0021140006072575

Irish Theological Quarterly
71 (2006) 143178
2006 Irish Theological Quarterly
Sage Publications [www.sagepublications.com]
DOI: 10.1177/0021140006072575
Vatican II and the Theologians on the

Church as Sacrament1
John M. McDermott
Theologies depend on philosophies. Vatican II introduced the Church as sacrament.
Although the Council followed no theologian, that idea was proposed variously by the preconciliar Schillebeeckx, Rahner, and Semmelroth. Each theory manifests weaknesses and
strengths, complementing each other in addressing human freedom. This emphasis accords
with John Paul IIs thought.
s the infinite God is a boundless mystery, so are all His decisions, His
plan for mans salvation. Ecclesiology has to deal with a mystery, the
Church, that is grounded in three deeper mysteries: the Trinity, the
Incarnation, and the blessed Eucharist. How does one comprehend mysteries surpassing human intelligence? (Cf. Eph 3:1619.) That is the
theologians task. Since God cannot be blamed for any flaw in His revelation, incomprehension and confusion regarding the good news must be
traced squarely to the incapacity of theologians. But they must say something. Woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel (I Cor 9:16).
Faith is Gods gift through the Churchs ministry. Insofar as it is meant
to be understood, it implies a theology, that is, a human word about God.
Since God does not contradict Himself, human understanding of God
should be consistent. Hence philosophy is required. All theological difficulties are really philosophical difficulties. God does not have trouble
communicating, men have trouble understanding. Post-Vatican II confusion resulted from a change in the philosophies undergirding theology.
The dominant pre-Vatican II theology presupposed an analogous concept
of being at the foundation of thought. Thus in principle all reality is
conceptualizable. Theologians accordingly seek to find the most exact
concepts applicable to mysteries of faith. As the twentieth century
progressed, some theologians, aware of the mysteries transcendence,
1. The article incorporates sections of a talk The Church as Sacrament: Whose
Interpretation? given in May 2004 at the International Theological Conference held at the
Catholic Theological Institute of Riga. I have greatly increased the section on Vatican II,
changed parts of the sections on Rahner and Semmelroth, and substantially altered both
the section on Schillebeeckx and the conclusion. I wish to thank the Rev. Guido
Vergauwen, O.P., for his criticism and for procuring for me the French translation of
Schillebeeckxs De sacramentele Heilseconomie.
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IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
emphasized non-conceptual ways of approaching reality. This leads to a

rethinking of philosophical presuppositions and a new perspective on the
Churchs faith. In the Councils adoption of a theology of the Church as
sacrament, these changes are involved. By studying the main pre-conciliar proponents of the Church as sacrament this article hopes to shed some
light not only on the new ecclesiologies but also on the meaning of the
conciliar texts. After briefly outlining the conceptualist theology, especially its understanding of Church and sacraments, and averting to the
conciliar texts about the Church as sacrament, this article will concentrate on the sacramental ecclesiologies of E. Schillebeeckx, K. Rahner,
and O. Semmelroth. Then some cautious conclusions about the theology
of the Council can be hazarded.
The Conceptualist Ecclesiology2
If being is known in a concept, then truth occurs in propositions: the
intellectual content of the concept is predicated of an existent reality truly
or falsely. Correspondingly the Churchs faith in divine mysteries is articulated in propositions revealed by God. Since the truths of faith are revealed
by God supernaturally, they transcend the minds ability to grasp them
directly. They are believed on the authority of a veridical witness, namely,
Jesus Christ. The treasury of revelation closed with the death of the last
Apostle. Christ established the Church as revelations infallible interpreter
and endowed her with sacraments to communicate divine life to men.
Catholic theology opposes Protestantism with its multifarious doctrines
and churches. But time and new questions uncover internal tensions. A
basic problem concerns the interpretation of dogma. If revealed truths
stand beyond human reasons insight, how can men understand them? One
might accept them en bloc on the basis of authority, but how does a theologian explain them? The answer is analogy: just as analogy is necessary
to understand being in the natural order, analogy enables reason to have
some insight into truths surpassing it. If our Lord spoke in human words,
2. In the decades preceding the Council, R. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., through his
voluminous publications, teaching at the Angelicum, and position in the Holy Office was
probably the best-known representative of this theology. Yet the expression conceptualist
embraces Suarezians as well as Thomists, Molinists as well as Baezians, indeed all who
insist on the primacy of the concept of being and arrive at an ecclesiology based upon
authority proposing supernatural propositions. It includes such subtle thinkers as Billot,
Gardeil, Penido, Sertillanges, Chenu, and Maritain. In previous articles we spelled out some
other contrasts between conceptualists and the others, principally transcendental
Thomists: cf. John McDermott, S.J., Faith and Critical Intelligence in Theology, in
S. Minkiel, R. Lawler, and F. Lescoe (eds), Excellence in Seminary Education (Erie: Gannon
U., 1988), 6893; idem, The Methodological Shift in Twentieth Century Thomism,
Seminarium 31 (1991): 24566; idem, The Context of Veritatis Splendor, in J.Conley and
J. Koterski (eds), Prophecy and Diplomacy: The Moral Doctrine of John Paul II (New York:
Fordham, 1999), 11572; idem, Spiritual Theology and Religious Life Before and After
Vatican II, Josephinum Journal of Theology 8 (2001): 5175.
THE CHURCH AS SACRAMENT
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He must have intended them to be understood. Vatican I affirmed that

pious and diligent reason might attain a most fruitful understanding of the
mysteries, from an analogy with those things which it knows naturally as
well as from a connection among the mysteries themselves and with mans
final end (DS 3016). This answer prevails until historical research shows
how central dogmas were slowly hammered out over centuries. Early orthodox Fathers did not profess the clear dogmatic formulas of later Councils.
Did dogma evolve? But how could the great Councils draw conclusions
from truths surpassing understanding? Technical words such as hypostasis,
ousia, and transubstantiation are not found in Scripture nor in Tradition
until a relatively late date.3 In 1950, the definition of Marys corporeal
assumption establishes a dilemma. The dogma possesses no historical witness before the sixth century. How might theologians justify the Churchs
solemnly defined belief?4 Thus the problem of historicity which was ravaging Protestant theology emerges in the Catholic Church.
Another problem concerns sacramental efficacy. Trent anathematized
all who deny that sacraments contain and confer the grace which they
signify; moreover baptism, confirmation, and orders bestow upon the
recipients soul a character, i.e., a certain spiritual, indelible sign whence
they cannot be repeated (DS 1606, 1609). But how is sacramental efficacy conceived? Conceptualist presuppositions let God and man be
grasped in diverse concepts, however analogous. They can be contrasted
as two distinct natures, or principles of activity. But what type of causality
characterizes Gods gift? Material and formal causalities are precluded
since the analogous idea, or form, of God is essentially different from the
form of man. Final causality is excluded because assimilation to the term
that attracts does not preserve sufficiently the difference between God
and man. There remains only efficient causality. Baroque theology invents
actual grace to explain how God influences the human intellect and will
in free choice.5 As a spiritual force, or (pre)motion, emitted by God to
effect human conduct, actual grace, as an effect of Gods activity, possesses
a fluid, incomplete entity (entitas). It can hardly be a substance since it is
a transient assistance, disappearing after use, and it is a strange accident
since God has no accidents and it does not become mans until its effect
is accepted. Others, seeking some Aristotelian category, define it as an
3. Ousia is found in Lk 15:12f., but in the sense of property or wealth. Hypostasis is found
in II Cor 9:4; 11:17; Heb 3:14 meaning confidence or steadfastness and in Heb 1:3; 11:1
meaning substance, actual existence, and essence. This latter understanding, which
made it equivalent to the philosophical term ousia, actually confused for a long while the
Christological debate.
4. Cf. McDermott, Methodological Shift, 24553, esp. 2513. On the problem of the
Assumption, cf. Berthold Altaner, Zur Frage der Definibilitt der Assumptio B.V.M.,
ThRv 44 (1948), 12940; Michael Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik, V (Mnchen: Hueber,
1955), 2326.
5. Cf. Henri Rondet, S.J., The Grace of Christ, trans. and ed. T. Guzie (Westminster:
Newman, 1967), 22833.
146
incomplete, transient quality as the effect of Gods action.6 As in Galilean

physics an external force is applied to a substantial body to influence its
movement almost like an electric impulse.
Sacraments infuse or increase sanctifying grace in recipients, and actual
grace serves as the model for understanding sacramental causality. By His
decree God chooses to communicate grace through the sacraments ex
opere operato. Given the difference between natural and supernatural
orders, no direct connection between the natural sign and its supernatural effect can be ascertained. Sacraments are arbitrary signs, yet they cause
grace. Since God, the divine nature, is the principal efficient cause of
grace, instrumental causality alone can be applied to the sacraments.7
Theologians admitted that the occasionalist position, whereby God
uses the sacraments administration as an occasion for bestowing grace, is
not condemned by Trent. But occasionalism hardly finds defenders in
recent centuries since it fails to explain the causality of the sacraments.
6. So some Dominicans: cf. Jean-Marie Herv, Manuale Theologiae Dogmaticae, II, 18th edn
(Westminster: Newman, 1943), 10911; Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., De Gratia
(Turin: Berruti, 1947), 957. Yet seeking an Aristotelian category, others reduce it to a
quality. (Garrigou-Lagrange, De Gratia, 96, denies that actual grace is a quality before
admitting, 97, that it can be reduced to a quality insofar as it is considered as an immanent
elicited act.) But a transient quality is admittedly strange; moreover, the quality resides in
the soul as the effect of Gods moving. What then is the motion itself? Jesuits see actual
grace as an external or internal elevation of the intellect or will so that it might activate
itself internally in deciding to cooperate with grace: Herv, Manuale, I, 1069; Christian
Pesch, S.J., Praelectiones Dogmaticae, V, 4th edn (Freiburg: Herder, 1916), 7f., 24f., 27;
Hermann Lange, S.J., De Gratia, 3rd edn (Valkenburg: St. Ignatius, 1926), 2747, 2919;
Joseph Pohle, Grace: Actual and Habitual, ed. A. Preuss, 10th edn (St. Louis: Herder, 1943),
1418; Louis Billot, S.J., De Gratia Christi (Rome: Gregorian, 1954), 12034. But how is the
elevation accomplished? If produced by efficient causality, it should change the soul ontologically previous to the souls decision to cooperate. Jesuits refrained from defining it as a
quality or specifying the motion further lest the actual grace be considered different from
the act of choice itself, not fully integrated into the vital act, but only its presupposition.
Billot, though holding the Jesuit Molinist position about grace moving man internally,
acknowledges the problem and admits, 131, similar to the Thomists, that the motion is an
incomplete, fluid esse. The whole dispute flows from the wider debate about the interrelation of divine omnipotence and human freedom.
7. Louis Billot, S.J., De Ecclesiae Sacramentis, 6th edn (Rome: Gregorian, 1924) I, 25,
6672, 8598, 144f., 17072, 18899; Bernard Leeming, S.J., Principles of Sacramental
Theology, 2nd edn (Westminster: Newman, 1960), 3, 512, 2768, 298, 333f., 43555,
497543; Emmanuel Doronzo, O.M.I., De Sacramentis in Genere (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce,
1946), 85f., 1379, 14262, 43895; Clarence McAuliffe, S.J., Sacramental Theology (St.
Louis: Herder, 1958), 1222, 34f., 39, 43, 4766; Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality,
trans. P. Cummins (St. Louis: Herder, 1958), 247; Francis Connell, C.Ss.R., Outlines of
Moral Theology (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1953), 177, 183f.; Joseph Wilhelm and Thomas
Scannell, A Manual of Catholic Theology, 2nd edn, II (London: Kegan Paul, 1901), 362, 364,
36672; Pierre Pourrat, Theology of the Sacraments, 3rd edn, trans. J. Gummersbach (St.
Louis: Herder, 1924), 936, 162f., 16977, 183f., 18696; Wilhelm Wilmers, S.J., Handbook
of the Christian Religion, ed. J. Conway (New York: Benziger, 1921), 3058. Most presuppose
the merits of Christs passion as the cause of grace. Doronzo, De Sacramentis, 60, 66, 100,
sees Christs Passion as an efficient cause, yet elsewhere, 1658, he speaks of God as the
principal efficient cause of grace. Leeming, Principles, x, xxxiii, 353f., has Christ working
through His Mystical Body. It should be noted that the term instrument can be used in a
wide sense, applying to Christs humanity.
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In greater accord with the notion of Gods efficient causality, the

