The Mysteries of Christ and the Sacraments

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PRoviNCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. VoL. XXV JANUARY, I96~ No. I THE MYSTERIES OF CHRIST AND THE SACRAl\1ENTS W HETHER they agree with him or not, theologians must acknowledge Dom Odo Casel, 0. S. B., as a . primary influence in the development of contemporary sacramental theology. The fascination that his theory exercises, even if only as a catalysing agent, is made evident in the ever-growing bibliography which by now must have outpaced all but the most leisured theologian.1 Because of Dom Casel's unwillingness to express himself in Scholastic terms, theologians have experienced a certain uneasiness in dealing with his theories. To speculative arguments advanced against . his po~ition he invariably reverted to the authority of Tradition and explained with untiring patience that all difficulties could be overcome if the critics understood the presence of the his1 Th. Filthaut, Die Kcmtroverse uber die Mysteritmlehre, Warendorf, 1947 (French tr., Paris-Tournai, 1954) gives an account of the first reactions to Case!. For more recent developments cf. J. Gaillard, "Chronique de liturgie,'' Revue Thomiste 57 (1957). pp. 510-551. I COLMAN E. o'NEILL torical mysteries which he proposed was sacramental. His followers adopt the same appeal. Few theologians have succeeded in suppressing their conviction that the human actions of Christ, being essentially sucessive and therefore temporal, cannot be made present in their historical reality several hundred years after the event. At the same time, few theologians have failed to be impressed by easel's undoubted insight into the fact, attested to by Tradition, that the sacraments are not independent, self-sufficient sources of grace but are essentially related to the mystery of Christ into which they introduce the believer. All serious contemporarysacramental theologians have made and are still making, attempts to express the insight in traditional Scholastic terms. Until recently, the principal sponsors of modifications of Casel's theory were more or less external to the Thomistic school: SOhngen,Warnach, Monden and others. In the last few years, however, a version of the mysterypresence theory has been proposed by Thomists, their number apparently growing, claiming to find it in the pages of St. Thomas himself. In this article we wish to examine the new theory as developed in the works of its principal proponents, evaluate its claim to be Thomistic, and, finally, propose an alternative, more securely based, we believe, on Thomistic principles, if further removed from the ideas of Maria Laach. I. New Thomistic theory. Rejecting the possibility of presence of the historical mysteries , some Thomists think to find in St. Thomas' teaching on the instrumental efficacy of the mysteries of Christ a clear basis for asserting a certain presence according to an element of the mysteries which is supra-temporal. Fr. H. E. Schillebeeckx, 0. P., while referring to the eagerlyawaited second volume of his work on the sacramental economy of salvation for a full treatment of the matter, confidently gives a preview of his position as pertaining to· his historical survey of St. Thomas' teaching.2 Since the mysteries of Christ, he • H. E. Schillebeeckx, 0. P., De sacramentele keilseconomie, Antwerp, 1952, pp. 161 f. THE MYSTERIES OF CHRIST AND THE SACRAMENTS 3 states, when elevated by God, participate in the divine power by reason of the instrumental power (virtus instrumentalis) communicated to them, they become " interior mysteries " and thus contain an element which transcends time (perenniteitsgehalte ) .3 Since the divine creative action is eternal, giving to effects not merely their substance but also their place in time and space, the historical acts of Christ in the days of his flesh can, therefore, according to their perenniteitsgehalte, efficiently produce gracetoday.4 The sacraments receive this supratemporal -action of the mysteries and apply it to man. Christ in heaven is not excluded from this action. "The sacraments are not, therefore, new actions of Christ, but the mysteryactions of the Christus historicus, which, according to their supra-temporal content, are still the present actions of the Christus gloriosus." 5 This we take to mean that the virtus instrumentalis, communicated to Christ on earth, preserves...