Question One: On the Instituting Cause

St. Thomas III, q. 64, a. 1, 2, 3, 4.

68. Principle I. God alone is the principal cause, by the power of authority both instituting the sacraments and operating in them. - This is certain.

It is proved: He institutes something who gives to it force and power, as is clear in the institutions of laws. But the power of a sacrament is from God alone. Therefore God alone can institute a sacrament. The minor is proved: God alone can operate in the soul, and He alone as principal cause can confer either grace, which is a participation of His nature, or a right to it, or the instrumental power of causing it. Whence God alone is able by His own power to institute a sacrament, and to communicate to it the power of conferring grace (a. 1 and 2).

69. Principle II. Christ as man has principal ministerial power over the sacraments, insofar as He operates toward the interior effects of the sacraments meritoriously and efficiently.

It is proved: Christ 1. as head of the whole of humanity, from the fullness of grace merited for others the graces of salvation, and thus supplied the merits which are applied in the sacraments; and 2. by the hypostatic union He is an instrument conjoined to God, while the other ministers are separated instruments. Whence in the genus of ministerial cause He has a certain principality with respect to the other ministers, which is called the power of excellence (a. 3).

This consists in four things: 1. in this, that the merit and power of the passion of Christ operates in the sacraments (I Tim. II, 5, 6; Eph. V, 2), and therefore 2. the sacraments are ministered in His name (John I, 33; Acts II, 38; I Cor. I, 13); whence 3. most fittingly the power of instituting them was left to Him, and 4. He Himself could confer their effect even without them (Luke V, 20; VII, 48; XXII, 19; Mt. IX, 2).

70. Principle III. Christ instituted all the sacraments of the New Law. - This is of faith, defined by the Council of Trent, sess. 7, can. 1, against the Reformers; and it is also evident from condemned propositions 39 and 40 of the Modernists.

The assertion is to be understood of at least mediate institution, because the Council did not intend to define more, since it did not wish to condemn theologians defending that.¹

¹ This is evident from the history of the Council and from the testimony of those who were present at the Council, such as Ruard Tapper and Dominic Soto. Cf. De Baets, in Revue Thomiste, March 1906.

But it is sufficiently certain that Christ immediately, by Himself, instituted all the sacraments and did not confer upon the apostles, by a certain general and indeterminate mandate, the power from their own authority of determining sacraments at will according to species and number; but that He Himself determined each sacrament, i.e., the seven signs with some special grace, and indeed to its proper end. Yet one who said that Christ did not reveal all the sacraments by Himself to the apostles, but some by means of the Holy Spirit after the ascension, although that opinion rests on no solid argument, nevertheless would not certainly affirm something which is already judged erroneous in sacred doctrine by the Church.²

² Yet the manner of speaking of certain moderns is not to be approved, when they assert that Christ instituted certain sacraments only in their principles. The manner of speaking is equivocal; indeed false, if they intended that those sacraments were instituted only virtually, as conclusions which only afterward are known to be deducible from principles and are deduced. For then they would not be formally revealed.

It is proved:

1. From the documents of revelation: If Christ had given to anyone the power of instituting sacraments, He would especially have done this to the Apostles. But they declare that they are only ministers and dispensers of mysteries (I Cor. I, 12; III, 5; IV, 1). Therefore. - Whence Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit, I, prologue, 18: "For ours are the services, but Yours, O Christ, are the sacraments." And Augustine, on John, tract. 5, shows that a sacrament does not depend on the dignity of the minister, because it is the sacrament of Christ.

2. From the Council of Trent, which denies to the Church the power of changing the substance of the sacraments (sess. 21, c. 2); but there would be no reason for this if the power of instituting sacraments had been handed over by Christ to the apostles or to the Church.

3. From reason: The sacraments pertain to the very constitution of the Church and are the foundations of the New Law; therefore they had to be instituted by the very founder and institutor of the New Law, Christ; as Dionysius the mystic already observed, in the books On the Heavenly Hierarchy, I, and On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, I.

Among the scholastics several are cited who seem to have admitted mediate institution for certain sacraments, such as Hugh of St. Victor, the Master of the Sentences, Alexander of Hales, and St. Bonaventure for Extreme Unction; William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, and St. Bonaventure for Penance; St. Bonaventure again and Alexander for Confirmation. Some, however, understand them benignly of the revelation or manifestation of the institution through the Holy Spirit; others of the final determination of matter and form. That they can be understood in this way does not seem certain, at least for all.

71. Christ instituted the sacraments in various circumstances and times:

1. The Eucharist and Order at the Last Supper.

2. Baptism, when in the Jordan by His contact He sanctified the waters and conferred upon them the power of sanctifying, whence He Himself also afterward baptized (John III, 22); but He did not impose the precept of Baptism until after the resurrection (Mt. XXVIII, 19).

3. Penance on the day of the Resurrection (John XX, 23).

4. Matrimony, probably when He blessed the wedding at Cana of Galilee (John II), but He indicated the law of indissolubility in Mt. XIX, 6, 9.

5. Confirmation and Extreme Unction He did not minister, because the fullness of grace was not fittingly to be granted before the coming of the Holy Spirit, nor immediate preparation for entrance into glory before the ascension of Christ; but a) He instituted Confirmation by promising the Holy Spirit (John XIV, 17); b) Extreme Unction by sketching beforehand its future institution (Mark VI, 13), and after the resurrection by speaking with the apostles concerning the kingdom of God, to whose constitution the sacraments pertain (Acts I, 3); but c) they were not promulgated except through the apostles.

72. Observation. - Christ could have communicated the power of excellence to ministers; for He could have granted to a mere man such a fullness of grace that he would have merited de condigno for all others grace to be dispensed through the sacraments, as St. Thomas teaches, a. 4. But in fact He reserved it to Himself, "for the utility of the faithful, lest they should place hope in man, and lest there should be diverse sacraments, from which division would arise in the Church, as among those who said: I am of Paul, I am of Apollo, I am of Cephas (I Cor. I, 12)" (ad 1).