Appendix 3: Spiritual Gifts and the Sacraments in Protestantism

The purpose of this appendix is to argue that a Catholic perspective leaves ample room to acknowledge not only the intellectual and liturgical strengths of Protestantism, but the presence of spiritual gifts, and, to some extent, even the Catholic sacraments. Of special interest to Protestants will be the discussion of the priesthood of all believers in my analysis of holy orders. 

Before I begin, I should briefly define what I mean by “sacrament.” To quote the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a sacrament is “a holy ordinance instituted by Christ, wherein, by sensible signs, Christ and the benefits of the new covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to believers.” Put simply, they are how God uses physical things to help us become what Christ died to make us.

When I hold before my mind’s eye the vast panoply of Christian expression, a curious fact strikes me. As a Protestant, it was not surprising in the least that certain spiritual gifts should be found in some places more than others. Tim Keller comments on this in a bonus episode of the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast.¹ He says, in essence, that Anglicans will simply always have the most beautiful liturgy, that Presbyterians will always most naturally gravitate towards education, that Charismatics will always manifest the “sign gifts” most frequently. For a Catholic, this presents a bit of a puzzle. If the fullness of Christianity subsists most properly in the Catholic Church, what are we to make of the fact that other Christian groups seem to possess some gifts with more regularity and even more zeal than us? In the main text, I used this “curious fact” as an argument for the importance of incorporating Protestant traditions into the Catholic Church while preserving their distinct characters. But now I wish to treat the argument against Catholicism that lurks inside it. 

I am indebted to Marcus Gibson for this thought, and was gratified to find it  reflected exactly in a quote from Bishop Barron on “All the Gifts,” a blog linked in Appendix E. Here is the passage:

I’ll quote one of my mentors, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. He said, “The Catholic Church has all the gifts that Christ wants His people to have.” Christ wants to share all of His gifts with His people: Scripture, the liturgy, sacraments, the Eucharist, Mary the Mother of God, bishops – the successors of the apostles – apostolic authority, the supreme apostolic authority of the pope. All of these are gifts that Christ wanted His church to have. And that’s why Cardinal George would say he’s a Catholic. Now, he added this, which I think is important. It doesn’t mean for a second that other Christian churches don’t exercise some of those gifts better than we do.  I’ll say it, humbly and gratefully, the marvelous scriptural insights I’ve gotten from Protestant writers over the years. 

N.T. Wright has had a massive impact on my thinking over the years, about the Bible.  Theologically, someone like Stanley Hauerwas had a big impact on my thinking.  Now go back further, Karl Barth is a theological hero of mine.  Paul Tillich, I did my doctoral work on him.  Go back to the great reformers…Calvin reminds me in many ways of Aquinas.  Look at the great Protestant preachers of the 20th century, many of whom I’ve directly heard.  Are they better preachers in many ways than Catholics?  Yes.  So are some of the Protestant churches using the gifts of scripture and teaching better than we are?  Yes, in some cases. But the Catholic Church has all the gifts Christ wants His people to have.

[Note: After finishing the quotation but before beginning the following paragraph, I was confirmed into the Catholic Church at Easter Vigil on Saturday, April 8, 2023]

Bishop Barron shows his cards as a true Catholic here. The really Catholic mind is omnivorous. From paganism to leftism, no religion is so devoid of truth as to present nothing worth learning. Being deeply Catholic means having enough confidence in the truth of Jesus Christ that no opposition, physical, political, or intellectual, truly frightens you. How much more is this true for Catholics in dialogue with other Christians, others on the path of our same Lord Jesus? All the gifts are somewhere inside the Catholic Church, but that does not entail that a particular gift is not being used to a greater degree somewhere outside, any more than the fact that there are Catholic scientists means that those scientists will necessarily outclass their secular counterparts. The fact that Protestants have loved Scripture more deeply and preached with more skill is no threat to Catholic confidence. It should rather fan to flame a desire to reunite and enjoy all the good things God has given to His children. No doubt, some of what Protestants excel in results from having to do more with fewer tools. The man with only a hammer will discover a hundred more uses for it than if he’d had a fully stocked toolbox. Yet imagine what, after achieving mastery over one tool, he might accomplish with a complete kit. The spiritual and theological potential that would well up from the Reformation Rites is staggering. 

All the gifts are in the Catholic Church. But I suspect that fewer of them have been confined there than Catholics have typically thought. It is time to discuss the sacraments. Catholics recognize seven sacraments: baptism, communion/the Lord’s Supper/eucharist, confirmation, reconciliation/confession, holy orders, marriage, and anointing of the sick/last rites. Protestants recognize only baptism and communion. Initially, you might assume that Catholics regard all Protestant sacraments as invalid, and vice versa. But this is not the case. My argument is that, from a Catholic perspective, many of the sacraments are present in healthy Protestant traditions, even if only to a limited extent. 

Two sacraments, baptism and marriage, Catholics straightforwardly believe can be validly performed by Protestants. For baptism, all that is required is an intent to baptize and the Trinitarian formula (“I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”) carried out with the visible sign of water. Thus, when I entered the Church, I was not “rebaptized,” because “rebaptism” is an oxymoron. I died and rose with Christ in second grade under the ministry of my Foursquare pastors. That event can never be erased, so neither can it be replaced. Similarly, Catholic theology teaches that marriage is performed by the couple, not the priest. There, the consent of the couple and consummation of the marriage is all that is required for the sacrament to be valid, provided both parties are baptized. Thus, Protestants entering the Church as a couple need not be “remarried.” 

Showing the presence of the other sacraments in Protestantism requires a bit more theological agility. As I said, to whatever extent the other five are present, it will not be to the fullest. However close we get, tofu will never quite be the same as meat. But it can come closer than one might have guessed. I will start with the most contentious: communion.

