Ultimately this leads to a vision of the Christian life as a relationship with God as mediated through the Christian
tradition as sacrament.
My central claim, both today and tomorrow, is that being a Christian is primarily about a relationship with God lived within the Christian
tradition as a sacrament — a claim to which I will return at the end of this talk.
Not exact matches
But
traditions (e.g.,
sacraments not found in the Bible) gained force only
as explications of what was implicit in Scripture.
First, she claims that the
sacrament of ordination to the priesthood would not be threatened since «the unity» of the
sacrament resides in the bishop: Scripture gives him the authority to delegate
as necessary, and
Tradition allows for several grades within the
sacrament.
The bulk of this scholarly volume treats the distinctive and different ways that the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican
traditions adapted what the author identifies
as the medieval model; the Catholic
tradition, with its insistence that marriage constitutes a true
sacrament of the new dispensation, thus serves
as something of a foil for the book's extended argument.
Though he devotes the first chapter to «Marriage
as Sacrament in the Roman Catholic
Tradition,» Witte's analysis concentrates principally on the medieval centuries and concludes with some brief remarks on the marriage legislation of the Council of Trent in 1563.
Some of our
traditions reckon baptism
as a
sacrament of constitutive importance for Christian existence.
St. Augustine defines a
sacrament as the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace; but he does not lose sight of the community of believers
as the mediator of grace, nor should we, even though our doctrine of the relation of grace to the visible Church may declare considerably more freedom for the Holy Spirit than is the case in some
traditions.
The Pope said «It is my hope that your conversations will bear abundant fruit in the examination of such historically controversial issues
as the relationship between Scripture and
Tradition, the understanding of baptism and the
sacraments, the place of Mary in the communion of the Church, and the nature of oversight and primacy in the Church's ministerial structure.
In the Protestant
tradition, Scripture and the two
sacraments have been regarded
as the primary means of grace through which Christ becomes a reality of life to believers.
The distinctiveness of Christianity from other
traditions lies especially in its choice of this particular «
sacrament»
as central.
Toward the end of Ut Unum Sint, John Paul cites some of the questions that must be addressed in conversation with the communities issuing from the tragic divisions of the sixteenth century: (1) The relationship between Sacred Scripture,
as the highest authority in matters of faith, and Sacred
Tradition,
as indispensable to the interpretation of the Word of God; (2) The Eucharist
as the
Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, an offering of praise to the Father, the sacrificial memorial and Real Presence of Christ and the sanctifying outpouring of the Holy Spirit; (3) Ordination,
as a
Sacrament, to the threefold ministry of the episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate; (4) The Magisterium of the Church, entrusted to the pope and the bishops in communion with him, understood
as a responsibility and an authority exercised in the name of Christ for teaching and safeguarding the faith; (5) The Virgin Mary,
as Mother of God and Icon of the Church, the spiritual Mother who intercedes for Christ's disciples and for all humanity.
As early as 554 A.D., priests who disclosed confessions were severely punished (William Harold Tiemann and John C. Bush, The Right to Silence: Privileged Communications and the Law [Abingdon, 1983], p. 35) By the close of the ninth century, priests revealing the matter of a confession were deposed and exiled for life (p. 36) In the Catholic tradition, confession is seen as a sacrament that conveys grac
As early
as 554 A.D., priests who disclosed confessions were severely punished (William Harold Tiemann and John C. Bush, The Right to Silence: Privileged Communications and the Law [Abingdon, 1983], p. 35) By the close of the ninth century, priests revealing the matter of a confession were deposed and exiled for life (p. 36) In the Catholic tradition, confession is seen as a sacrament that conveys grac
as 554 A.D., priests who disclosed confessions were severely punished (William Harold Tiemann and John C. Bush, The Right to Silence: Privileged Communications and the Law [Abingdon, 1983], p. 35) By the close of the ninth century, priests revealing the matter of a confession were deposed and exiled for life (p. 36) In the Catholic
tradition, confession is seen
as a sacrament that conveys grac
as a
sacrament that conveys grace.
As I watched, I found myself thinking about how the Church, with the age - old
sacrament of confession and the
tradition of corporate lament, is equipped to speak powerfully and counter-culturally to this very issue.
Then, if one is religious, you go to your faith community and participate in a marriage ceremony
as your
tradition dictates and understands that
sacrament.
So I conclude by returning to this theme of Christianity
as a
sacrament of the sacred —
as a
tradition that mediates the reality of God to us — and the Bible
as a collection of stories that invites us to see in a particular way, to see reality in a certain way, and to see our own lives in a certain way.
The Christian
traditions to which the authors appeal are primarily Catholic and Calvinist,
traditions that respectively view marriage
as sacrament or covenant.
Maintaining Trent's fundamental teaching on justification, the
sacraments, and the relation between Scripture and
tradition is consistent with affirming a more comprehensive and balanced formulation of that teaching
as a fruit of serious theological dialogue.
Yet the Reformers combined this radical freedom with the insistence that the new life is lived in the community of the church with its
tradition, its scriptural authority and the celebration of the
sacraments, for now the church is known
as the community which God creates by his grace.
The
traditions Gregory Jones explores in Transformed Judgment are grand ones: Aristotelian virtue - centered moral philosophy; Thomism, especially
as it elucidates the relation between the
sacraments and friendship with God; Trinitarian thought; Wittgenstein's philosophy of language.
I was raised
as a devout Roman Catholic, very learned in all the Catholic
sacraments,
traditions, and prayers.
I was raised
as a devout Roman Catholic, very learned in all the Catholic
sacraments,
traditions, and prayers.