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Chapter Fourteen: Sacraments
- University of Notre Dame Press
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Fourteen Sacraments . , .. There is, indeed, a theology of sacraments in Aquinas. It does not, however , come in the form of a “treatise on sacraments.” Thomas Aquinas, like other Scholastic masters, was not writing a theology of this or that. The subject of his theology was God. When he dealt with this or that, it was as it comes forth from God and returns to God. This means that when these other things come explicitly into view, as the sacraments of the Church do at the end of the Tertia Pars of the Summa Theologiae, what he says about them is not all he has to say about them. Many theological things already said are assumed to be on the mind of the reader, who is expected to read the new material in their light. Like the other masters, Aquinas had to decide when and where the sacraments should come into view in his theology. Peter Lombard had put sacraments in Book IV of his Liber Sententiarum, and in the prologue to his Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum Aquinas explained how he understood that choice.1 He will maintain the positioning of considera tion of the sacraments that he found in the Sentences, and the eschatological perspective that it entails, in his Summa contra Gentiles and in the Summa Theologiae.2 Sacraments in the Summa The Summa, like the Bible, requires a continuous reading as well as the piecemeal reading of it that is often imposed by a theological curricu- lum or a research project.3 The progression of Aquinas’ theology, as it appears in its most refined state in the Summa, is not linear: he does not pass from one thing to another. He is looking at everything all of the time, but in a perspective that moves gradually from the more abstract and universal to the more particular . The subject is always God, and what comes forth from God and returns to God. In the Prima Pars4 this subject is dealt with in its most general terms, in the great questions about God, creation, and divine government. The move toward the concrete has, however, already begun in the Prima Pars. Created reality has its center of interest in Man and Woman, introduced in terms of the account of their creation provided by Genesis. Their unique openness to God as creatures made in God’s image and likeness, with the unique ability this gives them to act and interact within the world governed by God, is brought into focus in the end questions of the Prima Pars. The carried-over presence of these analyses of God and humans from the Prima Pars makes Aquinas’ discussion on the sacraments both a genuine theology and a genuine theological anthropology. The Prima Secundae analyzes the God-human relationship on the general level of human moral action in quest of blessedness and of God, the giver of blessedness, acting on humans through the community-forming power of law and grace.The consideration remains abstract, but there is a growth in concreteness with the introduction of certain temporal events: the original fall and its consequences for human solidarity in sin is introduced into the general consideration of moral fault; the giving of the law through Moses and the institutional establishment of God’s people is integrated into the discussion on law; and the coming of the New Law in the grace of the Holy Spirit gives body to the discussion on grace. By recalling these analyses of the Prima Secundae one can look at sacraments in the Tertia Pars as rituals that are God-given and God-driven acts of human moral choice, made in community, in which humans seek out the blessedness of eternal life. In the Secunda Secundae God is seen as acting in the more specifically biblical virtues and states of life by which humans return to God. Here is a growth in concreteness because this is the way of life that is lived in the Church. Although the Secunda Secundae introduces many features of life in the Church of the New Testament, the concept of Church is still sufficiently abstract to correspond to the ecclesia ab Abel justo and the different historical forms that it takes in gathering all humanity into salvation. This biblical and ecclesial analysis of God’s presence in human life will be at work when Aquinas refers to the ecclesial reality of sacraments. The Tertia Pars makes the God/human relationship that has been explored throughout...