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What Makes a Sacrament—and Why These Five Fail | John Calvin · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to The Deep Dive. We're shifting gears for this
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  session to open up a specific file we call Reformed Thinking.
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  We're so glad you're with us, the learner.
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  We know why you're here. You're not looking for a quick
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  headline, no 32nd summary. You want to open up the
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  machinery of history and theology.
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  Really see how the gears turn. And today we have a massive
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  engine to take apart. We certainly do.
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  It's a pleasure to be here, and I think we should probably set
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  the ground rules right away. We're approaching this material
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  as Protestant Christians and, you know, specifically holding
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  to the standards of the Westminster Confession.
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  We're looking at the roots of Reformed theology.
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  So this isn't just a history lesson for us.
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  It's a way to understand the very architecture of the faith
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  we hold. And the document on the desk
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  today is John Calvin's Institute to the Christian Religion.
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  Now, usually when people hear Calvin, they think of, I don't
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  know, a very serious, maybe even a grim figure.
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  That's the stereotype, yeah. But we're looking at his
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  specific critique of what the Roman Catholic Church called the
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  five other ceremonies. We're talking about the things
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  they called sacraments, which Calvin insists are definitely
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  not sacrament. He's quite emphatic about it.
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  That is putting it mildly. I was reading through these
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  sections again and the tone just, it really surprised me.
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  Kelvin is fiery here. Oh, absolutely.
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  He's sarcastic. He uses logic like a hammer.
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  But he also makes jokes. He he mocks the translation
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  skills of his opponent. He calls their holy oil grease.
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  Yeah, grease. It's entertaining, but you can
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  tell underneath all that sharp language there is a very, very
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  serious mission. There is, and we really need to
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  understand that mission. I mean, it is not just an
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  argument over vocabulary, over what you call something.
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  The question at hand is why the Reformed tradition strictly
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  limits sacraments to just two baptism in the Lord's Supper.
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  And you know on the other side of that coin, why Calvin felt
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  that the other five Confirmation, penance, extreme
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  unction, Holy Orders, and marriage, why he thought they
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  weren't just harmless extra ceremonies?
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  Right. He saw them as dangerous.
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  Dangerous distractions, yes. It's one thing to say, oh, we
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  don't do that. It's a completely different
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  thing to say that is dangerous. You're right.
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  For Calvin, this all comes down to the assurance of salvation.
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  OK, It's about where a Christian finds their confidence.
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  I mean, think about it. If you place your confidence in
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  a ritual that was invented by men, your conscience is always
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  going to be unstable. It's always going to be shaky.
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  Because men can be wrong. Exactly.
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  But if you place it in a promise made directly by God, you have a
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  rock to stand on. So as we go through these five
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  false sacraments, you have to keep in mind Calvin is fighting
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  for the peace of the believers conscience.
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  OK, let's unpack this. Before we can even look at the
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  specific five he rejects, we have to understand the standard
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  he's using. The measuring stick.
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  Right. How does Calvin define a
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  sacrament? I mean, if you don't have a
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  solid definition, you can't really say what fits and what
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  doesn't. And Calvin has a very strict
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  definition. He lays it out in the early
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  chapters of the Institute's and he applies it ruthlessly.
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  For something to be a sacrament, it has to have two components. 2
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  things. OK first it needs an outward
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  sign. We often call this the element.
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  So, you know, like the water and baptism or the bread and wine in
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  the supper. The physical part you can see
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  and touch. A physical part.
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  Second, and this is the most critical part, it has to have a
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  specific promise from God, the word attached directly to that
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  element. Element in Word.
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  Correct, and the source is the key here.
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  God alone has the authority to institute a sacrament.
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  Humans, you know, we can't simply pick up a physical
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  object, whether it's oil or salt or a ring, and say this now
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  carries a divine promise of salvation.
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  We don't have that a story. We just don't.
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  That makes perfect sense. I can't write a check from your
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  bank account. No.
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  And I can't promise that you'll do something tomorrow.
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  Only God can promise what God will do.
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  That's a perfect analogy. Calvin argues that a sacrament
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  is a seal of God's promise. It's a testimony of His goodwill
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  toward us, and since no man and no Angel was God's counselor, no
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  one but God can tell us what He has promised or how He chooses
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  to seal that promise. So if men invent A ritual, it
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  might be a nice ceremony, it might feel respectful.
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  Sure, it could be very moving. But it cannot be a sacrament
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  because it lacks that divine signature.
