Truth Unites - How Many Sacraments Are There? 2, Not 7!

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund offers a Protestant perspective that there are two sacraments in the church, not seven as other traditions like Roman Catholicism affirm. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Here's the short version of this video. The Roman Catholic Church requires, with anathema, a view that no one held for the entire first millennium of church history. All right. That's the short version. Here's the long version. We're going to talk about the idea of seven sacraments. This is an example of a historical issue.

We're told often as Protestants that we have rejected the historic doctrines of the church. I saw this tweet lately. It's basically saying Protestantism refuses to submit to the authority of the church and at the heart of Protestantism is a refusal to believe what the church has always taught. So note those final words there, what the church has always taught. This is a common criticism. It's like, you know, there's this clear set of historical beliefs, and then the Protestants jump off the ship.

Here's historic doctrine, and there go the Protestants. And a lot of my work as a Protestant apologist is to try to push against that, and I offer internal critiques of that claim, even though people routinely misunderstand what what an internal critique is, but I basically point out this is a naive and simplistic account of church history. At Nicaea 1, in 325 AD, there's not a single bishop who is there who believes what the contemporary Roman Catholic Church believes, same with Eastern Orthodoxy, not one, not a single one. And I've tried to document that in various areas. Mariology, for example, the bodily assumption of Mary that is only in heterodox contexts by the early 4th century, like the book of

Mary's repose, which is a monastic legend, papal infallibility, the idea of ex-cathre statements from popes that are infallible, the way Mary's assumption was defined in 1950. That doesn't happen in the early church in the 4th century. Icon veneration, that's one I've spent a lot of time on, and I'm going to make another video, kind of an updated response to some objections in a few weeks for my recording this. But basically, that's not going on at Nicaa 1. Between Nicaa 1 and Nicaea 2, 325 to 787, 4662 years. There's a lot that changes. Back at Nicaa 1, nobody is bowing down before portraiture art and praying through it as a window to heaven. Nothing like that. That whole practice comes about much later. I'll talk more about that in a few weeks, by the way. So these are

just a few examples of how people, I think, naively assume, continuity. And I've done this on other things like indulgences, purgatory, praying to the saints, etc. What we're protesting against is not, quote unquote, what the church has always taught. Today I want to do the same thing with, this would be a little briefer video, right? Not super lengthy cataloging, but just kind of flagging this issue and working through it briefly on the issue of the sacraments of the church, and in particular, how many sacraments are there? Now, that's a really important question to know, because we are told that the sacraments are vehicles of God's grace that are necessary for salvation. At the Council of Trent, there is an anathema for anyone

who denies that the sacraments are necessary for salvation. So if that is true, then it's really important to know how many are there. You know, if they're necessary for salvation, we need to know what they are. Most of Christianity outside of Protestantism affirms seven sacraments. But I'm going to focus on the Roman Catholic view here, not because I'm trying to pick on Roman Catholics in a negative sense in my heart toward them. I really, at a personal level, I love and admire them. Many, many friends are Roman Catholic. But I'm targeting that view because of the specific anathema there at the Council of Trent. In the Eastern traditions, it's a little tricky because there are Eastern Orthodox representatives at the Council of Florence, where there's

seven sacraments identified. But the Eastern Orthodox tradition and some of the other Eastern traditions, there's just less, they don't nail this down as much. There's less of an emphasis upon seven specifically there. You'll often find people saying, well, you know, there's more than just that, and it's less fixed and settled. You also have in the Assyrian Church of the East a different list. So it just gets kind of less compassible in a video to try to chase down all those nuances, and there's just more ambiguity there, I think. But the Roman Catholic view is very clear. I'll put up the seven sacraments listed in the catechism here in terms of their wording, because actually most of these except for baptism can be used with, can be referenced with different

terms. That's going to come up as we get into church history here. So baptism, confirmation or chrismation, we'll talk about that later, sometimes chrism, unction, anointing, sometimes it doesn't even have a term that is just described in church history. The Eucharist or the Lord's Supper or communion, penance, or sometimes called confession, anointing of the sick or extreme unction sometimes called holy orders or sometimes it's just called orders matrimony or marriage and you can find different terms as well so those are the seven affirmed by the roman catholic church and broadly speaking by eastern orthodox oriental orthodox but

