The Case For Seven Sacraments

In this episode Trent sits down with Anglican Stephen Boyce to discuss the case for seven sacraments.

Transcription:

Trent:

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent. My guest today is Dr. Steven Boyce, and we are going to be talking about the case for the seven sacraments. So Dr. Boyce, welcome to the program.

Stephen:

Hey, thanks for having me on. It’s good to see you again. Looking forward to this discussion. It’s a very important one. I think that needs to be had between Anglicans and Catholics.

Trent:

Sure. And all other Christians because the sling is very important and this is definitely one of the fruits of the Reformation. Trying to understand, well, just how many of them are there? How does this entail with God’s plan of salvation? It’s interesting because you and I, we did the two on two debate not too long ago. Jimmy Aiken and I, and then who is Dr.

Stephen:

Samuel Neeson? Samuel Neeson in Malaysia.

Trent:

Yeah, Samuel Neeson. So Dr. Neeson, yourself and me and Jimmy, and we were debating about the issue of justification by faith alone. And what’s interesting here is that when you look amongst Protestants, so when you kind of drill down into some of the aspects of salvation, there could be some significant differences. And this is one of them. And you’ve got an interesting journey yourself because when I was doing preparation for our debate, I had seen that you had previously appeared on James White’s dividing line, and back then you were a Baptist, but now you’re an Anglican. What happened there?

Stephen:

So I did a PhD program at a Baptist seminary, and one of the major things that I was studying was the early church patristics, going back to a codex in Jerusalem called Codex H, which contained first Clement Epistle Barnabas letters of Ignatius, the full copy of the Diday. And so just kind of meditating through that. And I had to do a lot of translation. And in the translation work that I was doing, one of the major things I found was that the church I was practicing in was not anything like them. And so I was actually a Baptist pastor. I started pastoring as a senior pastor at 21 years old. I was very young and

Got burned out in four years, became a Southern Baptist pastor at another church. Did very, very well there. But there was a problem the whole time, there was just an issue with I was never content where I was. And the more I was studying the early church, the less comfortable I became in a place that loved me and I loved ’em. So it caused me to search. And then my wife and I decided, let’s just go visit at some churches. And we visited an Anglican church, and I had some friends that were Anglican in Texas, and so they kind of introduced me to that world. So it was a long journey in there, but it really was doing a PhD program on the early church fathers in a Baptist seminary that opened that door.

Trent:

Well, it’s interesting because a lot of Catholics will quote Cardinal Henry Newman, and I think sometimes they quote him incorrectly with the sentiment that Newman said, to be deep in history is deceased to be Protestant. I think sometimes they quote that to mean to be deep in history means you’ll automatically become Catholic. I don’t think that was quite the sentiment Newman was saying, because I think he would consider many of the Anglicans closer to himself rather than forms of Protestantism he’s discussing. But I think the sentiment, it really does show itself if you compare more low church Protestantism, things like the Baptist tradition and things like that. What do you think?

Stephen:

Oh, I agree. I am at the point in my life where I don’t even like to be Protestant in the connection because the,

Trent:

There’s another Anglican priest I know he goes by the handle barely Protestant, maybe that’s an Anglican thing.

Stephen:

Yeah. So that is Father James.

Trent:

Yes.

Stephen:

And he was just on my show on Saturday. So we just did a live stream on from Baptist to Anglicans. We were both independent. Baptist was a very small group of Baptists, very conservative, king James only kind of group. So we were in that together. So we actually just told our story together just a few days ago. He lives a rocks throw from me. He’s actually over in Anglican Church about 30 minutes from here. And so he and I hang out every now and then. But yeah, so he’s one of those people and he called himself barely Protestant, and I’m not even willing to go that far anymore. And the reason for that is because the Anglicanism that I’m ascribing to in my heart and mind and study is something that was earlier than the Protestant Reformation.

