ARTICLE IV

In the Fourth Article We Ask: ARE THE SACRAMENTS OF THE NEW LAW THE CAUSE OF GRACE?

Difficulties:

It seems that they are not, for

1. Bernard says: "Just as a canon is invested by means of a book, an abbot by means of a crosier, and a bishop by means of a ring, so the different classes of grace are bestowed by the different sacraments." But the book is not the cause of the canonry; nor the crosier, of the abbacy; nor the ring, of the episcopacy. Then neither are the sacraments the cause of grace.

2. If a sacrament is the cause of grace, it is either the principal or the instrumental cause. Now it is not the principal cause, because only God is the cause of grace in this way, as has been said. Nor again is it the instrumental cause, because every instrument has some natural action upon the thing on which it works instrumentally. But since a sacrament is something corporeal, it cannot have any natural action upon the soul, which is the recipient of grace. And so it cannot be the instrumental cause of grace.

3. Every active cause is either perfective or dispositive, as can be gathered from the words of Avicenna. But a sacrament is not a perfective cause of grace, because in that case it would be its principal cause. Nor is it a dispositive cause, because the disposition for grace is in the same subject that grace is in, the soul, which is not affected by anything corporeal. A sacrament is therefore in no way the cause of grace.

4. If it is the cause of grace, it is so either by its own power or by some power added to it. It is not so by its own power, because in that case any water would sanctify just as well as the water of baptism. Likewise it is not so by any power added to it, because whatever is received into another is received after the manner of the recipient. Thus, since a sacrament is "a material element," as Hugh of St. Victor says, it will not receive anything but a material power, which does not suffice for the production of a spiritual form. A sacrament is therefore in no wise the cause of grace.

5. The power received into this "material element" will be either corporeal or incorporeal. If it is incorporeal, since it is an accident and its subject is a body, it will be nobler than its subject; for something incorporeal is nobler than a body. If, on the other hand, it is a corporeal power and causes grace, which is a spiritual form and incorporeal, the effect will as a consequence be nobler than its cause. But that again is impossible. It is therefore also impossible for a sacrament to cause grace.

6. It was said in answer that this added power is not something complete in a species but something incomplete.--On the contrary, what is incomplete cannot be the cause of what is complete. But grace is something complete, whereas this power is something incomplete. Such an incomplete power therefore cannot be the cause of grace.

7. A perfect agent should have a perfect instrument. But the sacraments act as the instruments of God, who is the most perfect agent. They should therefore be perfect, and so have perfect power.

8. According to Dionysius it is a law of divinity to conduct the intermediate things by means of the first, and the last thing by means of the intermediate. It is therefore against the law of divinity for intermediate or first things to be led back to God by means of the last things. But in the hierarchy of creatures corporeal ones are the last, and spiritual substances are first. It is consequently out of keeping for grace, by which the human mind is led back to God, to be conferred upon it by means of corporeal elements.

9. Augustine distinguishes a twofold action on the part of God: one which He performs "by means of a creature which stands for Him," and another which He immediately performs "by Himself." "To enlighten souls" is of this latter kind. But to confer grace upon a soul is to enlighten it. God therefore does not make use of a sacrament as an intermediate instrument to confer grace.

10. If any power is conferred upon a material element by which it might cause grace, when the sacrament is finished that power either remains or not. If it remains, then in the case of baptismal water after it has been sanctified by the word of life, if a person were to be baptized after another's baptism without the pronouncing of any words, he would be baptized. But that is false. If, on the other hand, it does not remain, since no contrary cause of its perishing can be assigned, it will wear out of itself. But since it is something spiritual and one of the greatest goods, being the cause of grace, it seems incongruous for it to disappear so quickly.

11. An agent is superior to its patient. Thus Augustine proves that a body does not imprint upon the soul the likenesses by which the soul knows. But that a body not joined to the soul should cause in it the supernatural form of grace is even more to be rejected than that the body united to it should cause in it a natural effect. It therefore seems by no means possible that such bodily elements, which are found in the sacraments, should be the cause of grace.

12. The soul disposes itself to have grace more effectively than it is disposed by the sacraments, because the disposition which the soul produces in itself leads to grace even without any sacrament, but not vice versa. Now even though the soul disposes itself for grace, it is not called the cause of grace. Consequently, even if the sacraments in some way dispose for grace, they should not be called the cause of grace.

13. No wise craftsman uses a tool except in accordance with its fitness, as a carpenter does not use a saw for hewing. But God is a most wise craftsman. He therefore does not make use of a corporeal instrument for a spiritual effect, which is beyond the competence of a corporeal nature.

14. A wise physician uses more powerful remedies for more virulent diseases. But the disease of sin is most virulent. Consequently for its cure through the conferring of grace God should have used powerful remedies and not corporeal elements.