again they don't fix it they don't nail it down so much in the protestant world it's usually just two sacraments baptism and the lord's supper not always you have the anglo-cate Catholics, of course. You also have in the Lutheran tradition, sometimes three sacraments, so there are little wrinkles. But looking at the big picture, we can say Protestant two, non-Protestant seven, for the most part, in terms of the number of sacraments. Now, the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, anathematized those who say it's any number other than seven. If anyone sayeth, that the sacraments of the new law were not all instituted by Jesus Christ, our Lord, or that they are more or less than seven

to it, then it names them all, or even that any one of these seven is not truly and properly a sacrament, let him be anathema. So, if it's not seven, if it's not those seven, as instituted by Christ, anathema. Now, a little sidebar here on anathemas, these things keep coming up. You know, it's fun to be on YouTube, and you get in these conversations and so forth. I never want people to feel like when I'm doing a more polemical video. I think there's a place for that, especially when we're, that's the thing. It's fine to be polemical or to criticize a piece of theology when there's an anathema coming at you, you know?

So it's funny. A little sidebar on this point, because this keeps coming up. People often downplay or fail to take seriously the significance of these historical anathemas. You find all kinds of ways people claim it's just a warning or it. an excommunication from the church, but not an excommunication from heaven and all these kinds of qualified views that I don't think are historically authentic. Historically, an anathema meant damnation. Okay, this is drawing from Paul's use of this term in the New Testament to refer to someone being

accursed. And in my video on Nicaea, too, I just point out at that time, in the context of the seventh ecumenical council, there's a lot of language that makes this very clear. Anathema is being expelled from the kingdom of heaven, carried off. into outer darkness, condemned on the day of the Lord. Anathema is nothing other than separation from God. There's lots of other examples where it's clear. You know, the language for the people being anathematized is very clear. God has scorned them. Okay, they're scattered by the flail of divine judgment. They're like the Jews who crucified Christ and so on and so forth. They're very clear.

This is not a mere warning. And so I find it strange when people act like I'm making too much out of anathemas or out of Nicaea too. It kind of feels like someone burns your house to the ground and steals all the money out of your bank account and then says, oh, why are you making such a big deal out of this? You know? Little sidebar comment here. This came up a lot in responses to my dialogue

with Father Stephen DeYoung recently. I really enjoyed the dialogue. Some of the responses, though, were really just bizarre. I had to put it, you know, a lot of the comments. So under the video, a lot of these comments are acting like I made it about Nicaa, too. You know, one of the comments was my critique is that Gavin turned what was framed as a discussion on Sola Scripura into an attack on Holy Tradition. Another person said, the fact that this video did not end up being about Sola Scriptura,

but about Nica too was a good strategic move on the part of Orland. Now, these comments are so outrageous. All you have to do is read the title of the video. It was a discussion on Sola Scriptura and Holy Tradition. and that's what all the questions were about. It was about these two models in comparison to each other. Number two, Nicaea II came up organically in the conversation as an example that is relevant to that topic.

If you're talking about holy tradition, it's entirely appropriate that particular alleged apostolic traditions will come up as examples of the point. And number three, I wasn't the one who made it a point. That's why it's so weird people are acting. A lot of the responses to that dialogue were just, you could tell people were just angry and trying to find something to find fault with. But if you just go back and watch it, I just answered the questions that were put to me. And then when it went to the free-flowing conversational time, it was Father Stephen who brought up counsels. So I wasn't the one pushing that.

So that was very strange. So anyway, sidebar over. The point is, I'm not making too much of Nicaa too here. And I'm not making too much of anathemas. when you have anathemas given against you for positions that are obviously not apostolic, were allowed to protest that. So that's anathemas at Nicae 2. The Council of Trent appears to have a similar position about anathemas.

The Council of Trent affirmed the decision of Nicae 2 over and against the opponents of images, and it often uses this verb anathematize as a parallel verb with the verb condemn, targeted against heretics. So, you know, over and over, you'll find language like we anathematize and condemn as heretics, those who say this, or something like that. So when we get to a canon at the Council of Trent that says, if anyone sayeth that there are more or less than seven sacraments or that any one of these sacraments is not truly improperly a sacrament, let him be anathema, this is really throwing down the gauntlet and we're allowed to critically evaluate that claim. Now, here's the shocking truth. To my awareness, there is not any church father who lists those

seven sacraments, or to my awareness, even just any seven. For the first millennium of church history, to my awareness, no one taught seven sacraments. Not one person. Certainly not those seven. I don't even know of anyone who taught any specifically seven. I think you can make a better case for any number other than one or eight or more. Two, three, four, five, and six. All have better historical grounding as the number of sacraments than seven. So when we get to these words, Protestants are refusing to submit to what the church has always taught.