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  It's a forgery in his eyes. And Calvin points out that this
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  isn't just some new Reformed idea he cooked up.
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  He goes back to the early church for this.
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  He brings up the number 7. Yes, the famous 7.
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  We hear about the seven sacraments of the Catholic
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  Church all the time, and I think most people just assume that
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  number goes all the way back to the apostles.
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  That is the common assumption, but Calvin just tears it down.
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  He points out first that the number 7 is nowhere in
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  Scripture. You cannot find a list of seven
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  sacraments anywhere in the New Testament.
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  That's a big one. But then, even more damaging to
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  the Roman argument, Calvin points out that you can't find
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  the number seven in the early church writers either, and he
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  specifically cites Augustine. And Agustin's the heavy hitter.
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  Everybody, Anybody wants Augustine on their team.
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  He is, and Calvin notes that when Augustine talks about the
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  signs of the new covenant, he doesn't list 7.
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  He says the sacraments of the New Covenant are few, easy and
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  excellent. Few.
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  Easy and excellent. I like that.
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  And which ones does he name? Baptism and the Eucharist, the
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  Lord's Supper, That's it. He says you know and any other
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  approved in canonical scripture, but he never ever creates a list
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  of seven. So if Augustine didn't have 7
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  and the Bible doesn't have 7, where did that number even come
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  from? Well, it's sort of.
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  It crept in later. It became a commonplace idea in
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  the medieval schools. The school men, as Calvin calls
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  them, they're the ones who really fixed it in people's
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  minds. I see.
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  So by the time Calvin is writing, it's a deeply
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  entrenched idea. But Calvin's argument is that
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  just because an error is old doesn't make it true.
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  He has a great slippery slope argument about this.
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  I remember this part, he says. If we start letting human
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  rituals be called sacraments just because they seem holy.
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  I mean, where does it stop? Right.
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  The apostles prayed on their knees.
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  Should kneeling be a sacrament? The disciples faced E when they
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  prayed. Should facing East be a
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  sacrament? It highlights the absurdity of
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  it. If every pious gesture of a holy
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  person becomes a sacrament, you'd have thousands of
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  sacraments. You wouldn't be able to count
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  them. So what's the point he's making?
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  His point is that we have to distinguish between a reverent
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  gesture or a church ceremony and an actual sacrament.
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  A sacrament carries a promise of grace directly from God.
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  Kneeling is a posture. It's a good posture, but it
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  doesn't promise salvation. And the danger, like you said
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  earlier, is trapping men's consciences.
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  Yes, that's the bottom line. If you tell a simple believer
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  that a human ritual is necessary for their salvation, or that it
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  confers forgiveness, you've just bound their conscience to
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  something God never commanded. You're making them slaves to
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  men. Slaves to men rather than
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  servants of God. That's the tyranny that Calvin
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  is trying to break. So that's the baseline.
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  God alone makes sacraments. There are only two authorized by
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  Scripture. Now let's look at the ones
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  Calvin kicks out of the club. The five impostors.
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  The first one he tackles is confirmation.
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  Right confirmation. In the Roman system, this is the
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  right that follows baptism, and it's usually administered by a
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  Bishop. But Calvin actually starts by
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  admitting that the ancient church had something like
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  confirmation, right? He doesn't completely hate the
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  idea of confirming one's faith. No he doesn't, and this is so
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  interesting. He actually speaks quite fondly
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  of the original practice. In the early church, infants
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  were baptized, but obviously an infant can't understand the
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  creed or confess their faith. So when they reach the age of
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  discretion, you know, adolescence, usually they would
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  come before the Bishop and the whole church.
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  They'd be examined in their knowledge of the faith.
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  They would make a public profession and then the Bishop
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  would lay hands on them to bless them.
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  That sounds remarkably Protestant.
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  It is, Calvin says. I wish this were restored.
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  He wants a public profession of faith.
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  He wants catechizing. He wants children to own their
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  faith for themselves. But he says what the Roman
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  Church did was take this simple, sensible educational practice
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  and turn it into a strange theatrical sacrament that has
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  basically nothing to do with the original.
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  And this is where he starts talking about the chrism, the
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  oil. That's the innovation, the
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  introduction of chrism or holy oil.
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  The Roman teaching had evolved to say that while baptism gives
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  the Holy Spirit for innocence and forgiveness, confirmation
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  gives the Holy Spirit for battle, for battle, for battle,
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  and for an increase of grace. That distinction that really
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  bothers. Yeah, it infuriates them.
