Aquinas on sacraments

A few notes on Thomas on the sacraments, aided by Frederick Bauerschmidt’s excellent notes (in Holy Teaching , recently published by Brazos Press).

1) Bauerschmidt points out that Aquinas is bucking a trend in medieval theology by placing sacraments under the genus of “sign” rather than under the genus of “cause.” He does both, of course, but Aquinas describes the causation of the sacraments as a causation that pertains to signs. In short, in the context of medieval theology, Aquinas is moving in a more “Augustinian” direction.

2) Sacraments are causes of grace, but it is not clear what Aquinas means by “grace” in this context. Grace could mean God’s favor, and in this sense sacraments are not causes but results of grace. Grace might also mean “santifying grace,” whether the habitus or capacity of good works that is given in the soul or the actual grace that takes the form of good works. This seems more likely for Aquinas, but the ambiguity about the kind of grace involved might have something to do with later medieval and even Reformation debates about the efficacy of sacraments.

3) Aquinas works, as most medieval theologians did, with a triple classification rather than the binary of sign-thing. Between the “sacramentum tantum” and the “res tantum” there is the “res et sacramentum.” The “sign” of baptism is the pouring of water along with the form of words in its ritual context; the “thing and sign” is the character or seal that is indelibly impressed on the soul, and this character is the ex opere operato result of a valid sacrament; the “thing itself” is the justification of the sinner, which is not an inevitable result of a valid baptism. I’d want to describe things differently, but the triple scheme is a useful starting point at least. There are some things that invariably happen to the baptized simply by virtue of their being baptized (they are ingrafted into the body of Christ, they are marked as Christ’s possession), but the ultimate “thing” to which baptism points does not take hold in every baptized person.

4) One of the very helpful emphases in Aquinas is his insistence, against the “occasionalist” doctrines of the medieval church, that the effect of the sacraments is “proportionate” to its natural reality. God didn’t arbitrarily choose a meal as a sign of our participation in Christ and one another; the Supper picks up on and transforms the phenomenological reality of meals. In other words, Aquinas puts sacramental theology in a creationist context – setting it within an understanding of created reality, the bodily nature of human existence, our dependence on sensible information, etc.

At the same time, Thomas’s critique of occasionalism might imply a kind of nature/supernature scheme. He challenges the king and the lead coin description of sacramental efficacy – sacraments are effective in the way a lead coin stands for real currency, because of the will of the king. By saying that there is intrinsic value or meaning to the sacramental elements, Thomas may be saying that there is some power or value “inherent” in things that is somehow distinct from God’s naming of them. If God says that a lead coin has X value, it simply does; this is not “mere imputation.”

5) I could do without the Aristotelian terminology, but Aquinas’ claim that sacraments are a combination of the matter (element in action) and form (words) is a helpful correction to a zoom-lens emphasis on the elements apart from their liturgical and verbal context.

6) Bauerschmidt points out that for Aquinas sacraments are not primarily remedies for sin, but are means for perfecting our humanity. This fits nicely with the emphasis on much covenant theology on prelapsarian sacraments.