sacraments

• erroneous likening of human associations to divine

83:8.1Mar­riage which cul­mi­nates in the home is in­deed man’s most ex­alted in­sti­tu­tion, but it is es­sen­tially hu­man; it should never have been called a sacra­ment. The Sethite priests made mar­riage a re­li­gious rit­ual; but for thou­sands of years af­ter Eden, mat­ing con­tin­ued as a purely so­cial and civil in­sti­tu­tion.

83:8.2The liken­ing of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions to di­vine as­so­ci­a­tions is most un­for­tu­nate. The union of hus­band and wife in the mar­riage-home re­la­tion­ship is a ma­te­rial func­tion of the mor­tals of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. True, in­deed, much spir­i­tual prog­ress may ac­crue con­se­quent upon the sin­cere hu­man ef­forts of hus­band and wife to pro­gress, but this does not mean that mar­riage is nec­es­sar­ily sa­cred. Spir­i­tual prog­ress is at­ten­dant upon sin­cere ap­pli­ca­tion to other av­enues of hu­man en­deavor.

83:8.3Nei­ther can mar­riage be truly com­pared to the re­la­tion of the Ad­juster to man nor to the fra­ter­nity of Christ Mi­chael and his hu­man breth­ren. At scarcely any point are such re­la­tion­ships com­pa­ra­ble to the as­so­ci­a­tion of hus­band and wife. And it is most un­for­tu­nate that the hu­man mis­con­cep­tion of these re­la­tion­ships has pro­duced so much con­fu­sion as to the sta­tus of mar­riage.

83:8.4It is also un­for­tu­nate that cer­tain groups of mor­tals have con­ceived of mar­riage as be­ing con­sum­mated by di­vine ac­tion. Such be­liefs lead di­rectly to the con­cept of the in­dis­sol­u­bil­ity of the mar­i­tal state re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances or wishes of the con­tract­ing par­ties. But the very fact of mar­riage dis­so­lu­tion it­self in­di­cates that De­ity is not a con­join­ing party to such unions. If God has once joined any two things or per­sons to­gether, they will re­main thus joined un­til such a time as the di­vine will de­crees their sep­a­ra­tion. But, re­gard­ing mar­riage, which is a hu­man in­sti­tu­tion, who shall pre­sume to sit in judg­ment, to say which mar­riages are unions that might be ap­proved by the uni­verse super­vi­sors in con­trast with those which are purely hu­man in na­ture and ori­gin?

• ideas of ransom, redemption, covenants evolved into

89:9.1The hu­man sac­ri­fice, through­out the course of the evo­lu­tion of Uran­tian rit­u­als, has ad­vanced from the bloody busi­ness of man-eat­ing to higher and more sym­bolic lev­els. The early rit­u­als of sac­ri­fice bred the later cer­e­monies of sacra­ment. In more re­cent times the priest alone would par­take of a bit of the can­ni­bal­is­tic sac­ri­fice or a drop of hu­man blood, and then all would par­take of the an­i­mal sub­sti­tute. These early ideas of ran­som, re­demp­tion, and covenants have evolved into the later-day sacra­men­tal ser­vices. And all this cer­e­mo­nial evo­lu­tion has ex­erted a mighty so­cial­iz­ing in­flu­ence.

89:9.2In con­nec­tion with the Mother of God cult, in Mex­ico and else­where, a sacra­ment of cakes and wine was even­tu­ally uti­lized in lieu of the flesh and blood of the older hu­man sac­ri­fices. The He­brews long prac­ticed this rit­ual as a part of their Pass­over cer­e­monies, and it was from this cer­e­mo­nial that the later Chris­tian ver­sion of the sacra­ment took its ori­gin.

89:9.3The an­cient so­cial broth­er­hoods were based on the rite of blood drink­ing; the early Jew­ish fra­ter­nity was a sac­ri­fi­cial blood af­fair. Paul started out to build a new Chris­tian cult on “the blood of the ev­er­last­ing covenant.” And while he may have un­nec­es­sar­ily en­cum­bered Chris­tian­ity with teach­ings about blood and sac­ri­fice, he did once and for all make an end of the doc­trines of re­demp­tion through hu­man or an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. His the­o­logic com­pro­mises in­di­cate that even rev­e­la­tion must sub­mit to the grad­u­ated con­trol of evo­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Paul, Christ be­came the last and all-suf­fi­cient hu­man sac­ri­fice; the di­vine Judge is now fully and for­ever sat­is­fied.