sacramental instrument is seen by many to produce an effect within the
soul, either the grace directly, as in the perfective physical causality theory, or the res et sacramentum, that is, the character, real presence, or
disposition, that calls for or causes grace, as in the dispositive physical
causality theory.8 Others, pointing to the impossibility of a natural sign to
cause a supernatural effect or of a physical sign to cause a spiritual effect,
postulate either a moral causality, whereby God looks on the dignity of the
sacrament as Christs work and gives grace in accordance with the sacraments value, or an intentional causality, that designates efficaciously the
subject of grace by placing a juridical claim in the subject that brings
about the exercise of the divine power.9 Obviously the notion of causality is being strained, and it is hard to explain how a human being can raise
a juridical claim against God even if the claim is given by God.
Vatican II10
Given the lack of unanimity about sacramental causality, Vatican IIs
description of the Church as a sacrament seems extraordinary. Many
Council Fathers reject the term with dismay since it would confuse believers
who were long taught that Jesus had instituted only seven sacraments (cf.
DS 1310, 1601).11 Yet theologians were preparing the change. Examining
Scripture and the Church Fathers, E. Mersch and others discover that
8. The perfective physical causality theory is attributed to the late Thomas by Cajetan,
who developed it against Protestants (Leeming, Principles, 3347). It is defended by
Doronzo, De Sacramentis, 1658, 1724, 18097; Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality, 247; cf.
Leeming, Principles, 288f., 314f. The dispositive causality theory was proposed by St.
Thomas at least in his early years; it is defended and developed by Leeming, Principles, 289f.,
31432, 34681, so that a personal relationship between Christ and the recipients in the
Mystical Body is established.
9. The moral causality theory was first presented by Melchior Cano and is accepted by
Pourrat, Theology, 183f., 1916. Attributing the intentional causality theory to St. Thomas,
Billot, De Ecclesiae, 11643, developed it at length; cf. also McAuliffe, Sacramental
Theology, 37f. Billot avoided the argument about the impossibility of a natural sign producing a supernatural effect since he wished some sort of supernatural effect to be produced at least in the intentional order by the sacramental sign (Billot, De Ecclesiae, 124,
143, n. 1).
10. For a more detailed analysis of the change at the Council cf. our Lumen Gentium: The
Once and Future Constitution, to be published in the 2005 Proceedings of the Twentieth
Annual Convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.
11. Council Daybook, ed. F. Anderson (Washington, DC: NCWC, 1965), 153; Relatio of the
Theological Committee for Lumen Gentium in Acta Synodalia (Vatican: Vatican, 1973),
Concile du Vatican (Paris: Descle, 1967),
170f; Grard Philips, Lglise et son mystre au IIe
23; Alberto Melloni, The Beginning of the Second Period: The Great Debate on the
Church, in G. Alberigo and J. Komonchak, III (eds), History of Vatican II (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 2000), 49f.; Charles Moeller, History of Lumen Gentiums Structure and Ideas, in
J. Miller (ed.), Vatican II: An Interfaith Appraisal (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame, 1966), 124f.; Grard Philips, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: History of the
Constitution, in H. Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, I, (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 111.
148
the primary designation of the Church is Body of Christ.12 Such an