Going back to an some and looking back all the way to Augustine of Canterbury and some of the things that were going on there with the Celtic churches that were already in existence. To me there’s a deeper rooted Anglicanism than in the Protestant Reformation and prior to the Reformation. So to say that you’re a Protestant is actually subjecting yourself to a certain period of Anglicanism that is limited. And so the longer I’ve been in Anglican, I’ve realized Anglicanism is larger in scale of years than that period of time. And usually the ones that contend for the Protestant status are low church Anglicans or mid church at best. And we have fun debates. So

Trent:

Yes, no, it’s definitely something as a Catholic I can understand engaging those in more of the low and mid church tradition where a lot of times there’s just this kind of barrier and a difficulty to understand things that shouldn’t be as foreign, but you have just a radically different ecclesiology and that’s going to factor into how you understand the church as a whole, sacraments, other elements like that. So let’s jump into it right there. So what’s interesting when we talk about the sacraments, because there are Protestant apologists from low church traditions who will say, well, if you look at the history of the fathers and the councils, the idea of seven sacraments is actually really late. It’s an accretion. That’s not the common thing we find in the early church. And they’ll try to argue just for two sacraments. And most low church Protestants will say, well, there’s two sacraments. There’s baptism and the Lord Eucharist, which I’ll call the Lord’s Supper.

The others, they might say, oh, it’s great if the church is involved. It’s cool if you get married at our church or it’s nice to have a pastor here, but there’s no such thing as the sacrament of holy orders or the sacrament of matrimony. And that’s the big difference between the Catholic Protestant tradition. That’s where Anglicanism comes in in an interesting way historically, because you have in, I want to say it was 1521 in the 1520s King Henry VIII writing a response to Luther defending the seven sacraments. And with some collaboration, Thomas Moore is a little bit of a debate about how much he’s can do there, but King Henry VIII is writing this. He earns the title Defender of the Faith, which he loses later. And that’ll a whole different show to get into that. But even there, we see that this tradition amongst Anglicans and some of their Protestants in the holding well know there’s seven sacraments. Where’s kind of the common ground Catholics and Anglicans might have on this question.

Stephen:

Yeah, I think that King Henry VII is a beginning point because obviously he had those seven sacraments of defense Luther, whether he held three or two or some Lutheran say, I hold two and a half. It’s like, what? So penance is a half a sacrament or something, I don’t know. But he was harsh and it’s hard to get. I actually, Luther was harsh, you said? No, no, king Henry was very harsh on Luther. Well, Luther was harsh too, I guess on other issues. But the 16th

Trent:

Century was a harsh time.

Stephen:

It was tough time to live in. There was a lot of bloodshed and a lot of riding against people. But I think that King Henry VII was pretty pointed. And I mean, it was Pope Leo ii, I believe, who actually gave King Henry vii, that title defender the faith.

Trent:

Well, he dedicated the book to him. I think

Stephen:

He did. He most certainly did because, and this is the thing that people have to understand, and some of the Catholics that I have that are friends, they don’t realize that King Henry VIII wasn’t fully against everything in Rome. There was a fallout naturally, we don’t even have to debate that, but not everything that was being defended in Rome was automatically bad to a lot of the Anglicans at the very beginning of this. They were trying to find their grip, and this was not a debate for him. This was even up for discussion. The fact that Luther challenged this, the Catholic’s greatest defender of the seven sacraments at that time was not a Roman Catholic. It was King Henry viii. And he wrote a whole book. And it’s hard to get that book’s actually hard to get to find an English. Actually, Roman Catholic, Eric Ybarra is the one that actually sent me a document to read it in English, and I actually got to read through it just a few months ago. And it was phenomenal. But he was very hard on Luther, very hard on Luther and how he approached this. So

Trent:

There was, yeah, but the way Luther talks to people, he kind of has it coming.

Stephen:

Yeah, he sets himself up in a lot of ways. And because he was speaking very dogmatic about things that he was unsure of himself. And that’s the reason that Lutherans even have this debate. Did he hold a three or did he hold a two? Penance was one minute Luther saying one thing and the next minute he was saying another. And I would even argue that a lot of Lutherans are loose on penance compared to Martin Luther, but the fact that he was that flimsy with it is already the problem because he’s dogmatic one minute and then he’s not dogmatic the next. So that Lutherans today can’t even identify field to three or two. To me, that shows a problem.