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  I mean, just think about the implication.
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  If you say baptism only gets you part of the Spirit or only makes
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  you half ready for the Christian life, you are insulting the
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  promise of Christ in baptism. You're devaluing it.
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  Completely. Calvin argues that in baptism we
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  put on Christ totally. We are buried with him and
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  raised with him. We don't receive a partial
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  Christ in baptism and then get the rest of him in confirmation.
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  He calls it an injury to baptism.
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  He says it implies that baptism is 1/2 measure.
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  And this is where the sarcasm really, really comes out.
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  He starts attacking the oil itself.
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  He does. He asks, where is the word of
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  God attached to this oil? Remember our definition?
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  Element plus word? You see the oil?
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  That's the element. But where's the promise?
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  Where is the Word? There is no command in Scripture
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  to anoint with oil for salvation, so Calvin calls it.
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  Gross and greasy liquid. Gross and greasy liquid, yes.
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  That's not the language of a man who's, you know, trying to be
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  diplomatic. Not at all.
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  And he goes further. He attacks the very phrase oil
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  of salvation. He says that calling oil
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  salvation is a denial of Christ. He quotes the Apostle Paul
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  saying we should turn away from these weak elemental things.
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  I remember the quote he uses. Which one?
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  Oil is for the belly and the belly for oil.
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  The Lord will destroy both. Yes, it's so blunt.
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  He is stripping away every ounce of the mystical aura they had
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  built around the substance. OK, but the Roman apologist
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  would say, wait a minute, Calvin.
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  The apostles laid hands on people in the book of Acts.
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  We're just doing what the apostles did.
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  And that is their strongest counter argument.
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  Acts chapter 8 is the big one. Peter and John go to Samaria,
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  they lay hands on the believers, and they receive the Holy
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  Spirit. So how does Calvin handle that?
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  It's right there in the Bible. He handles it by looking at the
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  result. He asks a very simple question.
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  When the apostles laid hands on people, what happened?
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  Miracles. Visible miraculous gifts
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  appeared. People started speaking in
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  tongues. They prophesied.
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  They healed. Calvin argues that the laying on
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  of hands in Acts was a specific gesture to confer these
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  miraculous powers for a specific time, the Apostolic age, to
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  validate the new message of the Gospel.
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  So his point is that those miracles have stopped.
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  Correct. He looks at the bishops of his
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  day and he says essentially, OK, you laid hands on them.
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  Did they start speaking in tongues?
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  Did they prophecy? And since those visible miracles
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  have ceased, the gesture that accompanied them is now an empty
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  shell. It's just an action without the
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  power. He calls it play acting.
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  He says they're like apes, monkeys mimicking the motions of
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  humans without understanding the purpose or having the power.
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  That is a vivid image. Wow, just copying the motion.
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  There's also this strange, almost political dimension to
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  confirmation. Apparently only a Bishop could
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  perform it. Yes, the Donatist error, as
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  Calvin kind of hints at. The Roman Church taught that
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  while a simple priest could baptize only a Bishop, a higher
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  authority could confirm. Calvin asked the same thing.
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  Why, if they claim they are successors to the apostles, are
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  they saying priests or not? But the theological absurdity is
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  what really strikes Calvin. By doing this.
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  They value confirmation more than baptism because they
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  reserve it for the higher rank of clergy.
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  If a priest can baptize, but you need a Bishop to apply the oil,
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  you are implicitly saying that the oil is more important or
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  somehow holier than the water of baptism.
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  And baptism was instituted by Christ himself.
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  Exactly. Calvin calls this Magnus.
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  You're taking a human invention, the Oriole ritual, and you're
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  elevating it above a divine institution.
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  It really shows how protective Calvin is of the two true
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  sacraments. I mean he defends baptism like a
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  lioness defending her cub. He will not let anything over
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  shadow it. That's a great way to put it.
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  Baptism is the sign of our adoption, and anything that
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  suggests our adoption is incomplete or insufficient is
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  heresy to him. Let's move to the next one,
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  Penance. This is a huge one because it
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  deals directly with the forgiveness of sins after
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  baptism. It is massive and frankly, it's
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  a mess. Calvin spends a good bit of time
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  just pointing out that the school men, the medieval
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  theologians, were incredibly confused about their own
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  doctrine. And they couldn't even agree
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  among themselves. Not at all.
