The Economy of Salvation: Entitative Sacramentality and Operative Sacramentality1

1 A shorter version of this essay was presented on 30 April 2011, at the Spring 2011 “Thomistic Circles” Conference on “Theo-Centric Ecclesiology” at the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C. The translation of the article’s French original and of all citations from their original languages has been made by Dominic Langevin, O.P., the university assistant to the author. The latter has reviewed the translation. 2 Thus, for example, the centrality of the notion of communion was only truly integrated beginning in the 1980s. 3 See Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, Le sacrement de la communion: Essai d’ecclésiologie fondamentale (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires Fribourg, Suisse; Paris: Cerf, 1998), esp. 247ff. 537 The Thomist 75 (2011): 537-53 THE ECONOMY OF SALVATION: ENTITATIVE SACRAMENTALITY AND OPERATIVE SACRAMENTALITY1 BENOÎT-DOMINIQUE DE LA SOUJEOLE, O.P. University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland T HE ECCLESIOLOGY OF the Second Vatican Council, principally contained in the constitution Lumen gentium, presents a certain number of characteristics that are unique to it but that equally are magisterial assessments of manifest importance. Among these principal characteristics, attention is generally paid to the Trinitarian movement of paragraphs two, three, and four (an ecclesiology from “on high”), the recourse to the notion of communion, and the adoption of the “category” of sacrament. The Trinitarian origin and end of the Church—an origin and end that establish the Church as a communion—are facts that have been relatively well received, albeit after a certain delay.2 On the other hand, the determination of the Church as a sacrament has been varyingly received and, at the present time, seems not to have been taken up much by theologians.3 The purpose of this article is to elucidate the importance of this BENOÎT-DOMINIQUE DE LA SOUJEOLE, O.P. 538 4 Charles Journet, “Le mystère de la sacramentalité: Le Christ, l’Église, les sept sacrements,” Nova et Vetera (French ed.) 49 (1974): 161. 5 “. . . non ut duae res considerandae sunt, sed unam realitatem complexam efformant, quae humano et divino coalescit elemento” (Lumen gentium 8.1). The Latin text is from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, Giuseppe Alberigo, et al., vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990). 6 “Sicut enim natura assumpta Verbo divino ut vivum organum salutis, ei indissolubiliter unitum, inservit, non dissimili modo socialis compago ecclesiae Spiritui Christi, eam vivificanti, ad augmentum corporis inservit” (Lumen gentium 8.1). ecclesiological theme, and to make clear what the Thomistic tradition can contribute to our understanding of it. Generally speaking, the word sacrament expresses in the Latin tradition what the Greeks called mystery, but with an added precision: what is entailed each time is a reality that is revealed insofar as that reality manifests itself in the world for the world’s salvation. The Greeks have only one word, that of mystery, to designate the profound realities that have been announced to us through divine revelation and that are the object of our faith. The Trinity, the Incarnation, the Church, these are all mysteries. The seven liturgical dramas of baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist . . . are for them [i.e., the Greeks] seven mysteries. The Latins have two words. When the mystery, in order to accommodate itself to our fragility, goes so far as to wrap itself in veils . . . men will be able to designate it as a sacrament, a sacred thing, a sacred sign, in order to separate it from profane realities. We will not say of the Trinity that it is a sacrament. 4 The sacramentality of the Church is Vatican II’s response to the ecclesiological question instigated by the Reformation in the sixteenth century: the visible and invisible aspects of the Church “are not to be considered as two things, but they form one complex reality that coalesces with a divine and human element.”5 From this follows the analogy of the mystery of the Incarnate Word: “For, as the assumed nature serves the divine Word as a living instrument of salvation—an instrument united to the Word indissolubly—so in a not dissimilar way the social structure of the Church serves the Spirit of Christ, who is giving life...