DownloadJuly 26 issue
More than symbols
Baptizing a convert or celebrating communion, we act out symbols of spiritual truths. And yet these rituals are more than that.
To grasp the full meaning these signs hold, we need to take another look at how the first Anabaptists redefined the sacraments, a historian said at a conference last month at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan.
Brian Brewer of George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, spoke on “Anabaptist Sacramental Theology and Its Contemporary Applications” as part of Bethel’s “Marginal or Mainstream? Anabaptists, Mennonites and Modernity in European Society” conference June 25-26.
Brewer noted that the 16th-century Anabaptists, like other reformers, rejected the Catholic concept of ex opere operato. That’s Latin for “from the work done.” It refers to the belief that the sacraments transmit God’s grace — for example, that baptism confers salvation.
It’s often assumed that the alternative is to consider the sacraments (which Mennonites call ordinances) as merely symbolic. This was what some of the reformers contended. But Brewer said the early Anabaptists didn’t devalue these rituals that way, and neither should we.
Brewer credited Goshen (Ind.) College professor John D. Roth with this explanation: When we go to a wedding, we don’t say, “That was a nice symbolic ritual.” We believe something real, not merely symbolic, has happened. A newly married couple has a new identity. They are different than they were when they arrived at church that day.
Christians should view the sacraments, or ordinances, as covenants with God. Getting baptized and celebrating the Lord’s Supper are meant to be life-changing promises of our commitment to Christian living.
By stripping the sacraments of their virtually magical power, the early Anabaptists filled them with greater substance. It’s a bit of history to shape our faith today.
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Mennonite groups and other Anabaptists.
