Our Presbyterian church is looking at how our church is to “follow Jesus”. The three areas outlined in a short summary are: believing the Bible, praying and working together as the people of God. A very stripped down description, but even with this kind of brevity, should there also be a fourth, i.e. receiving the sacraments?
Yes (speaking as an Anglican). The sacraments are not “magic”, but they are a means of sustaining grace which would not be available any other way. My inner Baptist would also note 1 Cor 11:26 (“remember the Lord’s death until he returns”), and of (believers’) baptism that it is a step of obedience as well.
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If you haven’t already, I would check out @tbbayly’s Church Reformed. Might be something you could walk through your church with (written for pastors and laymen). Here’s the contents:
Who Is the Church?
Baptism: How We Enter the Church
(Part 2: What Does the Church Do?)
The Teaching of the Apostles
Fellowship
Breaking of Bread (Lord’s Supper)
Prayer
(Part 3: Threats Faced by the Church)
Naiveté
Hypocrisy
Gathering Goats
I think your 4 ‘stripped down’ points are close. This book would help flesh it out.
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I appreciate the answers so far, especially the clear statement about receiving grace and the link to Acts 2:42.
I was curious as to what reaponse I would get to my question. I have read a bit about the dangers of sacramentalism here on this forum, but nothing I can find (with an admittedly cursory search) about the much more pervasive error of the baptistic view of the sacraments, at least in my circles. Having spent much of my life in baptist-like churches, it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve understood the difference.
This topic does raise another question: what are the consequences of churches holding to a baptistic understanding of the sacraments other than losing marks for their theology?
Yes, I will check out Church Reformed. 
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Mind elaborating?
I assume you mean elaborating on the question.
If baptistic theology is an error and should be avoided, what are the negative consequences of Baptist churches and other churches holding thise views?
Now, I have looked around to find some answers, but I’m interested in the insights of this group.
I’m curious what the error of baptistic theology is, what the negative consequences are, and how they relate to sacramentalism.
I think I know what you’re getting at. Let’s see if this helps:
There is theology (covenantal theology, hermeneutics, etc) behind one’s views of timing and mode of baptism, whether credo- or paedo- baptist. But not everyone holds to the same theological positions behind their practice of baptism (e.g. not all credo-baptists hold to the same covenantal theology).
I am a paedo-baptist but I don’t necessarily hold credo-baptists in error. Evangel Presbytery’s BCO requires that both credo- and paedo- baptists view their children as members of the church, even before baptism:
The members of this visible Church catholic are all those persons in every nation who make profession of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and promise submission to His laws. Communing members are those who have made a profession of faith in Christ, have been baptized, and have been admitted by the Session to the Lord’s Table. The children of communing members are, through the covenant and by right of birth, non-communing members of the church. The children of communing members holding credo-baptistic convictions are non-communing members in the sense that they are entitled to the church’s care, love, discipline, and training, with a view to their embracing Christ and thus possessing personally all the benefits of the covenant. The children of communing members holding paedo-baptistic convictions are non-communing members in the sense that they are entitled to baptism and to the church’s care, love, discipline, and training, with a view to their embracing Christ and thus possessing personally all the benefits of the covenant. BCO Ch. 7 Church Members
This is huge, and I believe fixes most of the errors of ‘baptistic theology,’ or at least helps smooth things over between credo- and paedo- baptists.
All that being said, here are a couple errors I’ve seen in ‘baptistic theology’ and their ‘negative consequences’:
- Radical Discontinuity Between Old and New Testaments. This is unfortunately all too common among Baptists. The Church in both the Old and New Testaments has sacraments, that is, we have always had physical signs, and God has always required heart circumcision, faith. See Paul’s use of Deut. 30 in Rom. 10.
