The Reformed
view of the New Covenant sacraments are, to be blunt, confusing, and a
desperate attempt to straddle the line between a purely symbolic view of saving
ordinances and their having true salvific efficacy. James Bannerman (1807-1868),
a Presbyterian theologian who wrote The
Church of Christ, viewed as many modern Calvinists (e.g., Carl Trueman) as the best work on Reformed ecclesiology,
wrote the following about the efficacy of sacraments, even stating that they
can increase, not holiness, but grace,
a believer has:
The Sacraments of the New Testament are made
means of grace to the individual who rightly partakes of them . . . Sacraments
differ also from ordinances in this, that they are seals or vouchers of a
federal or covenant transaction . . . it is never to be forgotten that the
Sacraments presuppose the existence of grace, however, they may give to him
that already has it more abundantly . . . There is no ground then, in
Scripture, but the very opposite for asserting that the Sacraments are no more
than signs or symbolic actions. (James Bannerman, The Church of Christ: A Treatise on The Nature, Powers, Ordinances,
Discipline, and Government of The Christian Church, volume 2 [Edinburgh:
The Banner of Truth Trust, 1960], 12, 18, 26)
Elsewhere,
in his discussion of water baptism, Bannerman writes the following:
Baptism is a means for confirming the faith
of the believer, and adding to the grace
which he possessed before. (Ibid., 49)
As a
Presbyterian, Bannerman held to infant baptism. In a very convoluted manner, he
tries to defend water baptism, in some way, as being the instrumental means of
regeneration for “elect infants” (infants who, prior to their death, are
granted saving faith and regeneration):
There seems to be reason for inferring that,
in the case of infants in infancy, Baptism is ordinarily connected with that
regeneration.
To all infants without exception, Baptism, as
we have already asserted, gives an interest in the Church of Christ as its
members. To all infants without exception, Baptism, as we have already
asserted, gives a right of property in the covenant of grace, which may, by
their personal faith in after life, be completed by a right of possession, so
that they shall enter on the full enjoyment of all the blessings sealed to them
by their previous Baptism. And beyond these two positions, in so far as infants
are concerned, it is perhaps hazardous to go, in the absence of any very
explicit Scripture evidence; and certainly, in going further, it were the
reverse of wisdom to dogmatize. But I think that there is some reason to add to
these positions the third one, which I have announced, namely, that in the case of infants regenerated in
infancy, Baptism is ordinarily connected with such regeneration. (Ibid.,
117)
Bannerman,
being Reformed, has to (rather desperately) defend Sola Fide, so elsewhere in his book, we read the following theological
gobbledygook:
Dr. Halley alleges that the Sacraments, if
they were considered as the cause or the means, or even the seals of spiritual
and saving grace, would be opposed to the great Protestant doctrine of
justification by faith without works. Now it is readily admitted, that if
Sacraments are regarded as the causes or means of justification, they are
utterly inconsistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith
alone; and in this point of view the objection is true and unanswerable when
directed against some of those theories of the Sacraments which we may be
called upon to consider by and by. But it is denied that the objection is true
when directed against the theory of the Sacraments which maintains that they
are not causes and not means of justification, but seals of it and of other
blessings of the new covenant. The Sacraments as seals, not causes of
justification, cannot interfere with the doctrine of justification by faith,
for this plain reason, that before the seal is added, the justification is
completed. The seal implied in the Sacrament presupposes justification, and
does not directly or instrumentally cause it; the seal is a voucher given to
the believer that he is justified already; and not a means or a cause of
procuring justification for him. Justification exists before the seal that
attests it is bestowed. The believer has previously been “justified by faith
without the works of the law,” ere the Sacrament of which he partakes can affix
the visible seal to his justification. (Ibid., 25)