Trent:

Right. Well, let’s talk then a little bit about the numbers of the sacraments. And I think a lot of people will have some misunderstandings here because even the very term sacrament mysterion in Greek, like all theological terms, it changes over time for the church to understand what this is. So I think some people, you have a very low church Protestant saying, well, where does the Bible say how many sacraments there are? Well, the Bible doesn’t talk about the hypostatic union, the Bible doesn’t talk about the Bible. So where does the Bible say how many, and this is a relevant analogy, where does the Bible say how many books are in the Bible? So the question then of you first have to define what a sacrament is, and eventually the church settled on the idea that a sacrament is something that imparts grace. So it is an outward sign of an inward reception of grace. And the church says that these seven sacraments are instituted by Christ because there could be other things that Christ instituted that are not sacraments, like foot washing for example, but the understanding that these things are instituted by Christ and they’re a means of imparting, sanctifying grace, the essence of understanding what a sacrament is. So do you think that, first off that if Protestants saying, oh, well, how many there are first, they need to get a firmer grasp on what a sacrament is versus say, an ordinance?

Stephen:

Well, I think that’s the problem. I think there’s been a major downplay on what is a sacrament. So their view has been devaluing it. So when you start dealing even with the major ones where you say, well, there’s at least two, we can find common ground there. But then you actually define do you believe in real presence? And then what do you mean by real presence? Right? And so when you actually even find the commonality, it’s not so common anymore. And that’s the problem because when I was a Baptist pastor, we didn’t use the word sacrament that was too Catholic. And so we would say, these are the Lord’s ordinances. These are things that we practice in relation to, we call it the Lord’s Supper,

Communion,

And then baptism. And then you get into baptism. Well, who do you baptize and what does baptism mean? Well, it’s just a symbol. It doesn’t do anything spiritual to the person. So you can all believe in baptism, but what you believe it’s doing is not the same. So functionally, theologically, you can affirm those things by term but mean them differently in both categories. And that’s the issue here is that I think at the time of the Protestant Reformation, we start seeing a devalue and a reductionist movement toward the sacraments, which loses its knowledge and its purpose and its function. And so we start seeing them brought down. Then you have Zwingli brings it in. It’s like, well, these are all the symbols to the point where Luther even had to get in and say you’re wrong. But see, that’s the downhill spiral is when you already diminished the number. Now you’ve left it all up for debate. And I know that’s where the Council of Trent came in and affirmed it, not because they didn’t believe it before that, but they had to confirm it because everybody else was debating. Now how many and which ones?

Trent:

It’s an interesting point you make about the idea. You might say, oh, well, Catholics and Protestants, we at least agree there are two sacraments. But if you define a sacrament as a way of being able to transmit sanctifying grace, for example, if you’re defining it what it actually does to the soul, the idea that baptism, for example, it actually cleanses us of original sin, it spiritually regenerates the person. Well, then there’s many Protestants, not all, but there are many Protestants. It’s only an ordinance. It’s just a covenant sign. So they don’t even really, so it’s interesting for those Protestants, I wonder, I might say to them, you really don’t believe in any sacraments. You believe in two ordinances. And if that’s the case, why don’t you just have more ordinances? Why wouldn’t you also just anoint with oil for confirmation or anoint your pasture anoints the sick? It’s clearly described in James chapter five that the elders of the church anoint people as sick. It’s so interesting that they’ll say, oh, there’s only two sacraments. So they treat them as ordinances, not sacraments. But then they’re just so hesitant to have any of these other aspects of the Christian life described in scripture as being ordinance is proper to the church.

Stephen:

Well, this is part of the radical reformation, right? So if Rome does it, it’s wrong. We’ve got to do the exact opposite. And if it even hints or smells or looks like anything that could be Roman, well then we have to remove it because that makes us look Catholic. And I’m just telling you from personal experience, I was trained in these institutions. I was pastoring. I had that belief myself. So if it has any superpowers sounding to it, then it’s wrong. We can’t have that. But yet these same Protestants believe that Jesus came and turned water to wine. They believe that God poured water out of a rock, that he stuck a tree stump in the water and turned bitter water to sweet, all of those things. But we can’t believe that God is taking something common and doing something divine and bringing unity between the divine and the common together and bringing grace through those means. We believe that in every other place in the scripture until it comes to our daily practice today with communion, their term, communion or baptism, it’s problematic because it’s inconsistent theology and how they believe God met his people in the Old Testament, how Jesus performed those kinds of things in the New Testament, but he’s not doing it today. To me, it was an inconsistent thing.

