Confirmation
From a Blessing at Baptism to a Sacrament of the Bishop
onfirmation is the second of the
seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church and the second of its three “sacraments of
Christian initiation.” Rome teaches that a baptized person is not fully equipped for the Christian
life until a bishop anoints him with chrism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states
plainly that “the reception of the sacrament of Confirmation is necessary for the completion of
baptismal grace” (§1285).
That claim raises the question the Reformers pressed at every point: Where has God promised this? A rite that began as a simple laying on of hands and a public confession of faith was turned, over many centuries, into a sacrament said to give the Holy Spirit in a fuller measure than baptism. This page traces that growth, sets out what Rome teaches, and weighs it by the Word of God.
Background
Rome finds the origin of confirmation in the Acts of the Apostles, where Peter and John laid hands on the believers in Samaria, “and they received the Holy Ghost” (Acts 8:17; cf. 19:6). The Catechism adds that “very early, the better to signify the gift of the Holy Spirit, an anointing with perfumed oil (chrism) was added to the laying on of hands” (§1289). In the first centuries this anointing was part of the baptismal service itself. “In the first centuries Confirmation generally comprised one single celebration with Baptism, forming with it a ‘double sacrament,’ according to the expression of St. Cyprian” (§1290).
Calvin did not deny that the ancient church had such a custom. He described it as a rite of catechism and blessing for those baptized in infancy:
It was anciently customary for the children of Christians, after they had grown up, to appear before the bishop to fulfil that duty which was required of such adults as presented themselves for baptism. . . . In order that this act, which otherwise justly required to be grave and holy, might have more reverence and dignity, the ceremony of laying on of hands was also used. Thus the boy, on his faith being approved, was dismissed with a solemn blessing.1
History
The separation of confirmation from baptism was the work of circumstance. Rome itself explains that “the multiplication of infant baptisms all through the year, the increase of rural parishes, and the growth of dioceses often prevented the bishop from being present at all baptismal celebrations. In the West the desire to reserve the completion of Baptism to the bishop caused the temporal separation of the two sacraments” (§1290). The Eastern churches never made this division. There the priest who baptizes anoints the infant at once, using oil a bishop has consecrated, and the child receives communion in the same service (§1312, §1318).
In the West, then, a rite that had been the closing act of baptism became a separate ceremony, often administered years later. A separate ceremony needed a separate explanation. The explanation that won the day came from a Pentecost sermon preached in fifth-century Gaul. Catholic scholarship now attributes it to Faustus of Riez (c. 404–95). It is the first known sermon to treat confirmatio as a familiar term, and it introduced the picture of the confirmed as soldiers strengthened for battle. The ninth-century Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, a famous collection of forgeries, attributed the sermon to Pope Melchiades (311–14). Under his name it passed into the canon law of Gratian and into the theology of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, who believed they were citing a fourth-century Roman bishop.2
Development
The supposed words of Melchiades became the standard definition of the sacrament. The Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), written to instruct parish priests, quotes them at length:
In baptism man is enlisted into the service, in confirmation he is equipped for battle: at the baptismal font the Holy Ghost imparts fulness to accomplish innocence, but in confirmation he ministers perfection to augment grace: in baptism we are regenerated unto life; after baptism we are fortified for the combat.3
The same catechism defends the sacrament by appeal to “Pope Melchiades” and “St. Clement,” and adds that the confirmed person “begins to be settled in firmness by the strength of a new virtue, and thus to become a perfect soldier of Christ.”4 In other words, the definition on which the medieval sacrament rested came from a sermon that was not written by the pope whose authority gave it weight.
The Council of Trent closed the question in 1547. Its first canon on confirmation condemned anyone who said “that the confirmation of those who have been baptized is an idle ceremony, and not rather a true and proper sacrament; or that it was formerly nothing more than a kind of catechism, whereby they who were near years of discretion, declared an account of their faith in the face of the Church.” The third canon reserved the ordinary ministry of the rite to “the bishop only.”5 The council named the very view the Reformers held, and anathematized it.
What Rome Teaches
The present Catechism teaches that confirmation’s effect “is the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost” (§1302). It “brings an increase and deepening of baptismal grace”: it roots the believer more deeply in divine sonship, unites him more firmly to Christ, increases the gifts of the Spirit, perfects his bond with the Church, and gives him “a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ” (§1303).
