Sacramental cause

Thomas ( ST III, 60, 1) is interestingly careful in the way he deals with the notion that sacraments are causes. He asks whether sacraments are signs, and his first objection is grammatical: Sacramentum comes from sacrando , which means “sacring,” and, on analogy with medicando , it refers to causality rather than signification: Medicament comes from the causal participle for “healing,” and thus sacraments have “the nature of a cause rather than of a sign. Therefore a sacrament is a kind of cause rather than a kind of sign.”

In stating his own position, he say that sacraments are called so from a “sacred secret” hidden within, or because the sacrament has some relation to sanctify, whether as a cause, a sign, or in some other relation. Sacraments are kinds of signs, but he also suggests that they may be in some way causes as well.

His reply to objection 1 explains how:

Medicine is the efficient cause of death, and therefore the term “medicament” implies causality, in this case efficient causality. But when sanctity is linked to the sacrament, it is not linked as the effect of an efficient cause, “but rather as a formal or a final cause.”

As final causes, sacraments have the ultimate aim of sanctity, but they are not efficient causes in the way medicine is the efficient cause of health, or poison the efficient cause of death. As formal causes, sacraments are the pattern/form in the presence of which the matter of humanity is molded to sanctity. But, again, this is not efficient causality. Sacraments do not cause sanctity in the way a sculptor chisels away stone and makes a statue to emerge; sacraments cause in the way the sculptor’s plan about what the statue is to be or the use to which the sculpture will be put guides the sculptor.

If I’m following, this means that the form of, say, the Eucharist – the actual shape of Eucharistic celebration – forms the recipient and the church into the holy thing that God intends for it. It means that the purpose for which God instituted sacraments is to produce holy persons and a holy church. This leaves to the side the “how does it work?” and the “who does it?” questions. Those remain to be answered.

Recognizing the variations in the notion of “causation” might have some important ecumenical import.