Common Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism - National ...

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were given ―under the Law‖ (Scots Confession XXI) from those given under the new
dispensation. The Second Helvetic Confession asserts that ―a great difference‖ exists between
the signs. The new signs are ―are more firm and lasting,‖ ―more simple and less laborious,‖ and
―belong to a more numerous people.‖ Further, ―both the substance and promise‖ (et rem et
promissionem) have been ―fulfilled or perfected‖ in Christ, and ―a greater abundance of the
Spirit‖ follows (XIX).
3. c. Summary
In our respective accounts of sacramentality it is evident that this theological concept
weighs more heavily in the Catholic than in the Reformed tradition. Perhaps this is most clear in
our respective understandings of ecclesiology. As we have seen in the Catholic section, the
notion of the Church as sacrament emerged in theology, in the conciliar documents of the Second
Vatican Council, and has been utilized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Reformed
theologians have been less apt to appropriate this ecclesiological model. It is interesting that the
following statement appeared in the 1976 Report of the U.S. Presbyterian & Reformed-Roman
Catholic Dialogue, entitled The Unity We Seek.
…we see the Church as called to be a sign—a sacrament—
of that unity which God has willed for his creation and
disclosed in Jesus Christ.
However at the international level things are quite different.
In the second phase (1984-1990) of the Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church
and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Final Report entitled Towards a <strong>Common</strong>
Understanding of the Church, two respective conceptions of the Church were examined: the
Church as ―Creatura Verbi‖ for the Reformed tradition and the Church as ―Sacrament of Grace‖
for Roman Catholics. In their ―Questions and Reflections‖ on these distinct ecclesiologies the
document states what is worth quoting in full.
112. We are agreed in recognizing the radical dependence
of the church in receiving the transcendent gift which God
makes to it, and we recognize that gift as the basis of its
activity of service for the salvation of humanity. But we do
not yet understand the nature of this salutary activity in the
same way. The Reformed commonly allege that Catholics
appropriate to the church the role proper to Christ. Roman
Catholics, for their part, commonly accused the Reformed
of holding the church apart from the work of salvation and
of giving up the assurance that Christ is truly present and
acting in his church. Both these views are caricatures, but
they can help to focus attention on genuine underlying
differences of perspective, of which the themes of creatura
verbi and sacramentum gratiae serve as symbols.
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