1. Sacramental Traditions
Academic Saturday: Leaving Cert

2. Introduction Leaving Cert!
One of your questions:
Sacraments are central to worship in some Christian traditions. Conduct an evaluation of the evidence for this statement making reference to the role sacraments play in worship for he members of two Christian traditions.

3. Worship, Liturgy, Sacraments
Many Christian tradition combine all three into a “service” or a “Mass.”
Worship is the formal service usually celebrated on Sundays.
The Liturgy tends to be the actual ritual context in which worship happens. Some liturgies follow the seasonal calendars, such as Advent, Lent, Easter, etc. There are “high” and “low” liturgies.
Sacraments are specific rituals that draw the members closer to their God. Some are “one off” and others are repeated. We’ll highlight Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Eastern Orthodox

4. Sacrament is a “Mystery”
The word sacrament comes from the Latin sacramentum
The Latin is a translation of the Greek musterion
Only one one occasion in the New Testament is the word musterion used, and it refers to the mystery of Christ’s redemption.
The New Testament does not have a developed sacramental theology, for that comes later.

5. Sacrament is a Speech-Act Ritual
A sacrament is a performative utterance. This means they have a utility of "action" (like I do at a wedding. Or when I repeat after a lawyer and witness for my will. Or in a court room… raising your hand to tell the whole truth).
sacramental language: baptism, confession, eucharist, last rites, marriage.
Each sacrament requires particular ritual language and material element.

6. Sacramentality? Hermeneutic of Expereince
Sacramentality is a way of interpreting and understanding humanity, not a set of belief or propositions
Ritual, celebration and the fullness of sign and language: calendars, weddings, baptism, eucharist, etc.
Sacraments give an individual a kind of narrative unity or coherence in which to plot one’s life

7. 7 Sacraments of Roman Catholic Church
Baptism
Confirmation
Eucharist (bread and wine)
Confession and Reconciliation
Holy Orders or Preisthood
Marriage
Extreme Unction or Last Rites

8. Why 7 Sacraments? Why not 9 or 33? Karl Rahner: “What is a Sacrament?”
See his brief essay, “What is a Sacrament,” in vol. of Theological Investigations
A central point is that the church herself makes judgments that are legitimate precisely because she is the body of Christ.
If there is no explicit reference to marriage or priesthood being a sacrament, then that does not prevent the church from declaring that so at a later date: the church tries to make explicit what is implicit in the scriptures (Eph 5 for example), but it also simply creates a framework for interpreting sacramentality.

9. 2 Main Sacraments
Every Tradition affirms:
1. Baptism: initiation, entryway into the covenant
2. Eucharist: principal means of regular communion with Christ (Aquinas says it is first among equals)

10. Pluralisation of the Theology: The Reformation
Reformation: 1517 Martin Luther
John Calvin in the 1530s
Church of England, King Henry VIII
Radical Reformation: Anabaptists, Menonites, Amish, Quakers, etc.

11. Reformation: Faith over Sacramentality
Sacraments, for Protestants, become more vehicles of sanctifying grace rather than reconciling grace
The three “solas” of Reformational Theology:
Sola gratia
Sola scriptura
Sola fidei
Sidebar: no mention of Sacraments or Church in the solas!

12. Sacraments: Also a Locus of Intense Debate
The role of the Bible and the nature of faith were the triggers to the Reformation.
But the Sacraments quickly objects of fascination for theologians.
Violence broke out often due to disagreements over doctrine

13. The EUCHARIST
Given that each sacrament has its own particular ritual context and history (in the history of intellectual theological debate), I’ll focus on the Eucharist
The Eucharist is generally considered the first among equals in sacramental theology.
First, what does Roman Catholicism hold to? All the Protest reactions consist of a refusal of this doctrine.