understanding, more organic, dynamic, and relational than the institutional
model, corresponds to twentieth-century philosophies in which personal
relations, community, and transforming development are appreciated. The
Body of Christ consists primarily of believers united among themselves and
with Christ in a dynamic, mystical manner. Even if hierarchically ordered,
the Church is not primarily an authoritarian institution imposed from without. Recognized as the expression of a hidden supernatural life, ecclesial
structures can easily be embraced by believers who build up the Body of
Christ by cooperating with grace. In Mystici Corporis Pius XII strongly
endorses the Body of Christ ecclesiology.
Not that the ecclesiology is new. But the anti-Protestant polemics led
ecclesiologists to define the Church by her visible, institutional characteristics.13 Before Vatican II De Ecclesia Christi enjoys a pivotal position in Catholic theology, concluding apologetics and introducing
dogmatics. After the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church established by Christ is shown to be the Catholic Church with her structured
hierarchy and authority in dogmatic and moral questions, dogmatic
theology can employ the Church tradition, especially its magisterial
definitions, to prove dogmatic treatises. But very little is said about the
mystery of the Church or the Church as Body of Christ. After Mystici
Corporis conceptualist ecclesiologists regularly present apologetic
arguments for the Church as institution before tacking on a section on
12. Emile Mersch, S.J., The Whole Christ, trans. J. Kelly (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1938); idem,
The Theology of the Mystical Body, trans. C. Vollert (St. Louis: Herder, 1951); Sebastian
Tromp, S.J., De Spiritu Sancto Anima Corporis Mystici (Rome: Gregorian, 1931); idem,
Corpus Christi Quod Est Ecclesia (Roma: Gregorian, 1937); Joseph Anger, La Doctrine du
Corps Mystique de Jsus-Christ, 5th ed. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1934); Paul Galtier, S.J.,
LHabitation en nous des trois personnes (Paris: Beauchesne, 1927); idem, De SS. Trinitate in
se et in nobis (Paris: Beauchesne, 1933); Ambroise Gardeil, O.P., La Structure de lme et lexprience mystique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gabalda, 1927), II, 760, 23864.
13. In his apologetics, De Controversiis, II, (1588; rpt. Rome: Giunchi et Menicanti, 1836),
iii, 2, 90, Bellarmine stresses the Churchs institutional aspect: The Church is an assembly
of men as visible and tangible as is the assembly of the Roman people, or the kingdom of
France, or the Venetian Republic. Immediately thereafter, however, he adds: One must take
into account, however, the saying of Augustine in the Breviculum Collationis (collat. 3), that
the Church is a living body, in which are soul and body, and indeed the soul is the internal
gifts of the Holy Spirit: faith, hope, charity, etc. The body is the external profession of faith
and communication in the sacraments. Because Protestants postulate an invisible Church
of the elect and deny the identity of the visible Church with the Church of Christ,
Bellarmine insists on a minimal definition of the Church: those who confess the faith and
communicate in the sacraments under the rule of pastors. Mystici Corporis, in AAS 35
(1943), 217f., cites Bellarmine for supporting the notion of the Church as Christs Body.
Before Pius XII, both Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum, in AAS 28 (1896), 71071, 71517, and
Divinum Illud Munus, in AAS 29 (189697), 649f., and Pius XI in Miserentissimus Redemptor,
in AAS 20 (1928), 172, 174, refer to the Church as the (Mystical) Body of Christ. Cf. Yves
Congar, O.P., Lumen Gentium n 7, Lglise, Corps mystique du Christ, vu au terme de
huit sicles dhistoire de la thologie du Corps mystique, Le Concile de Vatican II (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1984), 14661, tracing broadly the traditions of spiritualist and institutional
interpretations of Body of Christ since the Reformation.
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the Body of Christ.14 The tension between the organic and institutional models is manifest. Thus in deciding to compose Lumen
Gentium, the Fathers of Vatican II were confronting a theological problem. Most probably they are not fully aware of all its implications. But,
given ecclesiologys pivotal position, any change in it must have profound consequences for theological method and content.
Through its early approval on 21 November 1964, Lumen Gentium set
the parameters for subsequent debates and documents. From the first
chapter the change is obvious. Defined as a mystery rooted in Gods
decrees for mans salvation effected through Christ, the Church is seen
as a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit (4), and an examination of various Scriptural images
culminates in a long section on the Church as Spouse and Body of
Christ (6f.). Only in the final paragraph is the visible, organizational
aspect of the Church explained as a living instrument of salvation
entrusted to the hierarchy for propagation and governance (8). The subordination of the hierarchy to the living Church is repeated insofar as
the second chapter on the People of God precedes the third chapter on
the hierarchy that serves the whole body.15 Clearly the organic image
takes precedence over the institutional. 16 But whereas Mystici Corporis
seeks to identify the Mystical Body with the institutional Roman
Catholic Church, now the true Church of Christ is said only to subsist
14. E.g. Timothy Zapelena, S.J., De Ecclesia Christi, II, 2nd ed. (Rome: Gregorian, 1954),
dedicates the final 248 of 579 pages to the Mystical Body after considering, in the first volume and the first half of the second, questions of hierarchy and jurisdictional competence.
The first volume published in 1955 went through six editions as compared with only two of
the second. Even Charles Journet, Lglise du Verbe incarn (Bruges: Descle de Brouwer,
1962) dedicated the first volume to the Churchs institutional structure before considering
the Body of Christ; yet the ample treatment attempted a synthesis of internal grace with
external structure. Most ecclesiology manuals before 1943 ignore the Body of Christ. Two
noteworthy exceptions are Ludwig Lercher, S.J., Institutiones Theologiae Dogmaticae, I, 2nd
ed. (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1934), 386404, who uses Body of Christ to demonstrate the
Churchs supernatural end and dignity, and Herv, Manuale, I, 19th ed. (1943), 42348,
who places Mystical Body of Christ immediately after the apologetical part to introduce
the section on the Churchs members with their obligations and jurisdictional rights. (The
preface, x, states that the section was added already in 1935 to the twelfth edition.)
15. Moeller, History, 127f., considers the precedence of the People of God over the hierarchy the first of the Copernican revolutions that marks Lumen Gentium; the hierarchy
serves the People even though, in another sense, the precedence is reversed insofar as the
hierarchy applies the sacramental order that constitutes the People of God. Among the
reasons for placing People of God before Hierarchy the Relatio, 209f., considers the hierarchy a means subordinate to the end of the People of God, their salvation. Cf. also Yves
Congar, O.P., The Church; The People of God, in The Church and Mankind (Concilium vol.
1) (New York: Paulist, 1965), 1113; the rest of the article (1337) is quite good at showing the advantages and drawbacks of the term People of God.
16. When Melloni, Beginning, 50, writes about the Council abandoning the dominance
of the image of the mystical body, he must be referring to its juridical interpretation as in
the preparatory schema. Periti consider the image still very significant: Congar, Lumen
Gentium , 15961; idem, Dune ecclsiologie en gestation Lumen Gentium chap.
I et II, Le Concile, 133f.; Moeller, History,126f. LG 7, entirely dedicated to the Body of
150
in the Catholic Church (8).17 But is there not a danger that the emphasis on dynamic, internal unity with Christ and other believers will
relativize the ecclesial structures, reducing them to means of furthering
Christian fellowship? If they are judged inadequate or incapable of such
a task, cannot the structures be rejected? Recent history in Europe and
North America has shown that such a danger is not illusory. In a materialistic culture encouraging self-fulfillment, the norms for judging
reality too easily become subjective and malleable.
Christ image, is longer than LG 6, which contains all the other Scriptural images. The
Relatio, 173, explains that because the Theological Committee agrees with many Fathers
that Mystical Body is more than an image and leads more deeply into the mystery of the
Church, its paragraph is placed after the consideration of other Scriptural images.
17. Mystici Corporis, in AAS 35 (1943), 199, 202f. Yet even here the identification is not
simple. Members of the Church are those baptized who profess the true faith and have
not unhappily withdrawn from the Body-unity or for grave faults been excluded by
legitimate authority. But this would include all those baptized, including Protestants,
outside the Catholic Church who have not renounced her authority. Cf. Karl Rahner, S.J.,
Die Gliederschaft der Kirche nach der Lehre der Enzyklika Pius, XII. Mystici Corporis
Christi , Schriften zur Theologie (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 19541984), II, 1417, 33f.; but
Rahner, 7294, distinguishes between the juridical, external definition of the Mystical
Body, given in Mystici Corporis, and the traditional Mystical Body, which includes all those
justified before Christ and, according to Rahner, is open to embrace all who have a votum
Ecclesiae. Earlier Herv, Manuale, I, 44857, holds the same opinion. For various
interpretations of subsistit in cf. Francis Sullivan, S.J., The Significance of the Vatican II
Declaration that the Church of Christ Subsists in the Roman Catholic Church, in
R. Latourelle (ed.), Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives (New York: Paulist, 1989), II,
27476. Sullivans own interpretation of the universal Church as a communion, at various
levels of fullness, of bodies that are; more or less fully churches does not do justice to the
whole sentence which he is interpreting. The text speaks of the unique one, holy, catholic,
(i.e., universal) and apostolic Church entrusted to Peter and the other Apostles to extend
and rule and continues: This Church, in this world as a constituted and ordered society,
subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by Peters successor and the bishops in communion with him. Sullivans universal Church is hardly an ordered society in this world. It
is also difficult to agree with Sullivan that a non-Catholic community, perhaps lacking
much in the order of sacrament, can achieve the res, the communion of the life of Christ
in faith, hope, and love, more perfectly than many a Catholic community (278f.).
Confusion is introduced when Sullivan compares a Catholic community with a nonCatholic community, whereas Lumen Gentium speaks of the Catholic Church in
comparison with non-Catholic ecclesial communities (as well as Eastern Churches not
in communion with Rome). While none can deny that God is not bound to the sacraments
(cf. St. Thomas, STh., III, 64, 7c; 66, 6c) but can give grace where and when He wills, it is
another question whether a community qua community can mediate or effect more faith,
hope, and charity than a Catholic local church in communion with Peter. (Sullivan, 281f.,
is concerned with the role of ecclesiastic communities qua communities.) Were that true,
the sacramental economy of the Catholic Church would be relativized, and there would be
no strict need for the Catholic Church in Gods plan of salvation. It is hard to see how any
ecclesial community, imperfect at least insofar as it lacks the full unity desired by Christ,
can mediate more faith, hope, and love to Christ than the Catholic Church in which
resides, as Sullivan admits, 278, the full institutional integrity of the means of salvation. UR
3f. also relates all other Churches and ecclesial communities to the concrete fullness of
means of salvation that is to be found in the one Catholic Church entrusted to the apostolic
college with Peter at its head. Admittedly LG 8 substituted subsistit in for an earlier is
(est) that simply identified the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church. Certainly the
notion of subsistence in Catholic theology, already before this usage, was very unclear,
sometimes signifying existence, sometimes person, sometimes standing under as the
151
Probably the Council Fathers think that they have avoided relativizing objective structures of salvation to subjective experience by originally
defining the Church as a type of (veluti) sacrament, i.e., a sign and
instrument of communion with God and of unity among men (LG 1).
What do the Council Fathers intend with such a designation? Other
texts shed a bit of light. The Councils first document, Sacrosactum
Concilium 26, citing St. Cyprian, sees liturgical services as celebrations of
the Church which is the sacrament of salvation, namely, the holy people united and arranged under the bishops. Clearly the sacrament
includes hierarchical structure, which gives unity to the Church. Lumen
Gentium 48 looks more to the Churchs purpose, calling the Body of
Christ the universal sacrament of salvation, and Gaudium et Spes 45
picks up that reference: Every benefit the people of God can confer on
mankind during its earthly pilgrimage is rooted in the Churchs being
the universal sacrament of salvation, at once manifesting and actualizing the mystery of Gods love for men. These texts offer an intriguing
parallel to the Eucharist in which the work of redemption is carried out:
In the sacrament of the Eucharistic bread, the unity of believers, who
form one body in Christ (cf. I Cor 10:17), is both expressed and brought
about (LG 3, 42; UR 2; SC 47). For the Christian community has its
basis and center in the Eucharistic celebration through which believers
are fully joined to the Body of Christ. To the Eucharist all other sacraments are directed, for it contains the Churchs entire spiritual good,
Christ Himself. It is the source and peak of preaching the gospel and all
equivalent of substantia or suppositum. Actually the Councils text, composed in committee and resulting from theological compromises, leaves a penumbra of uncertainty. If this
Church is recognized as the Catholic Church, which the previous sentence confesses, what
does it mean to say that the Catholic Church subsists in the Catholic Church? If anything
more than a tautology is intended, a very analogous use of language must be in play, and the
Council does not intend to define doctrine. But what other Church would be governed by
Peter and his successor than the one entrusted to them by Christ? In fact the Relatio, 180,
insists, The mystery of the Church is not an idealistic nor unreal construction (figmentum)
but exists in this concrete catholic society under the leadership of Peters successor and the
bishops in communion with him. Maybe the Fathers and theologians, avoiding two
extremes, are leaving the door open to a new and more comprehensive ecclesiology. (Cf.
Congar, Lumen Gentium, 160f.; Aloys Grillmeier, S.J., The Mystery of the Church, in
Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, I, 139f.) Although subsistit may not be so intellectually stimulating as Chalcedons persona, the Councils new terminology points the way
for future theological endeavors. That the imprecision of meaning is deliberate may be
gathered from Philips, glise, 119: It is to be presumed that the Latin expression subsistit in
will cause oceans of ink to flow. He is the author of the schema (including the rejected est)
adopted as the basis of Lumen Gentium and very involved in the Constitutions composition. If he cannot give a precise meaning, who can? The Relatio, 177, merely states, in the
place of is the expression subsists in is used in order that it might better harmonize with
the affirmation about the ecclesial elements that are present elsewhere. Truly the text is
treating a mystery with very weak human words (ibid., 180). Cf. Moeller, Congar, Thomas
Stransky, and Christopher Butler in Session IV Discussion, in Vatican II, 17880; Grard
Philips, The Church: Mystery and Sacrament, in ibid., 191f., 194f.; Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, Mysterium Ecclesiae, AAS 65 (1973), 3968; Notificatio de scripto
P. Leonardi Boff, OFM, Chiesa: Carisma et Potere, in AAS 77 (1985), 758f.; and Alexandra
von Teuffenbach, Die Bedeutung des Subsistit in (LG 8) (Mnchen: Utz, 2002).
152
apostolic works (PO 5f.; SC 10). It perfects the Church, bringing all into
communion with Christ and fellow believers (LG 7; CD 15; SC 47), and
they are encouraged to have frequent resort to it in order to grow in love,
the bond of perfection and fullness of the law, which governs, gives
meaning to, and perfects all the means of sanctification (LG 42). For all
that, however, the Church as sacrament is not simply another name for
Eucharist. Qua universal sacrament of salvation, the Church, as
demanded by her own essential universality strives to preach the
gospel to all men (AG 1). She has to go out to those who have not yet
received the Eucharist. In this sense she precedes the Eucharist by her
preaching. In another sense the Eucharist precedes her preaching insofar
as she was founded by Christ as the sacrament of salvation just before
His assumption into heaven when He obliged her to preach to all nations
(AG 5: Acts 1:11; Mt. 28:1820). Thus the Eucharist, instituted on Holy
Thursday as the sign of self-giving and expansive love, comes before the
Church as preacher of the gospel. Though the Eucharist constitutes the
Church, the Church cannot be simply identified with the Eucharist. She
is only a type of sacrament.
In justifying the application of sacrament to the Church, Council
theologians appeal to earlier Scriptural and patristic usage in which
sacramentum translates the Greek mysterion.18 But that involves a bit of
stretching. Scripture usually refers the mystery to Gods salvific will
manifested in Christ. Christ is the mystery, though not exclusively so
since its revelation is intended to be accepted by believers, Christ in
you (Col 1:262:3; 4:24; Eph 1:314; 3:212; 5:32; I Cor 2:18; Rom
16:2527). The Church is not explicitly called a mystery. Only rarely do
the Fathers consider the Church a sacrament.19 Indeed, the Council
uses both sacramentum and mysterium in regard to the Church. She is
both within Gods mystery and herself a mystery (LG 25). In describing the Church as a type of sacrament, Lumen Gentium immediately
qualifies the word by sign and instrument. Such are the functions of the
post-Tridentine scholastic sacrament that causes grace by signifying. It
appears that the Council avails itself of a scholastic understanding of the
sacrament without tying itself to that understanding. There is an
unspecified analogy between the scholastic sacrament and the more general Scriptural and patristic notion. As Grillmeier writes: The
Constitution maintains a certain reserve about the expression, but the
notion of the Church as the sacrament of salvation forms a close link
between patristic and modern ecclesiology. There is no definition of
18. Council Daybook, 153f.; Henri de Lubac, S.J., Lumen Gentium and the Fathers, in
Miller (ed.), Vatican II, 155157; Philips, The Church, 188f.; idem, Lglise, 724;
Grillmeier, Mystery, 139f.
19. P. Smulders, S.J., La Chiesa sacramento della salvezza, in G. Barana (ed.), La Chiesa
del Vaticano II, 3rd ed. (Florence: Vallecchi, 1967), 364, admits as much, though defending
the usage; cf. 36775 for a good overview of the historical meanings of sacrament.
153
sacrament in the Constitution and no explanation of how exactly the