89:9.4And so, af­ter long ages the cult of the sac­ri­fice has evolved into the cult of the sacra­ment. Thus are the sacra­ments of mod­ern re­li­gions the le­git­i­mate suc­ces­sors of those shock­ing early cer­e­monies of hu­man sac­ri­fice and the still ear­lier can­ni­bal­is­tic rit­u­als. Many still de­pend upon blood for sal­va­tion, but it has at least be­come fig­u­ra­tive, sym­bolic, and mys­tic.

• Mithraics › believed partaking of sacrament ensured eternal life

98:5.4The ad­her­ents of this cult wor­shiped in caves and other se­cret places, chant­ing hymns, mum­bling magic, eat­ing the flesh of the sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals, and drink­ing the blood. Three times a day they wor­shiped, with spe­cial weekly cer­e­mo­ni­als on the day of the sun-god and with the most elab­o­rate ob­ser­vance of all on the an­nual fes­ti­val of Mithras, De­cem­ber twenty-fifth. It was be­lieved that the par­tak­ing of the sacra­ment en­sured eter­nal life, the im­me­di­ate pass­ing, af­ter death, to the bo­som of Mithras, there to tarry in bliss un­til the judg­ment day. On the judg­ment day the Mith­raic keys of heaven would un­lock the gates of Par­a­dise for the re­cep­tion of the faith­ful; where­upon all the un­bap­tized of the liv­ing and the dead would be an­ni­hi­lated upon the re­turn of Mithras to earth. It was taught that, when a man died, he went be­fore Mithras for judg­ment, and that at the end of the world Mithras would sum­mon all the dead from their graves to face the last judg­ment. The wicked would be de­stroyed by fire, and the righ­teous would reign with Mithras for­ever.

• Mithraics › partook of bread and wine

98:6.4Al­ways had it been the prac­tice of Mith­raic wor­shipers, on en­ter­ing the tem­ple, to dip their fin­gers in holy wa­ter. And since in some dis­tricts there were those who at one time be­longed to both re­li­gions, they in­tro­duced this cus­tom into the ma­jor­ity of the Chris­tian churches in the vicin­ity of Rome. Both re­li­gions em­ployed bap­tism and par­took of the sacra­ment of bread and wine. The one great dif­fer­ence be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Chris­tian­ity, aside from the char­ac­ters of Mithras and Je­sus, was that the one en­cour­aged mil­i­tarism while the other was ul­tra­pa­cific. Mith­ra­ism’s tol­er­ance for other re­li­gions (ex­cept later Chris­tian­ity) led to its fi­nal un­do­ing. But the de­cid­ing fac­tor in the strug­gle be­tween the two was the ad­mis­sion of women into the full fel­low­ship of the Chris­tian faith.

• Remembrance Supper was the only sacrament Jesus established

179:5.4In in­sti­tut­ing this re­mem­brance sup­per, the Mas­ter, as was al­ways his habit, re­sorted to para­bles and sym­bols. He em­ployed sym­bols be­cause he wanted to teach cer­tain great spir­i­tual truths in such a man­ner as to make it dif­fi­cult for his suc­ces­sors to at­tach pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and def­i­nite mean­ings to his words. In this way he sought to pre­vent suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions from crys­tal­liz­ing his teach­ing and bind­ing down his spir­i­tual mean­ings by the dead chains of tra­di­tion and dogma. In the es­tab­lish­ment of the only cer­e­mony or sacra­ment as­so­ci­ated with his whole life mis­sion, Je­sus took great pains to sug­gest his mean­ings rather than to com­mit him­self to pre­cise def­i­ni­tions. He did not wish to de­stroy the in­di­vid­ual’s con­cept of di­vine com­mu­nion by es­tab­lish­ing a pre­cise form; nei­ther did he de­sire to limit the be­liever’s spir­i­tual imag­i­na­tion by for­mally cramp­ing it. He rather sought to set man’s re­born soul free upon the joy­ous wings of a new and liv­ing spir­i­tual lib­erty.

179:5.5Not­with­stand­ing the Mas­ter’s ef­fort thus to es­tab­lish this new sacra­ment of the re­mem­brance, those who fol­lowed af­ter him in the in­ter­ven­ing cen­turies saw to it that his ex­press de­sire was ef­fec­tively thwarted in that his sim­ple spir­i­tual sym­bol­ism of that last night in the flesh has been re­duced to pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and sub­jected to the al­most math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion of a set for­mula. Of all Je­sus’ teach­ings none have be­come more tra­di­tion-stan­dard­ized.