You know, I understand a lot of people have grown up in contexts where they're evangelical Protestants. They've never studied church history. They get swept off their feet by these claims. There are a lot of strong claims that can be made against prophets. Protestants, especially if you're in that circumstance. But if you are patient with it and you really work through each particular issue, you see there's also some incredibly strong falsifying claims in the other direction. This is one of them. Because so far from being what the church has always taught,

this is actually a case of what the church has never taught. Now, I want to be really clear here. This is not a matter of clarification. This is how people try to smuggle it in. They say, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a lack of clarity about the number of sacraments in the early church. And so the church had to just clarify that after some time. No, this is not a lack of clarity about seven sacraments. This is a lack of existence. The movement is not from murky to clear, but from non-existent to existent. The view just does not exist for the first millennium of church history.

No one is saying there's seven sacraments that I can find. I mean, my knowledge is not infinite. it. So it's always actually a little vulnerable putting about out of video and thinking maybe there's something I haven't read. Maybe there's some church father who says, you know, here are the seven sacraments and I just haven't read that passage yet. But I've done a fair amount of digging that I'm reasonably confident to just put it out there. I don't see this anywhere, that there's seven. I'll talk about in a moment how people try to get it. So in other words, this is not a case of just, well, you've got a lot of different options on the table and the church just had to select one of those

options, no, this is a case of an option being put on the table for the first time, way late into church history. The first time, to my awareness, you see these seven sacraments is in the medieval era around the 12th century. The particular catalyst is Peter Lombard, but there's a few others just prior to him who are less influential than him. But it's right around that time, right around the 12th century, but there's a lot of diversity still at that time and continuing. going on. You have people like Alexander of Hales in the 13th century denying that confirmation is instituted by Christ, and there's disputes about, does he believe in two or more sacraments? Peter Damien has a greater list. He includes things like the consecration of kings and queens as a sacrament.

You have Hugh of St. Victor, who wrote on the sacraments of the Christian faith. He enumerated around 30 sacraments because he includes all these other broader practices that today would be classified as sacramentals. A sacramental is a right or act or ritual of some kind that doesn't confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that a sacrament does, but it still has some kind of spiritual effect. Holy Water would be an example of something like that. So Hugh has this massive list. So I'm not saying, in other words, it's not that when we hear that date, 12th century, don't think that's when it's resolved, think that's when it's initiated. That's the first time it comes up. but it takes around 400 years for it to get fully nailed down.

The idea of seven sacraments is refined a little bit. You see it taking root at the Council of Leon in the 13th century, around 1274, and then more decisively at the Council of Florence in the 15th century, and then, of course, reasserted at the Council of Trent in the 16th century. So this is the broad time frame. We're talking high Middle Ages, late Middle Ages, this 400 or so year span of time. Okay, prior to that, you don't have people saying there are seven sacraments.

People try to read it back into the patristic data. For example, people try to read it into Augustine, for example, because Augustine refers to several of the other Roman Catholic sacraments, other than baptism in the Eucharist as sacraments. The problem here is, number one, Augustine doesn't ever refer to anointing of the sick, for example, as a sacrament. People try to say he does, but he never calls that a sacrament. At least I've read a lot of Augustine.

I've never found that in Augustine, the identification of anointing of the sick as a sacrament. But the other more basic problem is that Augustine uses the term sacrament for all kinds of other practices. He refers to the sign of the cross as a sacrament. There's one passage where he's saying, oh, the sacraments of the church, baptism, the Eucharist, and the sign of the cross. He uses the term sacrament for various rights associated with baptism, like the prayers and exorcisms and chance and physical gestures associated with baptism. So Augustine is using the term sacrament much more broadly, and he's not alone in that. This is why the patristic or early church evidence is really murky trying to sort through

this. You have people who think of footwashing as a sacrament, especially some groups in like North Africa, for example. You have people using the term sacrament to refer to doctrines like the Trinity or events like the incarnation of Christ. You see that in John Chrysostom, for example. But I would say there is clearly among the church fathers and even into the medieval era, there is clearly a special prominence given to baptism and the Lord's Supper.