term is to be applied to the Church.20
Although the Council refrains from defining precisely the Churchs
sacramentality, the word has not fallen directly from heaven. In the years
preceding the Council, theologians were elaborating the notion. Three
principal interpretations were proposed by E. Schillebeeckx, K. Rahner,
and O. Semmelroth. The latter two served as periti at the Council while
Schillebeeckx was very active in consultations and lectures both before
and during the Council. Which theory best corresponds to the mind of
the Council Fathers?
Edward Schillebeeckx
Under the influence of D. De Petter, O.P., this Flemish Dominican opens
school Thomism to insights of phenomenology. While admitting that concepts do not reach reality in themselves, he nonetheless insists on their
permanent validity since the mind naturally seeks quiddities.21 Their proper
use is manifest in mediating knowledge of God. Although men possess no
positive idea of the utterly transcendent God and His attributes, the inner
dynamism of the concepts employed refers to a reality beyond them. The act
of signifying refers objectively to God, the res significata. Though such knowledge is negative, it is true since it is implicit in positive knowledge.22 This
epistemology grounds the possibility of supernatural revelation. Even though
revelation as a saving event involves more than the transmission of propositions, concepts are required for its understanding. Not only are Christs words
personal and effective but also statements of faith possess an objective and
absolute value since they intend their object in the direct line of this and
no other conceptual content. While this objective projection does not
reveal how the content of faith is realized in God, it gives us an objective
view of His mystery. Because the revealed data surpass human insight, they
have to be accepted from without on the word of an authoritative witness.23
At the same time because the act of signifying goes beyond the concept, the
20. Grillmeier, Mystery, 139. Philips, Lglise, 72, 118, sees sacrament defined by sign
and instrument, but he may not give enough weight to veluti.
21. Eduard Schillebeeckx, O.P., The Concept of Truth, in Revelation and Theology, trans.
N. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 196768), II, 16, 1820. Cf. also Franco Brambilla,
La Cristologia di Schillebeeckx (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1989), 11417. For de Petters epistemological underpinnings, cf. Jan Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen: Schillebeeckx Auffassung von
den Sakramenten (Regensburg: Pustet, 1980), 7283.
22. Schillebeeckx, Concept, 19f.; idem, What Is Theology? Revelation, I, 120f., 137; idem,
The Non-Conceptual Intellectual Dimension in Our Knowledge of God According to
Aquinas, ibid., I, 16671, 1758, 188, 190f., 195, 2046; Brambilla, Cristologia, 11719.
23. Schillebeeckx, Concept, 19f., 22; idem, What Is Theology? 96, 1215, 158; idem,
Non-Conceptual Intellectual Dimension, 170, 1768, 181; idem, Revelation-in-Reality
and Revelation-in-Word, Revelation, I, 416; idem, Scholasticism and Theology, ibid.,
226, 229f., 2324, 238, 246, 254; Brambilla, Cristologia, 11925, showing also the opening
of the act of faith to personal encounter.
154
order of natures, which concepts grasp, need not be closed upon itself. Since
in the unity of His being and willing, which is beyond contingency, God
intends a unity of creation and redemption, the notion of pure nature is an
abstract fiction. Though nature enjoys a relative autonomy, it receives all its
meaning from the supernatural. Nature is intrinsically ordered to the supernatural, created for a supernatural destiny which it demands but cannot
merit. Man has a natural desire for the God of grace. Given this fundamental continuity between nature and grace, the supernatural order can be said
to be rooted in human psychology and natural sacraments are assumed into
the supernatural order. Hence the Churchs sacraments are not arbitrary signs
but employ their natural symbolism for the bestowal of grace. The Christian
mystery thus brings nature to its culmination.24
To the tension between concept and reality corresponds the tension
between mans soul and body, the unity in diversity. The soul grows to full
personhood through the body even while mediating meaning to the body;
for through it the soul expresses its own experiences and intentions.
Because of its link with mans symbolic activity, significatio, the bodily symbol contains more than what it explicitly manifests. An activity is more
suggestive than any word, yet the activity needs the word to overcome its
inherent ambiguity. The transcendence in immanence of signifying in
word and symbol structures the understanding both of revelation as a saving event and of sacrament. Revelation-in-deed and revelation-in-word
accompany each other.25 This gives prominence to Christs revelatory role.
Although faiths material object is the saving God, He is known most
clearly where he revealed himself as such in Christ Jesus who is the
public manifestation of God and the means to salvation. As full divine
revelation, the man Jesus explains how faiths primary object, that is, the
saving God, can be made plural in various judgments of faith. Jesus words
manifest His reality, which remains nonetheless greater than the words.
24. Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., Lconomie sacramentelle du salut, trans. Y. von der Have
(Fribourg: Academic, 2004), 919, 42, 4851, 547, 119, 333, 336f., 540f. (this is the first
translation of De sacramentele Heilseconomie, originally published in 1952). So closely linked
are natural and supernatural orders that the Christian modality of the supernatural is a
different free divine initiative alongside the free divine initiative establishing the supernatural order. The Christian modality of the supernatural allows for sin, mans moral failure.
Thus the supernatural is not inherently constituted by the novelty of Christ; this explains
why Christs humanity will be only an instrument, not a true cause. This interpretation is
grounded in the neo-Platonic exitus-reditus structure of the Summa Theologiae, in which the
human, the supernatural, the Christian sacramental are each a partial aspect of the totality (1417). Cf. also Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with
God, trans. C. Ernst (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 4, 64f., 98, 121, 177.
25. Schillebeeckx, Lconomie, 31013, 3238, 3327, 3459, 540f.; idem, Revelation-inReality, 336, 39f., 45f.; idem, What Is Theology? 1524, 194f.; idem, Concept, 26;
idem, Revelation, Scripture, Tradition, and Teaching Authority, in Revelation, I, 810;
idem, The Lord and the Preaching of the Apostles, ibid., 25; idem, The Bible and
Theology, 1713; idem, Christ, 15, 64f., 76f., 198; idem, Eucharist, trans. D. Smith (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), 99101; Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 4751; Brambilla,
Cristologia, 1335.
155
For human knowledge comes into contact with reality only in and through
a knowledge in which experience and conceptuality form a unity.26 Since
believing is an existential attitude of the whole man confronted by the
ultimate meaning of His life, not only is Jesus manifested in His words and
actions to those who experienced Him living, dead, and resurrected, but
also, since Gods saving act and self-revelation are always accompanied by
words inviting men intelligibly to faith, the apostles preaching belongs
constitutively to revelations totality. Hence there is at least an incipient
understanding of faiths mystery which theology later develops.
Conceptualist elements are preserved even while being transcended. The
personalist, existential act of faith, as a fundamental choice, cannot be separated from dogmatic faith, in which the personal attitude is completely
dominated by the objective reality of the revelation that presents itself.27
The structure of revelation reappears in the understanding of sacraments posed in De sacramentele Heilseconomie and Christ: The Sacrament
of the Encounter with God. The Church and the sacraments are signs and
personal, corporeal prolongations of the grace of the crucified and resurrected man Jesus, the primordial sacrament. The mystery involving all
Jesus historical acts of obedience, sacrifice, and worship of God is
realized and rendered visible in the instrumentum conjunctum, Jesus
humanity with its human freedom. Not only is Jesus the existence of
God himself (the Son) according to and in the mode of humanity but
also his human presence to His fellow man [is] permeated with his divine
mode of being and being present. With a human existence Christ is God
in a human way, and man in a divine way. In the man Jesus are united
both Gods invitation to dialogue and mans perfect response of fidelity.
He is grace become man. Because of their hypostatic link to the eternal
Son of God, His historical acts possess a perennial value which allows
them to be present in later history to all men. Now in heaven, in the
mode of glory, the glorified man Jesus intercedes for us and offers grace
in anticipation of the Parousia. This prayer is infallible, and as man
Christ sends the Holy Spirit after His exaltation. This glorified state
cannot be opposed to the efficacy of the historical Jesus nor does it add
anything to that efficacy since the same sacrificial will is common to the
historical and the glorified Christ. Jesus departure from the earth renders
26. Schillebeeckx, What Is Theology? 126, 132, 139, 140; idem, Scholasticism, 249f.;
idem, Revelation-in-Reality, 33f., 37f., 45; idem, Revelation, Scripture, 10, 13, 14f.;
idem, The Development of the Apostolic Faith, in Revelation, I, 74; idem, The Creed and
Theology, ibid., 213, 216. Brambilla, Cristologia, 136, 13948, who shows that the naturalsupernatural distinction is not based principally on the revelation of supernatural truths
but on degrees of Gods personal revelation.
27. Schillebeeckx, Revelation, Scripture, 10, 13; idem, The Lord, 257, 302; idem,
Revelation-in-Reality, 37f., 41f.; idem, Development, 57, 74; idem, What Is Theology?
96, 97f., 1568; idem, The Creed and Theology, in Revelation, I, 216. The obverse truth is
that no dogmatic formulation ever exhausts the mystery expressed; thus it is always open to
further expansion and reformulation: Eucharist, 259, 4690, 926, 157f.
156
necessary for us some continuing corporeal sign of His presence. Hence