15. The re-creation of the soul ought to be similar to its creation. But God created the soul without the intervention of any creature. Then in like manner He should re-create it by means of grace without the intervention of a sacrament.

16. It is a sign of the impotence of the agent to have helps. But instruments help toward producing the effect of the principal agent. Then it does not befit God, who is the most powerful agent, to confer grace by means of the sacraments as His instruments.

17. In every instrument its natural action, which contributes something to the effect intended by the principal agent, is required. But the natural action of a material element does not seem to have anything to do with the effect of grace which God intends to produce in the soul. In baptism, for instance, the washing does not have any closer bearing upon the soul than the water itself. Such sacraments therefore do not work toward the conferring of grace as instruments.

18. Sacraments are not conferred without a minister. Now if sacraments are in any way the cause of grace, man will in some way be the cause of grace. But that is contrary to the teaching of Augustine, who says that the power of justifying has not been conferred upon the minister, lest hope be placed in a man.

19. In grace the Holy Spirit is given. If, then, the sacraments are the cause of grace, they will cause the giving of the Holy Spirit. But that is contrary to Augustine, who says that no creature "can give the Holy Spirit." Sacraments are therefore by no means the cause of grace.

To the Contrary:

1'. Defining a sacrament of the New Law, the Master says: "A sacrament is the visible form of an invisible grace, in the sense that it bears the image and becomes the cause of the grace."

2'. Ambrose says that grace is stronger than guilt. And this is evident also from the Apostle in his Epistle to the Romans (5:15-19). But guilt is caused in the soul through the infection of the body. Then grace too can be caused in the soul through the sanctification of a bodily element.

3'. Through the institution of the sacraments there is added to the natural instruments either something or nothing. If nothing, then nothing has been conferred upon the world in the institution of the sacraments. But that is unacceptable. If, on the other hand, something is added, since it is not added in vain, the natural instrument will be capable of effecting something that it was previously unable to effect. But this can be only grace, since sacraments were instituted to this end. The sacraments are therefore capable of effecting grace.

4'. It was said that only a certain ordination to grace is added.--On the contrary, an ordination is a relation. But a relation is always founded upon something absolute, on which account there is motion in the category of relation indirectly. Consequently, if an ordination is added, something absolute must be added.

5'. What is absolute is not caused by what is relative, because what is relative has a very weak act of being. Now if nothing but a relation is added to the sacraments by their institution, they will not be able to sanctify by reason of their institution. But this is contrary to Hugh of St. Victor.

6'. It was said that the cause of the sanctification is not that relation but the divine power attached to the sacraments.--On the contrary, the divine power, which is God Himself, is connected with the sacraments after their institution either in a different way than before or not. If not in a different way, they will not have any different effect after their institution than they did before. If, however, in a different way, since God is said to be in a creature in a new way only because He causes a new effect in it, something new will have to be added to the sacraments themselves. And so the conclusion is the same as before.

7'. In certain sacraments consecrated matter is required, as in extreme unction and confirmation. But that consecration is not without purpose. By it, then, some spiritual power is conferred upon the sacraments by reason of which they can be in some measure the cause of grace, since that power is directed to this end.

REPLY:

It is necessary to hold that the sacraments of the New Law are in some sense the cause of grace. For the Old Law was said to kill and to increase the transgressions because it gave knowledge of sin but did not confer any grace as a help against sin. Now if the New Law did not confer grace, it would likewise be said to kill and to increase the transgressions. But the teachings of the apostles proclaim the contrary. It does not, however, confer grace merely by instruction (because even the Old Law had this feature), but by causing grace in some sense through its sacraments. The Church is accordingly not content with the catechizing by which it instructs a convert; but it adds the sacraments that he may have grace, which the sacraments of the Old Law did not confer but merely signified. But signification pertains to instruction. Thus, because the Old Law merely instructed, its sacraments were only signs of grace; whereas, because the New Law both instructs and justifies, its sacraments are both the sign and the cause of grace. But how they are the cause of grace not all explain in the same way.

Some say that they are the cause of grace, not because they themselves by any power vested in them do anything effective for bringing about grace, but because in their reception grace is given by God, who upholds the sacraments. As a result they are called the cause of grace in the manner of an indispensable (sine qua non) cause. They give as an example of this the case of a man who hands over a lead nickel and receives a hundred dollars in exchange, not because the lead nickel is the cause which brings on the reception of the hundred dollars, but because one who is able to give it has decreed that whoever brings in such a nickel should receive so much money. It has similarly been decreed by God that whoever sincerely receives the sacraments should receive grace, not indeed from the sacraments but from God Himself. And they say that the Master was of this opinion when he said that one receiving a sacrament seeks salvation in things beneath himself, though not from them.