Trent:

I think part of it may stem. Do you think part of it stems from the fact that among these more low church Protestants that there is just a desire for, and the faith is reduced to invisible realities? There’s invisible regeneration, invisible election. What the church is, is the invisible bond between baptized Christians. There isn’t a visible, hierarchical, authoritative church. So the idea is that this more radical reformation thinks what authentic Christianity is, is that it’s basically just an invisible reality,

Stephen:

Which is ironic because it’s a mystic view, which in a result, they’re trying to be anti mystic,

But

Their view is mystic in that anything visible is a problem or can become an idol, or it’s something that, I had a guy just recently tell me, a Baptist pastor, he is like, well, you guys do. He’s like, you do the Lord’s sper every Sunday. He is like, doesn’t it lose its power? It’s like, no, but that’s the way they think. It’s like, well, if you do something too many times, then it becomes of no value yet. It’s like, do you not have the same order of service every week? Do you not take up offering every week? Do you not preach a sermon at the same time every week? Do you not have the same amount of hymn sung every week? It’s an inconsistent thing because the root of the issue is not these things. It’s there’s a greater agenda that we’re not going to be this, and if it looks like this, then we’re not going to practice it. Now at every heart of these Baptists, and the reason I can say this, I was one and I was in these institutions, I’ve taught in these institutions as a professor, and their main issue is this. Their main issue is this because it comes up all the time. That sounds Catholic.

And if it sounds Catholic, so when I started becoming an Anglican, I had people say, well, you’re Catholic. It’s like, no, I’m an Anglican. No, that’s Catholic. No, I’m an Anglican Anglicans practice this too. Not everything that has this look is Catholic. It can be Anglican, Lutheran or Orthodox. So it’s interesting, at the very root of these very low church Protestants, their agenda is not about let’s be biblically and historically sound. It’s let’s be everything that they’re not. And that, to me, it’s scary because I was entrapped in that. And then when I studied church history for the first time that nobody else taught, it shattered me. My world was shattered. People out there. And just like I went through trauma because I felt lied to, I felt manipulated. I felt like hidden information was there. I don’t think people intentionally did it. I think a lot of it was ignorance,

But

My whole world changed and I struggled for two years. I went into silence on a lot of things because I didn’t know who I was. It’s like, and then I took Eucharist for the first time with priests who were under succession, which I’m sure could be debated, but it changed my life. It changed my wife’s life. We’ve never been the same. We walked away from that altar. Different people.

Trent:

Yeah, because you’re trying to approach that reality. It’s so interesting what you say because it’s like there’s the hip protestants who want to do things like celebrate Lent or put ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, and there’ll be other Protestants, friends of theirs who will just be aghast at that, even though there’s absolutely nothing you could get out of scripture to condemn something like that. And then if you say, well, I’m not condemning, I’m just saying it’s not in scripture, and I’m going to say, okay, so if you’re only going to do what is described in scripture, well, scripture doesn’t describe the weekly meetings that referencing weekly gathering and all the things that you do preaching a sermon. And it doesn’t describe that as being normative for the church. That’s fascinating. We say about the Lord’s supper, it’s like, well, we only do it a few times a year, so it’s special. Okay, why don’t you just have church once on Eastern, once on Christmas? They don’t do that.

Stephen:

Well, there are some that do, but

Oh, goodness.

But the interesting part about what you said earlier, I think is very important. You mentioned the canon as an argument. I use sacrament the same way because what we’re finding now is that Anglican churches are now, there’s a push for a low Anglican church, particularly coming from Australia, New Zealand, but now it’s hitting the US and it’s actually discouraging because this has become a very big point of contention because you’re either reformed Anglican or you are Anglo-Catholic.

And

It’s actually creating a, I think an unhealthy debate right now. But with that comes how many sacraments there are, because any Anglo Catholic holds the seven. And then the debate is, well, the 39 articles. And so both sides think the 39 articles agree with them. And what I’ve come to find, and I was like, you know what? I need to find that out because I was taught when I first came to Anglicanism, there’s only two and the 39 articles are expressing that in Article 25. But then I actually went through and read the homilies homily book one, book two with Kramer and John Jewel

And Jewel and his book two. I was like, if you don’t mind, I’ll read just this section. There’s actually a commentary that came in 1563 of this says, but in a general it talks about there’s categories. So you’ve got gospel, obviously the Eucharist and baptism and the others are ecclesiastical, so they’re practices for the church. But the commentary in 1563 says, but in a general acceptance of the name of a sacrament may be attributed to anything whereby a holy thing is signified. So it takes a moment with John Jewel, I think John Jewel wrote this section and he says, there’s two that are actually directly commanded by the Lord and that are salvific in the sense of that it has a forgiveness of sins to it. And then it explains how penance does too, but it works a little differently. But then it pauses and gives a commentary and says, it is acceptable to call anything with a signified holy item as a sacrament.