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  They couldn't agree on what the sacrament of Penance actually
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  was. Was it the inward feeling of
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  contrition? Was it the outward act of
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  confessing to a priest? Was it the words of absolution
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  the priest spoke? Or was it the satisfaction the
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  works you do afterwards? They had no consensus.
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  Sound like a theological fog? It was, and in that fog they
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  latched onto a metaphor from Jerome, one of the early Church
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  fathers. Jerome called Pennants the
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  second plank after shipwreck. I have heard this.
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  The idea is that baptism is the ship, right?
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  You get on the ship and you're sailing towards heaven.
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  But then you sin. You fall overboard the ship.
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  Your baptism is broken or lost to you, so God in his mercy
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  throws you a plank. That plank is penance.
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  You cling to that plank to get to shore.
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  It's a very compelling image visually.
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  I mean, you can picture it, but Calvin says it is chemically
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  explosive. To Reformed theology, it
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  destroys assurance. Why does it destroy assurance?
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  It sounds merciful at first. It sounds merciful, but think
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  about what it implies. It implies that the grace of
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  baptism is destroyed by post baptismal sin.
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  It suggests that baptism is a one time event that works for
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  your past sins, but the moment you sin again, its validity is
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  gone. And you have to find a new way
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  to be saved. A new way, a new plank.
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  Calvin argues this is a fundamental catastrophic
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  misunderstanding of baptism. So what's the Reformed
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  correction? If I sin today and I was
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  baptized 20 years ago, what does Calvin say I should do?
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  He says you do not need a new sacrament, you need to recall
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  your baptism. Recall it.
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  Yes, Calvin argues that baptism is a seal that covers your
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  entire life, past, present and future sins, the promise of God,
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  and baptism. I will be your God and you will
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  be my people. That doesn't expire when you
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  stumble. So when we sin, we look back to
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  our baptism and say I am a child of God.
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  I have been washed. That promise still holds.
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  That changes everything. It means baptism isn't just an
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  entry ticket to the show, it's a lifelong identity.
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  Precisely. And this is a killer line from
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  Calvin. He actually calls baptism the
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  sacrament of penance. He says we don't need a separate
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  sacrament called penance because baptism is the sign of our
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  continual lifelong forgiveness. What about absolution, though?
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  Calvin doesn't hate the idea of a minister declaring
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  forgiveness, does he? No, not at all.
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  In fact, in the Reformed liturgy we often have a corporate
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  confession of sin and then an assurance of pardon spoken by
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  the minister. Calvin values the power of the
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  keys, the authority of the church to declare forgiveness
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  based on the promises of Scripture.
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  But he refuses to call it a sacrament because it lacks the
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  visible sign. Exactly.
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  Hearing the words you are forgiven is powerful.
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  It's a ministry of the Word, but there's no material element
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  instituted by God like water or bread attached to.
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  It so it's a ministry, not a sacrament.
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  Right. He also points out the history.
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  Originally, penance in the early church was not a sacrament for
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  getting forgiveness. It was a disciplinary procedure.
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  If someone committed a grievous public sin, they were put out of
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  the church community for a time. Oh, for church discipline.
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  Yes, and penance was the public process of showing repentance
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  and being brought back into communion.
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  It was about church order, not a magical ritual for salvation.
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  So again, the Roman Church took a practical disciplinary
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  practice and inflated it into a necessary vehicle for grace,
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  eclipsing baptism in the process.
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  You are seeing the pattern very clearly.
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  I am OK #3 on the list. Extreme unction.
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  This is the last rites, right? The anointing of the dying.
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  Yes, extreme here means in extremists at the very end of
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  life. The Roman practice involved the
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  priest coming to the dying person, anointing their eyes,
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  ears, nose, lips and hands with oil, and praying for the
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  forgiveness of sins committed through those senses.
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  And their biblical proof for this is the book of James
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  chapter 5. Is anyone among you sick?
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  Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray
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  over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
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  And that seems pretty direct. How does Calvin get around James
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  5? Calvin applies what I call a
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  reality check. He says.
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  Just read the text carefully. James is discussing healing the
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  sick. The promise in James is the
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  prayer of faith will save the sick man and the Lord will raise
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  him up. It's a passage about recovery.
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  It's about getting better. And I see the disconnect
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  immediately. The Roman Rite is specifically
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  for people who are dying. Right.
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  Calvin jumps all over this irony.
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  He says if the Roman church really believed this was based
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  on James 5, they would use the oil when someone first gets a
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  fever to heal them, but they call it extreme unction and they
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  wait until the person is half dead, barely breathing.