the sacraments are instituted to make present His glorified humanity as
the perfect sign of Gods redeeming love and invite us as spiritualcorporeal beings to join His worship.28
Sacraments are natural symbols by which the interior life is exteriorized; they manifest the interior faith of the community actualizing them.
Since nature is capax gratiae, natural sacraments can be assumed into the
supernatural order. For the natural signification of the gesture is capable of
various interpretations until it is determined ad unum by the word; hence
the supernatural word can specify its meaning as word and gesture complement each other. In the supernatural order the sacrament expresses the
faith of the Church. Not that the Church establishes the sacrament;
rather Christ works as the principal agent in and through the Church.
Sacraments have their origin from God, from Christs institution. The
Churchs word of faith is ultimately Christs word. After historical studies, revealing how both words and gesture in the sacraments have changed
in time, it is no longer possible to identify the sacraments form and matter with the exact words and gestures of Christ. Instead the substance of
the sacrament, if it is to remain invariable, has to be understood in nonphysical terms as the significatio, the expression of the same intention in
and through various rites and words. The significatio is recognized as the
form of the sacramental activity. Thus the Church, in and through whom
Christ works, can determine the particular expression of the sacraments in
history. Her faith guards Christs intention. Through the visible, audible
symbol of these sacraments our subjectivity is joined in the words of the
sacrament to Jesus petition that the divine, objective reality of grace be
given us in the sacraments. In this way the Church continues Christs
redemption by actuating the sacramental signs which contain the saving
mystery offered to individual men; these signs come to their full significance when they are properly received. They conform the believers to
Christ. As Christ was the sign of both the divine offer and the perfect
human response to grace, so His Church, the Body of the glorified Christ
and His messianic community, is in turn considered the primordial sacrament. She exists as the sacrament of Christs humanity and the subject in
whom the seven sacraments are found; they are her actions. Thus she
perpetuates both the offer of divine love to men and Christs loving
28. Schillebeeckx, Lconomie, 13851, 193, 308f., 41620; idem, Christ, 10, 13f., 1720,
325, 3845, 479, 5063, 6673, 81f., 106, 112, 134, 138, 141, 147, 149, 159, 166, 180;
idem, The Sacraments: An Encounter with Christ, in Theology Today, I, ed. J. Feiner, J.
Trtsch, and F. Bckle, trans. P. White and R. Kelly (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1965), 1948,
2013, 20711, 213f. Schillebeeckx, Christ, 33, 115f., 161, does not allow Jesus to send the
Spirit nor the Church to be the sign of grace imbued with the reality it signifies before His
exaltation. Yet His earthly ministry already touched hearts with grace (38), the Spirit
descended upon Mary, John, Elizabeth, Zachariah, and Simeon (Lk. 1:15.35.41.67; 2:2527;
Mt. 1:18.20; cf. Mk. 12:36) and the Last Supper was a valid Eucharist.
157
human worship of God that requests graces bestowal.29 At the same time,
insofar as Christ is really present in the community of believers and their
official, the priest, acting through their faith, and insofar as sacraments are
understood to render the Christian faith explicit in the corporeal realm,
Christ is said to express Himself in the sacraments, especially the
Eucharist, that serves as the center of the other sacraments. Indeed, in
each of the other sacraments is contained a votum Eucharistiae, a desire for
the Eucharist.30
In and through his Church, Christ sacramentalizes his intercession for
us in heaven. It is the way he as Lord manifests his eternally-present
divine redeeming act, so that every sacrament that is performed for
one of the faithful is a sacramental prayer for grace for this believer: the
prayer of Christ himself to which the Church joins her prayer here and
now. On the other hand, the sacraments are also the sacramentalizing of Christs effective sanctification from heaven in and through his
Holy Spirit. In virtue of the eternally-present redeeming act of the
Kyrios, both efficacious and an act of worship, the sacraments bestow
the grace which they ask of God by this act of worship.31
29. Ibid., Lconomie, 25, 49, 6870, 11519, 1402, 1513, 201, 286, 30912, 32739,
34751, 3848, 412f., 4214, 47981, 494, 516, 52343; idem, Christ, 49, 53f., 60, 6672,
74, 7982, 879, 91, 95f., 1004, 11216, 12635, 140f., 147, 149, 193, 197200. The book
is well summarized in Sacraments, 2047, 21421.
30. Ibid, Lconomie, 127, 194, 422, 438, 478, 522, 534; idem, Christ, 59f., 638, 1004,
170f., 1759, 193; idem, Eucharist, 103, 1225, 13744, 150f.; Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 53,
71, 102f., 1079, 173. By understanding the symbolic gesture as the matter to which the form
(word) of the significatio is joined and by understanding the sacrament not as a symbol-thing
but as a cultic activity with a symbolic texture which effects by signifying (Lconomie, 91,
147), Schillebeeckx might have difficulty with the Eucharist which, according to St.
Thomas (STh. III, 73, 1, 3; 74, 7c; 87, 1c), is accomplished with the words of consecration
before its application to people; it is a stable presence not just an activity mediating God.
Schillebeeckx, Eucharist, 108f., 112, 117f., 120, certainly sympathizes with attempts to
replace transubstantiation with transsignification and transfinalisation. But after Paul
VIs Mysterium Fidei rejects the inadequacy of these terms, Schillebeeckx, ibid., 14951, 83,
insists that the change of the bread and wines meaning depends on the metaphysically prior
objective change of the bread and wine into Christs real presence. Real presence, however,
is an analogous term since God is personally present in everything, in creation, in the ecclesial assembly, in His word, and especially in the Eucharist (43, 103f., 1279, 13742). Since
human meaning is relational (131f., 1458) and a reality expresses itself in its appearances,
which function thereby as its revelatory signs (100, 147f., 155, 157f.), and corporality is a
visible sign of the spirit (99101), the Eucharist is given in the Eucharistic assembly as Christ
makes Himself present also in and through the species as well as in and through the assemblys faith (1225, 134f., 142f.). Christs real presence in the Eucharist is, of course, really an
offer of grace . And Christs offer of grace remains real in it so long as it remains a
sign(143f., 81f., 84f.). The Eucharist differs from the other analogates of divine presence
by possessing a greater density (81, 103). Given that nature already desires grace and the
creature is a transcendental relationship to God who is not opposed to His creature but can
fill it inwardly, permeating it without its retreat before Him, could this not be a neo-Platonic
vision of universal grace coming to appearance in creatures, most densely in the man Jesus
and the Eucharist? But does this sufficiently preserve the dialogical aspect of revelation or its
novelty?
31. Schillebeeckx, Sacraments, 213f.
158
Sacraments are the redemptive act in sacramental visibility applied to

individuals. Seen from above, they repeat the actual gift of grace itself coming and appealing to us in historical visibility. Schillebeeckx denies that the
sign, as sign has any actual effect. Yet the effect of grace ex opere operato
is the element ultimately determining [the sacraments definition].
Although sacramental causality is intimately linked to the symbolic expression of interiority, significatio and causality do not coincide. The link is
admittedly mysterious and cannot be adequately elucidated by conceptual
categories, but faith assures believers of the connection. Sacramenta causant
significando. Specifying their causality is more difficult. Thomas characterizes
them as instrumental efficient causes. As signs of the sacrificial causality of
Christs redemptive mystery, they participate instrumentally in the bestowal
of grace won by Christs Passion and other historical acts. As Christs humanity is an instrumentum conjunctum, the sacraments are instrumenta separata.
Just as Christ in His Passion participated in the divine power and merits
grace for us, so sacraments represent an intermediate, created causality of
cultic merit embraced by Gods divine causality. The efficient causality of
sacramental grace is Gods. His intrinsically efficacious grace, which enjoys
an absolute priority over all human efforts, produces infallibly its results
within the soul. On the basis of their objective value of prayer borrowed
from Christ the sacraments offer His historical mysteries to the Church and
at the same time they bring about effectively those mysteries of Christ in the
receiving subject on the basis of their objective, efficient, salvific power
which they also received from Christ. Therefore in infallibly bestowing grace
sacramental efficacy ex opere operato in no way lays an obligation on God.
Both the Son and the Holy Spirit, in their distinctness and within
the unity of the Trinity, have their own proper active share in the
sacraments, and this whole is dominated by the all-embracing initiative of the Father: to him, in union with Christ, the Church
addresses its sacramental prayer; from him, in and through the Son,
the eternal emission of the Holy Spirit proceeds.32
32. Ibid., Lconomie, 60, 111, 121f., 127, 137, 142f., 14653, 16771, 187f., 194, 420f.,
453, 4679, 475, 482, 508, 521, 523, 534f., 542f.; idem, Christ, 369, 71, 736, 111, 146;
idem, Sacraments, 211, 215. In regard to mans justification Trent attributes to Christs
Passion only a meritorious causality, reserving efficient causality to the merciful God (DS
1529). Schillebeeckx, Lconomie, 127, repeats Thomas opinion (STh. III, 60, 3c) considering the Passion an efficient cause, but does not insist upon it and elsewhere, 13740, 144,
sees the Passion as only participating in the divine power (virtus divina). Ultimately merit,
whether in Christ or in the sacraments, cannot be played off against Gods gracious efficacy
(139, n. 264; 152f., n. 316), and the Incarnation itself renders visible Gods salvific will and,
as Gods salvific work, is tied to a divine salvific force (150f., n. 312). What Christs death
actually accomplished aside from rendering visible Gods already determined salvific will is
not clear just as the sacramental causality is not clear. Both are only instruments of the
divinity. Cf. nn. 35 and 37 below. When Christ, 75, writes, As soon as we have said sign
we have already said efficient causality, that means that the sign points to another who
effects the result.
159
Despite the parallelism between Christs humanity and the instrumenta

separata, and despite the sacramental identity between Christ and His
Church, everything in the sacraments is not completely divinized.
Though Christs humanity is a mode of existence of God the Son himself, the Churchs symbolic acts are clearly separate from Christ. As
such, they are readily considered instruments. Despite reservations,
Schillebeeckx employs Thomas designation instrumental efficient
cause, but he interprets it by the analogy of personal encounter and
mutual availability.33 The subjectivity of the person addressed is always
included in the sacramental work. Hence Schillebeeckx interprets
grace received outside the visible Church as striving for its full
realization in the sacraments; previous to that it remains anonymous to
pre-Christians and non-Christians. Similarly the sacramentality of
everyday life is saved from anonymity by the clear expression of the
sacraments.34
In its openness to personal encounter Schillebeeckxs theory becomes
somewhat vague. Though Christs prayer may recall elements of the
moral causality theory, it is not clear how the sacrament causes grace.
Christs prayer, apparently the quintessence of His human will accomplishing the Passion, is represented in the concreteness of the sacraments which invite believers to join their intentions to Christs in and
through the faith of the Church. But not only does that prayer envelop
non-believers as well as believers but also, as coming from Christs
human will, it is caused by Gods universal salvific will.35 Sacramental
causality must involve an unspecified something beyond prayer. J.
Ambaum notes that the cause of grace and the signification of grace
manifested in the sacrament are unified only insofar as they both derive
33. Schillebeeckx, Christ, 47, 49, 739, 84f., 10812, 1402; idem, Lconomie, 475, 525,
535f.; idem, Sacraments, 21316; idem, Eucharist, 101.
34. Ibid., Christ, 1436, 197202, 206, 21116; idem, Sacraments, 198201, 216-18,
220f.
35. On Gods universal salvific will, cf. Schillebeeckx, Lconomie, 49, 56, 499f., which
brings about an anonymous acceptance of grace for anonymous supernatural faith in
pre-Christians and non-Christians (49f., 52). This theory leads to an internal difficulty.
Schillebeeckx follows Thomas in distinguishing Jewish from Christian sacraments thus:
while both manifest the interiority of the believers, Jewish sacraments do not possess an
interior, Christian salvific efficacy since His Passion cannot act in them in an efficient
manner; Christian sacraments indicate His active redemptive act and carry thereby an
intrinsic efficacy as representative of His human salvific will (142f., 149, 422). But if all
grace is won by Jesus, the universal Savior, even when given anticipatorily to preChristians (143, 521), and comes from the divine natures efficient causality, Christian
and Jewish sacraments do not differ on that account. Furthermore, insofar as even natural sacraments express the faith of any community and the Jews believe in the future
Savior, the expression of that faith must also have Christological content, even if not
fully explicit; they are signa passionis futurae (142f.). So Jewish sacraments signify Christs
Passion and possess an efficacy from that Passion; hence the difference between Jewish
and Christian sacraments would be in terms, not of interior, salvific efficacy, but of
greater or lesser explicitness. In Christ, 12, Schillebeeckx still holds that the grace
received by Jews before Christ is not an anticipated effect of the future mystery. Yet he
160
from Gods salvific will, which comes to expression in the Incarnation

