In 1964, in the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium (LG), the Catholic magisterium spoke for the first time of the church as the “sacrament of salvation”. In this article, we will first look at the Roman Catholic theological context that led to this statement, based on the idea of the church as a continuation of the incarnation of Christ. Second, we will look at the diversity of Catholic interpretations of the idea of the church as sacrament and look at the different ways that this doctrine is used in practice. We will show that, despite the more conservative interpretations, Catholic sacramentology leads to an inclusivist or even universalist interpretation of the idea of the sacramental church. Third, we will criticize this idea along three axes: its universalism, its ontological excesses, and its loss of sight of the meaning of the ascension.

1. Before Vatican II: extra ecclasiam nullam salus

As we shall see, the idea of the church as sacrament was not explicit until the Second Vatican Council. However, this doctrine has a double context: (1) the church as a continuation of the incarnation and (2) the church as the exclusive place of salvation. Henri Blocher explains how the idea of Church-Incarnation provides the necessary context for understanding contemporary Catholic ecclesiology:

At the heart of all Catholicism, as at the heart of its ecclesiology, it’s easy to discern this thought: the Church is “Jesus Christ poured out and communicated,” so much one with him that she subsists “as a second person of Christ,” and in her is accomplished the extension, the prolongation of the redemptive incarnation. The expression is still used: it was promoted by the “ecclesiological renewal” of which the 19th-century Tubingen school (in reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution) was an important source, and the interwar period (in reaction against the drying up of post-Tridentine juridical ecclesiology) a time of magnificent flowering. If this time has passed, it remains relevant for Catholic ecclesiology in the 21st century.¹Henri Blocher, La doctrine de l’Église et des sacrements, tome 1 (Charols, France: Édifac, 2022), 110, author’s translation.

The idea of Church-Incarnation originated with St. Augustine, in his idea of totus Christus, the whole Christ, made up of the head as well as the Church, which is the body. Augustine was not satisfied with a metaphorical understanding of the Pauline passages on the Church as the body of Christ and sought to give them an ontological interpretation.²Greg. R. Allison, Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 58–59.

Over time, this idea became dogmatized as an understanding of the Church as an extension of the incarnation of Christ. It possesses, like him, human and divine elements united in a single person/church. A certain modesty is preserved in the assertion that the divine elements do not belong to the Church in their own right but are hers only by virtue of her participation in Christ.³Allison, Roman Catholic Theology and Practice, 57.

This ontological link between Christ and the church leads naturally to a very high ecclesiology. The Roman Catholic Church, and her alone, is the body of Christ, and possesses qualities of exclusive mediation that prolong the exclusive mediation of Christ.⁴In Roman theology the mediation of the Church is not fundamentally other than the mediation of Christ, so there is no contradiction between the exclusivity of Christ’s mediation and the Church’s role as mediator. She alone dispenses the sacraments of Christ that are necessary for salvation. Extra ecclesiam nullam salus (Canon 1, 4th Lateran Council, 1215).

This very conservative line would remain the Vatican’s even into the early 20th century, when dissenting voices were already being heard.⁵For an overview of this pre-Vatican II dissent, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (Since 1700), Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine 5 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 368–69. However, the Second Vatican Council marked a major shift in the direction of Rome’s official dogma.

2. Vatican II: No One outside the Church?

For the first time, the Second Vatican Council spoke of the idea of the church as sacrament in documents pertaining to the Church’s teaching magisterium. We will first look at what the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium (LG), says, then we will turn to the question of its interpretation.

2.1. The Church as Sacrament in Lumen Gentium

The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, a normative and infallible document of the Second Vatican Council, mentions the idea of the Church-Sacrament in three paragraphs:

Since the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race, it desires now to unfold more fully to the faithful of the Church and to the whole world its own inner nature and universal mission.⁶“Lumen Gentium,” 21 November 1964, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html

God gathered together as one all those who in faith look upon Jesus as the author of salvation and the source of unity and peace, and established them as the Church that for each and all it may be the visible sacrament of this saving unity.⁷“Lumen Gentium,” §9

[Jesus] sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him has established His Body which is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation.⁸“Lumen Gentium,” §48

As is obvious to any observer, the references to the church as sacrament are not particularly numerous and never really define how we should understand the idea of church as sacrament. As we shall see, this leads to a diversity of interpretations.

