Re: sacraments as means of grace (was Re: [asa] Pregnancy & Communio)

----- Original Message -----
From: "George Cooper" <georgecooper@sbcglobal.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 12:47 PM
Subject: RE: sacraments as means of grace (was Re: [asa] Pregnancy & Communio)

> As a Southern Baptist, allow my 2 cents...
>
> I know of no SB churches that would suggest works of any kind is a means to
> salvation, including the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
..............................................

Here is just where the disagreement, & I would say misunderstanding, lies. If Baptism & the Lord's Supper are simply works that we perform then saying that they are means of salvation would conflict with justification by faith. But if Baptism and the Lord's Supper are things that God does, by joining his word to the visible elements & actions, it's a different matter. The sacraments can be thought of as "visible words," a term Augustine used for Baptism. The proclamation of the Gospel offers grace & evokes faith - cf. Rom.10:17. Because human beings preach & hear the Gospel, does that make it a "work" which can't be a means of salvation?

& to say that something is a "means of grace" signifies just that - that God's grace if offered, to be received by faith. So in Bernie's example of the unbeliever who communes, the absence of faith means that the forgiveness of sins is not accepted. Sacraments, like the spoken word, are ways in which divine forgiveness and acceptance are offered to faith, not things that replace faith.

The question of whether or not Baptism is necessary for salvation is, I think, more debatable. Even those those who have made this claim have often found ways to qualify it, like "baptism of desire" or Bernard's "it is not the lack of baptism but contempt for baptism that condemns." (The Latin text of Article 9 of the Augsburg confession says that baptism "is necessary for salvation," but the German text, which is actually the original & official one, simply says that it is "necessary.")

Shalom
George
http://home.neo.rr.com/scitheologyglm

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Received on Thu Nov 6 13:29:10 2008