- Visible/Invisible Church Distinction. Baptists tend to insist that the visible church be regenerate (stemming from how they view the New Covenant), but this is not a good way to think about the visible/invisible church distinctions. We don’t know who is regenerate in the visible church. We can have good hope based on fruit, and we seek for all to be, but ultimately we don’t know. Insisting on a regenerate visible church can lead to an unhealthy relationship with covenant children. Just as paedo-baptists can err toward presumptive regeneration, credo-baptists can err the opposite direction: believing their child to be nothing more than a pagan prior to baptism (contra 1 Cor 7:14). This can lead to an unhealthy desire to see the child profess faith, and even then wanting an inordinate amount of evidence that the child is regenerate. Both paedo- and credo- baptists need to be careful in how we relate to our covenant children: neither giving false hope, nor refusing little children to come to Jesus (Matt 19:13-15).
To be clear: just because someone holds to credo-baptism doesn’t mean they make the above errors.
Also, how a church handles admitting covenant children to the Lord’s Supper is a good indication of how healthy their sacramentology and pastoral care is…
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Paedo- and credo- baptist arguments are about the qualifications for baptism, yes. However, I am actually thinking more of the Presbyterian teaching that Christ is spiritually in the elements of the Lord’s Supper and that in a real, though carefully defined, way, baptism saves, i.e. through sacramental union, grace is given by God to his people.
A baptistic view of baptism and the Lord’s Supper reduces these sacraments to memorials, i.e. they are reminders of what God has done.
Given that difference, and assuming you agree with the Presbyterian view, what negative consequences come from the baptist view?
Gotcha. What you are getting at is sacramental efficacy. I think a better way of phrasing the question is not by using Presbyterian vs Baptist, but Westminsterian vs Zwinglian (or something along those lines). Because, you can be a Baptist and hold to the Westminster Confession’s sacramentology, and you could also be Presbyterian and hold to a Zwinglian sacramentology (memorial view).
As for negative consequences:
To treat the sacraments as mere memorials (bare signs) is to remove their usefulness. How would a Zwinglian make sense of Romans 6? How could anyone ‘improve their baptism’ using it in times of temptation, doubt, or sorrow (WLC 167) if it is a mere memorial? Doing so also blunts the dangers of the sacraments (1 Cor. 11:30). Why should a minister fence the Table if it is a bare ceremony?
Perhaps others can point out more negative consequences? But sacramental efficacy is a complicated subject, a narrow path with dangers all around. We must avoid both Romish ex opere operato and Zwinglian memorialism. Always comes down to the necessity of faith on the part of the recipient, and the necessity of the word on the part of the minister. ‘Let the word come to the element and you shall have a sacrament’ - Augustine.
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A Zwinglian Presbyterian? Never heard of such an animal, except among those who used to be baptist and do not understand the WCF.
Thanks for the replies. I’d be interested to receive any other input.
Speaking of Zwingli, it’s been popular among the reformed men of the past few decades to diss Zwingli’s views on the sacraments, claiming he held to a “merely memorial view.”
In an article we posted ten years ago opposing Moscow’s sacramentalism and paedocommunion, we included this from Zwingli. It gives the lie to this canard of his “merely memorial view” of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. To be sure, men may find other things that would seem to confirm that accusation, but this is the locus classicus:
A Short and Clear Exposition of the Christian Faith
by Ulrich Zwingli
Chapter IV: The Presence of Christ’s Body in the Supper
To eat the body of Christ sacramentally, if we wish to speak accurately, is to eat the body of Christ in heart and spirit with the accompaniment of the sacrament.
But when you come to the Lord’s Supper with this spiritual participation and give thanks unto the Lord for His great kindness, for the deliverance of your soul, through which you have been delivered from the destruction of despair, and for the pledge by which you have been made sure of everlasting blessedness, and along with the brethren partake of the bread and wine which are the symbols of the body of Christ, then you eat Him sacramentally, in the proper sense of the term, when you do internally what you represent externally, when your heart is refreshed by this faith to which you bear witness by those symbols.