Two things are clear, however. Firstly, the church is the Church-Sacrament by virtue of her bond with Christ (LG §1), and her sacramental mission is universal (LG §9, 48). The scope of this universality is not explicit in LG, but we’ll come back to it later.

2.2. What Understanding of the Church as Sacrament?

Given the broad scope for interpretation that LG’s formulation seems to allow, it is not surprising to see a number of rival interpretations of the idea of Church-Sacrament emerging, following, once again, the dividing line between more or less conservative theologians.

On the more conservative side, let us note the remarks of Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI):

Another aspect was the emphasis on the Church’s sacramental character. “Sacramental” is used here in opposition to that superficial view which often enough tried to see the Church as established on the level of worldly legitimacy and to seek for the Church a place among worldly institutions. So, to demand that the Church acquire greater sacramental self-awareness was tantamount to a demand that it again consider and actualize itself as a sign. In St. Augustine’s definition, sacramentum is the equivalent of sacrum signum—i.e., a holy sign. A Church that sees itself sacramentally understands that it partakes of the meaning of a sign, whose responsibility it is to point beyond itself. If the Church is a “sacrament,” a sign of God’s presence among men, then it does not exist for its own sake. Its responsibility becomes a responsibility of pointing beyond itself. It is like a window which best fulfills its function by allowing one to see greater things through it.⁹Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist, 1966): 78–79.

What might be surprising on reading this paragraph is that it seems fundamentally compatible with an evangelical reformed theology! But this is precisely where we need to see a problem: Ratzinger here adopts a sacramental theology that is only part of the whole of Roman sacramental theology. By referring to the Augustinian definition, Ratzinger sets aside any discussion of transubstantiation or the communication of grace. No doubt many Catholics would agree with Ratzinger’s very conciliatory assertions, but a fuller interpretation of the idea of Church-Sacrament must take account of Roman sacramentology and the wider context of the Church-Incarnation idea, two themes Ratzinger does not discuss here, and which will take us away from his relatively conservative position.

Before departing completely from Ratzinger’s interpretation, it is important to dwell on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an important document but of lesser authority than LG, written under Ratzinger’s supervision.

The mission of the Church-Sacrament is an extension of Christ’s mission, in keeping with the idea of the Incarnation-Church:

Thus the Church’s mission is not an addition to that of Christ and the Holy Spirit, but is its sacrament: in her whole being and in all her members, the Church is sent to announce, bear witness, make present, and spread the mystery of the communion of the Holy Trinity.¹⁰Catechism of the Catholic Church §738.

Strictly speaking, it is Christ himself who is the only sacrament (taken in the strong sense of mysterium); the Church is a sacrament in an analogical way, and has the same connection to the mystery of Christ as it has with the Incarnation:

The Greek word mysterion was translated into Latin by two terms: mysterium and sacramentum. In later usage the term sacramentum emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation which was indicated by the term mysterium. In this sense, Christ himself is the mystery of salvation: “For there is no other mystery of God, except Christ.” The saving work of his holy and sanctifying humanity is the sacrament of salvation, which is revealed and active in the Church’s sacraments (which the Eastern Churches also call “the holy mysteries”).¹¹Catechism of the Catholic Church §774.

As a sacrament, the Church has a vertical role, to be the instrument of the union of men with God, and consequently it also has a horizontal role, to be the instrument of the unity of the human race.

“The Church is, in Christ, in some way the sacrament, that is to say, both the sign and the instrument of intimate union with God and of the unity of the whole human race” (LG 1): To be the sacrament of man’s intimate union with God: this is the Church’s primary goal. Because communion between men is rooted in union with God, the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race. In her, this unity has already begun, since she brings together men “from every nation, race, people and language” (Rev 7.9); at the same time, the Church is “sign and instrument” of the full realization of this unity, which has yet to come.¹²Catechism of the Catholic Church §775.

These excerpts from the Catechism say more than Ratzinger did in his commentary on Vatican II but still leave some room for interpretation as to the exact role of the church’s sacramentality in bringing about the union of man with God and the unity of man with man. We will now turn to interpretations of the church as sacrament that seem to us to be more representative of the general trend in Roman Catholic theology in the twentieth century and of an ex opere operato sacramentology.

