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194 pages

English

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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.

Sujets

Germany

Calvinism

Christian theology

Philosophie et théologie

Calvinist

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	03 octobre 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493410866
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0778€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2017 by Brian C. Brewer
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1086-6
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NET are from the NET BIBLE®, copyright © 1996–2006 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com . Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Special thanks to Yale University Press for permission to reproduce a passage from Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), in chapter 5 below.
Endorsements
“With characteristic robustness, Martin Luther dismissed all but two of the seven sacraments of the mediaeval church. Yet Luther valued the spiritual support that people received from the ceremonies associated with penance, confirmation, marriage, ordination, and even extreme unction. He devised ways of capturing the beneficial purpose of each rite while insisting on the absolute priority of faith as the way of salvation. In Martin Luther and the Seven Sacraments , Brian Brewer reviews Luther’s teaching in this field, compares it with the opinions of subsequent reformers, and recommends methods of reviving the legitimate purposes of the seven sacraments in Protestantism today. This book is a model of the use of historical theology as a resource for the contemporary church.”
— David Bebbington , University of Stirling, Scotland; Baylor University
“This excellent volume by Brian Brewer is an important exploration of Luther’s sacramental theology. Brewer not only offers a convincing historical portrayal of how Luther reframed the sacraments but also probes possibilities for enriching contemporary Protestant practices. For those seeking greater understanding of the Lutheran Reformation and for those involved in contemporary ecclesial life in an ecumenical context, this stimulating study is essential reading.”
— Ian Randall , Spurgeon’s College, London; International Baptist Theological Study Centre, Amsterdam
“ Martin Luther and the Seven Sacraments is both a historical review and a practical retrieval—a must read for anyone interested in how the sacraments and rituals of the church have been and are to be understood. In leading us through the remains of medieval Catholic and early Protestant church towers, Brewer not only offers us a banister with which to steady ourselves but may have even got hold of the bell rope.”
— David Wilhite , George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University
“In this searching and carefully researched book, Brian Brewer wears his considerable learning lightly. His thorough—but thoroughly Protestant—appreciation of Christian practices thought by Roman Catholics to be sacraments reveals their value even for Protestants. That marriage is not a sacrament does not mean it is trivial; that ordination is not a sacrament must not hide its importance. Brewer’s work is ecumenical in the best sense of the word. Rather than pretending that no differences remain among Christian communions, it mines the depths of our traditions for nuggets of wisdom and insight. As the church observes five hundred years of Reformation, this book will help us remember what must be retained and what can be let go.”
— Derek Nelson , Wabash College
Dedication
Für Brittany,
die meine Liebe für Luther teilt
Epigraph
It is dangerous
to remember the past only
for its own sake, dangerous
to deliver a message
that you did not get.
Wendell Berry
Contents
Cover i
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Endorsements v
Dedication vi
Epigraph vii
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 1
1. Penance: The Once Third Protestant Sacrament 37
2. Confirmation: A Ceremony for the Laying On of Hands 66
3. Marriage: A Public Ordinance 86
4. Ordination: “A Man-Made Fiction” 112
5. Extreme Unction: “Anointing the Sick” 136
6. Baptism: The “Untouched and Untainted” Sacrament 164
7. The Lord’s Supper: “The Most Important of All” 192
Conclusion 227
Bibliography 233
Subject Index 245
Name Index 251
Back Cover 254
Preface
The title of this book may strike some as curious and others as absurd. The vast majority of Protestants through history have believed there to be only two sacraments or ordinances: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Since the reforms of Martin Luther in the early Reformation period of the sixteenth century, this has consistently been the case. On the other hand, Roman Catholicism has historically avowed seven sacraments of the church—adding confirmation, holy orders (ordination), penance (reconciliation), matrimony, and extreme unction (or anointing of the sick) to baptism and the Lord’s Supper—originating from its medieval practice, and it later reaffirmed this number in response to the development of Protestantism. Protestants thus believe in two sacraments, Catholics in seven. Hence this book may seem to be mistitled.
Yet this summation belies the whole picture. Even though Luther and his Reformation successors reduced the number of sacraments, they never intended to diminish most of the sacraments’ material practice in the Christian faith. Their diminution, and even abandonment in some circles, has nevertheless become the unfortunate outcome within most Protestant congregations. Now, for centuries, Christians from the Protestant tradition have ignored important traditional and often biblical disciplines in their faith because of their misunderstanding of Luther’s intentions. This book will review the thoughts of Martin Luther and many of the other Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century to see how they actually attempted to shape their Christian followers regarding the sacraments and practices of the Christian faith.
To be clear, the book will not recommend a recovery of the seven sacraments for Protestant practice. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the Anabaptists, the great leaders who shaped Protestantism as we inherit it today, though differing from one another in a number of important areas, all interpreted through Scripture that God granted only two sacraments for the church. 1 This book will not challenge their numbering. Yet often overlooked is that the Reformers also sought to reorder and reframe several other long-held practices within the Christian tradition. This book intends to underscore both the importance of the two Protestant sacraments and a robust understanding of other Christian practices that help to strengthen a Christian’s faith in Christ.
In my years of teaching the history and theology of the Reformation period, I have found that most Protestant students do not fully comprehend the importance of sacramental theology within the nascent Reformation movement, within their own theological traditions, and in the life and worship of the church today. This book intends to rectify this void for all those who wish to study theology for their own edification and for the inexorable reshaping of the Christian church, as we observe and reflect upon the witness of five centuries of Protestant Christianity in the world.

1 . Although Luther, Melanchthon, and early Lutheran confessions periodically also included penance as a third sacrament, or at least as a practice closely associated with the other two sacraments.
Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time coming. As one raised as a Presbyterian, trained at Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist schools, and now teaching at a Baptist institution, I am intrigued at how Protestant traditions share and yet differ in their church practices. As a student of historical theology in seminary and graduate school, I have always had a strong interest in how the church and its varying traditions have understood and practiced the sacraments in particular. As a pastor of two fine congregations and interim pastor of several more, I have been fascinated at how different churches appropriate and practice the ordinances in their own local communities. But I suppose it was at my prospectus defense at the commencement of my dissertation stage of graduate school that I was forced to reckon with something of the topic at hand as my liturgy professor, James F. White, recommended that I expand my dissertation on Balthasar Hubmaier’s theology of baptism to a study of Hubmaier’s sacramental theology in general. “That would be a much more interesting question,” he said. And, of course, he was right.
Through that study, I recognized just how foundational Martin Luther’s reinterpretation of the sacraments became for subsequent Protestant sacramental theology and how many Reformers, though differing in their own perspectives, u