Notes on a Catholic Ecumenical Perspective of the Sacramental Life of the Church

Paper presented at a bi-annual meeting of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, of which I am a member, June 5, 2023, Colorado Springs.

If anyone says that these seven sacraments are so equal to one another that one is not in any way of greater worth than another, let him be anathema. –Council of Trent¹

[T]he question about the number of sacraments is not just a question about number, but about the nature of the sacraments. . . . The conflict over the number of sacraments was a conflict over the nature of grace. –G. C. Berkouwer²

The seven sacraments are anchored in Jesus, who instituted them; this is an article of faith. . . . [T]he sacraments are the only way of touching Christ in the flesh, so that his presence becomes real and concrete, without the idealistic, ethereal contours with which we usually imagine him. Nunquam sine aqua Christus, we can say with Tertullian: one never encounters Christ without the water of baptism and the other salvific rites. –José Granados³

Yves Marie-Joseph Cardinal Congar, OP (1904–1995) was a French Dominican friar, priest, theologian, ecclesiologist, ecumenist, and influencer at the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). This short essay is a reflection on his article, “The Notion of ‘Major’ or ‘Principal’ Sacraments,”⁴ which is essentially Congar’s reflection on the first epigraph to my essay. I shall show that his thesis is of ecumenical significance for Evangelicals and Catholics Together as we reflect in today’s session on the sacramental life of the Church, of Divine Worship or Sacred Liturgy.

Congar’s thesis: “The idea that some sacraments are more important than others, particularly baptism and the eucharist, is well supported by traditional [Catholic] theology.”⁵ Of course, Congar rejects the idea of theological indifference to the remaining five sacraments. For he also holds to Canon 1 of Trent’s Decree on the Sacraments, namely, there are seven sacraments— “baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, orders, and matrimony.” As Canon I adds, all of these seven are “truly and properly a sacrament,” and they are “all instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord.”⁶ Congar says,

I am aware of the fact that to restore in our theology, and therefore afterwards in our catechetics, the traditional idea of “major” sacraments may risk encouraging the Protestant denial of the proper sacramental quality of the other sacraments. But we have seen that this denial is not absolute, but is limited to the aspect of the immediate and explicit institution by Christ.⁷

Reminiscent of the “hierarchy of truths” in Vatican II’s Unitatis Redintegratio (no. 11),⁸ Congar urges us, following Vatican II, to “recognize that there is a grading, a hierarchy, of certain realities, which though going by the same name, are neither heterogenous or equivocal nor identical.” Rather, we must think about the sacraments in an analogical way. We can get at the point that Congar is making by following a distinction first drawn by Herbert Mühlen between a “doctrine’s content from the authority with which it is proposed.” Alternatively put, in the words of Thomas Guarino, “the distinction is between centrality to the foundation of the faith as opposed to the certainty with which the Church teaches it.”⁹ Congar explains:

Formally or legally considered, all dogmas, all “ecumenical” Councils, all sacraments are equal. But looking at things from the point of view of their content, their place in the saving structure of the Church, and that of “sacred doctrine,” we must accept that there are major dogmas, major “ecumenical” Councils and major sacraments.¹⁰

Congar gives two reasons for “grading” the sacraments. One reason has to do with the source of the sacraments in Christ and his redeeming acts, his life, cross, death, Resurrection, and Ascension; the other reason is found in the “effect [benefits] of the sacraments on the faithful and the Church.”¹¹ On the one hand, all seven sacraments are efficacious means of grace that have a Christological foundation, that is, salvific signs that communicate grace, says Congar, “related to the Passover of the Lord, his death and resurrection.” Adds Congar, “this [efficacy] holds equally and absolutely for all of them [sacraments] insofar as that [Christ] is the only source of their efficacy.” On the other hand, considering not only the content but also the benefit, their effective significance, baptism and the Eucharist by virtue of their recognition as “principal,” “major,” or “fundamental,’ are instituted by Christ, “more directly, explicitly and formally than that of the other sacraments. These two sacraments, then, “are directly and fully linked up with Christ’s Passover and ‘re-present’ the reality of this Passover in a certain real way, have a special and outstanding place in the overall sacramental structure.”¹²

Finally, says Congar, the sacraments are the sign and instrument manifesting the concrete historical expression of God’s salvific purpose for salvation. As mediation of God’s grace in Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit, they dynamically relate to the world and its history; they intervene “with his grace in mankind and in creation in order to make them achieve the end for which he had destined them from the beginning: the condition of freedom of the sons of God (cf. Rom 8, 18–30).”¹³ In sum:

