The Number and Enumeration of Sacraments

The Diversity

Christians agree that God works through visible, material means — water, bread, wine, oil, the laying on of hands. They disagree about which of these material acts deserve the label “sacrament.”

Rome and the East enumerate seven sacraments: Baptism, the Eucharist (Divine Liturgy), Confirmation (Chrismation), Penance (Confession), Anointing of the Sick (Holy Unction), Holy Orders, and Matrimony.

The number seven was formalized in the West by Peter Lombard (Sentences IV, c. 1150) and dogmatically defined at the Council of Trent (Session VII, 1547). The East received the same enumeration, though the Orthodox tradition has historically been less insistent on the number itself and more focused on the mysteriological character of the Church’s entire life [*].

Classical Protestantism recognizes two “dominical sacraments” — Baptism and the Lord’s Supper — on the ground that only these two were directly instituted by Christ with a visible sign and a command to continue.

The Augsburg Confession (Article XIII) adds Absolution as a possible third; some Lutheran scholastics counted Ordination. But the normative Protestant position is two. The Westminster Confession (XXVII.4) is explicit: “There be only two sacraments ordained by Christ our Lord in the Gospel.”

Anglicanism occupies a deliberate middle ground. The Thirty-Nine Articles (Article XXV) distinguish “two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel” from five rites “commonly called Sacraments” which are “not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel.”

The five are not rejected; they are reclassified. They lack dominical institution or a visible sign appointed by Christ, but they are genuine rites of the Church with spiritual efficacy. This Anglican taxonomy has proved remarkably useful in ecumenical dialogue, offering a framework that both Catholic and Protestant interlocutors can engage with.

Scriptural Warrant for Each Position

For seven sacraments: Each of the seven can point to scriptural roots. Baptism: Matthew 28:19. Eucharist: Luke 22:19-20. Confirmation: Acts 8:17, 19:6. Penance: John 20:22-23. Anointing: James 5:14-15. Orders: 1 Timothy 4:14, 2 Timothy 1:6. Matrimony: Ephesians 5:31-32 (where Paul calls marriage a mysterion — the Vulgate renders this sacramentum).

For two sacraments: The dominical criterion restricts the count to rites that Christ himself instituted with an explicit command and a visible element. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them” (Matthew 28:19). “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). The other five practices are present in Scripture but lack this specific form of institution — they are apostolic practices, not dominical commands with attached material signs.

For the Anglican middle: The distinction between “sacraments of the Gospel” and “sacramental rites” preserves the unique dominical authority of Baptism and the Supper while acknowledging that the other five are genuine means of grace, practiced from the apostolic age.

The scriptural question is ultimately a question about criteria. What makes an act a “sacrament”? If the criterion is dominical institution with a material sign and an explicit command, only two qualify clearly. If the criterion is apostolic practice conveying grace through material means, the number expands. If the criterion is the Church’s Spirit-guided recognition of God’s gracious action in material forms, the number might expand further still. Scripture does not define the word “sacrament” or enumerate a list — the enumeration is a theological judgment about Scripture, not a direct scriptural claim.

Patristic and Historical Roots

The early Church did not enumerate the sacraments. The Fathers used the term mysterion (or sacramentum) broadly — Augustine applied it to the sign of the cross, the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and dozens of other realities. The restriction to a specific list is a medieval Western development.

Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141) still counted sacraments in the dozens. Peter Lombard’s enumeration of seven (Sentences IV, d. 1-2) won the field in the West, and Thomas Aquinas gave it systematic theological justification (Summa Theologiae III, qq. 60-65).

Aquinas argued that the seven sacraments correspond to the needs of human life: birth (Baptism), growth (Confirmation), nourishment (Eucharist), healing (Penance and Anointing), and the ordering of social life (Orders and Matrimony). This anthropological argument is elegant but does not claim direct dominical institution for all seven in the same way. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) assumed seven; Florence (1439) defined the list explicitly; Trent made it dogma.

The East adopted the seven-count, likely under Western influence after the thirteenth century, though the substance of the seven rites was practiced from antiquity.

Orthodox theologians like Alexander Schmemann have argued that the fixation on the number is itself a Western import, and that the Eastern tradition is better served by a broader mysteriological theology in which the whole Church is sacramental [*]. The Council of Jerusalem (1672) formally affirmed seven sacraments for the Orthodox Church, but the conciliar authority of this council is debated within Orthodoxy itself.

The Reformers’ restriction to two was driven by their principle of sola scriptura: a sacrament requires dominical institution plus a visible sign plus a promise of grace. Only Baptism and the Lord’s Supper meet all three criteria unambiguously. Luther’s Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) originally recognized three sacraments (Baptism, the Eucharist, and Penance) before narrowing to two. This early hesitation reveals that even within the Reformation the boundary of “sacrament” was debated, not self-evident.

