The Reformers also identified as a mark of the true church the sacraments that were rightly administered. Augustine defined a sacrament as “a visible form of an invisible grace or a visible sign of a sacred thing.” John Calvin defined a sacrament as “a testimony of divine grace towards us, confirmed by an outward sign, with mutual attestation of our piety towards him.” (Calvin’s Institutes, A New Compend, p. 133) Throughout the history of the church, there have been a number of sacraments. The Catholic Church now affirms seven sacraments and most Protestant churches affirm two, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
Some, in our increasingly eclectic community, speak of a “sacramental view of life.” A sacrament makes use of ordinary elements to point to an extraordinary truth or common physical elements to point to eternal spiritual realities. Many people have had the experience, while participating in something that appears to others as very common or ordinary, to suddenly be awakened to a different dimension of insight or opened to a higher quality of truth. Many who offer spiritual retreats or seminars on spirituality attempt to recreate that experience and make it available to their adherents. They may offer a directed form of breathing, chant or guided meditation which they suggest can lift a person to a higher plane of reality. In recent times, many such offerings do not even point to God as the object of their search. Spirituality becomes a search for a truth that can be grasped rather than an encounter with God who reveals truth to them.