First, for more liberal theologians, the idea of Church-Incarnation still plays an essential role. There has been, however, a shift towards an incarnationist soteriology, most notably in the thought of Karl Rahner:

Jesus Christ is the fact that manifests God’s self-communication in the world…. But from now on, it is precisely the Church of Christ that is the lasting presence and historical visibility of this ultimate and victorious Word of God in Jesus Christ.¹³Karl Rahner, Traité fondamental de la foi: introduction au concept de christianisme, trans. Gwendoline Jarczyk (Paris: Centurion, 1983): 421–22, author’s translation.

For Rahner, the center of Christ’s work is not his death and resurrection but rather the fact that through the incarnation he bears witness to God’s self-communication.¹⁴Note that in Rahner’s thought, Christ bears witness to God’s self-communication, but this is not restricted to the work of Christ, the Holy Spirit being the second “channel” of divine self-communication. On this subject see Camden M. Bucey, The Triune Gift of Self: A Reformed Critique of Karl Rahner’s Theology of Divine Self-Communication, (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 2014), 56–57. Since this self-communication is the salvific event par excellence, the church becomes the sacrament that achieves the salvation of the world by prolonging this divine self-communication by the very fact that it prolongs the incarnation. By shifting the focus of soteriology from the cross to the incarnation,¹⁵Strictly speaking, this is not a shift but rather taking a stand in ancient debates, the incarnationist position being in the lineage of figures like Athanasius or Duns Scotus. sacramental presence takes on a soteriological value through the very idea of presence.

The French episcopate has produced a study report on the question of the church as sacrament.¹⁶Robert Coffy, “Église-sacrement,” in Église signe du salut parmi les hommes, rapports présentés à l’Assemblée plénière de l’Épiscopat Français de Lourdes 1971 (Paris: Centurion, 1971), 1–91. According to this report, the doctrine of the church as a sacrament of salvation makes it possible to maintain a balance between sacramental theology (which requires participation in the sacraments for salvation) on the one hand and evangelism on the other, which wants everyone to enter into and participate in the church.¹⁷Coffy, “Église-sacrement,” 12. In this relationship, inclusivism is king, and the problem to be solved is how people can have access to salvation without taking part in the church’s sacraments. The obvious solution is for them to participate, in one way or another, in the Church-Sacrament. Once again, the underlying sacramentology is indeed ex opere operato: “[The Church] is an event of salvation: she reveals and realizes the salvation that God grants to men.”¹⁸Coffy, “Église-sacrement,” 32, author’s translation. In fact, the Church-Sacrament is the fundamental sacrament, which is subsequently broken down into seven sacraments.¹⁹Blocher, La doctrine de l’Église et des sacrements, tome 1, 116–17. In this sense, the seven sacraments are relativized and the church itself is brought to the fore.

How, in this inclusivist line, is it possible to maintain a demarcation between the church and the world? The key here is Vatican II’s assertion that the church of Christ “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church (LG §8), i.e. that the church of Christ, the invisible church, is wider than the Roman Church, but only achieves full ecclesiality within the Roman framework. The Roman Church therefore has a role of witness and sacrament towards the wider invisible church (which can be understood to cover the whole of humanity). Alexis Rouiller describes the specificity of the Roman Church as follows:

But one thing is impossible without the Church: God’s grace must be present in the world … in the corporeal dimension of incarnation.²⁰Rahner, Traité fondamental de la foi, 461–62, author’s translation.

He reminds us that this specificity is only made possible by the distinction between the church and the world:

If the Church of Christ is called the sacrament of salvation, the word is to be understood by analogy with the sacraments of faith, the seven sacraments. Like them, the Church-Sacrament will be the effective and tangible sign of Christ’s grace. This obviously presupposes that the Church of Jesus, in order to be a sacrament of salvation, will always present itself to the world without ambiguity, as visible, discernible, with precise contours. This also assumes that, if the Church is a sacrament for the world, it will never be the world, the whole world.²¹Alexis Rouiller, “L’Église, sacrement universel du salut,” Échos de Saint-Maurice 69 (1973): 75, author’s translation.

The Church can be thought of as an iceberg, with believers forming the tip:

Like an iceberg, the immense invisible part of the Church’s mystery emerges sacramentally from its visible part, the believers. In the words of a contemporary Orthodox theologian, you can say where the Church is, but you can’t say where she isn’t. She is visibly in the sacramental and hierarchical organism of the people of God, but we cannot say where her invisible Mystery of grace is not, for only God searches loins and hearts.²²Jean-Miguel Garrigues, L’Église sacrement du salut des hommes (Paris: Mame, 1994), 19, author’s translation.

