SACK, FRIEDRICH SAMUEL GOTTFRIED:
German Reformed; b. at Magdeburg Sept. 4, 1738; d. at Berlin Oct. 2, 1817. He was educated at the University of Frankfort (1755-57) and in England (1758-59), and was appointed, in 1769, German Reformed preacher in his native city. In 1777 he was called to Berlin as fifth court and cathedral preacher, becoming the Reformed member of the supreme consistory in 1786. He gradually rose to be first court preacher, but was chiefly active in religious instruction and in official duties. In 1804 he was made chief school councilor, and in 1814 was appointed presiding officer of the committee for the improvement of the Protestant church system; in 1816 he became a bishop of the Evangelical Church. In his theological views he was slightly semi-Pelagian, but an opponent of deism and of the speculation and pantheistic tendencies of German philosophy beginning with Fichte. In ecclesiastical administration he sought to keep the Church from too close connection with the State, and in 1788 was one of the five who protested against the officializing of orthodoxy enacted by the religious edict issued by Wollner's ministry. He labored earnestly to revive true religion among both Lutherans and Reformed, as exemplified in his Gutachten uber die Verbesserung des Religionszustandes in den koniglichcn preussischen Landern (Berlin, 1802). He also wrote Schriften an einen Freund den Hcrrn Dr. Bahrdt und sein Glaubensbekenntnis betreffend (1770); Ein Wort der Ermunterung an meine Mitbilrger (1S07); and Ueber die Vereinigung der beiden protestantischen Kirchenparteien in der preussischen Monarchic (1812). (K. H. SACKf.)
Bibliography: M. g. Lowe, Bildnisse . jetztlebender Berliner Gelehrten, Berlin, 1806-07 (supplied by Sack himself) ; F. Theremin, Gedachtnisspredigt auf den Bischoj F. S. G. Sack, Berlin, 1817; J. M. H. Doring, Die deut-
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Sack Brethren
Sacrament
schen Kanzelredner des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, p. 365, Neustadt, 1830.
SACK, KARL HEINRICH: German Lutheran, son of the preceding; b. at Berlin Oct. 17, 1789; d. at Bonn Oct. 16, 1875. He was educated at the University of Gottingen, returning to Berlin in 1810. Three years later he served as a volunteer in the Napoleonic war, where he gained the Iron Cross, and in 1815 returned to the field as a chaplain. On the close of hostilities he spent a year and a half in touring Germany, Holland, and England, and on his return became privat-docent at the University of Berlin. In 1818 he was called to Bonn as professor of theology, and in the following year also became Lutheran pastor in the same city. In 1834, however, he resigned his pastorate that he might devote himself to his professorial duties. In his theology Sack was strongly influencd by Schleiermacher, as is clear from his Idee und Entwurf der christlichen Apologetik (Bonn, 1819), Christliche Apologetik (Hamburg, 1829), and Christliche Polemik (1838). His rigid adherence to the Bible as the foundation of the Church was evinced in his Vom Worte Gottes (Bonn, 1825) and Ueber das Ansehen der heiligen Schrift (1827; in collaboration with Nitzsch and Gottfried Christian Friedrich Liicke), while he attacked the myth-theory of Strauss in his Das Leben Jesu von Strauss (1836). Shortly after 1840 Sack visited Scotland, the results of his observations being embodied in his Die Kirche von Schotland (2 parts, Heidelberg, 1844-45). In 1847 he accepted a call to Magdeburg as consistorial councilor. Here, in the face of many difficulties, he strove faithfully to promote the cause of union, until, in 1860, he retired from active life, living henceforth first in Berlin, and later at Neuwied and Bonn. During these years of retirement he wrote his last work, Ueber die Geschichte der Predigt von Mosheim bis Schleiermacher (1866). (David Erdmann1\)
Bibliography: W. Beyschlag, Karl Immanuel Nitzsch, Berlin, 1872; Neue evangelische Kirchenzeitung, 1875, pp. 772-773; L. Lemme, Heilsthatsachen und Glaubenserfahrung, Heidelberg, 1895.