Every one of the seven sacraments stands in this sign, but it is obvious that baptism is fundamental as constituting the People of God and the eucharist as creating and expressing the unity and communion of Christians in Christ Jesus [1 Cor 12:12–13]. The other sacraments sanctify and christianize man in a special situation: sin, illness, marriage, spiritual service, but baptism (confirmation) and the eucharist constitute them as Christian persons pure and simple. They are basic.¹⁴

But what about Holy Orders? The Church is constitutive of God’s design for salvation, and hence the sacrament of Holy Orders is essentially related to baptism and eucharist. The priesthood is an icon of the eternal priesthood of Christ, “visibly representing Christ as head and as a sanctifier.” Congar explains:

The Church is not in the world only as a community of the sons of God and of those that are saved, but fully as the sign and instrument of Christ as he actually saves and communicates this quality of “son of God” [Gal 4:1–7]. Therefore, insofar as the Church is the universal sacrament of salvation, the principal sacraments are baptism (completed in confirmation), orders, and the eucharist.¹⁵

I turn in the next section to say a few words about the sacraments as means of grace. I will also address the question regarding the Catholic Church’s teaching that the sacraments were instituted by Christ.

The Sacraments as Means of Grace

Reformed and Catholic theologies have much in common when it comes to the doctrine of the sacraments.¹⁶ They agree that the sacraments are means of grace, rather than merely outward and empty signs.

Excursus

Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, IV (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1901), 451; English translation: Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 4, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Translated by John Vriend. Edited by John Bolt (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 474. Furthermore, the difference between Reformed and Catholic sacramental theologies is not over the relationship between the celebration of the sacrament and the proclamation of the Word of God, with the latter always initiating the former (CCC, nos. 1122, 1131). In this light, we can appreciate their agreement with the Augustinian teaching concerning the import of the sacramental word: “Let the word be added to the element and it will become a sacrament. For whence comes this great power of water, that in touching the body it should cleanse the heart, unless the word makes it” (cited in Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, XIV, 4). Indeed, we find a version of this teaching in the Catholic tradition as expressed by John Paul II in his theological magnum opus: “Each of the seven sacraments of the Church is characterized by a definite liturgical action constituted by the word (form) and the specific sacramental ‘matter’—according to the widespread hylomorphic account that comes down to us from Thomas Aquinas and the whole scholastic tradition” (John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, A Theology of the Body, 98.7; see also 103.3.4.5).

In short, they agree that God really does impart his grace by sacramental means. They also agree, as Bavinck states, that God alone is the author, initiator, and efficient cause of the sacraments.¹⁷ This, too, is the view of Thomas Aquinas.¹⁸ On this question, according to Abraham Kuyper, “The Reformed stand with Rome, Luther, and Calvin against Zwingli in their adherence to a divine working of grace in the sacraments.”¹⁹

Excursus

The Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) sees the sacraments as a mere outward or empty sign (nudum signum), implying the exclusion of grace from the sacrament apart from faith. Bavinck describes the position of Zwinglians, “True, the sacraments visibly represent the benefits that believers have received from God, but they do this as confessions of our faith and do not impart grace” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek IV, 448 [470]). For Luther’s rejection of Zwinglians or Anabatists, as he also called them, see his The Large Catechism, Translated by Robert H. Fischer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), Fourth Part: Baptism, 80–101. See also the Schleitheim Confession (Anabaptist, 1527) that rejects infant baptism, affirming adult believer baptism. I am aware of Baptists who are trying to recover the place of the sacraments in the Baptist tradition. See the work by Michael A. G. Haykin, Amidst Us Our Belovéd Stands: Recovering Sacrament in the Baptist Tradition (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2022). See also the earlier study, Baptist Sacramentalism edited by A.R. Cross and P.E. Thomson (Paternoster, 2003), with particular attention to the essay by our own Timothy George, “The Sacramentality of the Church: An Evangelical Baptist Perspective.”