This concept is explicitly universalistic:

This simple truth does not absolve Christians from evangelizing all the time; on the contrary, it urges them to teach and baptize every nation, while at the same time giving them the certainty and hope that Jesus, through his Spirit, is already present and active before them. So they will not give in to the dangerous dualism of thinking of a visible Church, where the Lord dwells, and alongside it, and outside it, a poor world without God or grace.²³Rouiller, “L’Église, sacrement universel du salut,” 76–77, author’s translation.

The Church’s faithfulness is the guarantor of the salvation of those far away.²⁴Rouiller, “L’Église, sacrement universel du salut,” 77, author’s translation.

The Roman Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament-Church is in fact an impressive feat of theological gymnastics. On the one hand, it combines the historical exclusivism of the Roman Church (extra ecclesiam nullam salus) and the necessity of the sacraments for salvation with a universalism in which one can be saved without belonging to the church or partaking of the sacraments! The Catholic Church remains the only place where salvation exists, and only the Roman Church is the sacrament of salvation among men,²⁵Allison, Roman Catholic Theology, 61. but the Church-Sacrament is also a fundamental doctrine for developing an ecumenism with universalistic tendencies: just as the sacrament is the instrument of the unity of the church, the Church-Sacrament is the instrument of the unity of all humanity in Christ.²⁶Allison, Roman Catholic Theology, 63. Cyprian’s expression “Outside the Church there is no salvation” was transformed by the Second Vatican Council to become not an exclusivist statement but a strongly inclusivist one, with the Church gathering together all men and women in more or less loose circles of belonging.²⁷Blocher, La doctrine de l’Église et des sacrements, tome 1, 119–20. Taken to its logical conclusion, we should not speak of the church as the sacrament of salvation for the world, but of the visible church as the sacrament of salvation for the invisible church.

3. A Reformed Critique: the Church in Covenant Relationship with God

Having provided an overview of the roman doctrine of the church as sacrament of salvation, we now outline a critique of this doctrine from the standpoint of reformed theology.

3.1. The Sacramental Church and the Temptation of Universalism

Before addressing the idea of the Sacrament-Church as such, it is useful to consider the inclusivism (indeed, universalism) that is the driving force and consequence of this doctrine. The appeal of a universalist doctrine is understandable: the Christian wants everyone to achieve communion with God. This desire must not prevent us, however, from taking account of the abundant biblical testimony concerning the eternal damnation of those who do not come to faith. The Bible proclaims with great clarity the existence of hell (see e.g., Isa 66:24; Mark 9:43–49; Jude 7; Rev 20:13–15). Furthermore, the idea often found in the mouths of Catholic priests that “yes, hell exists, but we can expect it to be empty” has no biblical support. On the contrary, Scripture presents the last judgment as a day when humanity is separated into two parts, between those who will be found in Christ and those who will be condemned (see e.g., Matt 24:40–41; 25:41–46).

In reality, Catholic universalism²⁸Catholic universalism is not universal! This idea is widespread but is not an official doctrine of the Roman Church. stems from a theological movement with liberal tendencies which looks beyond the biblical text to locate the basis for its doctrine. The multiplication of biblical texts should therefore serve to convince the evangelical reader, but a wider discussion on the place of Scripture, its authority, and the nature of the evolution-progression of dogma is necessary to go further.

More broadly, the idea of the sacramental church tends, as we have shown above, to lead to a blurring of the church/world distinction, replacing it with a visible/invisible church distinction: outside the visible church are those who do not yet know they are members of Christ’s church. A covenantal evangelical Reformed ecclesiology will insist, if not on separation, at least on the visible distinction of the covenant people from the world. Moreover, the invisible church is within the visible church, the visible people of the covenant, and not the other way around. It is a fundamental error to think that the church’s mission is to make known to the world that they are already in Christ; rather, the church’s mission is to make known to the world what Christ has already accomplished and the faith in him that is necessary to benefit from it.

3.2. The Church-Sacrament, the Incarnation-Church and the Ontological Gospel

The second point of criticism we wish to make against the Roman Catholic doctrine of the church as sacrament of salvation is to show that this doctrine is part of a Roman Catholic tendency to relocate everything in terms of ontological categories.