SACRAMENT.
Name and Early Church Theory (§ 1).
Medieval Development of Sacramental Doctrine (§ 2).
Nature of Sacraments (§ 3).
Intention (§4).
Necessity of the Sacraments (§ 5).
Protestant Teaching (§ 6).
The name sacrament is given to seven sacred Christian rites in the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches, and to two, baptism and the Lord's Supper, in the Protestant churches. The Greek word mysterion, "mystery," used in the Eastern Church to designate these rites, is taken from the New Testament, and contains a reference to the hidden virtue behind the outward
i. Name symbol (see Mystagogical Theoland Early ogy). The Latin word sacramentum
Church means something that is consecrated,
Theory, more particularly an oath, especially
a military oath of allegiance to the
standard; and also the sum of money deposited in
court by the plaintiff and defendant previous to the
trial of a case, and kept in some sacred place. The
term was applied to Christian rites in the time of Tertullian, but can not be traced further back by any distinct testimony. Jerome translated the Greek work mysterion by sacramentum (Eph. i. 9, iii. 3, 9, v. 32; I Tim. iii. 16; Rev. i. 20), and from the Vulgate the word sacrament passed into the Reims Version in Eph. v. 32, where marriage is spoken of, and the translation is, "This is a great sacrament." In other cases the Reims Version retains the word "mystery."
/ The doctrine of the sacraments was not fully (developed till the Middle Ages, and the Schoolmen I did for it what the Church Fathers did for the doc- Itrines of the Trinity and for Christology. With J the exception of Augustine, none of the Fathers I gave more than passing attention to the definition \and doctrine of sacraments; but the Eastern Church meld that there were two sacraments, baptism and [the Eucharist, although later the number seven yvas accepted. St. Augustine has a number of passages bearing on the definition, meaning, and necessity of the sacraments. He calls baptism and the Eucharist sacraments "in an eminent sense" (Epist. ad Januarium, liv. 1, MPL, xxxiii. 2000), and he likewise applied the term sacrament to ordination to the priesthood (Contra epist. Parmeniani, II., xiii. 20; MPL, xliii. 70), to marriage (De bono conjugali, 21; MPL, xl. 394; NPNF, 1 ser., iii. 408), and to other rites. He assigned sacraments to the Old Testament as well as to the New, and spoke of the former as promising a Savior, and of the latter as giving salvation (On Ps. lxxiv. 1 ; NPNF, 1 ser. viii. 343). He defined a sacrament as a visible sign of a thing divine (De catechizandis rudibus, xxvi. 50; NPNF, 1 ser., iii. 312), and, commenting on John vi. 41-59, he declared: "The sacrament is one thing, the virtue of the sacrament another" (In Joannis Evangelium Tractatus, xxvi. 11; NPNF, vii. 171). He did not, however, write a connected treatise on the sacraments; this task remained for the Schoolmen.
The sacramental system was one of the inspiring constructions of the Schoolmen and engaged their most careful and profound speculation. To no other one branch of theology did they give more attention, and their conclusions determined the dogma of the Latin Church, especially when reaffirmed by the Council of Trent. The theologians most prominent
(in developing the sacramental system were Hugo of St. Victor, who wrote the first formal treatise on the sacraments (see Htjgo of St. Victor, §§ 5-6), Ppter Tiomj-iarrl, Alejxander^pf Hales, 2. Medie- and Thomas Aquinas "(qqTvJ. The val Devel- last-named~3iaTlittle more than clearly opment of reaffirm the views of his three predeces- Sacramental sors, especially Alexander of Hales; Doctrine, and with him the development may be said to have come to an end, for though the Franciscan Duns Scotus (q.v.) modified some parts of the doctrine, his teachings were set aside by the Council of Ferrara (1439) in favor of the clearer statements of his great Dominican antagonist, Thomas Aquinas. The Schoolmen all started with the definitions of Augustine and were not conscious of having departed from him, although they did so by laying emphasis upon the ex opere
Sacrament