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  And by waiting until death is basically certain.
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  They prove they don't actually believe the oil will heal the
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  person. They're not expecting a miracle.
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  Calls them butchers at one point I remember that he says they're
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  cruel because they had this medicine in their view, but they
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  refuse to use it until the patient is completely beyond
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  hope. It's a harsh insult, but it
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  exposes the massive contradiction in their practice.
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  But Calvin goes deeper. He applies his cessationist
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  argument again. Like with the laying on of
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  hands. Exactly like with the laying on
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  of hands, he asks what was the anointing in Mark 6 and James
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  five? It was a symbol for the
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  miraculous gift of healing. In the Apostolic age, the gift
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  of healing was active. The oil was an external symbol
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  of the Holy Spirit's power to heal the body.
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  But Calvin argues that this gift of healing, that miraculous
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  ability to cure everyone you pray for, has vanished from the
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  church. Or at the very least, it's not
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  consistently present in every single priest.
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  So if you don't have the power to heal, using the symbol is
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  meaningless. It's mimicry.
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  It's the apes again, he says. Using the oil without the
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  miraculous gift of healing is like acting out of play.
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  You were going through the motions, but the stage is empty.
• 18:47
  The power isn't there. He also mocks the ritual itself
• 18:50
  Doesn't need the hail holy oil. Chan describes the priest coming
• 18:53
  in with breathings and mutterings, chanting to the oil.
• 18:57
  Calvin finds this repulsive. He asks who taught them to speak
• 19:00
  to the oil. For him, it borders on idolatry.
• 19:03
  So the whole thing fails the test.
• 19:05
  It fails. The promise healing is usually
• 19:07
  missing because the person dies and the command was for a
• 19:11
  specific time and a specific gift.
• 19:13
  Therefore, it is not a sacrament.
• 19:16
  It's interesting how consistently Calvin appeals to
• 19:18
  the fruit or the result. If the result isn't there, he
• 19:22
  says the ritual is empty. He's very pragmatic in his
• 19:25
  theology. That way.
• 19:26
  God's promises are effectual. If God promises healing, healing
• 19:30
  happens. If healing doesn't happen then
• 19:32
  we are miss applying the promise or the ritual.
• 19:35
  Moving on to #4 Holy Orders, this is the ordination of
• 19:39
  priests and deacons and so on. This is where the logic of the
• 19:42
  seven sacraments really breaks down mathematically.
• 19:46
  I love this part. Calvin points out the mass
• 19:48
  problem. The Roman Church claims there
• 19:50
  are 7 sacraments, but Holy Orders isn't just one thing.
• 19:54
  No, it's an umbrella term. It's subdivided into 7 or
• 19:57
  sometimes he says, 9 different ranks.
• 19:58
  You have Doorkeepers, readers, exorcist, acolytes, subdeacons,
• 20:01
  deacons, priests. And Kelvin just jokes that these
• 20:04
  sacramentlings breed more sacraments.
• 20:06
  If each of those orders is a sacrament, you have way more
• 20:09
  than 7. The math doesn't work.
• 20:10
  He just tears apart the minor orders.
• 20:13
  I didn't even know some of these existed.
• 20:15
  Doorkeepers. In the ancient church, there
• 20:17
  were people assigned to guard the doors during worship.
• 20:20
  It was basically a security job. A practical role.
• 20:23
  A practical role. But by Calvin's time, this had
• 20:26
  become a spiritual rank. You'd be ordained as a
• 20:29
  doorkeeper in a solemn ceremony, given the keys to the church.
• 20:32
  But Calvin points out the farce of it all.
• 20:35
  How so? In reality, the actual job of
• 20:38
  opening and locking the doors was done by a Sexton or a boy.
• 20:42
  A layman. The ordained doorkeeper didn't
• 20:45
  actually keep the door. It was an empty title.
• 20:47
  And the acolytes. He has a linguistic field day
• 20:50
  with this one. He does.
• 20:51
  The Roman church called them taper bearers or candle holders.
• 20:55
  They had a whole ceremony with a Candlestick.
• 20:57
  But Calvin looks at the original Greek word akoluthos.
• 21:00
  And it doesn't mean candle holder.
• 21:02
  Not even close. It means follower or attendant,
• 21:05
  basically a lackey or an assistant.
• 21:07
  He accuses them of inventing magic words and rituals based on
• 21:11
  bad translations and lost meanings.