Furthermore, they do not differ on the dipolar structure of the sacrament, for they both hold that sacraments are “each and always composed of a visible and invisible element.”²⁰ They do not differ on the fact that sacraments are composed of “matter” and “form,” of sign and thing signified, by divine institution. They do not differ on the “primary affirmation . . . that only God is the Author of grace,” that grace is caused only by God, but they do differ on the “secondary affirmation . . . that grace is caused by the Sacraments.”²¹ Regarding the secondary affirmation, the difference here is between sacramental causality — the sacraments do something as the instrumental efficient cause within the order of grace — and occasional causality. The latter means that it is only God who directly causes the grace, with the sacrament being an antecedent condition, or occasion, of God’s action. On the view of occasionalism, the grace of God is communicated only with but not through the sign because “there is nothing in the sacrament itself which causes the grace.”²²

Excursus

Sacramental causality means “the grace conferred by a sacrament is identically a real relation of dependence on the sacrament as sign, such a real relation being the necessary and sufficient condition for the truth of the traditional affirmation, sacramenta causant significando” (Philip McShane, S.J., “On the Causality of the Sacraments,” 423–436, and at 424–425). See also, Romanus Cessario, O.P., “Sacramental Causality: Da capo!” in Nova et Vetera 11, No. 2 (2013): 307-316. Berkouwer, De Sacramenten, 75 [ET: 63]: “We now touch upon a central point of the Roman Catholic analysis of ‘ex opere operato’, for it is undeniable that the Reformation has also placed great emphasis on [sacramental] objectivity.” So, too, Herman Bavinck, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 19 (2008; [1887]): 127–142, and at 132: “With this objective view of the sacrament, Calvin stands decidedly on the side of Rome and the Lutherans. . . . [Calvin] can hardly find words strong enough to express his conviction concerning the real, essential, genuine presence of Christ’s own flesh and of his own blood in the Lord’s Supper. He declares explicitly that the issue between him and his Roman Catholic and Lutheran opponents involves only the manner of that presence” (132).

On this view, says Bavinck, the sacraments are not understood to be “causes and instruments of grace, but as conditions or opportunities by which God communicates his grace.” Both Bavinck, and Jesuit theologian Bernard Leeming, note that before the Council of Trent there were Catholic theologians, such as Bonaventure and Scotus, who seemed to be occasionalists in their sacramentology. Says Bavinck in his study on sacramental theology, “However, after Trent there is no longer any room in the Roman system for this sentiment.”²³ Elsewhere in this study, Bavinck writes: “After the Council of Trent until the present day [1903], some Roman Catholic theologians have continued to sense the weight of these objections [to sacramental causality, ex opere operato] so deeply that they proposed a view of the operation of the means of grace somewhat similar to the Reformed view. It appears, however, that after Trent there is no longer any room in the Roman Catholic Church for such a modified view.”²⁴ Less definitively than Bavinck, Leeming puts the point about occasionalism this way: “There has been a general reluctance among theologians since the Council of Trent to propound and defend this view, at least in the definite words ‘occasional causality,’ or ‘the sacraments are infallible conditions of God causing grace.’ This indicates that there has been a growing conviction in the Church that sacraments are in some sense true causes of grace.”²⁵

Still, Berkouwer argues that, on the view of occasional causality, the sacrament is neither subjectivized, as in Zwinglianism, or objectivized, allegedly as in the Catholic notion of ex opere operato, having been disconnected from its Christological foundation, that is, “from their proper and sole source, namely from Christ, the true and only giver of grace, and gives them an independent status.”²⁶ In this light, we can understand why even Edward Schillebeeckx speaks of this objectivistic view, sometimes rendered a deistic view of “ex opere operato,” as “the headless corpse of sacramentalism,”²⁷ meaning thereby that the sacraments have been severed from the “Christological foundation of the ex opere operato efficacy.”²⁸ In other words, rejected are both the notion of the mere sign in itself, an empty and outward sign, or the automatic conjunction of sign and thing signified which depersonalizes the sacrament. What, then, “grounds the conjunction between the sign and the signified firmly in the acts of God[?]” It is the Spirit who grounds the conjunction of sign and thing signified, which is instituted by God, and hence “the sign is full of efficacy with respect to faith. That is why the per sacramentum and the cum sacramentum can be accepted simultaneously without involving us in contradictions.”²⁹

Excursus

Johan Adam Möhler, Symbolism, Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences Between Catholics and Protestants as Evidenced by Their Symbolic Writings, trans. James Burton Robertson (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1997 [1832]), 218n2: “Now Calvin makes the matter appear, as if the Catholics separated the power working in the sacraments from their primary fountain, and looked upon them as working of themselves.” See also, Möhler’s clarification that the work performed in the sacrament is the work of Jesus: “ex opere operato, that is, by Christ, meaning quod peraes est Christus, ‘that which Christ wrought’.” Berkouwer understands that sacramental efficacy of ex opere operato is wrongly given a deistic construal. See Berkouwer, “Ex Opere Operato,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 53 (No. 3-1953), Part I: 78–88, and at 87–88. See also, Berkouwer, De Sacramenten, 79 [ET: 65–66].

