sacrament

in Christianity, a magical religious rite; according to church teachings, a sacrament gives a person a supernatural miracle-working power (“divine grace”).

The origins of the sacraments go back to the pre-Christian mysteries. The sacraments were gradually introduced with the establishment and strengthening of the Christian church organization. The first sacraments mentioned in Christian literature were baptism and the Eucharist (end of the first to the second century, Epistles of the Apostles, Acts of the Apostles).

In the 13th century (definitively at the Council of Florence of 1438–45), the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches adopted seven sacraments: (1) baptism, which is administered to a person as a sign of acceptance into the church and to cleanse the person of alleged sins (in the Orthodox tradition it is administered by immersing an infant in water, in the Catholic tradition by pouring water, and in the Protestant tradition by sprinkling water); (2) confirmation (Roman Catholic) or anointing (Eastern Orthodox), by which a person is “sanctified” by being anointed with an aromatic mixture (chrism); (3) Eucharist, by which, according to Christian teachings, believers receive the body and blood of Christ and in so doing free themselves of sins (in the Orthodox Church both laymen and clergy partake of bread and wine, and in Catholicism the clergy take bread and wine and laymen, as a rule, only partake of the bread); (4) penance (confession), the disclosing of one’s sins to a priest and receiving absolution (“remission of sins”) in the name of Christ; (5) matrimony (in the Catholic Church this cannot be dissolved); (6) extreme unction, or anointing of the sick, which is administered to a sick person (according to Orthodox teaching it cures illnesses, and in Catholicism it is a blessing over a dying person); and (7) holy orders, which is administered by a bishop, admits a person into the priesthood (the sacrament formed with the rise of a clergy).

The sacraments can be administered, as a rule, only by a member of the clergy who acts, according to church teachings, as an intermediary between god and people. Thus, the church teachings about the sacraments served to lay the foundation for the necessary existence of ministers of worship and the church.

The sacraments underwent some changes in the Protestant teachings of the Reformation period. Lutherans recognize only the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist (Luther originally recognized the sacrament of penance as well), and the Anglican Church recognizes baptism, the Eucharist, and matrimony. Baptists and members of the Reform Church retained the rites of baptism and the Eucharist, but they see them as symbolic acts rather than as sacraments. In the papal encyclical Mysterium fidei (1966), Pope Paul VI made a stricter observance of the sacraments mandatory, especially the sacrament of the Eucharist. (At the same time, some relaxation in respect to the form of observance was allowed.) In modern Protestantism there is a tendency to emphasize the meaning of the sacraments as a means of strengthening religious faith.