• 21:13
  And exorcists. That's the most damning one of
• 21:15
  the minor orders. They ordained men as exorcists,
• 21:19
  giving them, in theory, power over demons.
• 21:22
  But Calvin asks the obvious question, Do these men actually
• 21:26
  cast out demons? And the answer is no.
• 21:29
  No, they just hold the title, he says.
• 21:31
  The whole system is a patchwork of falsehood and empty ceremony.
• 21:35
  But getting to the really serious theology, the priesthood
• 21:38
  itself, the major order, Calvin has a fundamental problem with
• 21:43
  the very idea of a sacrificing priesthood, doesn't he?
• 21:46
  This is the core of the Reformation argument against the
• 21:49
  Mass. The Roman Church taught that the
• 21:51
  priest offers a sacrifice, Christ's body and blood on the
• 21:54
  altar. To do this, they are anointed
• 21:56
  with oil, like the Jewish priests in the Old Testament.
• 21:59
  He says they are aping Judaism. Precisely, he says they are
• 22:02
  trying to rebuild the Levitical priesthood, the order of Aaron.
• 22:05
  They use oil, vestments, altars, the works.
• 22:09
  But Calvin argues straight from the book of Hebrews, Christ is
• 22:12
  the only eternal high priest. He's from the Order of
• 22:14
  Melchizedek. Exactly.
• 22:15
  Not Aaron. He offered the one final perfect
• 22:19
  sacrifice of himself on the cross.
• 22:20
  It is finished. So if Christ finished the work,
• 22:24
  we don't need priests to keep sacrificing him over and over.
• 22:28
  Right. We need pastors to preach the
• 22:30
  Word. We need teachers to explain it.
• 22:33
  We need ministers to administer the sacraments he gave us, but
• 22:36
  we do not need priests in the sacrificial sense.
• 22:40
  By setting up a new priesthood, Calvin argues, they are
• 22:43
  obscuring the glory of Christ's finished work.
• 22:46
  It's like going back into the shadows.
• 22:47
  Going back to the shadows of the Old Testament when we have the
• 22:50
  brilliant light of the new. He also attacks the indelible
• 22:54
  mark, this idea that ordination changes your soul forever.
• 22:58
  The character in the level is, yes, the idea that once you're a
• 23:02
  priest, you're always a priest, because the anointing leaves a
• 23:04
  permanent spiritual mark on your soul.
• 23:07
  Calvin just dismisses this with contempt.
• 23:09
  What does he say? He says the oil and salt they
• 23:11
  use can be washed off with soap. It's physical, it's external, it
• 23:15
  does not touch the soul. It's a magical idea with no
• 23:17
  basis in Scripture. We absolutely cannot skip the
• 23:20
  haircut, the ton chair, the shaving of the top of the head.
• 23:23
  The monk's haircut. Yeah, Calvin traces the history
• 23:26
  here, and it's hilarious. He says it started because in
• 23:29
  the ancient world, long hair on men was sometimes seen as
• 23:32
  effeminate or vain, so clergy were simply told to cut their
• 23:36
  hair short. Just a normal grooming standard
• 23:38
  for the time. Exactly the grooming standard.
• 23:41
  But over time, as fashions change, the clergy kept the
• 23:44
  short hair and then eventually they started just shaving the
• 23:47
  crown. And then, as he says they always
• 23:50
  do, they invented a mystery to explain the weird haircut.
• 23:54
  So they retroactively gave it a spiritual meaning, yes.
• 23:58
  They said the shaved head symbolizes a crown of royalty,
• 24:02
  or it represents the crown of thorns that Christ wore.
• 24:05
  Or that it symbolizes cutting off worldly thoughts and lusts?
• 24:08
  Which Calvin finds incredibly ironic.
• 24:11
  He asked if there is any class of men in his day more greedy,
• 24:14
  stupid and lustful than the clergy.
• 24:17
  Ouch, he says. Basically, you shaved the hair
• 24:19
  on your head, but you kept all the worldly lusts in your heart.
• 24:22
  It's a biting insult, but again, it shows his point.
• 24:24
  Human rituals tend to become masks for hypocrisy and not
• 24:27
  means of grace. OK, let's go to the final one.
• 24:29
  Number five, marriage. This is surprising to some
• 24:33
  people because, well, Protestants love marriage.
• 24:35
  We think it's great. Calvin thought it was great.
