Skip to content
Quod Ubique The Common Confession of the Universal Church

Layer 2 · 06

The Sacramental Character of Ordination

The Common Witness

The historic church has consistently witnessed that ordination is not merely a functional appointment — a community selecting one of its own for a task — but an act of God through the Church that confers a distinct spiritual reality upon the one ordained. The laying on of hands with prayer, attested from the apostolic age, does something: it conveys a charisma, a gift of the Holy Spirit fitted to the office, setting the ordained apart for a ministry that is not interchangeable with the general priesthood of all believers. This witness is not the private conviction of one tradition but the received teaching of the overwhelming majority of Christians across two millennia.

The Church does not deny the priesthood of all the baptized. She affirms it. But she also affirms that within this royal priesthood, Christ has instituted a particular ministry — apostolic in origin, sacramental in character, and essential to the Church’s life. The ordained minister does not act in his own name but in the name of Christ and His Church, and ordination is the means by which this commission is bestowed.

Scriptural Warrant

The gift conferred through laying on of hands:

  • “Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you” (1 Timothy 4:14, ESV)
  • “I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands” (2 Timothy 1:6, ESV)

Apostolic ordination by the laying on of hands:

  • “These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them” (Acts 6:6, ESV)
  • “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off” (Acts 13:3, ESV)
  • “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands” (1 Timothy 5:22, ESV)

The distinction of ministerial office:

  • “And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:11-12, ESV)
  • “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28, ESV)

The Pastoral Epistles treat ordination as conveying a real charisma — not merely recognizing a pre-existing quality but bestowing something through the sacramental act itself.

Patristic and Historical Attestation

Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-107)

“See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop.” — Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 8.1

Ignatius treats the threefold ministry not as a pragmatic arrangement but as reflecting the divine order itself. The bishop stands in the place of the Father; the presbyters represent the apostles; the deacons serve by divine institution.

Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170-235)

The Apostolic Tradition (c. 215) preserves the earliest detailed ordination rites. The prayer for the ordination of a bishop invokes the Holy Spirit: “Pour forth now that power which is from You, the princely Spirit, which You gave to Your beloved Son Jesus Christ, which He bestowed upon the holy apostles.” The rite assumes that ordination is an epiclesis — an invocation of the Spirit who alone can confer what human hands cannot.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

Augustine argued, against the Donatists, that ordination confers an indelible character (character indelebilis) that is not erased by the unworthiness of the minister. A bishop validly ordained remains ordained even if he falls into schism or sin. This doctrine — that the sacramental reality of ordination is objective, not dependent on the minister’s moral state — became foundational for both Western and Eastern theology of orders. — Contra Epistolam Parmeniani 2.13.28

Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390)

“Do not think that because you have received the laying on of hands, you are at once made wise… The grace is given, but the cooperation is required.” — Oration 2 (In Defence of His Flight to Pontus) [∗]

Gregory presupposes that ordination bestows a real grace — a divine gift — while insisting that the recipient must cooperate with it.

Tradition-Formulary Evidence

Roman Catholic

CCC §1538: “The ordained ministry is conferred by a special sacrament.” CCC §1581-1583: Ordination confers “an indelible spiritual character” that “cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily.” The Council of Trent, Session XXIII (1563), Canon 4: “If anyone says that by sacred ordination the Holy Spirit is not given, and that therefore bishops say in vain, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’… let him be anathema.” Affirms.

Eastern Orthodox

The Orthodox Church teaches that ordination (cheirotonia) is one of the seven sacraments, conferring the grace of the Holy Spirit for the specific ministry to which the candidate is ordained. The ordination rites in the Byzantine tradition include the triple Axios! — “He is worthy!” — spoken by the people, but the sacramental act is the bishop’s laying on of hands with the consecratory prayer. The sacrament is understood as irreversible: a deposed priest is deposed from the exercise of his ministry, not from the ontological reality of his ordination. Affirms.

Lutheran

The Augsburg Confession, Article XIV: “Our churches teach that nobody should preach publicly in the Church or administer the sacraments unless properly called.” The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XIII: “If ordination is understood as applying to the ministry of the Word, we are not unwilling to call ordination a sacrament. For the ministry of the Word has God’s command and glorious promises.” Classical Lutheranism retained ordination as a sacramental act, though later Lutheran theology has sometimes reduced it to a functional appointment. Affirms (classical); qualified in later traditions.

Reformed

Calvin, Institutes IV.3.16: “The laying on of hands… I do not quarrel about, provided it be not turned into empty show, but used with due regard to the end designed.” The Reformed tradition generally treats ordination as a solemn commissioning by the church rather than a sacrament that confers an ontological change. The Westminster Form of Presbyterial Church-Government affirms ordination by the laying on of hands of the presbytery but does not attribute sacramental character to it. Dissents from sacramental character; affirms ordination as solemn rite.

Anglican

The Ordinal (1550/1662): “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.” Article XXXVI of the Thirty-Nine Articles affirms the Book of Consecration of Bishops and Ordering of Priests as containing “all things necessary” for such consecration and ordering. The Anglican tradition has consistently treated ordination as conveying a spiritual gift, and the historic episcopate is maintained as essential to the Church’s order. Affirms.

The Dissenting Minority

The dissent comes principally from two sources: the Reformed tradition and the free-church Protestant movements (Baptist, Pentecostal, many Evangelical churches).

The Reformed case. Calvin and his heirs argued that the New Testament does not distinguish a “sacramental” ordination from commissioning. The laying on of hands in Acts and the Pastoral Epistles is a solemn recognition of gifts already present, not a conferral of ontological change. The priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9) is not merely a spiritual metaphor but a structural reality: every baptized Christian has direct access to God through Christ, the sole Mediator, and no ordained intermediary is needed. The distinction between clergy and laity risks creating a hierarchical caste that obscures Christ’s unique priesthood.

The free-church case. Many Baptist and Pentecostal communities go further, treating ordination as purely functional — a church recognizing and authorizing a minister for a task. The Spirit distributes gifts sovereignly (1 Corinthians 12:11), and these gifts are not confined to an ordained class. The New Testament churches appear to have had fluid, charismatic leadership rather than a fixed sacramental hierarchy.

The strongest form of the argument: The New Testament evidence for a “sacramental character” of ordination is indirect at best. Paul’s language in 2 Timothy 1:6 speaks of a charisma given through the laying on of hands, but the word charisma is used elsewhere for gifts given to all believers (Romans 12:6; 1 Corinthians 12:4). The patristic development of an indelible character is a theological construction built upon the text, not a plain reading of it. And the history of clerical abuse demonstrates the danger of investing ordination with an ontological weight that places the ordained beyond accountability.

This is a serious argument, and it has borne good fruit in recovering the dignity of the laity. But it remains a minority position in the whole of Christian history, and even the Reformers who pressed the priesthood of all believers most vigorously did not abolish ordination — they reformed it.

For Further Study

  1. Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition — the earliest surviving ordination rites, c. 215
  2. Augustine, Contra Epistolam Parmeniani — the foundational argument for the indelible character of ordination
  3. World Council of Churches, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982), Section on Ministry — the most significant modern ecumenical convergence on ordination
  4. Paul F. Bradshaw, Ordination Rites of the Ancient Churches of East and West (1990) — comparative liturgical study
  5. Kevin Giles, Patterns of Ministry Among the First Christians (2nd ed., 2017) — accessible survey of the New Testament and patristic evidence