And so I read that. I was like, so John Jewel, and then you get into Hooker who was a disciple of John Jewel. Clearly Hooker had no problem with there being seven. He just wanted to always emphasize categories between seven being two, gospel, five ecclesiastical, and that they don’t have the same equality. Now there’s room for debate there between even Anglicans and Catholics, but they were never denying the other five. They just wanted to emphasize these were commissioned directly by the Lord. They have the forgiveness of sins in mind, and these are put into the church to aid the church in its everyday practices. So they saw ’em as two separate categories, but they never denied seven the way that some Anglicans are now saying, oh, no, no, no, no, they’re two, only two.

Trent:

And I think Catholics could agree that the seven sacraments are all equally sacraments, but there are some that are more prominent. So for example, baptism is called the door to the other sacraments. So it has a place of prominence because you have to have that one before you can have the others. Or the Eucharist is called the source and summit of our faith. It’s the source and summit of the faith. It’s the pinnacle of when we worship at mass. So there’s a prominence there. And when we talk about can of scripture, you’ll have some lower church Protestants will say, well, look at the history of theologians. Some will say two, some will say three. These say five, these say six. But that same argument, what they’ll say is, but through all of them, there’s a prominence given to baptism and the Eucharist and all of that.

Well, I can turn that around and make that very same argument with the canon of scripture to say, look, when you look at the first 400 years of church history, there is debate about some talk about the New Testament canon. There is debate about some of the Anina, some letter to the Hebrews for example, or Revelation second Peter. Yeah, second Peter. But there’s some, like the four gospels are, they’re never denied from the earliest point. They’re always held up. They’re called the memoirs of the apostles. So even in the New Testament canon, there’s going to be some that are prominent widely accepted, others where there’s a bit of wondering, well, is this canonical? Is it not? And I think that’s going to be something similar happens like the sacraments of initiation. They’re going to be the most prominent and the sacraments involving restoration and the church’s function like holy orders and penance.

The ones where I think in church history, where it becomes, we we’re trying to understand more would be especially something like the sacrament of marriage, because there, at least in the Western church, the ministers are the couple. So for the church’s involvement is more as a witness of it. And so you’re going to have later developments of understanding that this properly speaking is a sacrament, even if the priest is not the minister, at least in the Western church. So that’s the analogy I would give if some Catholics or other angles say, well, is this historical? Well, yeah, because the church defines what a sacrament is, and that can develop just low Church Baptist going to have to say, look, the canon having the full 27 book canon, that also developed over time.

Stephen:

I like your analogy. And actually when I saw you had posted that, I actually was like, man, we might actually been on the same page here. Now, we may come differently at canonicity because I mean, my PhD was in canonicity. So I love the analogy here, and let me kind of develop this too. So my perspective is let’s take some of the disputed books that were received, but there was some debate about second Peter, like Revelation like second and third John. When you look at these books that were disputed in some places, it took time for the church to get together and put all that together. But it wasn’t that second John was not inspired up to that point, and that the Holy Spirit, it inspired the minute the Holy Spirit moved the hand to dry the ink off that papyrus.

And so something can be a sacrament without it fully being discovered by the church. The church was in discovery mode for a while. We don’t say that gravity did not exist until Isaac Newton figured it out. No, it always existed. He just, how long was it before somebody discovered the idea of gravity on planet Earth? But we don’t say gravity didn’t exist before just because a sacrament or a book of the New Testament was worked through and discussed and traced and historically attributed and attested. Once those things came into play, there was a confidence in it that the universal church comes around and says, yes, this is used in our liturgy. This has been given to us by Peter, or this was given. And you see the evidence of that just in distribution. The gospels are the most copied New Testament manuscripts of any of the books in the New Testament, the least manuscripts. We have any book, the Book of Revelation, we have just over 320 manuscripts. Why? Because it was debated. It was disputed. So it took time to work through the insides of the text and making sure that the churches universally received this from an apostolic hand, but they were always scripture while the church was working it out. I don’t see sacraments as being any different. So I love the analogy.

