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Sacrament or Ordinance

The argument in short

Grudem thinks the sacrament-versus-ordinance dispute is a quarrel about an English word and nothing turns on it. Horton thinks the vocabulary tracks a real difference, whether the rite is primarily God's act toward us or ours toward Him. Once the ordinance framing wins, the list of "means of grace" becomes open-ended, and if everything is a means of grace then nothing in particular is. In a Pentecostal setting it is an important question, because our default is already the ordinance default but most of us have never noticed we hold it.

Table of Contents

  1. #The dispute
  2. #Grudem, nothing turns on it
  3. #Horton, something does
  4. #The evangelical default, and what it costs
  5. #Bavinck states the principle
  6. #Where I land
  7. #Sources

The Dispute

Some Protestants, particularly Baptists and most of the free church world we are in, prefer "ordinance" to "sacrament." The reasoning is defensible on the outside: "sacrament" carries the idea of a rite that conveys grace ex opere operato, independently of the faith of the recipient, and nobody in our tradition wants that.

So the question is whether the word choice is a matter of taste or a matter of doctrine.

Grudem, Nothing Turns on it

Grudem takes the deflationary line, and he takes it about as well as it can be taken:

The argument is not really over doctrine but over the meaning of an English word. If we are willing to explain clearly what we mean, it does not seem to make any difference whether we use the word sacrament or not.
(Grudem, 2020)

He uses the terms interchangeably throughout his Systematic Theology, and given that he also affirms the Supper is "a fellowship with Christ, in his presence and at his table" and a genuine means of grace, the point is fair in his case. Grudem's doctrine is not damaged by his vocabulary, because he has done the work of explaining what he means.

The trouble is that most churches using the word have not.

Horton, Something Does

Horton's argument is that the vocabulary tracks a real difference: whether the rite is primarily God's act toward us or our act toward Him.

His diagnosis of the contemporary evangelical situation is:

Even in Lutheran, Presbyterian and Reformed congregations, the views recorded in the official confessions are often (at least implicitly) modified by the Anabaptist currents of the broader movement, so that the sacraments are treated as basically human, and not divine acts.
(Horton, 2011)

He cites Stanley Grenz's framing of baptism and the Supper as "Community Acts of Commitment" and "signs of obedience," and Millard Erickson's judgment that the Supper is "basically commemorative," as representative of where evangelical theology has landed.

Then the assessment:

Once the sacraments are understood exclusively as human acts of obedience rather than as God's means of grace, disagreements over symbolic and realistic theories are comparatively insignificant.
(Horton, 2011)

If the Supper is fundamentally something we do, then the argument between Transubstantiation and Memorialist Communion is a squabble over the metaphysics of a prop. The whole five-hundred-year fight only matters if God is the one acting.

The Evangelical Default, and what it Costs

Horton also runs an argument by analogy, quoting Charles Ryrie asking why, if baptism merely symbolises leaving the old life behind, a church could not build "a little closet on the church platform" for the candidate to change clothes in, which would "illustrate the same truth" (Ryrie, quoted in Horton, 2011).

The answer, on a consistent ordinance framing, is that there is no reason at all. If the rite is purely a human declaration, then any equally clear declaration will do, and the specific thing Christ commanded becomes a matter of custom rather than of promise.

Horton's diagnosis of the medieval expansion to seven sacraments then applies here in mirror image, and this is the clever move. The medieval church's inflation of the list reflected "not an exaggerated view of sacraments but a weakened view of the efficacy of baptism and the Supper," and he sees "a similar tendency in contemporary Protestantism."

We do the same thing from the other end. When the two rites Christ actually instituted stop being where God particularly acts, the category leaks outward until worship, small groups, journalling, coffee with a mate and a good podcast are all "means of grace." If everything is a means of grace, nothing in particular is, and the one place where God attached a promise to something you can hold in your hand has then been demoted to the level of a helpful practice.

Bavinck States the Principle

Of primary importance in the Lord's Supper is what God does, not what we do. The Lord's Supper is above all a gift of God, a benefit of Christ, a means of communicating his grace. If the Lord's Supper were only a memorial meal and an act of confession, it would cease to be a sacrament in the true sense.
(Bavinck, 2008, vol. 4)

Note that Bavinck is not denying it is a memorial meal or an act of confession. It is both. The claim is about which comes first, and therefore about who the primary actor is.

Where I Land

I use "sacrament" to communicate the sacredness of the act. Because:

  1. God is the primary actor at the table. He instituted it, He attached the promise, He gives Himself in it, and the Spirit does the work. Our part is to receive by faith.
  2. That makes the Supper a means of grace in a specific rather than a diffuse sense. Not "a thing that is good for you," but a place where God has undertaken to meet His people.
  3. The word will teach the congregation something whether I intend it or not. If a church says "ordinance" for twenty years without ever explaining what it means by it, it will end up with a congregation who believe the meal is something they perform. That is the description of most Pentecostal churches I know, including ours before we started teaching this.

Use whichever word your congregation will understand. But know which one you are defending, because the word will eventually teach them something whether you intended it or not.

See also: Memorialist Communion | A Pentecostal Theology of the Table | Holy Communion

Sources