Six overlapping tendencies make it difficult for evangelicals to grasp baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
First, a spiritualizing reading of redemptive history…
Second, the prophets: Israel’s prophets inveighed against empty formalism…
Third, the Reformation: The Reformers taught that the Word has priority over the sacraments…
Fourth, individualism: The frame of reference for nearly everything, including worship and sacraments, is the individual…
Fifth, inwardness: Grace is invisible, so why do I need visible substances to receive grace?…
Finally, privatization: Religion is a matter of belief and personal devotion…
In the end, all of these factors reduce to one: the Church has embraced modernity’s disdain for ritual, though we have given pious glosses to our worldliness.
In the end, all these factors are part and parcel of our adherence to Christianity.
-Peter Leithart, Against Christianity, 75-76.
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