The doctrine of the church as sacrament, following on from the idea of the church as incarnation in the strongest sense, immediately takes on an ontological dimension. For Gregg Allison, this is an example of the Roman tendency to see nature as capable of contributing to grace,²⁹Allison, Roman Catholic Theology, 65. i.e., the church does not remain on the level of a human or even a divine institution but possesses the divine nature like Christ, conferring on it a role of mediation between God’s grace and the world of nature comparable to Christ’s mediation.³⁰Allison, Roman Catholic Theology, 57. This ontological confusion in Catholic theology leads to a form of monophysitism when applied to Christology. Henri Blocher points out that in the church, the Creator-creature distinction is erased,³¹Blocher, La doctrine de l’Église et des sacrements, tome 1, 151–52. to such an extent that a more rigorous Roman Catholic theologian, such as Yves Congar, is obliged to admit that the two natures scheme is not valid in the church “when applied rigorously.”³²Yves Congar, Sainte Église (Paris: Cerf, 1956), 84; qtd Blocher, La doctrine de l’Église et des sacrements, tome 1, 120, author’s translation.

Moreover, this is a fundamental soteriological error: the idea of the church as sacrament of salvation makes the incarnation the reason for salvation, not the death and resurrection of the incarnate Christ.³³Blocher, La doctrine de l’Église et des sacrements, tome 1, 151–55. This soteriological error is made possible (and even necessary) by the tendency of Roman theology to see the gospel as responding to an ontological rather than an ethical imperative.

For Herman Bavinck, the most fundamental error in Rome’s theology has its origins in the doctrine of creation: man is subject to an internal struggle with concupiscence, which is not a sin but of the order of creation.³⁴Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003–2008), 2:541. To enable man to overcome this struggle, God grants an ontological grace, the donum superadditum.³⁵Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:541. The fall leads to the loss of this grace,³⁶Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:95–96. and redemption then takes on a strongly ontological dimension: sinful man has become subject to concupiscence, and to regain righteousness he needs an infusion of God’s grace (still understood ontologically), an infusion made possible by the sacraments (which explains the centrality of transubstantiation in Roman doctrine). The sinful human being, reduced to the natural state, needs the infusion of divine grace in order to be able to perform works of salvific value.³⁷Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:575. The primary concern is not the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of communion with God; this objective disappears behind the divinization of man, who becomes like God.³⁸Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:577. Against this conception of redemption as the elevation of nature by grace, Bavinck, in line with the Reformation, reminds us that the important opposition is not between the natural and the supernatural but between sin and grace,³⁹Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:577. and thus “the operation of grace is and remains ethical.”⁴⁰Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:579.

Beyond Bavinck’s critique of this “ontological gospel,” we would like to point to Michael Horton’s more recent critique and proposal in his discussion of the nature of union with Christ published in Covenant and Salvation.⁴¹Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007). Horton criticizes what he sees as the Neoplatonic⁴²Horton finds the origin of this model in the works of St. Augustine (Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 193–94), which allows us to see it as a Neoplatonic influence that then spread into Roman theology and whose effects then survived the Thomistic paradigm shift to remain in Roman theology to this day. model of union with Christ, which he calls “overcoming the distance”⁴³Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 153. (thereby taking up Paul Tillich’s nomenclature) and which envisages union with Christ as an ontological transformation of man so that he can enter into communion with God. To this approach, Horton counters that sin introduces not an ontological distance between God and the sinner but an ethical hostility.⁴⁴Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 154. A proper understanding of what separates man from God must derive not from a general metaphysical system but from the covenant.⁴⁵Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 154. Horton then sets out to lay the groundwork for an “covenantal ontology.”⁴⁶Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 181. Such a metaphysical construct places particular emphasis on the personal nature of union with Christ (not merely participation in Christ’s benefits but union with his person through the operation of the person of the Holy Spirit).⁴⁷Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 183. This ontology is primarily forensic⁴⁸Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 198. before being participatory. Moreover, participation is conceived differently than in the Neoplatonic model; in the covenantal model, it is God’s declaration that has efficient power: the declaration of justification brings about regeneration, sanctification, etc.⁴⁹Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 201, 211. The consequences of a “covenantal ontology” do not stop at soteriology, but Horton applies them to ecclesiology⁵⁰Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 202. Union with Christ is central to the application of salvation as well as to ecclesiology, which explains Horton’s reasoning, which seeks to place these two elements in a covenantal framework. : the Church is not to be conceived as a continuation of the incarnation but as the bride of Christ, in covenant relationship with him, his counterpart constituted in his body by the forensic declaration of justification.

