The Catholic Church has been accused of corrupting the essentials of the Christian faith. Catholics maintain the importance of a priesthood to steward the faith, claim that Baptism and Holy Communion are necessary for salvation, and that Christ is fully and really present in the elements of Holy Communion. Protestants decry these as denial of the priesthood of the believer, salvation by ritualistic good works, and hocus-pocus cannibalism. Although I believe that the Catholic Church has exaggerated some of its doctrines beyond what the Bible teaches, and is encumbered in some areas by centuries of gradual accumulation of pharisaical over-complication, recent inquiries lead me to believe that these accusations do not fully understand Catholic doctrine. Moreover, I believe it is possible to reconcile some of the more controversial Catholic doctrines with what the Bible teaches. Many of the supposed errors of Catholicism can be explained if we make a crucial assumption: that the language whereby God communicates with man is through visible signs. I will explain this idea and show how it works to account for  the controversial Catholic doctrines of the Church, Priesthood, Baptism and Transubstantiation, while showing that these doctrines are not, if properly understood and practiced, a betrayal of Biblical Christianity. The goal for all of this is to show that it is possible for Protestants and Catholics to strive for unity through a deeper understanding of these doctrines. Such unity would be of great value to the church.

Understanding the Sacramental Paradigm

The Catholic Catechism describes the basis for the belief in a visible symbolic language of interaction between God and man: God conveys his grace to man, and man renders his worship to God, by way of rituals that signify spiritual realities and form a bridge of meaning between the temporal and eternal. These signs and symbols are called the sacraments. “A sacramental celebration is a meeting of God’s children with their Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit; this meeting takes the form of a dialogue, through actions and words” (Catechism, 1146). The core of this philosophy is rooted in human nature.

 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. (Catechism, 1146)

Do visible signs usher in heavenly realities? Scriptures can be offered that support and defend the sacraments, and scholars have debated for centuries. Let me offer to broad ideas that verify that we communicate with God through visible signs.

First, the unique miracle of Christianity is that God has communicated redemption to us visibly and entered the physical realm. In Jesus Christ, God came from that which we could not experience to become like us, tangible and understandable to us. That is the heart of the wondrous Gospel—Immanuel, God With Us, the God-Man, the Word and Revelation of the Unseen God! Catholic.org makes the analogy of Jesus and the sacraments:

 The great mystery of the union in Christ of a human nature with the second Person of the Godhead is that the human actions and sufferings of Christ are divine actions and sufferings. The sacraments are a living continuation of this mystery. There are earthly, external signs here which, of themselves, could never acquire any supernatural significance, but the signs of the sacraments have been made by Christ into vehicles of his grace. They effect in men the grace for which Christ made them the sign.

In no other major religion does God Himself so enter the physical. Furthermore, we will have resurrected bodies—again, a redemption of the physical, which is not the same as simply enlightening us to a spiritual plane. Therefore, the very Incarnation of Jesus set the precedent for a sign economy.

Second, we express faith back to God visibly. True faith is not intellectual assent, but a response with “heart, soul, mind and strength.” The New Testament cautions us countless times to express the sincerity of our belief through actions. As James says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected” (James 2:21-22).

There is a fullness, a reality, a consummation that only comes to faith when it is acted upon. Like the old example says, one might believe that the tight-rope walker can carry him across the canyon, but he does not truly have faith until he climbs into the walker’s arms.

If man has both divine and earthly natures, and God came to earth to partake of both, and if man offers back faith through both, then it makes sense that our communication with God would be in a language of holy signs which, by God’s power, themselves bridge the sacred and mundane, to bring our human hearts into God’s heavenly presence.

Controversial Doctrines Understood through the Sacramental Paradigm

The presupposition that visible  rites are the vessels of heavenly realities has given rise to many of the doctrines that Protestants take issue with. However, if we think through this sacramental lens, the doctrines seem less than heretical.