Four further points follow. First, the sacrament cannot be repeated, because “it too imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark, the ‘character’” (§1304). Second, it is required: “the faithful are obliged to receive this sacrament at the appropriate time,” for without it “Christian initiation remains incomplete” (§1306). Third, in the Latin rite “the ordinary minister of Confirmation is the bishop,” who has “received the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Orders” (§1313). Fourth, the outward sign is the anointing with chrism, which Rome calls “the sign of consecration” (§1294). Confirmation thus binds the believer’s experience of the Spirit to the oil, to the bishop, and to the hierarchy that stands behind him.
The Reformers’ Response
Luther dismissed the sacrament in 1520 in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. If every laying on of hands made a sacrament, he asked, why not make one of every act of the apostles?
It is surprising that it should have entered any one’s mind to make a Sacrament of Confirmation out of that laying on of hands which Christ applied to little children, and by which the apostles bestowed the Holy Spirit, ordained presbyters, and healed the sick. . . . But if whatever the apostles did is a sacrament, why has not preaching rather been made into a sacrament?6
Luther’s point was that a sacrament requires a word of divine promise joined to a sign, and that no such promise is attached to confirmation. He was willing to keep a laying on of hands as a pious rite, but not to call it a sacrament of God. Calvin made the same objection with greater force. The question was not whether the rite was old or venerable, but whether God had commanded it:
But where is the word of God which promises the presence of the Holy Spirit here? Not one iota can they allege. How will they assure us that their chrism is a vehicle of the Holy Spirit? We see oil, that is, a thick and greasy liquid, but nothing more. “Let the word be added to the element,” says Augustine, “and it will become a sacrament.”7
Calvin saw a graver danger in the claim that baptism is incomplete without confirmation. To say that the Spirit is given in baptism “for righteousness” but in confirmation “for increase of grace” is to deny what Paul teaches of baptism: “Are we not, then, buried with Christ by baptism, and made partakers of his death, that we may also be partners of his resurrection?”8 Yet Calvin did not want to discard the ancient practice. He wanted it restored to its true purpose:
I wish we could retain the custom, which, as I have observed, existed in the early Church, before this abortive mask of a sacrament appeared. It would not be such a confirmation as they pretend, one which cannot even be named without injury to baptism, but catechising by which those in boyhood, or immediately beyond it, would give an account of their faith in the face of the Church.9
That is exactly the view Trent condemned in its first canon. The Reformed churches put Calvin’s wish into practice through catechisms, such as the Heidelberg Catechism, and through the public profession of faith that admitted the young to the Lord’s Table.
Confirmation and Scripture
Christ instituted two signs, not seven. The Lord commanded his disciples to baptize (Matthew 28:19) and to eat and drink in remembrance of him (1 Corinthians 11:23–26). Nowhere did he command an anointing with chrism or attach a promise to it. A sacrament is God’s seal upon his own promise, and men have no authority to create one.
The Spirit is given with faith in Christ. “In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13). “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9). Every believer has the Spirit, and no Christian is half-equipped until a bishop arrives. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13).
The events in Samaria were apostolic and extraordinary. Luke records that the Samaritans had been baptized but had not yet received the Spirit, and that the Spirit came when the apostles laid hands on them (Acts 8:14–17). The purpose was to join this new and once-despised people to the one church founded at Jerusalem, and the visible gifts that followed marked the apostles as Christ’s chosen witnesses (Acts 8:18; 2 Corinthians 12:12). Luke does not present it as a rite for every believer in every age. Nor does he speak of oil.
Baptism is complete because Christ is complete. “And ye are complete in him” (Colossians 2:10). The believer who has been “buried with him in baptism” has also been “risen with him through the faith of the operation of God” (Colossians 2:12). The strength to confess Christ boldly does not come from chrism but from the Spirit who dwells in every child of God, and from the Word, which is “the sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17).
What the church owes its young people is what Calvin asked for: faithful teaching, a credible confession of faith before the congregation, and a welcome to the Lord’s Table. See Baptism in Roman Catholic Teaching and The Seven Sacraments.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.