Trent:

So let’s just go through some of the sacraments then to help people to see why we would believe that. So I think if we look, for example, let’s take Holy orders, we look at the role of baptism in the Eucharist in the New Testament. I think also it’s very clear that the laying on of hands has the same authoritative role and it has that same important role in building up the church. So what else would you look at and explain to someone why holy orders is a sacrament?

Stephen:

Well, to me, this was the one. If there was a third, I developed all seven. At one point. I didn’t accept the other five in one setting. I went from, I held two, well, I held none, and then I went to two.

And

Then once I accepted two, the thought came into my mind of, okay, if the sacrament of Eucharist is a sacrament, what authenticates a valid and an invalid sacrament? Well, that goes back to can just anybody do it. And then in that process it was like, wait, if it has to be through succession, the hands of the apostles who have been passed down to validate this gift to the church, then that actually precedes in some ways aspects of the sacraments and its validity. So you can’t disconnect them. They’re connected. So that’s where I actually started my journey is on this very one started my journey just recently, I was talking about the Eucharist to my students. I had a young girl in the class, 17, 17 years old. She raised her hand, and we got to the part in First Corinthians where Paul said we, when he was talking about distributing the table, and she asked the question, it was brilliant. She said, who is we? She’s like, is that talking about the apostles? I was like, it is. She said, so who then has the right, if this is such a holy order given to the church, that’s serious. I don’t think that Jesus would’ve just given that to anybody. She’s like, it was the apostles. She said, if it was given the apostles, then who today has that weight of responsibility to carry on such a task? I said, I am so glad you asked that question.

And it led to this discussion. And by the end of this study for her, she personally went through, she came to me after class a few weeks after. She said, there’s no way that the weight of the Eucharist would’ve been left in the hands of just anybody. There has to be a trace to this. And Paul said, we when distributing it, and then Jesus commissioned his apostles do this. He’s telling them to do it. She’s like, so it’s got to be something connected to them. And so now she’s in search mode and she’s Protestant. So I find that interesting that anyone, even a 17, 18-year-old can see the consistency of needing one and the other to have an actual valid sacrament distributed to the people in the church. And so I think this one’s very, very important to understand.

Trent:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that gets to also with Anglicans of understanding the role of the visible church, the doctrine of apostolic succession, though Catholics, Anglicans are going to have some differences on some of the finer tune points. It was interesting. I haven’t found a lot of debates on apostolic succession. I think one of the few that I found was between a Protestant Gavin Orland, and it was an Anglican, Jonathan Sheffield. I moderated that. Oh, you did?

Stephen:

I was the moderator.

Trent:

There you go. It’s a small world after all.

Stephen:

Sheffield’s the one that introduced me to Anglicanism. That’s the guy I was talking about earlier.

Trent:

Oh, okay. There you go. Yeah, because he and I, we had a debate about the Juro canon a long, long time ago, but I remember watching that and finding that to be really fascinating. So I guess once you see holy orders being a sacrament, then it seems like the three sacraments where a priest is the minister, confirmation, confession, and anointing of the sick, it seems like they naturally flow once you see the role of holy orders being a sacrament, do you think?

Stephen:

Yeah, absolutely. James five. I mean, you see the anointing of the sick and confession all in one. And so why do you have to bring the elders to the church to do that if they don’t matter,

Right?

Why bring the elders, the serve, the Presbyterians of the church have to come forward and why not just anybody? And that has to be answered on the Protestant, and I know they have answers. I mean, you need to have a good answer. I’m not saying that we can’t pray over people because Paul says pray for one another constantly when he talks about people that are in distress or people that are in trial to actually encourage and edify. He tells us to do all of those things. Why in this direct setting in James five does James come in and say, if there’s someone who is sick among you and they have sin to bring in a presbyter to anoint and forgive the sins of that sick person, why can’t just anybody else do that? So there’s a biblical transformation with these people are under the orders of the apostles

Who

Are brought before the church of people that are sick. They’re doing the anointing, they’re doing the confession and ablutions. That’s already happening in James five.