These are the ones that everybody seems to agree upon. These are the ones that are clearly established in the New Testament straight from the mouth of Christ. And these are the ones, even the non-Protestant traditions today recognize us kind of paramount importance or significance with these two. and in the early church, you see that. You see a paramount importance with these two. And I'm not trying to say this is the only view on the table, certainly not, and I'm not trying to say it's clear. What you find a lot is not necessarily people coming along and saying, hey, there's only two sacraments. What you find is people listing sacraments and then just discussing these two or three. Those are the most common views you can find. It's either two or three. But you can find people saying five or six as well. So just to give some examples in all the earliest

evidence that we can find, like in the didache, for example, only these two sacraments are mentioned. You don't have any of the other five sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church in the didache in a lot of the earliest evidence. And you can find other church fathers, like even Callistos Ware, who's an excellent Orthodox theologian, notes that this is even John of Damascus's position. What I've done is read through a lot of these catechesis texts in the early church where that'll talk about the sacraments or mysteries of the church, and a lot of them. just discuss baptism in the Lord's Supper, even though I'm told that Gregory of Nisa discusses holy orders as a sacrament in other contexts. I've not been able to find that. In his catechetical

lectures, he's just talking about baptism in the Lord's Supper, and that's a common view. Just those two sacraments as being discussed in the context of catechesis as the mysteries or sacraments of the church. And if you want a full documentation of that, you could see Martin Kempnitz. He goes through that pretty at length, as he often does, painstakingly at length. But the one wrinkle here is what you often see is three sacraments, because you'll often get what's sometimes called unction or anointing or chrism, today often called confirmation thrown in with baptism. This is a view, so this is the act of laying on of hands right after the baptism, often associated with the reception of the Holy Spirit. You see this in Turtullian, you see this in Cyril of Jerusalem and his

catechatical lectures. So he'll treat baptism, unctioned, the Lord's Supper, as the sacred mysteries of the church. Ambrose wrote a work on the sacraments. He is the same thing. Discusses baptism and the Eucharist, but then anointing or confirmation comes in in connection with baptism. What is unclear is, is that being understood as a separate sacrament, sort of parallel to baptism? So you've got three specifically, or is it part of the baptismal process? And either, way. So let's trying to be as generous as possible to alternative views. Let's say that it is. Even though I read through these texts very carefully, and actually the evidence is ambiguous. It's not always clear exactly how you demarcate things. But let's say it's three.

So what that means is then you can find two really common views as either two or three sacraments. You can also find people speaking of five, and you can find people speaking of six. On my reading, Pseudonisius identifies six sacraments, as does Theodore the studite in the late 8th and 9th centuries. Six sacraments. But he has different ones like monasticism and funeral rites. You can also find people listing 10 sacraments. As I mentioned, you get a lot, you know, in the medieval era, you get some people with a huge, huge lists of sacraments. So the point is this.

You have a lot of different options on the table. but the one option you don't have is seven. My knowledge is not infinite. Maybe I'm missing something. But I am not aware of anybody who says it's seven. And I put out, you know, I put out on Twitter a question like, hey, am I missing something? Is there somebody, is there a church father somewhere in the 400? It says, here are the seven sacraments of the church and list them all.

And people are unable to point to anything. What people try to do is, number one, though, just point to Bible verses that list these sacraments like this one. I'll put up an example of this. Now, the problem here is, of course, if they're not identified as sacraments, then you can just cobble together any list to get any number you want. I could add on foot washing to get to eight. I could then add on the holy kiss to get to nine. There's all kinds of things commanded in the Bible or referenced in the Bible. What we're after is the identification of these as sacraments in some way. Another person did the same thing with church history, just pointing to patristic citations of these practices to try to

it from seven different texts to try to cobble together a list of seven. But again, the Council of Trent set the bar with its anathema. It doesn't anathematize people for denying that marriage is good. It anathematizes people for denying that marriage is a sacrament, and it tightens the number at seven specifically. So that's the target to be hit here. And so far as I can tell, that idea, that theology is a second millennium accretion. And this is just, the Protestant concern is basically, that's not what Christianity is. Christianity is a revealed religion. We have to look to how God has revealed truth during the era of divine revelation. The church age is not this time where you can just sort of wait a thousand years and then add in something new. And historically, that's not how doctrinal

