Scripture as ‘Sacrament’ in Early Modern Evangelical Church Ordinances

This article seeks to contribute to the growing body of scholarly literature that challenges the Weberian disenchantment thesis and its assumptions about the role of the Protestant Reformation in shaping the modern world. It does so by interacting with scholarship that has identified a distinctively Protestant version of enchantment associated with the Word. Drawing on an unlikely and heretofore untapped source to support and expand such scholarship, this article examines treatments of the Word in Evangelical Church Ordinances. It demonstrates that the framers of the Church Ordinances frequently used the language of the Eucharist and other sacraments to explain the ministry of the Word, and thereby expressed their belief in the ‘real presence’ of the divine in Scripture. The article thus shows that the ‘enchanted Word’ was not a mere theological sideshow in the Reformation; it was an essential feature of institutionalized Protestant religious life, something previous scholarship has not appreciated.

Duke Scholars

Author Ronald K. Rittgers Divinity School