Trent:

Yeah, exactly. Then I guess the last one I go to, it seems like, I guess this one is sort of like the book of Revelation of the sacraments, and that would be, is marriage properly speaking a sacrament? Because when we look, and I’m interested to get your thoughts on this. As a church historian, the role of marriage and its relationship to the church, it takes a bit of time to develop. We don’t see the role of priests and bishops as ministers that early on there’s a lot of problem. It seems like when the church gets involved in marriage, it really canonically seems to get involved to do something about secret marriages and dealing with bigamy and people getting married without parental consent. One thing I found really interesting in studying that the Council of Trent is the question that Council Trent tried to address is parental consent necessary for the validity of marriage?

Because historically speaking, no, from a theological perspective, you don’t need the consent of others to receive a sacrament if you’re an adult, if you’re somebody of sound mind. But from a cultural perspective, marriage is such an important cultural institution. You had a lot of people wanting to say, no, you need this. You can’t have people marrying somebody, ruining families without consent. So the Council of Trent basically said, well, no, canonically, sacramentally, validity wise, you don’t need parental consent, but we’re going to have all these rules to make sure to keep parents involved, and we’re going to guilt the heck out of you if you don’t keep your parents involved in this. So do you think when we look at marriage, unique role of the man and woman being the ministers and then the church trying to deal with secret marriage, do you think that’s why of all the seven, that one kind of pops up later in development?

Stephen:

I think so because it’s a common element like you’re saying with everybody else in the world. Marriage exists in all cultures, religions, so it is common. We can’t say all other religions do Eucharist, baptism, anointing the sick. So this has a commonality worldwide, all groups, all people nations. And so that one, there has to be distinction. But yeah, I find it to be the easiest one to defend. One, Paul says in Ephesians five, this is the ion

Of

Christ and his church. So the word is used there. And then obviously Jerome’s Vulgate, he translates that word there in Ephesians five, sacramentum. And so he even uses the word for it there. So it’s almost like Paul was identifying it. And also, I’m going to read a section from Ignatius of Antioch. You asked about the historical side. When he wrote his letter to Polycarp, he said this, it becomes to men and women who married to form their union with the approval of the bishop that their marriage may be according to God and not after their own lust. So we even find Ignatius who’s disciple of John writing Polycarp, another disciple of John, that the bishops need to be approving marriages in the church so that people are not marrying for the purpose of just sensuality

And that there needs to be involvement in the marriage. And then there seems to be this gap where you were talking about in history, all of a sudden it’s kind of loose. And like you said, you got parents who promised their children off and you got that culture aspect. But I would say then Augustine really picked it up because Augustine of Hippo really honored marriage in a high regard. I would say he would almost, I don’t know if he ever flat out said, and this is a sacrament, but boy, he really described it as a sacrament in his defense of marriage. And then we see later on much more development. But I think with just Paul using the word ion in Ephesians five, and then Ignatius is saying, Hey, Polycarp, when there’s marriages happening in the church, make sure the bishop’s involved in these marriages. I think that’s in chapter five, verse two of his riding poly carb. And so to me, I find this one actually rather simple. I think the reason it took so long, and again, we see other places, I think you would agree too, where we find marriage being honored in the 12th century. Was it Lambert? Who was it that was really pushing Peter

Trent:

Of Yeah, it escapes me at the moment. Peter Lobar.

Stephen:

Yep, yep. He was instrumental in the 12th century for looking at the sacramental. So that goes back to what I was saying about canon. It doesn’t mean it was never a sacrament. It means that the church is working out and in marriage, there’s more to work out than anointing the sick. There’s a lot more to work out than succession. That one’s pretty easier. You either trace apostle and you have your records like Churchillian says, or you don’t.

So this one is you’ve got to work through the culture of marriage in the East is very, very different than the culture of the marriage in the West and how they did marriages in Africa are very different. Then what about royal? This was the issue in England. What about royal weddings? And then annulments, is it easier or harder for a king to get a marriage? And annulment issues came up that did not exist in the first, second, and third century as marriage, and it required the church to explain and make more choices because the Bible didn’t explicit. This is the issue with Sola script Torah. The Bible did not explicitly give us every single scenario. And as a result of that, as new cultural developments and ideas came into marriage and custom, the church has to speak. And now you have, they’re not practicing anything different. They’re just nuancing it because now you have to apply it in an area that they weren’t applying it in the first and second and third century. But what we can say, in my opinion, it is a ion. Paul said it was, we see the disciples like Polycarp, Ignatius in a letter saying, work marriages through the appointment of bishops, do it through the appointment of bishops so that people are not getting married for the wrong reasons. That to me is huge. I don’t know your thoughts, but that was huge.

