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ADDITIONAL MEDIA
Contact our editors with your feedback. Introduction The church and its history The essence and identity of Christianity Historical views of the essence Early views Medieval and Reformation views Modern views The question of Christian identity The history of Christianity The primitive church The relation of the early church to late Judaism The relation of the early church to the career and intentions of Jesus The Gentile mission and St.
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There was a problem with your submission. Though not necessarily sacramental, these rites enabled the Maenads to surmount the barrier that separated them from the supernatural world and to surrender themselves unconditionally to the mighty powers that transcended time and space, thus carrying them into the realm of the eternal. Ecstatic rites of this nature did not commend themselves to the Greeks of the unemotional nonsacramental Homeric tradition; such rites did appeal, however, to many, some of whom had come under the influences of the Orphic mysteries in which it was possible for them to rise to a higher level in its thiasoi brotherhoods.
The purpose of the Orphic ritual was to confer divine life sacramentally on its initiates so that they might attain immortality through regeneration and reincarnation, thereby freeing the soul from its fleshly bondage. To what extent, if at all, metempsychosis the passing of the soul at death into another body was introduced into Greece from India can be only conjectural in the absence of conclusive evidence.
Though belief in rebirth and the transmigration of souls has been widespread, however, especially in preliterate religions, it was in India and Greece that the two concepts attained their highest development.
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In post- Vedic the period after the formulation of the Hindu sacred scriptures, the Veda India, belief in the transmigration of souls became a characteristic doctrine in Hinduism , and the priestly caste i. In the earlier Vedic conception of soma , the personification of the fermented juice of a plant, comparable to that of ambros in Greece, kava in Polynesia, and especially haoma in Iran, the sacramental view is most apparent see Hinduism. The liturgy of the Yasna was a remarkable anticipation of the mass in Christianity.
Sacrament - Wikipedia
He was believed to be incarnate in the sacred plant that was pounded to death in order to extract its life-giving juice so that those who consumed it might be given immortality. He was regarded as both victim and priest in a sacrificial-sacramental offering in worship. The sacred wine gave vigour to the body, prosperity, wisdom, and the power to combat malignant spirits and to obtain immortality see Zoroastrianism. The early Christian leaders noticed the resemblances between the Mithraic meal, the Zoroastrian haoma ceremony, and the Christian Eucharist ; and between Mithraism and Christianity, to some extent, there was mutual influence and borrowing of respective beliefs and practices.
The recurrent and widespread practice of holding sacred meals in the sacramental system, in addition to being well documented in the Greco-Roman world, also occurred in the pre-Columbian Mexican calendrical ritual in association with human sacrifice on a grand scale. In the May Festival in honour of the war god Huitzilopochtli , an image of the deity was fashioned from a dough containing beet seed, maize, and honey; then the image was covered with a rich garment, placed on a litter; and carried in a procession to a pyramid-temple.
A number of human victims were then offered to him, and the image was broken into small fragments and consumed sacramentally by the worshippers with tears, fears, and reverence, a strict fast being observed until the ceremonies were over and the sick had been given their communion with the particles. This ceremony was repeated at the winter solstice when the dough was fortified with the blood of children, and similar images were venerated and eaten by families in their houses.
The main purpose of the sacrament was to secure a good maize harvest and a renewal of the crops, as well as human health and strength. In Peru at the Festival of the Sun, after three days of fasting, llamas , the sacred animals , were sacrificed as a burnt offering, and the flesh was eaten sacramentally at a banquet by the lord of the Incas and his nobles.
It was then distributed to the rest of the community with sacred maize cakes. Dogs, regarded as divine incarnations, also were slain and parts of their flesh solemnly eaten by the worshippers. Among the Plains Indians sacrificial blood was employed sacramentally to make the earth fruitful by the fructifying power of the sun.
Though the widespread conception of the sacramental principle is an ancient heritage, in all probability going back before the dawn of civilization, it acquired in Christianity a unique significance. There it became the fundamental system and institution for the perpetuation of the union of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ through the visible organization and constitution of the church, which was viewed as the mystical body of Christ. In the 12th century the number of sacraments of the Western Christian church was narrowed by the theologian and bishop Peter Lombard to seven: This enumeration was accepted by St.
These rites were thus affirmed by the Roman Catholic Church as sacraments that were instituted by Christ.
What About the “Sacraments”?
Protestant reformers of the 16th century accepted two or three sacraments as valid: Eastern Orthodoxy also accepts the sevenfold enumeration. Sacramentals include the use of holy water, incense, vestments, candles, exorcisms, anointing and making the sign of the cross , fasting, abstinence, and almsgiving.
Baptism, as the initial rite, took the place of circumcision in Judaism in which this ancient and primitive custom was the covenant sign and a legal injunction rather than a sacramental ordinance. Baptismal immersion in water was practiced in Judaism for some time before the fall of Jerusalem in ce 70, and it was adopted by John the Baptist a Jewish prophet and cousin of Jesus Christ as the principal sacrament in his messianic movement.
The purificatory lustration of John the Baptist, however, was transformed into the prototype of the Christian sacrament by the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan and by the imagery of this event combined with the imagery of his death and resurrection. A distinction was made, however, between the water baptism of John and the Christian Spirit Baptism in the apostolic church. Under the influence of St. Paul , the Christian rite was given an interpretation in the terms of the mystery religions, and the catechumen initiate instructed in the secrets of the faith was identified with the death and Resurrection of Christ Rom.