development is, you know, today people use doctrinal development way more ambitiously to cover over problems like this. Historically, that's not how doctrinal development has been understood. Doctrinal development, strictly speaking, should be the unfolding of understanding of what is already in the apostolic deposit. So with the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, in the New Testament itself, you've got an explicit affirmation of monotheism. You've got the baptism in the Trinitarian formula, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the name of them, Jesus says, baptized. You've got the repeated identifications of the Son of God as divine and so forth. All the building blocks, are there for the doctrine of the Trinity. What is growing is the understanding of that,

the clarification of that against alternatives, technical vocabulary for that. That's very different from saying you can go a thousand years without any instantiation of something. And then now it comes in and the church can do that. You can't do that. That's not how Christianity works. We are accountable to God and what God has said. And human beings make mistakes. This is why I use the word accretion. to refer to a slow buildup. And this has become kind of a buzzword. People love to just throw that word back at me in ways and say like, oh, your argument is an accretion or something like that. But if you just think about what that word means, or people will say, ah, well, your view,

Soliscriptura is an accretion too. And the answer to that is, no, it isn't. The word accretion means a slow buildup, something that's slowly coming in over time. Okay? Soliscriptura is based upon the Bible's claims about itself. When I argue for Sola Scriptura, I do it from the text of Scripture. What Scripture teaches about its nature, what Scripture teaches about its role. If those arguments are wrong, then they're not wrong because I'm arguing for an accretion. They're just wrong because, you know, we're arguing from the founding documents of Christianity. That's how the argument. So accretion is not the right concern there. The concern would just be, we've got to argue about these texts in Scripture. It's very different from seven sacraments where you just don't

see the thing at all. There's nothing from scripture to even argue from. Nobody's thinking of seven sacraments for centuries. Okay. I think I've made the point clear there. What is the Protestant alternative position? Let me clarify what it isn't. Number one, the Protestant concern is not that you can never use the word sacrament in a non-technical sense. That's not, the issue here is not really terminology. So in the Lutheran tradition, in the Augsburg confession, there's a concern you can find about not wrangling too much. over words like sacrament that are not found in scripture. In the reform tradition, you can find in discussions of the covenant of works. People will use the word sacrament to refer to one of the,

the trees in the Garden of Eden and other things like this. So the word sacrament can be used in a non-technical sense. It's not a big deal exactly. Terminology is not the main originating concern here. The Protestant concern is also not that everything about these other five alleged sacraments are bad and just to be roundly rejected. Of course not. There would just be some details or concern about reform and some of the practice and how it's happening. But the concern is with the categorization of these things as a sacrament. We're not against marriage. We're not against ordination. There's a lot in each of these other practices that are good. The question is, here's the Protestant concern. What is a sacrament? In the technical meaning of that term,

what is it? And what the reformers taught and recognized is that there is something unique and paramount about baptism and the Lord's Supper, even while we can appreciate spiritual value of many other commandments of God. And the reason for that is not just their historical and biblical basis as the two that Christ clearly instituted. The reason is also just the very nature of what they are. So we would say, broadly speaking, sacraments are, number one, instituted by Christ himself, and number two, visible signs of the new covenant. You'll often find this language in the Protestant confessions and traditions that sacraments are evangelical in substance.

That is to say, the subject matter they have to do with as a sign and seal and as a conduit of grace is Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. They are conduits of grace of the New Covenant Gospel. They are associated with the promises of God given to us in the New Covenant, and they are instantiated by means of a fixed right or formula of initiation taught to us by Jesus Christ Himself. Matthew 2819, we have the Trinitarian baptismal formula, and in 1st Corinthians 1123, these words, What I received refer to a tradition that Paul inherited.

baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two rights given to the Christian Church by Jesus as signs of the new covenant to administer the grace of that covenant to its members. They are unique. And again, as I said, a lot of the other traditions will admit a uniqueness to them of some kind, but our concern is we need to recognize they are unique as sacraments. They correspond to the two sacred rights of the Old Testament, circumcision and the Passover meal, one serving as the act of covenant initiation into the covenant community and the other as an act of covenant sustenance and covenant fellowship. When you look at the other five sacraments of the Catholic Church,

for example, we're just talking about something different. You know, marriage, for example, marriage goes back to Genesis too. It's not instituted by Christ as a new covenant visible sign. It's instituted by God at creation for all of humanity. It's just a fundamentally different thing. And so if you want to use the term sacrament for that, what ends up happening is the word sacrament gets broadened and diluted. And this is ultimately the root Protestant concern is we don't want to basically think of the Protestant view like this. We are concerned about diluting. The sacraments are so sacred. They're so precious that we don't want to dilute their meaning.