• 24:37
  So why isn't it a sacrament? This is such an important
• 24:40
  distinction, Calvin says. Marriage is a good and holy
• 24:44
  ordinance. It's ordained by God.
• 24:46
  He praises it, but then he compares it to farming or
• 24:50
  architecture or even shoe making.
• 24:53
  Shoe making. How does that work?
• 24:54
  He says these are all lawful good things given by God for
• 24:57
  human life to flourish, but they are not sacraments.
• 25:00
  And why not? Because they do not have an
• 25:03
  outward sign that seals a promise of salvation.
• 25:06
  Marriage is for this life. It doesn't confer saving grace
• 25:09
  or forgive sins. He has that tree argument, he
• 25:12
  says if we call marriage a sacrament just because it's a
• 25:14
  symbol of something spiritual, then we have to open the
• 25:17
  floodgates. Right.
• 25:18
  The Bible uses tons of metaphors.
• 25:19
  The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.
• 25:22
  So is a mustard seed a sacrament.
• 25:23
  God is like a shepherd. So is a shepherd a sacrament?
• 25:27
  Christ is the vine is a Grapevine, a sacrament.
• 25:30
  No, that would be absurd. Exactly, Calvin says if
• 25:33
  everything that is a sign or a symbol of a spiritual truth is a
• 25:36
  sacrament, then the word loses all meaning.
• 25:40
  The world is just full of them. But the Roman church had a
• 25:43
  specific verse, Ephesians 5.32. Paul is talking about marriage
• 25:48
  and Christ and the church, and he says this is a great mystery.
• 25:53
  And here's the big aha one moment.
• 25:56
  This is a translation error that literally changed history.
• 26:00
  A translation error. The Greek word Paul uses is
• 26:02
  mysterion, mystery, something hidden that is now revealed.
• 26:06
  But the Latin translation used by the Church for centuries was
• 26:09
  different. The Latin Vulgate, which was the
• 26:12
  official Bible of the church for 1000 years, translated the Greek
• 26:15
  word mysterion as sacramentum. So in the medieval theologians
• 26:19
  read Ephesians 5, they read This is a great sacrament.
• 26:22
  So the entire Doctor, the reason they call it a sacrament, rests
• 26:25
  on a single translators word choice.
• 26:27
  Calvin argues that's exactly what happened.
• 26:29
  He says Paul was Speaking of the beautiful mystery of the union
• 26:31
  between Christ and the church, for which marriage is an
• 26:34
  analogy. He was not saying the wedding
• 26:36
  ceremony is a sacrament. So he essentially tells the
• 26:39
  Roman theologians. He essentially tells them go
• 26:41
  learn Greek. You have built a doctrine on
• 26:44
  your ignorance of the original language.
• 26:46
  That is an absolute mic drop moment.
• 26:48
  Go learn Greek. But then he points out the
• 26:50
  massive contradiction. This is something that always
• 26:52
  confused me. The Roman Church calls marriage
• 26:55
  a sacrament, a vessel of grace, a holy thing.
• 26:59
  But then they forbid their priests from getting married.
• 27:01
  It's a glaring, undeniable hypocrisy.
• 27:04
  Calvin just puts them in a logical vice.
• 27:06
  He asks if it is a sacrament, how can you possibly ban it?
• 27:09
  You don't ban baptism. You don't ban the Eucharist.
• 27:13
  If marriage confers grace, why are you denying that grace to
• 27:17
  your clergy? And the language they used to
• 27:19
  describe marriage for priests was, I mean, it was nasty.
• 27:23
  They called it pollution or carnal filth.
• 27:25
  Exactly. They viewed the sexual union as
• 27:27
  something inherently unclean that would defile a priest and
• 27:30
  make him unfit for his duties. But Calvin traps them in their
• 27:34
  own logic. He says, wait a minute, you say
• 27:36
  the sexual union, the two becoming one flesh, is part of
• 27:39
  the sacrament of marriage. So you're saying a part of a
• 27:42
  holy sacrament is filth? You're saying the Holy Spirit is
• 27:45
  present in the sacrament but not in the physical act of marriage.
• 27:49
  He exposes the fact that they don't really believe it's a
• 27:51
  sacrament in the same way baptism is, they just use the
• 27:54
  title. So why?
• 27:56
  Why use the title? Why fight so hard to keep
• 27:59
  marriage as a sacrament if they thought it was so carnal?