There are five views on what happens during communion. On one end of the spectrum, the Catholic view is that in the Mass the bread and the wine literally become the physical body and blood of Jesus Christ and cease to be bread and wine. The Lutheran view says that Christ is indeed physically present, but the bread and wine remain what they are. The Reformed/Calvinist view says that by faith we feed on the body and blood of Christ, but only in a spiritual sense. Sometimes it is described as our soul being carried up into heaven to enjoy fellowship with Christ and all departed Christians. The Baptist view says that the bread and wine are mere symbols that serve to remind us of Christ’s death, and so can just as well be swapped with pizza and rootbeer if convenient. These are the four views traditionally acknowledged by theologians,² but my experience tells me there is a fifth view. This view looks on paper like the Baptist view, but in conversation those who hold it will balk at the idea that communion is merely a symbol. They maintain that there is something mysterious, something spiritual, something real happening, but they generally do not know what. 

What strikes me about all these views is that, excepting the Baptist, there is a real desire for mystical (comm)union with God. I cannot help recalling Thomas Aquinas’ concept of having a sacrament “by desire.” If we truly and seriously long for a sacrament, and we would take it given a real opportunity, then we already have the beginnings of that sacrament in us. That’s why the smallest amount of contrition wipes out all mortal sin. It is the beginning of what is perfected in the confessional. It seems to me that most Protestants long for the same thing Catholics do when they come to the communion table: Jesus Christ. They may have erroneous beliefs about how this is to happen, i.e., they may not believe that true communion involves the literal body and blood of Christ. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to suppose that they see their own communion as second-rate, or an alternative to what the “real Christians” do. In fact, many of them have probably never thought about what communion is, or been taught to believe that Catholic understanding of it is absurd. They honestly come by their disbelief. Thus, they are able to approach their own communion tables with clean hearts, and so the door is open to recognizing something akin to a sacrament by desire. This would make it very unsurprising that Protestants often show forth beautiful fruits of the Spirit, since they are in a serious relationship with Jesus Christ. If I may venture a thought that will no doubt be controversial, I have wondered whether we can say that all Protestants who believe communion is anything more than mere symbolism really do experience something like Calvin describes. The “spiritual presence” of Christ might be one way to describe a foreshadowing of the fullness found in the Catholic Church.

The argument is relatively similar for the other sacraments. When I was confirmed into the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in high school, I made certain vows and was anointed with oil after completing a confirmation course. At that point I was recognized as a full-fledged member of my church. Catholic confirmation is not much different. Is it possible that even then God was honoring my devotion, and planting in me the seeds of full confirmation? Likewise, when someone is seriously ill in Evangelical communities, their friends and family will often gather to pray over them together in person. Does this not bear a striking resemblance to the anointing of the sick? 

Confession presents another interesting case. A quirk about this sacrament should be noted. Although a confession must be made to a priest for it to be fully sacramentally valid, Aquinas says that under duress, any Christian may hear your confession in what he calls a quasi-sacramental way. Aquinas recognizes that what God desires from us is repentance, which is why he also says that the smallest amount of contrition is sufficient to wipe out all mortal in—though it may still leave a long healing process with the Church and others, which is part of what confession is there to help facilitate. Nevertheless, when Protestant theologians like Bonhoeffer urge all Christians to practice confession with one another, what is to stop a Catholic from acknowledging that there really is something quasi-sacramental happening? Again, it may be deficient in various ways; but if being deficient were the same as completely failing to exist, none of us would be around to complain about it. 

To discuss holy orders we must first discuss the priesthood itself. Luther famously championed the “priesthood of all believers,” and he was right to emphasize the importance of laypersons taking ownership of their faith. But he was also right from a doctrinal perspective. Catholic theology teaches that there is one Christian priesthood: Christ’s. Christ is a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek, and through Him we participate in the same. We are all called to this royal priesthood—none among us have been set aside to be the “real” Christians. The obligation to dedicate every square inch of our lives to knowing and loving God is just as real for the Pope as it is for an IRS agent, or bowling alley worker, or theologian. Yet within the body there are many parts, and some have tasks not given to all. The Catholic priest is given the specific task of tending to Christ’s flock, in much the same way Protestant pastors are. In this sense, holy orders have an analogy in the Protestant world. But there is also here a discontinuity that is sharper than with the other sacraments. Catholics claim that the line of bishops comes in an unbroken train to us from the original Apostles and even Christ Himself. They argue that the Holy Spirit gives them special authority and special vocation to carry out the liturgy of the Church. What a blessing it would be for the leaders of thriving Protestant communities entering communion with Rome to receive the full extent of apostolic succession and authority on top of the natural and spiritual gifts the Spirit has already poured out upon them! 

If I am anywhere near the mark here, we may draw two conclusions. The first is that Protestant spiritual life has naturally recognized the importance of the same sacraments the Catholic Church has identified as vital to a complete Christian life. It has either organically rediscovered or else preserved vestiges of the historical understanding, and for good reason. The second is that the energetic life of Protestantism makes complete sense to the Catholic because there is everywhere a shadowed presence of the sacraments, the ordinary anchors of Christian spirituality. This should deepen the sense of continuity between a Christian’s life in Protestantism and the life offered in Rome. I stand by my argument in the main text that the Catholic Church has not yet extended a credible offer for reunification to most Protestants, but this shows that there may be less distance between us than first supposed.

1. A great podcast, but the bonus episodes “Everything is Still Falling Apart” and “An Interview with Tim Keller” are by far the best.

2.  In technical theological terms they are called, in order: transubstantiation, consubstantiation, spiritual presence, and memorialism.