Now this opinion does not seem sufficiently to safeguard the dignity of the sacraments of the New Law. For if the example proposed by them and similar cases are rightly considered, we find that what they call an indispensable cause is related to the effect only as a sign. For the lead nickel is nothing but a sign of the reception of the money, like the staff of authority which is conferred upon an abbot.

Consequently, if the sacraments of the New Law are so related to grace, it will follow that they are only signs of grace; and thus they will have nothing to set them above the sacraments of the Old Law--unless perhaps one were to say that the sacraments of the New Law are signs of a grace given simultaneously with them, whereas those of the Old Law are signs of a grace that is promised. But this refers more to a difference of time than to the dignity of the sacraments, because at that time grace was promised, but now is the time of the fullness of grace on account of the restoration of human nature already accomplished. According to this opinion, then, if these same sacraments of the New Law had existed then with everything which they now have, they would not have effected anything more than those of the Old Law, nor would the ancient sacraments now effect anything less than the present ones even if nothing were added to them.

We must therefore solve the problem differently and say that the sacraments of the New Law have some effect upon our having grace. Now a thing works for the production of an effect in two ways: (1) By acting of itself. And something is said to act of itself if it acts by means of a form inherent to it after the manner of a complete nature, whether it has that form of itself or from another, and whether naturally or violently. In this way the sun and the moon are said to light things, and fire and red-hot iron and heated water to heat things. (2) A thing is said to work toward the production of an effect instrumentally if it does not do so by means of a form inherent to it but only in so far as it is moved by an agent that acts of itself.

It is the nature of an instrument as instrument to move something else when moved itself. The motion by which the instrument is moved by the principal agent is therefore related to the instrument as a complete form is related to an agent acting of itself. It is in this way, for instance, that a saw works upon a bench. Now although the saw has an action which attaches to it in accordance with its own form, that is, to divide, nevertheless it has an effect which does not attach to it except in so far as it is moved by a craftsman, namely, to make a straight cut agreeing with the pattern. Thus an instrument has two operations, one which belongs to it according to its own form, and another which belongs to it in so far as it is moved by the principal agent and which rises above the ability of its own form.

We must therefore say that neither a sacrament nor any other creature can give grace as a principal agent, because this is proper to the divine power exclusively, as is evident from the preceding article. But the sacraments work instrumentally toward the production of grace. This is explained as follows.

Damascene says that in Christ His human nature was like a tool of His divinity, and thus His human nature shared somewhat in the working of the divine power. By touching a leper, for instance, Christ made him clean. The very touch of Christ thus caused the health of the leper instrumentally.

It was not merely in corporeal effects that Christ's human nature shared instrumentally in the effect of the divine power but also in spiritual effects. Thus Christ's blood poured out for us had the ability to wash away sins, as is said in the Apocalypse (1:5): "[Jesus Christ] washed us from our sins in his own blood," and in the Epistle to the Romans (3:24): "Being justified . . . in his blood."

Thus the humanity of Christ is the instrumental cause of justification. This cause is applied to us spiritually through faith and bodily through the sacraments, because Christ's humanity is both spirit and body. This is done to the end that we may receive within ourselves the effect of sanctification, which is had through Christ. As a consequence the most perfect sacrament is that in which the body of Christ is really contained, the Eucharist; and it is the consummation of all the others, as Dionysius says. But the other sacraments also share some of the efficacy by which Christ's humanity works instrumentally for our justification. By reason of it a person sanctified by baptism is said by the Apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews (10:10-22) to be sanctified by the blood of Christ. Christ's passion is accordingly said to work in the sacraments of the New Law. Thus the sacraments of the New Law are causes of grace working in some sense instrumentally to produce it.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. Bernard does not deal adequately with the nature of the sacraments of the New Law, for he speaks of them inasmuch as they are signs and not inasmuch as they are causes.

2. The sacraments of the New Law are not the principal cause of grace as agents acting of themselves, but the instrumental cause; and after the manner of other instruments they have a twofold action: one which surpasses its own form, being from the power of the form of the principal agent, God; and this is to justify; and another which they exercise according to their own form, as to wash or to anoint. This latter action affects in a bodily manner the man who is justified--in his body directly and in his soul, which senses the bodily action, indirectly. But it affects in a spiritual manner the soul itself inasmuch as by means of the intellect the soul perceives it as a sign of a spiritual cleansing.

3. Because the last end corresponds to the first agent as principal to principal, for this reason not the last end but a disposition for the last end is attributed to instrumental agents. And so the sacraments are said to be the cause of grace as disposing instruments.