Finally, according to Berkouwer and Bavinck, the difference between Reformed and Catholic sacramentology is not at all over the real, objective efficacy of the sacraments, wherein the visible sign is not only expressive but also effective in communicating grace, that is, “efficacious signs of grace.”³⁰

Excursus

Pierre Pourrat, The Sacraments of the Catholic Church: An Apologetic Call to Communion, edited by Shawn Henry Potter (Renatus Press, 2018 [1910], 9): “A sacrament is defined as an efficacious symbol of grace. The notion of an efficacious symbol was worked out by the ecclesiastical writers of the third and fourth centuries, in connection with baptism and the eucharist. The first to attempt a technical definition of a sacrament was St. Augustine; but his formula contains only the generic definition: A sacrament is a sign of grace. It was for the theologians of the twelfth century to complete the Augustinian formula by adding the specific idea: A sacrament is an efficacious sign of grace. Since the Council of Trent, theologians have but set forth with more detail the formula of the medieval writers.”

But rather it is over, says Berkouwer, “a totally different understanding of what efficacy is.”³¹ In other words, as Bavinck puts it, “The difference in the doctrine of the sacraments, however, does not concern the question whether God really imparts his grace but in what way he does this.”³² And Bavinck himself claims that the Reformed rejection of ex opere operato does not mean that the connection between the sign and the thing signified is any less “objective, real, and essential” in its view.³³ Berkouwer argues that the Calvinist (Reformed) objection to the Catholic teaching of ex opere operato (literally: “by the fact that the sacramental rite is validly performed, and thus by the power of the rite”) should not be posed in term of sacramental efficacy. The question is not whether the sacraments are objectively efficacious but rather how they exercise their efficacy.³⁴ Although I cannot argue the point here, the difference is between sacramental causality and occasional causality.

The Institution of the Sacraments by Christ

The Belgic Confession of Faith (1561), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), the Canons of Dort (1619), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), Westminster Larger Catechism (1648),³⁵ 39 Articles of Religion (1571),³⁶ and The Augsburg Confession (1530)³⁷ agree with Congar about the immediate and explicit institution by Christ of the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Congar suggests that the immediate and explicit institution by Christ of these sacraments distinguishes these “principal” sacraments from the others. Is he thereby suggesting that the other sacraments were mediately instituted in the sense that those sacraments arise by a gradual discernment by the Apostles or the Church?³⁸ No, Congar affirms that the seven sacraments were instituted by Christ; this is defined doctrine of the Church. Indeed, Trent affirms, “If anyone says that the Sacraments of the New Law were not all instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord; or that there are more or fewer than seven . . . or that anyone of these seven is not truly and properly a Sacrament, let him be anathema.”³⁹ But Scripture does not tell us how and when Christ instituted all the Sacraments even if it tells us that Christ instituted them.⁴⁰ Here’s a good example:

Scripture tells us directly and explicitly that Christ instituted the Eucharist the evening before His death, in the Upper Room, in the presence of the Apostles. But the same Scripture indirectly affirms that on that very occasion He also instituted the Sacrament of Orders, and that He established the Apostles themselves as ministers of the new covenant. This institution was carried out with the words: “Do this in memory of me” [Luke 22:19, et al]. . . . While the institution of the Eucharist is evident in itself, the understanding of these words of Christ as a formula for the institution of another Sacrament comes to us from the Tradition, which interprets Scripture. The same applies to John 20: 22-23, a foundational passage for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and James 5: 14-15, which regards the Anointing of the Sick. For the other sacraments, there do not seem to be biblical passages that indicate the moment of their institution; nonetheless, the Tradition of the Church affirms without hesitation that such an institution dates back to Christ.⁴¹

On the matter of theological exegesis, but now regarding infant baptism, both Bavinck and Berkouwer acknowledge (in Berkouwer’s words) that “the New Testament did not give an explicit order to baptize children.” “Nevertheless,” he adds, “it was . . . felt that the baptism of children was fully legitimate in the light of the confession of God’s Covenant.”⁴² Bavinck concurs: “We need to overcome our astonishment over the fact that the New Testament nowhere explicitly mentions infant baptism. . . .The validity of infant baptism does not lapse on that account . . . For also that which can be deduced from Scripture by legitimate inference is as binding as that which is expressly stated in it. This is how the church acts every minute of the day in the ministry of the Word, in the practice of life, in the development of doctrine. It never stops with the letter but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit deduces from the data of Scripture the inferences and applications that make possible and foster its life and development.”⁴³ The late Germain Grisez (1929–2018) writes regarding the sacrament of marriage, “Neither Florence [1439; DS: 1327] nor Trent [1563; DS; 1797–1816] claims that Eph 5:32 by itself asserts the sacramentality of marriage. The Church’s doctrine that marriage is a sacrament follows from Eph 5:32 when it considered together with other data: Jesus’ teaching about the indissolubility of marriage in the beginning [Mark 10:6–9], the real efficacy of God’s redemptive work in him, Scripture’s witness to the sacredness of marriage even under the old covenant, Jesus’ use of the marriage and wedding feast analogy to describe the new covenant, and his participation in the wedding feast of Cana.”⁴⁴

