ABSTRACT
The Concept of Sacrament One might, at first glance, be forgiven for thinking that quite a leap will have to be made from a study of New Testament material to consideration of 'sacramentality'. After all, the word 'sacrament' derives from the Latin sacramentum, and is therefore not to be found in the New Testament, it being always a rendering of the Greek mysterion (which is sometimes not translated, but transliterated to mysterium). C. K. Barrett, referring to the earliest known reference to the word used in this sense by Eusebius in the fourth century, contends that it was quite late that mysterion came to be the word in Greek Christian usage to denote what we call sacraments, though two references, one in the Didache and one by Ignatius, could be read in this way. However, as Barrett concedes, it would not be sensible to assume that 'just because the New Testament lacked a word for it, it was without the thing that the word signifies'.1 The obvious references to the Eucharist in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St Paul, particularly the first letter to the Corinthians, mean that this cannot be the case. A more subtle reading of the New Testament reveals much more, however. For example, David Brown and Ann Loades contend that, just as the first chapter of John's Gospel can be seen as laying the foundations for all Christian sacramentalism in the idea of the incarnation as sacrament, 'so chapter six may be viewed as legitimating the extension of that principle to what are more conventionally known as sacraments, through that incarnational body now working its effects mysteriously upon our own'.2 However, to talk of 'biblical sacraments' would be anachronistic, not only because the term is not used in the New Testament itself, but also because even as late as the end of the fourth century in the writings of St Ambrose of Milan, the two words 'sacraments' and 'mysteries' are used interchangeably, and as Elizabeth Rees points out: 'For St Augustine, in the fifth Century, sacraments and symbols were fairly interchangeable concepts. Augustine described sacraments as "visible forms of invisible grace", and included a wide variety of actions and objects in his list: the kiss of peace, the font of baptism, blessed salt, the Our Father, the ashes of penance.' She suggests that he was
convinced that 'all organic and inorganic things in nature bear spiritual messages through their distinctive forms and characteristics'.3
