I wrote a draft of this a couple of years ago. I saw it again, and thought it appropriate to post now (a bit updated), to dovetail with my next post.
A major difference between Catholic and Protestant theology is in the way that they believe God communicates to man. Catholics believe that the mysteries of grace that God extends to us are chiefly communicated by tangible signs – the sacraments. The seven sacraments of the Catholic church are Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation, the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper), Marriage, Holy Orders (Ordination), and Anointing of the Sick. In the performance of these sacred acts, the heavenly graces of God are communicated into reality. Catholics place immense weight on the value of the sacraments as vehicles of God’s grace. In fact, the catechism states, “The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation” (1129).
Catholic doctrine places supreme importance on the Eucharist, the “Sacrament of Sacraments.” “The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being” (1325). All Christians affirm that Christ is the sole basis of our redemption and salvation; the Catholic doctrine venerates the Eucharist precisely because it equates it with Christ. ‘In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained’” (1374). Simply put, participating in Holy Communion is how to receive Jesus because the Eucharist is such a powerful symbol of Jesus that it actually is Jesus. The sacramental sign is necessary to the reality. You cannot get at the reality without the sacrament as a type and form of it that you can experience in the physical world. Thus, the sign is “efficacious” and “causes” the reality of communion with God.
Evangelicals practice the Lord ’s Supper, but they don’t regard these things the same way. They simply say that the ceremonies are special reminders for believers, special moments when God’s power and person are uniquely present, but in a metaphorical, abstract, symbolic sense. Nothing about the actual words or deeds causes the graces that they signify. In fact, in the view of most Evangelicals, believing salvation to be linked to the performance of sacraments is tantamount to “salvation by works” as opposed to “by grace through faith”—that is, no salvation at all. “You must believe and…” is damnable to many an evangelical ear. Faith is more internal and abstract, and does not require a physical action. Born and raised in an Evangelical church, I long thought the Catholic doctrine corrupt. Like the Galatians, Catholics had forgotten grace and bloated the sacraments into a system of good deeds. Granted, that may be true for many who were “raised Catholic” but have a poor understanding of Christianity; the sacraments are able to distract people from the things that they should signify; just as an unintelligent dog will not follow the signification of your pointing finger to the ball you have thrown, but will run eagerly to examine your finger. However, correctly understood, the Catholic teaching of the sacraments as vital is not incompatible with salvation by grace through faith in Christ.
The Institution of Holy Communion is predicted by Jesus in John 6:22-65, and happens during the Last Supper in Matthew 26:26-29 / Luke 22:14-23 / Mark 14:22-25. Suffice it to say that the meaning of Jesus’ statements, “This is my body,” and “this is my blood” is fiercely debated. I have no place at the round-table of scholars of Greek and Aramaic. However, simply making the assumption that Jesus intended to create some kind of semiotic (sign) relationship between himself and the bread/wine, I think I can speak generally about to the issue. French linguist Ferdinand de Saussur proposed a very helpful model of the sign. Allow me to quote from Chandler’s resource:
Saussure offered a ‘dyadic’ or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of:
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- a ‘signifier’ (signifiant) – the form which the sign takes; and
- the ‘signified’ (signifié) – the concept it represents.
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The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (Saussure 1983, 67; Saussure 1974, 67). The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as ‘signification’, and this is represented in the Saussurean diagram by the arrows. If we take a linguistic example, the word ‘Open’ (when it is invested with meaning by someone who encounters it on a shop doorway) is a sign consisting of:
- a signifier: the word open
- a signified concept: that the shop is open for business
The point is that the signifier and signified are unified in the sign. Thus, to say that taking the bread and wine of Communion is necessary for salvation is to say that you must partake of the sign of Jesus’ body and blood, not to say that there is a different source of salvation.
The question, then, is whether physical signs are the means by which God communicates to us. The Catholic church says that they are. According to the Catechism, “In human life, signs and symbols occupy an important place. As a being at once body and spirit, man expresses and perceives spiritual realities through physical signs and symbols. As a social being, man needs signs and symbols to communicate with others, through language, gestures, and actions. The same holds true for his relationship with God” (1146).
I suggest that the Catholic Church is absolutely right about this, and that Evangelicals need to check their semiotics. For Christ is the center of the Christian life, the ultimate means of God’s communication with us, and he Himself is a sign, the Signifier of God, indeed, the Word of God, a physical and efficacious sign like the serpent of old. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
Ben Taylor 