However, Trent does legitimize the Church’s intervention in the administration of the sacraments without denying their source is always in Christ. In this connection, the Council insists that the Church’s power is limited by the “substance of the sacraments.” The Council “declares that, in the administration of the sacraments — provided their substance is preserved [salva illorum substantia] — there has always been in the Church the power to determine or modify what she judged more expedient for the benefit of those receiving the sacraments or for the reverence due to the sacraments themselves — according to the diversity of circumstances, times, and places.”⁴⁵ In this connection, we can distinguish between the substance of the sacrament and the structure of the sacramental rite. For example, as Granados puts it, “The anointing with oil in confirmation appears only in the second century; the handing over of the instruments of priestly orders originated in the Middle Ages; the prayers for the rite of confirmation and of the anointing of the sick varied greatly, even at the dawn of Christianity from region to another, and so on.”⁴⁶

Salva illorum substantia — what does this expression mean? Does it mean a hylomorphic theory where substance would be the union of matter and form? This would mean institution in specie where the matter and form of each sacrament is concretely established, and hence “Christ would have had to institute, for each sacrament, the material sign and the words that accompany it.”⁴⁷ This would involve an explicit institution by Jesus of baptism and the Eucharist. There is also institution in genere, which just gives a general indication of the sacraments, meaning thereby an implicit institution, Granados states, “as it were ‘seminal’ institution of the rest of the set of seven.” Whether we choose one or the other, in specie or in genere, the theory that best agrees with the revealed data is immediate institution, because Jesus did not delegate to others the institution of the sacraments.⁴⁸ But an implicit institution would explain “why the ecclesial awareness about some sacraments had developed only over the course of the years; while continuing to maintain that the essential data are already found present from the beginnings.” Hence, Salva illorum substantia.

Fundamental to doctrinal development is the idea of “propositional revelation.” In particular, Newman says, “A true development is that which is conservative of its original, and a corruption is that which tends to its destruction.” (emphasis added). The “continuity of principle” and “identity of type,” or what Oliver Crisp calls a “dogmatic conceptual hard core,” and what Trent called the “substance of the sacraments,” is what Newman refers to when he speaks of what must be conserved. John Henry Newman held that revealed truths, what he called “supernatural truths of dogma,” have been “irrevocably committed to human language.” God’s written revelation, according to the late Ian Ker’s (1942–2022) reading of Newman, “necessarily involves propositional revelation.” This propositional revelation in verbalized form, or what Newman called the “dogmatical principle,” is at once true though not exhaustive, “imperfect because it is human,” adds Newman, “but definitive and necessary because given from above.”

For example, Jesus Christ reveals to us the truths about marriage by referring us back to the creation texts of Gen 1:27 and 2:24 (Mark 10: 6–9). Here we have Newman’s “dogmatical principle” at work. “Male and female he created them” and “for this reason . . . a man will be joined to his wife and the two [male and female] will become one flesh.” Marriage is a two-in-one-flesh union between a man and a woman. The truth of this judgment is grounded in objective reality, according to the order of creation — the way things really are. Its contact with reality is the basis of this teaching’s vitality. Jesus unites into an inextricable nexus the concepts of indissolubility, two-ness, and sexual differentiation, and hence we have the “identity of type” that must be conserved in the development of doctrine. Salva illorum substantia: “substance is what proceeds from Jesus himself and therefore constitutes the nucleus of the sacrament.”⁴⁹ On this account, the substance of the sacrament cannot change; but the substance of the sacramental rite, its matter and form can, in some cases, be modified. In other words, we can distinguish “development” from change, i.e., proper growth in understanding, which may involve correction, modification, and complementary formulations, from improper mutations and corruptions.⁵⁰

Of course, there is much more to say about the connection between the sacraments and the words and works of Jesus Christ. But I’ll stop here.