4. The sacraments do not work for the production of grace by the power of their own form, for in that case they would work as principal agents; but they work by the power of the principal agent, God, existing in them. That power does not have a complete act of being in nature, but is something incomplete in the line of being. That is shown from the fact that an instrument moves in so far as it is moved. But motion is "an imperfect act" according to the Philosopher. Consequently, things which cause motion as being at the term of the motion and already assimilated to the agent, move by means of a perfect form; but things which cause motion as being in the midst of motion, move by means of an incomplete power. It is this sort of power which is in the air to move sight in so far as it is changed by the color of a wall, in the sense of being in process and not in that of already being in the completed state. The species of the color is accordingly in the air after the manner of an intention, and not after the manner of a complete being as it is in the wall.

In the same way the sacraments have an effect upon grace inasmuch as they are, as it were, moved by God to this effect. And that motion can be considered on the basis of their institution, their sanctification, and their application to the one who goes to the sacraments. They consequently do not have their efficacy after the manner of a complete being, but in a sense incompletely. Thus it is not out of keeping for a spiritual power to be in a material being, just as the species of color are spiritually in the air.

5. That power cannot, properly speaking, be called either corporeal or incorporeal; for corporeal and incorporeal are differences of complete being. Properly it is called a power for something incorporeal, just as motion is rather said to be to a being than a being. But the difficulty argues as if that power were a complete form.

6. Something incomplete cannot be the cause of something complete as a principal agent; yet something incomplete can in a sense be directed after the manner of a cause to something complete, as we say that the motion of the instrument is the cause of the form introduced by the principal agent.

7. It does not pertain to the perfection of an instrument to act by a complete power, but to act in so far as it is moved, and thus by an incomplete power. It therefore does not follow that the sacraments are imperfect instruments even though their power is not a complete being.

8. An instrument is related to an action more like that by which it is done than like that which does it; for the principal agent acts by means of the instrument. Accordingly, although the lowest beings do not lead the intermediate or highest beings back to God, they can still serve as the means by which the intermediate and higher beings are led back to God. Consequently Dionysius also says that it is connatural for us to be led to God by means of sensible things, and he gives this as the reason for the necessity of visible sacraments.

9. It is suitable for God to enlighten the soul without the intervention of any creature which would act in this work as a principal agent acting of itself. There can nevertheless be a means acting instrumentally and dispositively.

10. There are some sacraments in which consecrated matter is required, e.g., extreme unction and confirmation; but there are others in which this is not required as necessary for the sacrament. It is therefore true in the case of all that the power of the sacrament does not consist in the matter alone, but in the matter and form together, both of which constitute a single sacrament. Consequently, however much the matter of the sacrament is applied to a man, if the due form of the words and the other requisites are missing, the effect of the sacrament does not follow.

But in the case of the sacraments which need consecrated matter, the power of the sacrament remains partially though not completely in the matter of the sacrament after its use. But in the case of the sacraments which do not need consecrated matter, nothing remains after the use of the sacrament. Thus the water with which baptism has been conferred has nothing more than any other water, unless it be because of the mingling of the chrism, which is not, however, necessary for the sacrament. Nor is there anything incongruous in the fact that the power ceases immediately, because that power is like a thing in the process of becoming and moving, as has been said. Such things cease to exist when the motion of the mover ceases; for as soon as the mover ceases to move, the mobile ceases to be moved.

11. Although a bodily element is inferior to the soul, and for this reason cannot effect anything in the soul by virtue of its own nature, it can nonetheless effect something in the soul inasmuch as it is an instrument acting by the divine power.

12. In disposing itself for grace the soul acts by virtue of its own nature, whereas a sacrament acts by the divine virtue as God's instrument. And so the case is not the same.

13. In keeping with its own form a sacrament signifies or is such as to signify the effect to which it is divinely ordained. In this respect it is a suitable instrument, because the sacraments cause by signifying.

14. The sacraments of the New Law are not weak remedies, but powerful, seeing that the passion of Christ works in them. The sacraments of the Old Law, however, which preceded the passion of Christ, are called weak, as appears in the Epistle to the Galatians (4:9): "You have turned to the weak and needy elements."

15. Creation does not presuppose anything in which the action of an instrumental agent could terminate, but re-creation does. There is accordingly no parallel.

16. It is not because of His own need but for the meetness of the effects that God uses instruments or intervening causes in His action. For it is meet that the divine remedies should be presented to us conformably to our condition, that is, through sensible things, as Dionysius says.

17. The natural action of a material instrument helps toward the effect of the sacrament in so far as the sacrament is applied by it to the recipient and in so far as the signification of the sacrament is completed by the said action, as the signification of baptism by washing.

18. There are some sacraments in which a definite minister is not required, as in baptism. In these the power of the sacrament is not situated in the minister at all. But there are some sacraments in which a definite minister is required. The power of these is partially situated in the minister as well as in the matter and the form. And yet the minister is not said to justify except by way of the ministry, inasmuch as he cooperates in justification by conferring a sacrament.

19. The Holy Spirit is given only by him who causes grace as the principal agent; and this is the business of God alone. Thus only God gives the Holy Spirit.