ARTICLE VII

In the Seventh Article We Ask: Is GRACE IN THE SACRAMENTS?

Difficulties:

It seems that it is not, for

1. Guilt is opposed to grace. But guilt is not anything corporeal. Then neither is grace in the sacraments, which are "material elements" according to Hugh of St. Victor.

2. Grace is subordinated to glory. But only a rational nature is capable of glory. Consequently, in it alone can there be grace, and therefore not in the sacraments.

3. Grace is counted among the greatest goods. But the greatest goods are in intermediate goods as their subject. Now since the intermediate goods are the soul and its powers, it seems that grace cannot be in any other subject, and therefore not in the sacraments.

4. A spiritual subject stands to a spiritual accident as a corporeal subject to a corporeal accident. Then by transposition, a spiritual subject stands to a corporeal accident as a corporeal subject to a spiritual accident. But a corporeal accident cannot be in any spiritual subject. Then neither can the spiritual accident, grace, be in the corporeal elements of the sacraments.

To the Contrary:

1'. Hugh of St. Victor says: "From their sanctification the sacraments contain an invisible grace."

2'. In his Epistle to the Galatians (4:9) the Apostle says that the sacraments of the Law are "weak and needy elements," and this is because they do not contain grace, as the Gloss explains. Then if grace were not in the sacraments of the New Law, they also would be "weak and needy elements" themselves. But that is absurd.

3'. On the words of the Psalm (17:12): "And he made darkness his covert," the Gloss comments: "The forgiveness of sins has been placed in baptism." Now the forgiveness of sins is had through grace. Grace is therefore in the sacrament of baptism, and for like reason in the other sacraments.

REPLY:

Grace is in the sacraments, not as an accident in a subject, but as an effect in a cause--in the manner in which the sacraments can be the cause of grace. Now an effect can be said to be in its cause in two ways. In one way it is in the cause inasmuch as the cause has control over the effect, as our acts are said to be in us. In this sense no effect is in an instrumental cause, which does not move except when moved. Consequently neither is grace in the sacraments. In another way it is in the cause by means of its own likeness, inasmuch as the cause produces an effect like itself. This happens in four ways:

(1) When the likeness of the effect is in the cause as regards its natural existence and in the same manner, as it is in univocal effects. In this way it can be said that the heat of the air is in the fire which heats it.

(2) When the likeness of the effect is in the cause as regards its natural existence but not in the same manner, as is the case with equivocal effects. In this way the heat of the air is in the sun.

(3) When the likeness of the effect is in the cause not as regards its natural existence but as regards a spiritual existence, and yet statically, as the likenesses of works of art are in the mind of the artist; for the form of a house in the builder is not a real being, like the heating power in the sun or heat in a fire, but it is an intellectual intention at repose in the soul.

(4) When the likeness of the effect is in the cause not in the same manner nor as a real being nor statically, but as a dynamic influence, as the likenesses of effects are in instruments, through the mediation of which forms flow from the principal causes into their effects. It is in this way that grace is in the sacraments, and even less, seeing that the sacraments do not arrive directly and immediately at the grace of which we are now speaking in itself, but at their proper effects, called sacramental graces, upon which the infusion or increase of ingratiatory grace follows.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. Even guilt is in something purely corporeal as its cause; that is, original sin is in the seed.

2-3. These difficulties conclude that grace is not in the sacraments as its subject.

4. Something spiritual cannot be the instrument of a corporeal thing, as a corporeal thing may be of a spiritual. Thus the transposed proportion does not hold in the case at hand.

Answers to Contrary Difficulties:

We concede these arguments, yet with the understanding that grace is in the sacraments as its instrumental and disposing causes, and this by reason of the power through which they work toward the production of grace.