But those are improperly said to eat sacramentally who eat the visible sacrament or symbol in public assembly to be sure, but have not faith in their hearts. These, therefore, call down judgment, that is, the vengeance of God, upon themselves by eating, because they hold not in the same high esteem, in which it is rightly held by the pious, the body of Christ, that is, the whole mystery of the incarnation and passion, and even the Church itself of Christ. For a man ought to test himself before he partakes of the Supper, that is, examine himself and ask both whether he so recognizes and has received Christ as the Son of God and his own Deliverer and Saviour that he trusts Him as the infallible author and giver of salvation, and whether he rejoices that he is a member of the Church of which Christ is the head. If as an unbeliever he unites with the Church in the Supper, as if he had faith in these things, is he not guilty of the body and blood of the Lord? Not because he has eaten them in the literal, material sense, but because he has borne false witness to the Church that he has eaten them spiritually when he has never tasted them spiritually. Those, therefore, are said to eat merely sacramentally, who use the symbols of thanksgiving, to be sure, in the Supper, but have not faith. For this they are in more terrible condemnation than the rest of the unbelievers, because those simply do not acknowledge Christ’s Supper, while these pretend to acknowledge it. He sins doubly who without faith celebrates the Supper. He is faithless and presumptuous, while the mere unbeliever is destroyed through his unbelief like the fool through his folly.
Chapter V: The Virtue of the Sacraments
These difficulties, O King, plainly show that we ought not, under the guise of piety, to assign to the Eucharist or to Baptism qualities that bring faith and truth into danger. What then? Have the sacraments no virtue?
First virtue: – They are sacred and venerable rites, having been instituted and employed by Christ, the Great High Priest. For He not only instituted Baptism, but Himself received it, and He not only bade us celebrate the Eucharist, but celebrated it Himself first of all.
Second virtue: -They bear witness to an accomplished fact, for all laws, customs, and institutions proclaim their authors and beginnings. Since, then, Baptism proclaims by representation Christ’s death and resurrection, these events must indeed have taken place.
Third virtue: -They take the place of the things they signify, whence also they got their names. The passover or passing by, through which God spared the children of Israel, cannot be placed before the eye, but a lamb is placed before the eye instead of this event as a symbol of it. Neither can the body of Christ and all that was accomplished in it be put before our eyes; the bread and wine are set before us to be eaten, in place of it.
Fourth: --They signify sublime things. Now the value of every sign increases with the worth of the thing of which it is the sign, so that, if the thing be great, precious, and sublime, its sign is, therefore, accounted the greater. The ring of the queen, your consort, with which Your Majesty was betrothed to her, is not valued by her at the price of the gold, but is beyond all price, however much it is gold, if you regard its material-for it is the symbol of her royal husband. Hence, it is even the king of all rings to her, so that if she should ever name her ornament separately and appraise it, she would doubtless say, “This is my king,” that is, “this is the ring of my royal husband with which he engaged himself to me, this is the symbol of our inseparable alliance and trust.” So the bread and wine are the symbols of that friendship by which God has been reconciled to the human race through His Son, and we value them not according to the price of the material but according to the greatness of the thing signified, so that the bread is no longer common, but sacred, and has not only the name of bread but of the body of Christ also, nay, is the body of Christ, but in name and significance, or, as the more recent theologians say, sacramentally.
The fifth virtue is the analogy between the symbols and the thing signified. The Eucharist has a two-fold analogy, first as applying to Christ, for as bread sustains and supports human life, as wine cheers man, so Christ alone restores, sustains and makes glad the heart bereft of all hope. For who can pine away in despair any longer when he sees the Son of God made his own, and holds Him in his soul like a treasure which cannot be torn from him and through which he can obtain all things from the Father? It has a second analogy as applying to us, for as bread is made of many grains, and wine is made of many grapes, so the body of the Church is cemented together and grows into one body from countless members, through common trust in Christ, proceeding from one Spirit, so that a true temple and body of the indwelling Holy Spirit comes into existence.