• 28:02
  Power and money. Calvin is very cynical, or maybe
• 28:05
  just realistic about this. OK, by classifying marriage as a
• 28:09
  sacrament, the church effectively removed it from the
• 28:11
  sphere of civil law. It became a spiritual matter
• 28:14
  under the Church's jurisdiction. Which meant the church courts
• 28:16
  decided everything. Everything they decided who
• 28:19
  could marry, who could get a divorce or an annulment, and who
• 28:22
  inherited property. It was a massive source course
• 28:25
  of legal power. And money.
• 28:27
  And money, he says. They created a den of
• 28:29
  abominations. They made-up complex rules about
• 28:32
  degrees of kinship. You can't marry your third
• 28:34
  cousin once removed or whatever, which almost every noble family
• 28:38
  in Europe violated. Which meant they had to pay the
• 28:40
  church. They had to pay for expensive
• 28:42
  dispensations, permission slips to allow them to marry, or on
• 28:47
  the other hand, the church could suddenly discover one of these
• 28:50
  violations and invalidate a marriage if a king wanted a new
• 28:53
  wife. It was a massive engine for
• 28:56
  financial and political game. So by stripping the title
• 29:00
  sacrament away from marriage, Calvin wasn't lowering the value
• 29:04
  of marriage. In a way, he was actually
• 29:06
  freeing it. He was freeing it from abuse.
• 29:09
  He was returning it to the civil and natural sphere where it
• 29:12
  belongs, and stopping the church from using it as a tool for
• 29:15
  extortion and control. It's really breathtaking when
• 29:18
  you look at the whole picture. We went from 7 sacraments and
• 29:21
  now we're back down to two baptism and the Lord's Supper.
• 29:24
  And we have to ask the big question.
• 29:26
  Why was Calvin just trying to be a minimalist?
• 29:28
  Was he just, you know, trying to declutter the church?
• 29:31
  No, it was clearly deeper than. So much deeper.
• 29:34
  The five false ceremonies all had one thing in common when you
• 29:38
  look at them together. What's that?
• 29:39
  They all shifted the believers reliance on to the Church as an
• 29:42
  institution. You needed the Bishop for
• 29:45
  confirmation. You needed the priest for
• 29:47
  penance. You needed the special oil for
• 29:49
  unction. You needed the whole hierarchy
• 29:51
  for orders. You needed the church court for
• 29:54
  marriage. It created a system where the
• 29:56
  church stands between you and God, the system of middle men.
• 30:00
  Exactly. It blocked the view of Christ by
• 30:03
  clearing away all this rubbish, as he calls it.
• 30:07
  Calvin wants to leave the believer with a clear,
• 30:09
  unobstructed view of Christ and his promise.
• 30:12
  That's the goal. The two true sacraments, baptism
• 30:15
  and the Supper, are so simple. They point directly to Christ's
• 30:18
  promise. They don't rely on the priest's
• 30:20
  magic or the Bishop special oil. They rely on the Word of God,
• 30:23
  plain and simple. It's about immediacy, direct
• 30:26
  access through the promise. That is the very heart of the
• 30:28
  Reformation, your assurances found in Christ's promise, not
• 30:32
  in man's performance or the church's rituals.
• 30:34
  As we wrap up this deep dive into Reformed thinking, I want
• 30:37
  to leave you the listener with a thought.
• 30:40
  You know, we look back at the medieval church and we can sort
• 30:43
  of shake our heads at the grease and the sacrament lings and the
• 30:46
  hail holy oil. It's easy to judge the past.
• 30:49
  It all seems so silly to us now. It does.
• 30:52
  But here's the provocation for us today.
• 30:55
  How much religious clutter do we still tolerate in our own
• 30:58
  churches, in our own lives? We might not have holy oil, but
• 31:02
  do we have traditions or jargon or certain emotional rituals
• 31:07
  that we treat as if they're necessary for salvation?
• 31:09
  Do we invent our own sacraments to make ourselves feel secure?
• 31:13
  That's the real question. Are we truly relying on the
• 31:16
  simple, sufficient means God gave us his Word and his
• 31:19
  sacraments? Or are we, like the people
• 31:21
  Calvin critiqued, trying to build our own planks to save us
• 31:25
  from the shipwreck? That is something to think
• 31:27
  about. Something to Mull over.
• 31:29
  Thank you for joining us on this episode of Reformed Thinking.
• 31:31
  Please read the sources for yourself, it is well worth the
• 31:34
  effort. Absolutely.
• 31:35
  We'll see you next time.