The Reformation restriction of sacraments to two rather than seven or. or any other number, results from a higher view of sacraments, not a lower view. Michael Hardin puts it like this. The addition of sacraments in the medieval church does not reflect an exaggerated view of sacraments, but a weakened view of the efficacy of baptism and the supper. Why is that? Because the emphasis upon these two re-centralizes them, and I think you see that, especially with the Eucharist.

It's ironic today that infrequent participation in the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper and too low a view of the Eucharist is characteristic of many, especially evangelicals. evangelical Protestants and low-church Protestants, because historically, the Reformation Re-centralized the Eucharist in Christian worship. Lay Christians, I've talked about this in other videos, in the medieval era, hardly ever partook of the Eucharist. For most, it would have been once a year, and it wouldn't have been in both kinds. So the Protestant Reformation really put the Eucharist back front and center.

People often don't understand that today. And Protestants' fault to a large degree, because we've often fallen away from that aspect. of our heritage. So, but basically the Protestant concern is we don't need more than what was instituted by Christ. In these two sacraments, received alongside the Word of God, and received by faith in God, we have all of Christ, and we enjoy a full salvation and experience of His gospel. Here's how Herman Bovink put it. For Protestant Christians, it is enough to have the Word and the two sacraments instituted by Christ in them. If they accept them in faith, they possess the whole, whole Christ, the full treasure of his merits, perfect righteousness and holiness, an unbreakable

fellowship with God. They are liberated from all guilt, released from all punishment. Of this, they are assured in baptism, and they are continually strengthened and confirmed in that faith by the Lord's Supper. In baptism in the Lord's Supper, Protestant Christians possess infinitely more than Roman Catholic Christians do in their seven sacraments, for it is not the number of sacraments that is decisive, but the institution of Christ and the fullness of grace he imparts in it. So the concluding question would be, well, why not accept the Protestant view? Number one, it has a better biblical and historical grounding. There's really no basis for believing in seven sacraments. It's pretty obviously an accreted belief that doesn't have any plausible relationship to the apostolic

deposit. Number two, you can still practice the full range of what God has commanded in the New Testament and all that is good in these other five practices. And number three, you're not yoked to anathemas. I am not as a Protestant Christian required to anathematize those who believe in seven sacraments, or five, or three, or 30, or whoever, you know, or however number. What makes you go to heaven is, are you united to Christ? It's that simple. So, in other words, the Protestant position is more plausibly true, number one, second, edifying and healthy and conducive to the health of the church. And number three, it's more generous. to the alternatives. Now, here's a concluding concern. Someone, let me address this concern at the end of

this video, which is tangentially related, but it's, it comes in the mix here. Someone might say this, and I've been doing this long enough to understand how some people are going to respond, just try to anticipate responses. Some people are going to say, look, Gavin, you're just poking holes in the alternative rather than trying to ground your own position. I heard this come up recently. Eric Yubara, I heard him say this recently. Someone tagged me in this video, he was basically saying Gavin gives strong criticisms against the other traditions, but his own position is not coherent. His own position with respect to church history is not coherent. And Eric, I really like Eric, and I understand where he's coming from with that, because it's similar to what Newman said.

If you read through the paragraphs prior to the statement to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant, this is kind of what he's saying, is saying, look, he's admitting, look, church history is really messy. you can find all kinds of, you know, councils against councils and so forth. But the one thing it isn't is Protestant. And I can understand that concern. Basically, you know, the concern here is, hey, you guys are trying to debunk other views rather than establish your own view. So let me address that concern here to conclude, specifically on relation to this topic

of the sacraments, but also more generally. And I'd say three things. First of all, I do think there's a good biblical and historical case for two sacraments. So I, you know, and actually, as I say, almost everybody can admit there's something about these two that are paramount. So it's not just that we're trying to poke holes somewhere else. I think we can build a case for this specific view. Second of all, I'm not the one thrown out anathemas here for just the position you take on the number of sacraments. So I had the, my burden of proof is a little lower, I'd say.