3.3. The Absence of Christ

With its twin doctrines of Church-Incarnation and Church-Sacrament, Roman Catholic theology runs the risk of stripping Christ’s ascension of all theological significance.⁵¹Gerrit C. Berkouwer, Studies in. Dogmatics: The Sacraments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969): 61–62. For Henri Blocher, the ascension signifies the “end of Christ’s work on Earth,” an argument that has “enough to pierce Roman ecclesiology.”⁵²Blocher, La doctrine de l’Église et des sacrements, tome 1, 153, author’s translation.

It is important to note here that we are dealing with a complex system of differences. The non-bloody sacrifice of the Mass extends the work of Christ into Catholic sacramentology. This sacramentology becomes, through the idea of the sacramental church, a driving force of Catholic ecclesiology. This ecclesiology, in turn, emphasizes the role of the church in the pursuit of the accomplishment of salvation, especially through the non-bloody sacrifice of the Mass.

Furthermore, the present absence of Christ, who is already in glory, is key to an understanding of the present life of the church as being a life lived at the foot of the cross, suffering in the footsteps of Christ. An over-realized eschatology at this point, exaggerating the presence of the glorious Christ today, runs the risk of leading to a theology of glory.

A full critique of this system is beyond the scope of this essay, but our aim here is to highlight the fact that the reality of the accomplishment of salvation (all is accomplished!) is entirely incompatible with Catholic sacramentology and soteriology—and the conception of Christ’s work they presuppose—and therefore also with the idea of the church as sacrament. The idea of the church as sacrament puts us back at the heart of the system of differences between Rome and the Reformation.

4. Conclusion

After describing the context and the idea of the Church-Sacrament in Roman Catholic theology, we set out to provide a critique of this doctrine that highlights how the key Reformed category of covenant addresses these concerns.

In the place of the Church-Sacrament, the church lives in covenant relationship with its Lord, and that involves

• a distinction between the inside and outside of the covenant, so that the invisible church is in the visible church and not vice versa, against universalism (covenantal ecclesiology);
• an ethical rather than ontological approach to the gospel (covenantal soteriology);
• an expectation of the return of Christ, who is absent today (covenantal eschatology).

In light of these criticisms, we can see that while the idea of the church as sacrament could be appealing to protestants and might even be valid within their specific theological and sacramental framework, the Roman Catholic understanding of the church as sacrament is doubly incompatible with Reformed theology. It is incompatible due to its appeal to classic Roman Catholic ecclesiology and sacramentology that was at the heart of the Reformation 500 years ago, and it is also incompatible due to its leaning towards universalism, a tendency that has appeared in both Roman Catholic and non-traditional protestant theologies in more recent years. Therefore, while it might be possible to fit the Church-Sacrament conception within Reformed ecclesiology, it would appear best to avoid using this category altogether, as it already has a specific and problematic meaning in Roman Catholic theology. From the perspective of Reformed theology, the Roman Catholic doctrine of the church as sacrament of salvation is theologically invalid.

Furthermore, this study on one specific aspect of contemporary Roman Catholic theology is illustrative of wider considerations when engaging aspects of Roman Catholic theology. By showing that, on the one hand, Roman Catholic ecclesiology is in line with the two key ideas of Church-Incarnation and the Catholic conception of the nature-grace relationship, and that, on the other hand, Reformed ecclesiology appeals to the category of covenant, we have in fact shown how this debate fits into a wider antithesis between two very different theological systems. While we hope that the refutation of the idea of Church-Sacrament proposed above may be convincing, we also believe that we have illustrated the fact that it is not always easy to compare Catholic and Reformed theologies in a “modular” way, given that both theologies form complex doctrinal systems with strong internal interconnections. Given the centrality of sacramentology in Roman Catholic theology, we hope to have illustrated here a structural element of this theological system, while also illustrating how the structural elements of Roman Catholic theology are evolving to take on new dimensions in the Vatican II era. A good understanding of these structural elements and their evolution should enable an analysis of Roman Catholic theology that is more sensitive to its true character and its various strands throughout history.

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