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substance, is conveyed through the channel of the means, and is therefore absolutely bound to
the means. Baptism regenerates man ex opere operato, and the even more important eucharist
raises his spiritual life to a higher level. Apart from Christ, from the Church, and from the
sacrament, there is no salvation.
2. THE LUTHERAN VIEW.
With the Reformation the emphasis was shifted from the sacraments
to the Word of God. Luther gave great prominence to the Word of God as the primary means of
grace. He pointed out that the sacraments have no significance apart from the Word and are in
fact merely the visible Word. He did not entirely succeed in correcting the Roman Catholic error
as to the inseparable connection between the outward means and the inward grace
communicated through them. He, too, conceived of the grace of God as a sort of substance
contained in the means and not to be obtained apart from the means. The Word of God is in
itself always efficacious and will effect a spiritual change in man, unless he puts a
stumblingblock in the way. And the body and blood of Christ is “in, with, and under” the
elements of bread and wine, so that they who eat and drink the latter also receive the former,
though this will be to their advantage only if they receive them in the proper manner. It was
especially his opposition to the subjectivity of the Anabaptists that caused Luther to stress the
objective character of the sacraments and to make their effectiveness dependent on their
divine institution rather than on the faith of the recipients. The Lutherans did not always steer
clear of the idea that the sacraments function ex opere operato.
3. THE VIEW OF THE MYSTICS.
Luther had to contend a great deal with the mystical
Anabaptists, and it was especially his reaction to their views that determined his final view of
the means of grace. The Anabaptists, and other mystical sects of the age of the Reformation
and of later times, virtually deny that God avails Himself of means in the distribution of His
grace. They stress the fact that God is absolutely free in communicating His grace, and
therefore can hardly be conceived of as bound to such external means. Such means after all
belong to the natural world, and have nothing in common with the spiritual world. God, or
Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or the inner light, work directly in the heart, and both the Word and
the sacraments can only serve to indicate or to symbolize this internal grace. This whole
conception is determined by a dualistic view of nature and grace.
4. THE RATIONALISTIC VIEW.
The Socinians of the days of the Reformation, on the other hand,
moved too far in the opposite direction. Socinus himself did not even regard baptism as a rite
destined to be permanent in the Church of Jesus Christ, but his followers did not go to that
extreme. They recognized both baptism and the Lord’s Supper as rites of permanent validity,
but ascribed to them only a moral efficacy. This means that they thought of the means of grace
as working only through moral persuasion, and did not associate them at all with any mystical