14. Transubstantiation: Thomas Aquinas (d.1274)

15. Aquinas 1: Real Presence vs. Locality of Christ
He writes, “The body of Christ is not under the dimension of the bread locally…. Hence, Christ’s body in this is no way localized.”
Christ’s body was, so to speak, in but not of the sacrament. Properly speaking, the body of Christ is in heaven and yet also sacramentally present at the same time.

16. Aquinas 2:Real presence and Spiritual Presence
Real or “spiritual” presence, Aquinas continued, had to be kept distinct from local presence.
“The body of Christ is not in this sacrament in the way a body is located in a place. The dimensions of a body in a place correspond with the dimensions of the place that contains it. Christ’s body is here in a special way that is proper to this sacrament” (ST )
Or again, Christ’s body was in the sacrament “[not] as if it were present in the way that is natural for a body to be present, that is, visibly in its normal appearance [but] a spiritual, non-visible presence, in the way of a spirit and by the power of the Spirit” (ST ).

17. Aquinas 3: Transubstantiation
Transubstantiation of substance not space
But the whole presence of Christ is enclosed there nevertheless:
“The body of Christ is here as if it were just substance, that is, in the way that substance is under its dimensions, and not in any dimensive way The manner of presence is controlled by considerations of what it means to be there just as substance” (ST ). Aquinas’ point was that substantial presence did not require local presence, but occurred precisely without it.

18. Luther’s View
He held to three sacraments: Baptism, Eucharist and Confession (See his Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 1520)
His view of the Eucharist is called traditionally “consubstantiation”
This means real presence is affirmed but that it is not enclosed within the elements

19. John Calvin’s View
Calvin wrote in the 1540s to the 60s. He was a famous pastor and theologian during the Reformation and is perhaps more intellectually formative than Luther is of the Protestant tradition.
He held to real presence, but he reversed the direction of grace.
In the Eucharist, we are spiritually raised upward, into heaven, into the presence of God (God does not descend).

20. Ulrich Zwingli’s View
A most radical departure in the history of doctrine.
For the first time in the intellectual tradition of Christianity, real presence is rejected.
His view is that the Eucharist, and all sacraments, are purely and simply symbolic. Nothing happens in the ritual. It is called the “memorial view.”

21. Eastern Orthodoxy: Transelementation?
George Hunsinger’s book, Eucharist and Ecumenism ascribes to the Eastern Orthodox tradition the transelementation
Bread itself was transformed by virtue of its sacramental union with, and participation in, Christ’s flesh. The image which illustrated transelementation was that of an iron rod thrust into the fire. Just as the iron was transformed by its participation in the fire, so was the consecrated element transformed by its sacramental union with Christ’s flesh. In and with this transforming union, the distinction between the two was maintained. Just as the iron did not cease to be iron, or the fire fire, so did the bread not cease to be bread, or Christ’s flesh his flesh. In the mystery of their sacramental union they formed a unique distinction-in-unity and unity-in-distinction.

22. Karl Barth: 20th-Century Theologian
Barth admits his “non-sacramental” view contravenes the whole 2000 year old tradition on baptism.
He writes, “Baptism and the Lord’s supper are not events, institutions, mediations or revelations of salvation. nor are they instruments, vehicles, channels or means of God’s reconciling grace. They are not what they have been called since the second century, namely mysteries or sacraments.”

23. Trent: Counter-Reformation 1540-60 roughly
The Counter Reformation was the response of the Roman Catholic Church to the Reformation.
It ran for over 20 years and included an official statement on justification by faith alone
It also reaffirmed Transubstantiation

24. Sources
Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II document (easy to find on Vatican website). Mediator Dei and Corporis Christi Mystici
James KA Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works
James F. White, Sacraments as God’s Self-Giving,
Kevin Irwin, Models of the Eucharist
George Hunsinger, Eucharist and Ecumenism

25. How to find: Vatican Document and Summa by Aquinas
Simply search the title in Google.
If it has .va at the end, then it is a reliable source.
The Summa can be found entirely online. I usually go to:
Newadvent.org (go to top right and click on summa).
For the sacraments, then go to “Tertia pars” questions