Trent:

No, I think that that’s really big. And one other point I wanted to raise is, it’s interesting even when I look at low church Baptists who would say, oh, I don’t see any biblical support for marriage being a sacrament, and I see this historical record, they still feel like, oh, my son or daughter’s getting married. Well, let’s make sure it’s in church. Or even if it’s not in the church, at least make sure the Baptist Minister is there to do the officiating that there is still this desire. Now, I always laugh, and I think as Ang can appreciate this, when I get invited to a Catholic wedding or I’m sure if there’s an Anglican high church wedding, it’s going to be a long solemn mass. Then when I go to a Baptist wedding, it’s like 10 minutes. I’m like, what happened?

Stephen:

Yep. What happened? I’ve performed over 13 weddings as a Baptist minister, and I think the longest one I did was 17 minutes. I was always known as the guy that everybody wanted to ask to do their weddings. So I got you in and out. Where’s the rings? Let’s do some vows. Let’s play the music at a faster pace. Let’s get back to the, that’s how I did weddings as a Baptist.

Trent:

The one I went to, it was like 15 minutes. It couldn’t have been longer than 15 minutes, but it was just, even though it was that, it’s just, well, why are we doing this? Why not just like, oh, I go down to the city hall. I go to have it officiated somewhere, and then we have the reception at the church. There’s still deep down understanding of wanting a minister of the church to be present for this important union.

Stephen:

I actually, funny story about that real quick. I was doing a couple, they were probably in their 22, 23 years old. The mom not only would accept me to do it because I was an ordained minister in the Baptist church. The mom made me show my ordination papers before she gave her blessing on me doing the wedding. It’s like, so me just saying I’m a minister wasn’t enough. I had to show my ordination papers to the mom for her to say to the daughter, yeah, I’m good with him doing your wedding. But if you were to have a discussion about sacrament and marriage, oh no, no, no, that would’ve never happened. But isn’t it ironic how adamant they are about some things, but what makes it so bad to me, and I asked a friend of mine this recently, if marriage is a sacrament, what is wrong with it being treated as one? If it’s not, let’s just say it’s not.

What is wrong with looking at marriage sacramentally? What is wrong with looking at anointing the six sacrament? He’s like, oh, nothing. I think it’s good. It’s like, so what’s the worst that could happen here? I mean, if I’m just in your shoes again, and I can go back in time and rethink all of these things as a young man, what would it have hurt for me to start treating the way I look at confession, the way I look at marriage, the way I look at sick people with a sacramental idea? And he said, that’s fair. He said, and I really probably should think through that more myself. He’s like, that’s all I ask. Just think deeper. That’s all I’m asking. Be consistent and think about it. Because even if you have a sacramental concept, you’re going to have reverence. You’re going to pray differently. You’re going to confess differently. You’re going to treat your wife differently. So that’s a major thing. If we all looked at things sacramentally, even if we don’t accept ’em as a sacrament, we can come out of this with a more robust understanding of the gospel and Christ’s desire to really sanctify his church and clean it from its sin and washer, as Paul said in the book of Ephesians.

Trent:

Amen to that. I think that was a perfect note to end on, unless you have anything else to discuss. Where can people go to learn more about some of the work you’re doing? Are there any of the resources that you would recommend?

Stephen:

Sure. So my podcast is Facts, F-A-C-T-S. It’s Father’s phe, Canon Texan scripture. It was a side gig for apologetics that I was doing with, well, Sheffield and a bunch of others. It ended up getting so popular doing the podcast. It actually outgrew the apologetic ministry, so

It’s

About two years old. We just started doing YouTube stuff recently. So you can find us on YouTube. You can find us on any of the major. I think we’re on eight different platforms for the podcast. That’s our biggest following currently, is that, I mean, you can find me on any social media as well too, but particularly I’m going through the ordination process right now to be an Anglican priest, so I’m quite busy with that. But it takes a couple, but that’s on the radar. And then I have two children who are very active in sports and school and a wonderful wife who’s about to run a Chicago marathon. So we’re busy, but you can find us actively constantly on other pages and then my own podcast facts.

Trent:

Perfect. Well, we’ll link to that in description below. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.