and the sacraments.36
Under Gods salvific will bestowing grace Schillebeeckx tries to balance
the interior workings of grace and the sacraments external sign causality.
From the former perspective he sees the Church as the result of grace
given to individuals and coming to full ecclesial expression: an ecclesiology from below. Since Gods inner word calling to a communion of grace
is given to every man, and every man by virtue of his hylomorphic composition is a sacrament, a bodily expression of an interior disposition, the
Church is present in all mankind.37 For all men, encounters with their
fellow men are the sacrament of encounter with God. Indeed, everything
is grace made visible. So sacraments are found wherever there is fraternal love and in the sincere Protestant celebration of the Lords Supper. In
such cases the sacramental sign manifests the grace. All visible activity
of grace is a sacrament, manifesting what God does in a soul. The gift of
grace comes in its own visibility; it makes itself present visibly (thus in a
sign) and therefore works in visible presence. It makes itself present in
an embodiment borrowed from this world.38 In this ecclesiology from
below, as the man Jesus is grace become man, the Church is grace realized and made visible. As all Jesus human actions can be recognized as the
actions of God, so the Churchs actions are those of Christ. As with Jesus
the Incarnation refers to His whole life and death, in which Christ as man
realizes his divine sonship, so a sacrament is a process of maturation by
the power of sacramental grace.39 Similarly, since both Jesus, Gods sacramental appearance, and the Church are recognized as the primordial
sacrament, the Church, like Christ, can be said to confer the grace that
she offers, calling others to full ecclesial adherence and an intensified religious experience. For, corresponding to mans constitution and graces
intention, the Church exists wherever there is grace. As grace realized,
she will continue in heaven as a visible saving society.40 Inversely, one
can say that the Churchs faith is needed to constitute the sacrament and
admits that the Jews who ate manna received and communicated spiritually in the Eucharist
by desire (193; Schillebeeckx, Lconomie, 525, sees the desire for the sacrament as an anticipated effect) and Old Testament circumcision really justified ex opere operato since its efficacy
derived from Christ himself, even if it was not instrumentally imbued with the power of
Christ (87). Yet all presacramental and extra-sacramental grace is really Christs grace and
therefore sacramental (1426, 197). Given the man Christs unique mediatorship of all grace,
somehow Jewish sacraments owe their power to the future and eternal exalted Christ.
36. Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 71, 116, 174f., 178, 187f., 219, 276, n. 141; he also points
out, 32f., 3744, the alleged duality between signification and causality in Schillebeeckxs
interpretation of St. Thomas.
37. Schillebeeckx, Christ, 7, 10, 15, 64, 1424, 1924, 198; idem, Lconomie, 32128.
38. Ibid., Christ, 74, 1924, 206, 208, 215f.; idem, Lconomie, 151, 167f., 499f.
39. Ibid., Christ, 10, 14, 17f., 25, 29, 51, 5660, 62, 67, 78; idem, Sacraments, 211; idem,
Lconomie, 481.
40. Ibid., Christ, 14, 38, 42f., 4951, 73, 78, 101, 115f., 118, 144, 197200, 21113; idem,
Lconomie, 193, 308f., 393, 416, 531.
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that to the extent that he sins, man is outside the Church. Thus
Schillebeeckx can berate Catholics for the non-adherence of nonbelievers because Catholic life-witness has been insufficiently holy and
charitable.41
To balance that ecclesiology from below, in accord with Church doctrine, Schillebeeckx has to acknowledge valid sacraments ex opere operato
when the minister is sinful or disbelieves as long as he has the intention
of doing what the Church does. The institutional office stands alongside
the charismatic expression in communicating Christs grace to men. The
validity and salvific force of these sacraments is attributed to Christs
institution. Since such sacraments produce grace not as the expression of
the ministers faith, their efficacy must come from Christ. They are said to
cause, to offer, to give, to bestow, and to confer grace, to sanctify
and to bestow the Spirit; they are even a co-principle with Christ of the
sending of the Holy Spirit.42 Since God alone gives grace and nothing
human can send the Spirit, their causality must be merely instrumental.
Their causality must be analogous to the instrumentality of Christs
humanity as a cause of grace. His human acts are said to cause what they
signify. So the man Christ is said to send the Holy Spirit from heaven.
Similarly an infallible efficacy is attributed both to Christs prayer and to
the Churchs prayer in union with Him.43 But God does not pray to God
since there is no dependence of one divine person upon another, and
prayer cannot be infallible unless the prayer itself is caused by Gods
efficacious grace.44
The tension between these two views is mitigated to some extent
because the Churchs faith is presupposed as a given to which individuals
join themselves in responding to Gods grace. Thus even on the side of
subjectivity and the ecclesiology from below there is a corporate objectivity meeting individual subjectivity. Indeed, at times, efficacy ex opere
operato is ascribed to the prayer of Christ and the Church, not just to the
office established by Christ: Since a valid sacrament is genuinely a ritual
pleading and prayer of Christ and his Church on behalf of the recipient, all
that is necessary on its side for it to confer grace infallibly (i.e., ex opere operato) has been accomplished.45 Sacraments can thus be seen as established
41. Ibid., Christ, 96, 98, 204, 209f., 213; idem, Lconomie, 149, 193, 309f., 330, 335, 337,
527. Strangely, though sinning Catholics are excluded from the Church, many lapsed
Catholics are said to be also, in a certain sense, still following the Churchs way of life
(Christ, 213). Would that imply that the hierarchical Church cannot impose obligations,
e.g. Sunday observance, under pain of mortal sin?
42. Ibid., Christ, 504, 66, 704, 79, 159; idem, Lconomie, 153, 15867, 188, 37088,
51826.
43. Ibid., Christ, 98, 29f., 33f., 38f., 45, 668, 70, 81, 83f., 134, 138, 141, 147, 149, 159, 166,
180; Lconomie, 41820; idem, Sacraments, 205.
44. Ibid., Sacraments, 211f.; idem, Lconomie, 152f.
45. Ibid., Christ, 6670, 81f., 849 (recalling that Christs historical, redemptive mystery
is understood in terms of obedience and worship of God), 147; idem, Lconomie, 51922,
528, 5336.
162
by Christ in history and produced by His prayer from heaven. In Him

horizontal, objective continuity in time and vertical continuity in interior
grace are united. But what would happen if all people in the Church
fell into mortal sin or ceased believing? An appeal to the heavenly and
suffering Church would not suffice since to the extent that a man sins
he is outside the Church46 and unbelief is a sin. Would the sacraments
cease to mediate grace because there would be no one to administer
them?
Perhaps the underlying difficulty in Schillebeeckxs position concerns
his notion of person. Despite the repeated emphasis on personal encounter,
personal response, and the personalization of Jesus humanity by the Word,
person is not adequately defined. Admittedly Jesus is recognized as a
divine person and thus, as divine, an independent person, who nevertheless, derives from the Father. Hence everything he does as man is an
act of the Son of God, a divine act in human form. For the Son of God
personalizes the human act of Jesus. Thus His activity is characterized as
theandric or the human act of a theandric being. For that reason a perennial value is attributed to His acts as His personal acts. Person and nature
are never extrinsic elements separate from one another. The God-man is
one person. His presence in these acts is always the presence of the person who acts; a personal presence which renders itself actual here and now,
and active in and through an act.47 Yet Schillebeeckx elsewhere, as we
mentioned, insists on the human prayer and acts of the man Christ with
His human freedom as responsible for sending the Holy Spirit and conferring grace. If Jesus as man freely chooses with His human freedom and love,
how does the Son of God influence that act? One suspects that the
Thomistic axiom, actiones sunt suppositorum, and the Patristic communicatio idiomatum are being implicitly invoked, even though natures are the real
principles of activity.48 In Thomism it remains unclear who or what acts in
46. Ibid., Christ, 204.
47. Ibid., Sacraments, 208, 211f.; idem, Christ, 13f., 57; idem, Lconomie, 144, 147. There
is a similar ambiguity about the one to whom Jesus human acts are referred. In Christ, 13f.,
17f., 26f., 29f., 32f., etc., and Sacraments, 1946, 211f., there is a facile transition from
Jesus human response (obedience, prayer) to God and his human response to the Father.
This ease may be justified in view of the continuity between nature and grace, but there
should be a distinction between the divine nature, to which Jesus as man responds, and the
Father to whom the Son responds. Lconomie prefers to talk indistinctly of Christ and His
mysteries and what Christ does. Yet the man Jesus has an experience of God, Christs interior worship is toward God, and He has merited before God; He is an instrument of the
divinity or of the divine will, and Gods salvific work becomes visible in Christs humanity (418, 152, 140f., 150). As in virtue of the hypostatic union He remains the instrument
of the divinity, there is in each of Christs human acts a divine saving efficacy traceable to
the hypostatic union (140, 138, 150). Yet one might explain this divine efficacy over the
beatific vision which the man Jesus possesses on earth (141, 146), which traditional
Thomism attributes to the hypostatic union.
48. Ibid., Lconomie, 426f., professedly avoids a detailed discussion of the human faculties,
but indicates the intellectus practicus (and then the intention and command of the will) as
the immediate principle of the human act that directs and leads the entirety.
163
Jesus and the Trinity: the person or the nature?49 Modal presence of the
divinity in Jesus humanity hardly deals adequately with the mystery of the
hypostatic union. Schillebeeckx may react against considering Jesus
humanity an instrument, but it hardly clarifies the matter to consider that
humanity a content, a mode of being of the divine person.50 One understands how his later Jesus book will consider Christ a human person subject to human limitations, including error, and even have Him identifying
with John the Baptists call for repentance, believing in the Creator-God of
the Old Testament, and calling others to the same belief. The corporeal
resurrection is judged only one of various possible interpretations of Jesus
continuing work of converting believers to Himself and Gods forgiveness.51 For in history, men arrive at only partial perspectives about realitys
meaning, and alongside other interpretations of reality Christian faith can
only be proven true when the end of history will judge them all.
Schillebeeckx apparently changes his theology because he loses faith in the
concepts ability to mediate reality objectively. Mere abstractions from
the flow of history, they can only guide action pragmatically.52 With the
Church deprived of a message that is objectively and absolutely true and
without any material continuity to Jesus in history the resurrection is not
49. Analogously, though the person of the humiliated and glorified Christ ... is the saving
reality, what the encountered Jesus offers in the sacrament is grace in human form, sanctifying grace (ibid., Christ, 14, 182), and sanctifying grace is a participation in the divine
nature (STh. III, 112, 1c; 114, 3c).
50. Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 190, citing Schillebeeckx. Schillebeeckx follows de Petter
in rejecting the distinction between nature and supposite (301, n. 142), but Ambaum is
confused on this point, saying that Jesus human nature is not simply defined as a supposite
of the divine person, but it is the mode of existence of the Son. In Thomism the person,
not the nature, is considered the supposite (STh. I, 29, 2c; III, 2, 2c; 3c.2; 5.2; 16, 1c.1; 2,
1.3; 3c.2). When Schillebeeckx holds that Jesus humanity has its autonomy only in the
Word, he seems to break away from de Petter, who considers mans autonomy, that which
gives him subsistence or makes him a person, to be grounded in his rationality and selfconsciousness (Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 846, 190).
51. Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. H. Hoskins
(New York: Seabury, 1979), 94, 115, 1379, 3317, 346, 352, 35660, 38097, 542f.,
62832, 655. Whereas Schillebeeckx considered that Jesus human nature has its autonomy
only in the Word (cp. previous footnote), now, 62832, 65361, creatureliness is understood as being of God; since God is pure hypostasis and creatively present in man, the
hypostatic union could be predicated of all men, if it did not cause confusion. In His human
transcendence Jesus realized the gift quality of His being so much as to be designated by the
Church Son of God, thereby specifying Jesus creaturely relation to God; Jesus cannot be
contrasted to God since God and man are not opposed but God works interiorly in mans
existence as intimior intimo meo. Jesus Abba experience provides no basis for a transcendent sonship (25869).
52. Ibid., 61619; idem, God the Future of Man, trans. N. Smith (New York: Sheed and
Ward, 1968), 1017, 28f., 31, 3542, 1805. This clearly acknowledged break with the past
reduces Schillebeeckx to a pragmatic, relativistic understanding, which, he previously
admitted, What Is Theology? 121, 124, 144f., would be Modernism and a priori deprive
also our modern concepts of faith of their serious meaning. Many have noted the break that
occurred at the end of 1967 (Brambilla, Cristologia, 172246, esp. 1769). Unfortunately in
an otherwise fine work, Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 189, chooses not to let the turn affect
his interpretation of Schillebeeckxs sacramentology. Yet he notes, 150, 172, some inconsistencies.
164
corporeal53 the Churchs apostolicity is understood no longer in terms of

