Sacrament

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The longer version

What it means

A sacrament is a rite in which God acts through something physical: water in baptism, bread and wine in communion, oil in anointing. Christians disagree about how much the rite itself does, but the word always points to the same idea — that God meets people through ordinary stuff, and that these particular acts are ones Christ gave the church.

The count is the famous difference. Catholics and Orthodox hold seven: baptism, confirmation (chrismation), Eucharist, confession (reconciliation), anointing of the sick, holy orders (ordination), and marriage. Most Protestants hold two — baptism and the Lord's Supper — as the only ones Jesus directly commanded. Anglicans split the difference: the two "sacraments of the Gospels" and the five lesser "sacramental rites."

Why people say it

Christians use "sacrament" to say that these rituals aren't just symbols or ceremonies but places where grace is actually given. The word sets them apart from everything else a church does. For Catholics and Orthodox, the sacraments are the Christian life — birth, growth, feeding, healing, forgiveness, vocation, death all have a sacrament attached. For Protestants the two sacraments are the visible gospel, the Word made touchable.

How to respond

If a Catholic tells you something is a sacrament, they're telling you it's central and sacred — marriage, for instance, which is why they'll want a church wedding. If a Protestant tells you their church has two sacraments, or "ordinances," they're telling you what they consider Jesus' own commands. If you're asked whether you've received a sacrament (baptism, usually), it's a factual question. If the conversation turns to counting, settle in; it's been going on since 1520.

If you hear it in different churches

Catholics: seven sacraments, central to everything. Orthodox: the same seven, called "mysteries," with less insistence on the number. Anglicans: two plus five. Lutherans: two (sometimes three, counting confession), with a high view of what they do. Reformed and Presbyterians: two, as "signs and seals." Baptists and most evangelicals: two "ordinances," understood as obedience and symbol. Pentecostals similarly; Quakers and the Salvation Army, distinctively, have none.

Where does “Sacrament” come from?

The Latin sacramentum was a soldier's oath of allegiance; Tertullian applied it to baptism around AD 200. The Greek word behind it, mysterion, is Paul's, and the Orthodox kept it. Augustine's definition — a visible sign of invisible grace — shaped the West. Peter Lombard fixed the number at seven in the 1150s, confirmed by the Council of Florence (1439) and Trent (1547). Luther's Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) reduced the count to two (or three), and the Reformed confessions settled on two. Baptists adopted "ordinance" in the 1600s to mark their symbolic understanding.

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Go deeper on the network

• The Augsburg Confession — the Lutheran articles on the sacraments ↗

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