The Church

In Catholicism, the Church, the Body of Christ, is the great sacrament by which God communicates the gospel to the world. The Latin phrase extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means: “outside the church there is no salvation” (Wikipedia). The Catechism interprets this to mean that “all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body.” Is this adding to salvation by requiring “church membership” as a distinct or separate requirement? I don’t think so. Why? All Christians affirm that there is no salvation without being united with Christ, being “in Him,” and all believe that one is united to the Body of Christ on the basis of faith, and that receiving the life of Christ by grace through faith unites one to the Body of Christ. Furthermore, it is impossible to be a member of Christ’s Body and yet at the same time, not a member.  The difference is that Catholics connect the Body Christ in the mystical sense with the Body of Christ that exists in the world—the church is the visible sign of the mystical reality. The Church is the representation of that entity to which every true believer belongs. So, because Catholics believe that membership in the earthly Body of Christ is sacramentally united with membership in the mystical or heavenly Body of Christ, they do not hold to a separate source of salvation. They simply define the expression of the heavenly reality in more concrete terms.

The Priesthood

In Catholicism, priests, bishops, and above all the Pope are said to represent the office of Christ. For example, priests proclaim salvation during confession, and the Pope speaks with divine authority when he makes proclamations ex cathedra. Is this elevating others to the level of Christ, or granting authority to men that belongs to God?

Not under a “visible sign” worldview. All Christians believe that Jesus is our shepherd and high priest, and that he is continually performing priestly intercession for us before the father, and conveying to us the blessings of priesthood by his spirit.  Catholics believe that human priests are sacramental representations of Jesus, not additional mediators between God and man. Catholic doctrine states that the services of the priest are effective regardless of the worthiness of the priest; rather, they are effective ex opere operato, i.e., by virtue of their being done. This shows that priests do not represent an intermediate gateway to Christ, per se. If they were a gateway, then, like a kink in a hose, a breach in their holiness would damage the services of sacraments administered through them. On the contrary, the priests are representational in their service—meaning that they represent Jesus to the Church, and the Church to Jesus. Just as the Church is the visible sign of the Body of Christ, the priests represent Christ the Head. They bear Christ’s authority and conduct his ministries as the signs of the invisible Christ who presides spiritually over the worship of the church. Thus it can be properly said that it is not the priest himself, but Christ, who conducts the worship of the Mass, and when the priest offers the Eucharist, it is Christ himself who offers Himself as the sacrifice and the feast, even as he did on the Cross. If priests are seen to truly signify Christ, then their role in the Mass, rather than creating unnecessary intermediate channels of grace, increases the immediacy and power with which Christ’s presence and ministry is experienced.

The Necessity of Baptism

Just as the priests visibly signify and communicate to the visible world the spiritual presence of Christ, and just as the visible gathering of the Church signifies the Body of Christ, his Spiritual Community of Worshippers, the sacraments signify the holy exchanges by which God communicates his grace through faith to man, and man offers back faith and worship. Catholics say that partaking of Baptism and Holy Communion is necessary for salvation. “The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation” (1129). In particular, the Catechism affirms that Baptism and Holy Communion are necessary for initiation into the redeemed community of the church.

Is this tantamount to works-based salvation? Is the requirement of participation in ceremonial rites not the same as “works of the flesh,” while the Bible says that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone? Not under a sacramental paradigm. Take Baptism for instance. Is the sprinkling or immersion in water by the priest, an act that is done in order to earn salvation? No, they are acts of faith. The Catechism states:

The purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify men, to build up the Body of Christ and, finally, to give worship to God. Because they are signs they also instruct. They not only presuppose faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it. That is why they are called ‘sacraments of faith.” (1123).

Just as before, the Catholic Church simply presupposes that the spiritual reality of faith must be fully realized in a visible expression that “expresses” it. Since the sacraments “presuppose faith,” they consummate it, rather than replace it or add to it. The Catholic Church denies that a sacrament is effective if administered to someone without the right disposition of faith. And yet, Catholics believe that baptism is essential in the formation of full faith in the person. If one refuses baptism (knowing of its existence) he rejects the sign of the reality, through which the reality is consummated. How can one possess the reality if he rejects its manifestation? Consider a man who says that he loves a woman and will never leave her, but refuses to marry her. His commitment could properly be denied. It is the same sort of situation here.

