Church receives candidates into its fellowship and in so doing obligates itself to care for them. The rite, therefore, is preferably celebrated in the Church and always by one acting for the Church. Finally, it sets forth the gospel of God's grace: God's forgiving mercy and the cleansing from sin by his Spirit.

What of the form of baptism? Should it be by immersion, or may it be by pouring or sprinkling? The earliest custom was probably immersion, as Paul's words suggest; but the exact form apparently was not viewed as something prescribed, and the other forms came early into use when immersion was not feasible. So, it would seem, when the Philippian jailer "was baptized at once, with all his family," "the same hour of the night" (Acts 16:33), probably with water from the same well which served the jailer when he washed the wounds of Paul and Silas. Of like significance is the change which seems to have taken place from the earlier form of baptism in the name of Christ or into Christ (Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3; Acts 2:38; et al) to the later use of the trinitarian formula. Here again is the freedom from literalism and legalism which marked the early Church. The absence of formal creeds, of specific requirements as to Church organization and forms of worship, with Paul's insistence upon vital centralities (the gospel of grace, the way of love, the gift of the Spirit), all this points the same way.

More difficult are the questions raised by the idea of infant baptism. Salvation demands not only God's grace but man's response in faith. So with the sacraments: nullum sacramentum sine fide, the reformers declared. But how can the infant exercise faith? Or how can one person's faith serve for another? Is not this a relapse into the mechanical-magical? And is it not joined traditionally to the idea of baptismal regeneration and the belief that infants dying without baptism are lost? Such misconceptions are joined to this practice in the Roman Church and sometimes in Protestantism. Are they necessarily involved in it?

The practice of infant baptism began very early. Whether it appears in the New Testament is not certain; the passages which refer to the baptism of a convert's household or family are not conclusive (Acts 16:15, 31-33; I Cor. 1:16). Probably what lay back of it was not an incipient sacramentarianism but the idea of family solidarity, particularly strong with the Jewish people. If the Protestant Church is to continue this practice it should understand the principles which underlie it and the obligations entailed for Church and home. It should be more than a form in which the child receives a name and should be free from all suggestion of the magical.

In its insistence on the personal-ethical, Protestantism has sometimes moved over to extreme individualism. Personal life is social as well as individual, and the principle of social solidarity has a vital place in the way of salvation. The home is not merely a biological and economic unit; it is a religious-ethical unit of which, for good or ill, the child is a part. The question is not whether the home should choose for the child, but what it should choose. If it fails, other agencies will mold the growing child. The home should choose moral ideals and religious faith for the child's training. In baptism the parents speak for the child, giving it to God and his Church, pledging Christian nurture.

The Church, in turn, standing for God's will and God's help for human life, accepts the home and the child as rightly belonging to it. The Church is a fellowship which includes many fellowships, of which the home is chief. It is no mere company of individuals. Baptism is the dedication of the home and its children to God and the Church; it is the acceptance by the Church of the home and the child. The religion of the Father and his children is not a religion which views the child as outside the Church or as a guest until, reaching maturity, it is competent to decide to enter.

This does not exclude the requirement of understanding and faith and personal decision. Quite the contrary. Baptism is not the end but the beginning. In it home and Church obligate themselves to bring up the child "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." The aim is not to impose authority but to further growth, so that the child may come for itself to know and choose the Christian faith and way. Then at last, freely and with knowledge, he "confirms" the choice made for him, confesses the faith in which he has been reared, and assumes the obligations of a member of the Church. To that final decision all the rest looks forward. The youth may refuse this decision, but the point of greatest danger is that church and home may look upon infant baptism as a form without discerning clearly its meaning or accepting the obligation involved. That obligation is not met when parents merely send the young child to the church school, or when the church gives a brief course of instruction before confirmation or the reception of its youth into full membership.