a visible, hierarchical succession but as a remaining faithful to the gospel
and Jesus cause in the community of faith. Church happens wherever
grace appears and leaders spring up spontaneously from a community of
equals, any one of which can preside over the Eucharist when the minister
chosen by the community is absent.54 Thus, when the concept proves
unequal to maintaining continuity and flexibility in dogmatic development, Schillebeeckxs original understanding of sacrament and Church
collapses. Unlike Rahner, he cannot fall back upon the intellectual act of
judgment because he considers the spiritual dynamism upon which transcendental Thomists rely subjective and non-intellectual, or volitional.55
Karl Rahner
The great influence of this German Jesuits theology must be attributed
to his ability to synthesize the Catholic faith and make it relevant to modern mans experience. He does both because of his philosophical starting
point, man as a question. But a question implies knowledge, an affirmative
judgment, the conversio ad phantasma, as well as ignorance. In knowing the
intellect is conceived primarily as active, affirming the juncture of phantasm
and being over an abstract concept. Since the judgment is a reflexive act,
the subject enjoys an initial self-awareness (Sein ist Beisichsein). Indeed, the
proper object of human intelligence is both the essence of a material reality
53. The denial of the corporeal resurrection contradicts Lconomie, 1235, 131f., 136f.,
537, 539, where the resurrection is listed among the historical mysteria carnis Christi;
Schillebeeckx, 321, also quotes St. Thomas to the effect that it is difficult to maintain the
souls immortality without the bodily resurrection; and Christs resurrection is the cause of
ours (137). Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 200, claims that Schillebeeckx intends to deny not
the corporeal resurrection but only its theological priority for the origin of the notion of the
resurrection. But for Schillebeeckx there is no objectivity in itself apart from the belief of
those converted, which is caused by Gods grace working interiorly. He does, however, in
Jesus, 645f., affirm the ontological priority of Jesus personal-cum-bodily resurrection over
any subjective faith-motivated experience. Hence if the bodily resurrection enjoys no theological priority, it does not belong to the resurrection experience as such and is irrelevant
for faith. The term bodily in personal-cum-bodily need refer only to the body of believers who belong to the resurrection event.
54. Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., Ministry, trans. J. Bowden (New York: Crossroad, 1981),
5f., 9, 11, 14, 259, 335, 37, 4650, 6875, 103f. These positions reverse previous positions: cf. Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 1425, where the bishops position is guaranteed by his
representation of Christ as God. Cf. also Schillebeeckx, Christ, 49, 132, 171f., 203. Since
the perennial character of Jesus historical acts depends on His being a divine person (ibid.,
57), making Jesus a human person destroys the alleged ontological basis of their perennial
efficacy.
55. Schillebeeckx, The Non-Conceptual Intellectual Element in the Act of Faith: A
Reaction, in Revelation, II, 72f.; idem, What Is Theology?, 111f., 141, 144f.; idem. NonConceptual Intellectual Dimension, 15862; Brambilla, Cristologia, 11113, 1568. The
very fine study of Daniele Moretto, Il Dinamismo intellettuale davanti al Mistero (Milan:
Glossa, 2001), esp. 11923, 1625, 20812, 243f., 33746, shows how in considering mans
spiritual dynamism Marchal oscillated for a long while between a volitive and an intellectual description.
165
and the self. Thus there is no objectivity unless over subjectivity, and since
the intellect is dynamic, searching for the true as its good, intellect and will
coalesce as a unity: the deepest truth is also the most free. Furthermore,
insofar as the intellect is dynamic and whatever is recognized as finite, is surpassed in the very recognition, nothing finite can satisfy its desire. It is
oriented toward the infinite horizon of being. Rahner takes up St. Thomas
doctrine of the natural desire for the beatific vision.56
Such a philosophy risks relativizing the concept. For the concept is only
part of the judgment and is constantly being surpassed in the movement of
affirmation. Nonetheless without a concept no judgment can be made. An
it alone without a something about it can in no way be imagined in
thought. Moreover Rahner postulates a concept of being which oscillates
from the non-being of matter to the plenitude of being, thus forming a conceptual duplicate of judgments movement; that allows the ontic language
of conceptualist thought to be translated into the ontological language of
Rahners existential, dynamic thought. This oscillation permits Rahner to
appeal to valid concepts when he wishes to emphasize the diversity between
body and soul, intellect and will, essence and existence, man and environment, world and God, nature and grace, and, inversely, to employ the
synthetic movement of judgment to emphasize their unity. So, for example,
a valid concept allows nature to be distinguished from grace as a remainder
concept within a dynamic existential subject, also called nature, whose
constitutive goal is the supernatural beatific vision. Yet Rahner more
frequently emphasizes Gods unified plan for the salvation of all and
the dynamic openness to grace that He has implanted in each nature.57
Upon such a nature his notion of the Church as sacrament is constructed.
Before that can be understood, two further presuppositions must be elaborated.
First, grace is conceived primarily as uncreated grace, Gods direct
presence in the soul. In approaching the soul God creates sanctifying
56. This brief summary does not do full justice to Rahners thought, his dialectical analogy:
cf. John McDermott, S.J., The Analogy of Knowing in Karl Rahner, IPQ 26 (1996): 20116
and idem, Dialectical Analogy: The Oscillating Center of Rahners Thought, Greg 75
(1994): 675703. (The order of publication reverses the order of composition.) These
insights have been deepened by Patrick Burke, Reinterpreting Rahner (New York: Fordham,
2002), 146. The argument for unity of intellect and will is made over the contingency of
the finite, which depends for its actualization on Gods willing; thus its reality can be known
only though a response that involves an affirmation of Gods willing. Love of God as an
inner moment of knowing is equally its condition and foundation. Karl Rahner, S.J. Hrer
des Wortes, 2nd ed., ed. J. Metz (Mnchen: Ksel, 1963), 11931. Rahners ecclesiology has
been very influential: e.g. Peter Franzen, S.J., Sacraments: Signs of Faith, in C. Sullivan
(ed.), Readings in Sacramental Theology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 5977;
John Gerken, S.J., Dialogue Between God and Man, in ibid., 7888. In Models of the Church
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 5870, Avery Dulles, S.J., though mentioning de
Lubac, Semmelroth, Schillebeeckx, and others, basically follows Rahners understanding of
the Church as sacrament.
57. Karl Rahner, S.J., Geist in Welt (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1939), 82; McDermott, Dialectical
Analogy, 6806; Burke, Reinterpreting, 4772. On the meaning of ontological and ontic,
166
grace, the material condition for His quasi-formal supernatural presence. Each grace effects the other in mutual causality. Uncreated grace
can be interpreted as actual insofar as it is offered to mans freedom
and, after acceptance, finds expression over a dynamic nature in individual spiritual and material acts.58 Second, a theology of real symbol
is developed whereby the plurality within all being is understood as
constituting its essence. This self-realization of one being in another,
which is constitutive of its essence, occurs most clearly in the human
composite, in which the form of man implies a necessary reference to
the matter which it informs and so actualizes itself. So the body is the
souls symbol by which it signifies and realizes itself. This self-realizing
unity in diversity also characterizes God, whose Trinitarian plurality
constitutes His very essence: the Father is Himself only in relation to
the Word, His self-expression or symbol. Analogously Christs humanity is seen as the real-symbol of the Word, as the appropriate revelation
of God to men. Moreover, insofar as God is the reality of salvation, all
of His operations on man will find expression in symbols. For when
grace is received in the soul, elevating it, it must find expression in the
body which the soul informs.59
Because there can be no greater divine self-revelation in time than
Jesus Christ, the Church must always continue by Gods omnipotent
grace as the faithful witness to Christ and the unfailing bearer of His
life for men. Otherwise Christs self-communication could disappear
from the earth and Gods plan of salvation would be frustrated. Thus
the Church is guaranteed by divine predestination not only continuance as the principal sign of grace until the end of the world but also
the power of infallibly defining the content of her belief. Though the
Church as a whole is primarily guaranteed this absolute fidelity to
Christ, the necessary further structuring of the Churchs faith in a
social, visible institution involves the episcopal college and the Pope
who act as final instance in determining the Churchs faith when such
articulation is rendered necessary. The people of God and the hierarchy
are seen as two poles mutually conditioning each other within the
whole event of revelation. The Church is not considered an authority
cf. Rahner, Geist, 83; idem, Grundkurs des Glaubens (Freiburg: Herder, 1976), 124, 132f., 296;
idem, Probleme der Christologie von heute, Schriften, I, 189, 192f., where both types of categories are presented as capable of mutual translation and as complementary; idem, Jesus
Christus, in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. K. Rahner et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1968), II, 3946, for
mutual translation; idem, Zur Theologie der Menschwerdung, Schriften, IV, 294, for the
description of ontic as static. Cf. also Karl Rahner, S.J., Zur Theologie des Symbols,
Schriften, IV, 2857, for ontic as dealing with a realitys in-itself and ontological with its
internal self-relatedness, which implies existential self-realization in self-knowledge and selflove.
58. K. Rahner, S.J., Zur scholastischen Begrifflichkeit der ungeschaffenen Gnade, in
Schriften, I, 34775; idem, Gnade, in Sacramentum Mundi, II, 45760.
59. Ibid., Zur Theologie des Symbols, 275311 (citation: 290). For a similar understanding of the body as symbol of the spirit in Schillebeeckx, cf. note 30 above.
167
diverse from the revelation she proclaims but as an internal constituent