But third of all, and here's the main thing, and this is like where we really get into two different paradigms for how to engage church history. There is nothing incoherent about thinking that the church has errors. The church is alive, but the church has errors, and the Reformation helpfully addressed some of those errors. That's a pretty simple view. It's nothing incoherent about it. In fact, I would say the more you study church history, the more it becomes necessary to adopt something like that, and what you end up with is a more organic view of the church. The Protestant view of church history is not incoherent. It makes a lot of sense. What we're saying is, look, the church is changing a lot throughout church history. And it also is not restricted to one institution. So as time goes

forward and the church grows, you're looking very broadly to see what the church is. You're looking in all kinds of different places, especially as you get as the church is growing. I don't think anybody can deny. There's just massive changes to what the church looks like in all its external functions and forms over the course of time. Just think about the relevance of the Roman Empire. You know, if you're a Christian in the late third century versus in the late fourth century in the span of about 100 years, the church looks completely different. You go from this kind of persecuted group to now you've got like the emperor calling ecumenical councils and so forth. And then if you go from that time to after the Roman Empire is no longer in the picture,

the church also looks completely different. So yes, Protestant churches look a lot different from one another and from previous eras of church history. I would say so to non-Protestant churches. But here's why it's not incoherent. It's what they have in common is Christ. Christ is not incoherent. So, yeah, there's diversity, and it's this organic phenomenon growing and sprouting wherever the Lord Jesus Christ pours out His Holy Spirit and you've got the true gospel and word

and sacrament, you've got churches. If you've got places in Africa where there's no contact with Christianity and then suddenly there's a village that comes into contact with the gospel and the Holy Spirit births a new church, it might look really different from previous times in church history and other places in the world today, but if they have Jesus Christ, then it's not incoherent to trace a thread between them and other valid churches. Because what gives them all coherence is Christ, and Christ is not incoherent. So if you think, here's another way you could think about this. Suppose you lost faith in the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Let's suppose, just as a hypothetical thought experiment, let's suppose that after Pope Francis, things keep going more and more liberal throughout the 21st century. Not a crazy thought. Humanly speaking, doesn't seem like that's an impossible thing that you could at least envision. Okay, so let's say by the late 21st century, you're saying, I'm out. I've lost faith in this institution, this hierarchy. Would you still be a Christian? Would you still trust in Jesus Christ?

would you still believe in the Trinity? Would you still follow Christ? If so, would you be incoherent for doing that? I would say that's not an incoherent view. It's a completely reasonable view. Basically what you're saying is, I want to trust in God, not in these accreted human traditions and institutions that do ultimately let us down. That's ultimately what a Protestant wants to do. That's what gets us out of bed in the morning as Protestants. That's what we want to do. And I know I speak of Protestants. One other thing people say is, well, you always defend Protestantism as a whole. And that's fine. You can do that. You can defend Theism as a whole, even though you disagree with Muslims. You can defend Christianity as a whole, even though you might

disagree with other churches. You can defend Protestantism as a whole because it's a collective umbrella term that refers to a coherent reality, namely Christians who believe in things like, for the most part, two sacraments, solo scrupura, sola fide, preaching and worship, church discipline is the mark of the church, et cetera, et cetera. There's a coherent reality referred to by Protestantism, even though I'm a particular kind of Protestant, namely a Baptist. Anyway, this is what as Protestants we want to do is we want to obey God. And so when we're told, you're refusing to submit to the church that Christ established and you're refusing to believe what the church has always taught, we just have to say,

look, that just doesn't seem true. We want to obey God. But the idea that we're supposed to submit to things like seven sacraments just doesn't seem true. That doesn't seem like what God has said. So this is a protest against this claim being put upon us, especially because it's attached to an anathema. All right, that's the video here. Let me know what you think. In the comments, if I've missed something, tell me what you think. But if you're going to put in the comments, oh, there are seven sacraments, here it is. Make sure you're actually hitting the target, that it's things that are identified as sacraments and that there are seven of them. Because any of us can

cobble together a list. Like I said, you can add on foot washing and a holy kiss to get the nine. The key is an identification as a sacrament. All right, hope this video has been helpful for people. Let me know what you think in the comments, and we will see you next time.