What of the symbolism of baptism as indicating a cleansing from sin and the gift of God's Spirit? How can these apply in infant baptism? Where is this a means of grace for the child? If the act is taken by itself, the questions cannot be answered from an evangelical standpoint. It is different when infant baptism is seen in its total setting and with its forward look. Here is the declaration, not only that home and child belong to God, but that the God of grace has saving access to the child and that he can use home and church as a means of grace for the child. Modern psychology has taught us how potent the first years are for evil as well as for good. But if evil has access to the child, so does the good. God is not shut out, and he does not wait for later years. Christianity is no mere adult religion. The water of baptism symbolizes for the child the work of the Spirit reaching it through church and home.

The Lord's Supper

The sacrament of the Lord's Supper has been the central and most significant rite of worship in the Church. Paul's words in 1 Cor. 11, our earliest New Testament reference, suggest that the Church of those first years believed that Christ himself had commanded this observance. In any case we know that it goes back to the beginning of the Church and from the first was observed as a memorial of Christ's last supper with his disciples. At the close of that supper Jesus took from the table first some bread, then a cup of wine. His words, as reported, told of his coming death, a death for men, and then held up the hope of the coming kingdom in which they would eat again. In Paul's report there is added the idea of commemoration.

The common meal was a significant part of the life of the early Church. In Acts 2:42 teaching and fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers, are joined in the picture of the Church's life. The fellowship of the common meal had a religious meaning; it was for them a means of grace as truly as the teaching and the prayers. Paul's account suggests that at the close of this common meal, perhaps regularly, the leader took bread and wine, blessed them, repeating the words of Jesus, and passed them to the company in solemn service. Interestingly, Paul's rebuke of the wealthier members of the Corinthian Church is concerned not with this closing service, but rather with the fellowship of the common meal which their conduct imperiled. Abuses like this may have been a chief reason for the separation of the Lord's Supper from the common meal, the latter continuing as the love feast (agape; cf. Jude 12).

The sacrament has for us the same rich meaning as for that first generation. (1) It is a service of commemoration. It calls to mind the supreme event of history and the central fact of our faith: Christ in his love and life and death bringing to us the saving mercy of God. It is a sacrament of love and the cross. Here is its great objective meaning. (2) It is a service of thanksgiving (eucharist in its primary sense), of confession (alike of our sins and of our faith in Christ as Savior), and dedication (an act of renewed devotion—sacramentum in its original Latin meaning). (3) It is a service of fellowship, of holy communion. It has its human side, as at the beginning; it is a fellowship of believers with one another, a union in faith and love and worship which takes in not only the immediate company but the whole Church on earth and in heaven. For this reason its normal celebration is by and with a company, not individually. It is a communion with God in Christ, not only in our worship of spirit but in God's gift of himself in love and grace. It means a real presence of Christ, not a physical presence of body and blood in transformed bread and wine, but a spiritual presence, with a sharing of his spirit and life. In all these aspects it is a means of grace, not only in its central act as we receive the sacred emblems and realize their meaning, but in all its aspects of remembrance, thanksgiving, confession, dedication, and communion.

These deeper meanings have too often been lost by the Church where it has taught "the sacrifice of the Mass" and the transformation of material elements into the literal body and blood of Christ. The idea of sacrifice is, indeed, central; but it is not found in a priestly performance. It is found in Christ's giving of himself for us, once for all, in life and love and death, and in the ever-renewed offering of ourselves in faith and in the acceptance of his way.

1) It might be noted that the two Greek derivatives, symbol and parable, both use the same verb ballein, with similar prepositions, sun and para f in both cases indicating a bringing together for comparison and suggestion.

2) Article, "Sacraments," by Daniel J. Kennedy, Professor of Sacramental Theology, Catholic University of America,

3) So the Council of Trent, "On the Sacraments in General," Canons vi and viii.

4) Works, Vol. I, Sermon XLV. This position was never held by his followers.

5) ϵf. Aulén, op. cit., pp. 372-74.