The bestowal of the new life constituted a sacramental rebirth in the church in union with the risen Lord as its divine head. Those who received baptism in early Christianity were adult converts. There is no scholarly consensus as to whether children, including infants, were baptized alongside their parents. By the 4th century the practice of infant baptism was universal. With the development of infant Baptism, the regenerative initial sacrament was coupled with the charismatic apostolic laying on of hands as the seal of the Spirit in the rite of confirmation Acts 8: At first, especially in the East, a threefold rite was performed consisting of Baptism, confirmation, and first communion; but in the West, where the consecration of the oil and the laying on of hands were confined to the episcopate, confirmation tended to become a separate event with the growth in the size of dioceses.
It was not, however, until the 16th century that Baptism and confirmation were permanently separated. In England Queen Elizabeth I was confirmed when she was only three days old; and infant confirmation is still sometimes practiced in Spain. But the normal custom in Western Christendom has been for confirmation to be administered at or after the age of reason and to be the occasion for instruction in the faith , as in the case of the mystae in the Mysteries of Eleusis. But whether or not confirmation conveys a new gift of the Spirit or is the sealing of the same grace bestowed in Baptism, which is still debated, it has come to be regarded in some churches as conferring an indelible quality on the soul.
Therefore, it cannot be repeated when it has once been validly performed as a sacrament. Together with Baptism the greatest importance has been given to the Eucharist, both of which institutions are singled out in the Gospels as dominical instituted by Christ in origin, with a special status and rank. It was then that the elements of bread and wine were identified with the body and blood of Jesus in his institution of the Eucharist with his disciples and with the sacrifice he was about to offer in order to establish and seal the new covenant.
Along these lines a eucharistic theology gradually took shape in the apostolic and early church without much controversy or formulation. It had become an occasion of drunkenness and gluttony. To rectify this, St.
Sacraments
Paul recalled and re-established the original institution and its purpose and interpretation as a sacrificial -sacramental rite. Not until the beginning of the Middle Ages did controversial issues arise that found expression in the definition of the doctrine of transubstantiation at the fourth Lateran Council in This definition opened the way for the scholastic interpretation of the eucharistic Presence of Christ and of the sacramental principle, in Aristotelian terms.
During the Reformation , though the medieval doctrine was denied in varying ways by the Reformers, it was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent in Holy Communion was retained as a sacrament by most of the Protestant groups, except that those churches that see the supper solely as a memorial prefer to speak not of a sacrament but of an ordinance. The Society of Friends , the Salvation Army , and some of the Adventist groups have abandoned the practice and concept of a sacrament.
In its formulation, the Christian doctrine of conciliation, which, as St.
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Paul contended, required a change of status in the penitent, had to be made sacramentally effective in the individual and in redeemed humanity as a whole. In the Gospel According to Matthew Peter and the other Apostles. Lapses into paganism and infidelity in the Roman world by the 3rd century had demanded penitential exercises. These included fasting, wearing sackcloth, lying in ashes and other forms of mortification, almsgiving, and the threat of temporary excommunication.
Details of the sins committed were confessed in secret to a priest, who then pronounced absolution and imposed an appropriate penance. In the sacrament of penance received the authorization of the fourth Lateran Council and was made obligatory at least once a year at Easter on all mature Christians in Western Christendom. When pilgrimages to the Holy Land, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, or going on a Crusade could be imposed as penitential exercises, commutation by means of payment of money led to abuses and traffic in indulgences and the treasury of merits, a superabundance of merits attributed to Christ and his saints that could be transferred to sinful believers.
The abuses opened the way for the Reformation reaction against the penitential system, before they were abolished by the Council of Trent. The power of absolution was retained in the Anglican ordinal and conferred upon priests at their ordination and in the Order of the Visitation of the Sick. The sacrament of penance, however, ceased to be of obligation in the Anglican Communion , though it was commended and practiced by John Whitgift , Richard Hooker , and, after the Restoration in by the Nonjurors Anglican clergy who refused to take oaths of allegiance to William III and Mary II in and revived by the Tractarians Anglo-Catholic advocates of High Church ideals after , who encountered some Protestant opposition notwithstanding its entrenchment in canon law and in The Book of Common Prayer.
Most Christian theologians have claimed that the ministry of bishops , priests , and deacons derives its authority and sacramental efficacy from Christ through his Apostles. In Protestant churches the ministry is interpreted as a function rather than as a status. Just as the sacramental power to ordain, confirm, absolve, bless, and consecrate the Eucharist can be given, so also it can be taken away or suspended for sufficient reason.
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In the Roman Catholic Church the institution of matrimony was raised to the level of a sacrament because it was assigned a divine origin and made an indissoluble union typifying the union of Christ with his church as his mystical body Matt. The adherence of Jesus to a rigorist position in regard to divorce and remarriage Matt. Paul, except in regard to the dissolution of a marriage contracted between a Christian and a pagan who refused to live with his or her partner I Cor. In Protestant churches, marriage is regarded as a rite, not a sacrament; views on divorce, however, vary, and many traditional notions of marriage and divorce are now being debated.
In Christianity anointing of the sick was widely practiced from apostolic times as a sacramental rite in association with the ceremony of the imposition of hands to convey a blessing, recovery from illness, or with the last communion to fortify the believer safely on his new career in the fuller life of the eternal world.