Transubstantiation

The Catholic Church affirms the doctrine of transubstantiation, that in the bread and wine of Holy Communion “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). The difference between transubstantiation (the Catholic doctrine) and consubstantiation (the Lutheran doctrine) is simply one of semantics: most Catholics will not agree that this means that they are participating in a cannibalistic act of eating the body of Christ on a molecular, cellular level. Catholics rely on the Aristotilian notion of “substance”, in which a substance transcends the sum of its properties or physical descriptors (as wax may change form, but still be wax). Thus the doctrine inevitably abstracts itself beyond crude physicality. Nevertheless, the Catechism states, “the signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ” (1333). The elements of bread and wine are the body of Christ, rather than being simply symbols or memorials of Him; though perhaps not “physically” present, Christ can be said to be literally, truly, really, or actually present in the elements.

Why must Christ be so present in the Eucharist? Because it is the visible sign by which we experience the spiritual reality. Again, according to the visible sign paradigm, to participate in the atoning death of Christ in the fullest sense requires that we experience it both mentally/spiritually AND physically, since God’s graces and our worshipful responses are communicated most truly when they are communicated concurrently in both dimensions, not in one or the other separately. Christ’s atonement, eternally true in the spiritual realm, is communicated to our bipartite natures by a means at once both spiritual and, yes, physical, through the elements. Thus properly understood, transubstantiation is a miracle in which the elements of communion undergo a sort of “hypostatic union” that perpetuates the mystery of the hypostatic union of His human and divine natures, and allows us to perpetually experience the fullness of his sacrifice on the Cross.

Dangers and Benefits of the Sacramental Paradigm

 The dangers of excess on the side of the sacramental paradigm are obvious from history. Men can easily forget the signified spiritual truths, and attach slavish obligation to the performance of the physical signs. The signs can easily become “of this world.” Saussure’s semiotics tell us that, if the signs are not properly understood, they cease to exist as transporters of meaning. Without proper teaching and instruction from the word, the holiness of the sacraments will disintegrate and leave only ritualistic shells. This is what drove the Protestant denominations back to the rudiments of the Bible, and that to this day leaves many nominal Catholics without a true saving faith.

However, the sacraments, if taught correctly, have great power to awaken the spiritual life. The frequent problem of the Protestant denominations is that they are plain and uninspiring. They sometimes do not capture the heart with the beauty and sacred majesty of the gospel, because they are so concerned with preserving the intellectual/spiritual side of faith. By bringing the faith into a more tangible, immediate experience, the Catholic can experience God’s presence with the senses and worship with great awe. A visible-sign theology does not necessarily reduce faith—it can increase it. Instead of merely affirming abstract truths, one’s faith is confronted with an array of miracles spread out before him, full of sacred power. So there is much good that can come from the sacramental paradigm.

The Take-away: Seeking Unity

I have attempted to show how some of the Catholic doctrines that Protestants disdain may in fact be reconciled with Biblical faith. My approach has been to highlight the pervasive theme of sacramental economy in Catholic doctrine. I don’t claim that this concept is better than a more straightforward “sola fide” approach to the communication of God and man, but I believe it at least expresses a valid point of view through which we may perceive the Christian faith. Actually I believe that the perfect perspective lies at some mysterious place near the intersection of the many sects of Christianity. That’s why I am eager for Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Coptics, and all Christians to examine our faith anew and determine exactly which hills we are willing to die on. What will be worth fighting over when we look back 100 years from now? Or from heaven? There are certainly some things that should be contended for, but there are also many unnecessary divisions in the church. I am eager for the day when the church will reach new levels of unity. Am I going to convert to Catholicism? That hasn’t been the point of this essay. The point has been to expand my and my readers’ idea of what Catholicism teaches in relation to the Bible and in relation to our own denominations, so that we might be more likely to extend a hand of fellowship or sit down to engage in a discussion with Catholics in the future. I hope that you will join me in pursuing this in the future.

Soli Deo gloria.