The Council of Trent’s response was sharp: “If anyone says that the sacraments of the New Law were not all instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord, or that there are more or fewer than seven… let him be anathema” (Session VII, Canon 1). This anathema was directed at the Protestant position but also, implicitly, at the patristic fluidity that preceded Lombard’s enumeration — a fact that creates its own internal tension within the Roman tradition.

The Case for Compatibility

The compatibility is stronger than the polemical history suggests, because the dispute is largely definitional rather than substantive.

Protestants do not reject the practices enumerated in the additional five. Most Protestant churches practice ordination, solemnize marriage, hear confessions (in pastoral contexts), pray for the sick with anointing (James 5:14), and practice confirmation or its equivalent.

What they deny is that these practices should be classified under the specific theological category “sacrament” as defined by dominical institution. The substance is shared; the taxonomy differs. This is a dispute about classification, not about the reality or value of the rites themselves.

The ecumenical dialogues of the twentieth century produced significant convergence. The Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry document (Faith and Order Commission, 1982) found broad agreement on Baptism and Eucharist while noting that “churches differ in the number of sacraments they recognize” — and treated this difference as a difference in theological vocabulary, not in fundamental belief. The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), while focused on soteriology, implicitly reduced the sacramental enumeration dispute by showing that the traditions’ divergent vocabularies can express compatible convictions.

Conversely, Rome and the East do not deny that Baptism and the Eucharist hold a certain primacy. Thomas Aquinas calls the Eucharist the “greatest of the sacraments” (Summa Theologiae III, q. 65, a. 3). The Eastern tradition treats Baptism, Chrismation, and the Eucharist as the “sacraments of initiation” with a special centrality.

The Anglican solution — two sacraments, five sacramental rites — makes the compatibility explicit. It preserves the Protestant concern (dominical institution as a criterion) while honoring the Catholic concern (the five rites are genuine means of grace, not empty ceremonies).

The real question underneath the enumeration dispute is: what is a sacrament? If the definition requires dominical institution, you get two. If the definition requires only that the Church’s action convey grace through material signs, you get seven or more. The traditions are answering different questions under the same word.

Schmemann’s insight is particularly valuable here: the fixation on number is itself a symptom of a particular (Western, scholastic) way of thinking about sacraments — as discrete, countable, juridically defined acts. The Eastern mysteriological tradition, at its best, sees the whole life of the Church as sacramental — the liturgy, the icons, the blessing of water, the funeral rite — without needing to draw a sharp line between “sacrament” and “non-sacrament.” This broader vision does not contradict the seven-count; it relativizes its importance.

The Boundary with Layer 4

The diversity becomes a faultline when the enumeration carries soteriological weight. If the claim is that all seven sacraments are necessary for salvation — and that Protestants, by not recognizing five of them as sacraments, lack access to the grace those rites convey — then the numbering dispute becomes a dispute about the sufficiency of grace.

Rome’s own position is nuanced here. Not all seven sacraments are necessary for every individual. Holy Orders and Matrimony are vocational, not universal. Anointing of the Sick presupposes illness. The strictly necessary sacraments are Baptism and, for the restoration of post-baptismal sin, Penance. The Eucharist is necessary for the fullness of Christian life but not in the same sense as Baptism [*].

The boundary also presses if the Protestant restriction to two sacraments is used to deny that ordination, marriage, confession, or anointing convey any grace — reducing them to mere human conventions. Most Protestant theology does not go this far; it affirms these as genuine means of grace while denying them the formal title “sacrament.”

The sharpest tension concerns Penance. If auricular confession to a priest with absolution is a sacrament necessary for the forgiveness of post-baptismal mortal sin, that is a claim Protestantism categorically rejects. The sacramental theology of Penance itself — not merely its enumeration — is a Layer 4 matter.

A secondary tension concerns Confirmation/Chrismation. If Chrismation is a sacrament that confers the Holy Spirit in a way distinct from Baptism, and if the absence of Chrismation leaves the baptized person without the Spirit’s fullness, then the enumeration carries pneumatological consequences. The Eastern practice of administering Chrismation immediately after infant Baptism, and the Western practice of delaying Confirmation, reflect different theologies of initiation that press beyond mere enumeration into substantive sacramental theology.

For Further Study

• Peter Lombard, Sentences, Book IV (c. 1150)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, qq. 60-65
• Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (SVS Press, 1963)
• Council of Trent, Session VII, “On the Sacraments in General” (1547)
• The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Article XXV