Sixth, the sacraments bring increase and support to faith, and this the Eucharist does above all others. You know, O King, that our faith is constantly tried and tempted, for Satan sifts us like wheat, as he did the apostles. But how does he attack us? Through treachery in the camp, for he busies himself with trying to overwhelm us through the body as through an old wall of our defense ready to tumble down, setting up the scaling ladders of the desires against our senses. When, therefore, the senses are diverted elsewhere, so as not to give ear to him, his schemes are less successful. Now in the sacraments the senses are not only made deaf to the wiles of Satan but bound over to faith, so that like handmaidens they do nothing but what their mistress, faith, does and directs. Hence they aid faith. I will speak plainly. In the Eucharist the four most powerful senses, nay, all the senses, are as it were, reclaimed and redeemed from fleshly desires, and drawn into obedience to faith. The hearing no longer hears the melodious harmony of varied strings and voices, but the heavenly words, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten for its life.” We are present, therefore, as brethren, to give thanks for this bounty to us. For we do this rightly at the command of the Son Himself, who on the eve of His death instituted this thanksgiving, that He might leave us a lasting memorial and pledge of His love towards us. “And He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto the disciples,” uttering from His most holy lips these holy words, “This is my body” [Luke 22:19]. “Likewise also He took the cup,” etc. -when, I say, the hearing takes in these words, is it not struck and does it not give itself up wholly in admiring wonder to this one thing that is proclaimed? It hears of God, and His love, and the Son delivered up to death for us. And when it gives itself up to this, does it not do what faith does? For faith is that which leans on God through Christ. When, therefore, the hearing looks to the same thing, it becomes the handmaiden of faith, and troubles faith no more with its own frivolous imaginings and interests. When the sight sees the bread and the cup which in place of Christ signify His goodness and inherent character, does it not also aid faith? For it sees Christ, as it were, before the eyes, as the heart, kindled by His beauty, languishes for Him. The touch takes the bread into its hands-the bread which is no longer bread but Christ by representation. The taste and smell are brought in to scent the sweetness of the Lord and the happiness of him that trusteth in Him. For as they rejoice in food and are quickened, so the heart, having tasted the sweetness of the heavenly hope, leaps and exults. The sacraments, then, aid the contemplation of faith, and harmonize it with the longings of the heart, as without the use of the sacraments could not be done at all so completely.
In Baptism, sight, hearing, and touch, are summoned to the aid of faith. For faith, whether that of the Church or that of him who is baptized, recognizes that Christ endured death for His Church, rose again, and triumphed. The same thing is heard, seen, and touched in Baptism. The sacraments, then, are a sort of bridles by which the senses, when on the point of dashing away to their own desires, are checked and brought back to the service of the heart and of faith.
The seventh power of the sacraments is that they fill the office of an oath of allegiance. For “sacramentum” is used by the Latin writers instead of “ius iurandum,” i. e., “oath.” For those who use one and the same Oath, become one and the same race and sacred alliance, unite into one body and one people, and he who betrays it is false to his oath. When, therefore, the people of Christ by eating His body sacramentally become united into one body, he who without faith ventures to obtrude himself upon this company betrays the body of Christ, as well in its head as in its members, because he does not “discern,” that is, does not properly value the body of the Lord, either as having been delivered up by Him for us, or as having been made free by His death. For we are one body with Him.
We are forced, then, whether we will or no, to acknowledge that the words, “This is my body,” etc., are not to be understood literally and according to the primary meaning of the words, but symbolically, sacramentally, metaphorically, or, as a metonymy, thus:-- “This is my body,” that is, “this is the sacrament of my body,” or, “this is my sacramental or mystical body, that is, the sacramental and vicarious symbol of that body which I really took and exposed to death.”
Appendix on the Eucharist and the Mass:
I maintain, therefore, that the body of Christ is not eaten in the Supper in the carnal and crude fashion they say, but I believe that the real body of Christ is eaten in the Supper sacramentally and spiritually by the religious, faithful, and pure mind, as also Saint Chrysostom holds. And this is a brief resume of my view, or, rather not mine but the truth’s own, in this controversy.
Love,
PS: Those interested in Federal Visionista, Peter Leithart’s, perambulations on Zwingli might find this helpful.
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[wipes egg off face] I recant of my Zwingli bashing 
Time to do some reading
Thank you,
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You have no egg on your face, dear brother. Much love,
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