of revelation itself.60
If the Church is understood as the sign of Christs grace and sacraments
are likewise signs of grace, the analogy for regarding the Church as a type
of sacrament is at hand. Rahner designates the Church the primordial
sacrament (Ursakrament) in virtue of which all sacraments have their
efficacy, referring to it as the source of the divine life, of which they are
signs, and as the goal of all their efficacy, the building up of the Body of
Christ. The Eucharist, the Body of Christ, serves as the central sacrament, the clearest, full expression of the Churchs life as Body of Christ,
and all the other sacraments are oriented to the Eucharist as the supreme
actualization of the Churchs social, hierarchical, ministerial, praying,
unified being in anticipatory expectation of the Parousia.61 Just as the
human soul comes to itself in forming and actuating the body, so the
sacraments of the Church represent the full actualization of ecclesial
grace, and as such the sacraments and grace mutually condition each
other. This understanding of the Church as basic sacrament instituted by
Christ renders obsolete or superfluous the question whether all the sacraments were directly and individually instituted by Christ. Given the
institution of the Church by Christ, the Church could later, under the
Spirits guidance, actuate herself in various sacramental forms as operative signs of grace.62 Indeed, many aspects of de jure divino ecclesial structure are due to the free decisions of the Apostles and others, which
become irreversible insofar as they correspond to the Churchs nature and
mark the working out in time of Christs foundation.63
The efficacy of the sacrament consists not in any efficient causality
worked upon the soul but in the sign itself. The sign effects grace insofar as grace effects the sacrament as sign of the occurrence of grace.
There is an oscillation in Rahners view between individual and ecclesial community. Even though in his theology grace is given to the
individual, its full sign is realized in the Church intended by God.
Hence the sacraments are thought of primarily as decisive actualizations
of the community; thus room is made for the infallible effectiveness ex
opere operato of a sacramental sign despite its rejection by individual
members in sin the whole Church carries the grace of the sign and
60. Karl Rahner, S.J., Wort und Eucharistie, Schriften, IV, 355; Karl Rahner, S.J., and
Herbert Vorgrimler, Unfehlbar, in Kleines theologisches Wrterbuch (Freiburg: Herder,
1961), 369f.; Rahner, Das kirchliche Lehramt in der heutigen Autorittskrise, in Schriften,
IX, 3406, 350f., 35965; idem, berlegungen zur Dogmenentwicklung, in Schriften, IV,
18f.; idem, Lehramt und Theologie, in Schriften, XIII, 6972; idem, ber die
Schriftinspiration (Freiburg: Herder, 1959), 4750.
61. Rahner, Kirche und Sakramente, 313, 6878; idem, Wort und Eucharistie, 349f. In
Gliederschaft, 80, n. 1, Rahner admits to borrowing the word Ursakrament from
Semmelroth.
62. Ibid., Kirche und Sakramente, 37f., 627.
63. Ibid., ber den Begriff des Jus Divinum im katholischen Verstndnis, in Schriften, V,
25777.
168
the sacramental efficacy of prayer in Extreme Unction beyond private

prayer is understood in terms of the Churchs absolute commitment to
the sign. For the sacraments are effective ex opere operato to the degree
that they are the expression of the grace already received in the Church
that thereby actualizes herself:
The Church is in her concrete essence the permanent sign not
only that God offers the grace of His self-communication to the
world but also that He in the victorious efficacy of His grace,
active in formal predestination (which concerns the totality of
humanity and the Church), powerfully effects the acceptance of
this offer. Grace is not just in the world, grace is not just present
as an offer; since and through Christ it is also de facto victoriously
present. The world can not only be saved, if it wants to; the world
(as a whole) is de facto saved, because in Christ God effects that it
wants to be saved.
Baptism is an effective sign of grace not as an isolated event occurring
between God and the soul but precisely insofar as it marks the incorporation of the baptized into the Church of Christ.64
Such an understanding also allows a greater unity between word and
sacrament. Gods word is also the proclaimed word of the Church as an
essential interior moment of Gods salvific action in the world. A
merely transcendental communication of God in grace would not be
sufficient to penetrate all regions of mans being; he would lack the
conscious awareness necessary for the gifts reception and social communication. So the Churchs word brings the inner word of grace to
explicit consciousness and calls man to take a position regarding it. As
the rendering present of grace, the word brings what it expresses. It
happens in the Church in various degrees of intensity according to the
degree of authority used in proclaiming it. In its most powerful effect
and greatest essential realization Gods word brings about the sacrament. The word is an essential element of the sacrament, which calls
64. Ibid., 36f., 2830, 5562, 78f.; idem, Wort und Eucharistie, 337f., 353f.; idem, Zur
Theologie des Symbols, 299f. Rahner is aware that mankind forms an original unity in
Adam and Christ (Gliederschaft, 8493) and attempts to express that unity through various causes (Erlsung, in Sacramentum Mundi, I, 1171f.), but this view of the races unity
stands in tension with his ontology which starts from an individual nature with a natural
desire for the beatific vision; if the individual is immediately open to God, the communitys
mediation seems secondary. So Dulles, Models, 64, can argue that if men do not receive
grace, the visible institutions of the Church would no longer palpably appear as the actual
expression of the faith, hope, and love of living men; hence the Church would be an inauthentic sign and therefore not a sacrament. Of the same opinion is R. Haight, S.J.,
Mission: The Symbol for Understanding the Church Today, in TS 37 (1976), 644f., who
also denies the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (629f.) and advises those who find belonging to a church hinders taking responsibilities in the present world to live outside that
church or in another (648).
169
for the free acceptance of the offered grace. But even outside the sacraments justifying grace can be increased by faith which derives from the
word of God. The efficacy of word and sacrament are parallel and
complementary. Like a sacrament the powerfully salvific word produces
what it expresses; it is itself therefore an event of salvation, which (in
its external, historical and social moment) signifies what happens in
and under itself, and it lets happen what it signifies. Word and sacrament are unified insofar as the sacrament can be considered the words
highest, most dense, and most intensive appearance in corporeal,
visible, ecclesial form.65
Rahners understanding of sacramental causality overcomes many difficulties bedeviling conceptualist theology. A material sign can produce a
spiritual effect because man is a bodysoul unity. Furthermore, given the
basic unity between nature and grace, a natural sign can produce a supernatural effect, especially when a relation of mutual causality exists
between sign and signified. Yet a danger is concealed in Rahners theory,
one that becomes more obvious after his proposal of transcendental revelation. Previous to 1963 Rahner imagines revelation primarily as explicit
verbal revelation proposed from without to men, who through graces elevation recognize it for what it is, Gods supernaturally revealed word.66
Thus the link to the hierarchical ecclesial structure is assured for the
historical transmission of faith. But Rahner comes to realize that if God
offers grace to all according to His universal salvific will, if grace is primarily Gods presence in the soul, and if the soul is originally self-conscious,
the soul must possess a supernatural awareness of God. Grace and
revelation coalesce. The preaching of the Church only brings to explicit
consciousness what the missionarys audience already believes unthematically through grace.67 However important graces thematization might be
for mans complete actualization, the essential is already given in
uncreated grace. Moreover, since the infinite God is never exhausted by
any thematic expression, a pluralism in theology and practice should be
allowed.68 Pushed to an extreme, such a theory leads not only to
65. Ibid., Wort und Eucharistie, 31315, 321f., 32641, 3457, 3515.
66. Cf. Karl Rahner, S.J., and Herbert Vorgrimler, Glauben and Praeambula fidei, in
Kleines theologisches Wrterbuch, 1315, 296. The change is manifested in the second edition
of Hrer, especially in the footnotes.
67. K. Rahner, S.J., ber die Erfahrung der Gnade, in Schriften, I, 1059; idem, Grundkurs,
104, 108, 111, 1358; idem, Glaubenszugang, in Sacramentum Mundi, I, 41416.
68. Ibid., Probleme der Christologie von heute, in Schriften, I, 16974; idem, Was ist
eine dogmatische Aussage? Schriften, V, 6581; idem, Kleines Fragment ber die kollektive Findung der Wahrheit, ibid., 10410; idem, Der Pluralismus in der Theologie und
die Einheit des Bekenntnisses in der Kirche, Schriften, IX, 1133; idem, Zur Theologie
des kumenischen Gesprches, in Schriften, IX, 4356; idem, berlegungen zur Methode
der Theologie, in Schriften, IX , 836, 123; idem, Grundstzliche Bemerkung zum
Thema: Wandelbares und Unwandelbares in der Kirche, in Schriften, X, 24554; idem,
Bietet die Kirche letzte Gewissheiten? in Schriften, X, 3014; idem, Zum Begriff der
Unfehlbarkeit in der katholischen Theologie, in Schriften, X, 30523; cf. Burke,
Reinterpreting, 20425.
170
anonymous Christianity69 but also, within the Christian community, to

various groups constituting themselves as Eucharistic assemblies even
without links to the hierarchical Church.70 Moreover, insofar as grace
comes to sacramental expression over human subjectivities, the sacramental symbol depends on the intentionality of those subjectivities. So
the Eucharistic species are understood fundamentally not only from an
event involving subjectivities but also as receiving their reality from the
intentionality of the believing, loving community; there is no physical
change in the species, but a transfinalization or transsignification occurs.
Presentia realis is predicated first of Christs presence in the community and
only thereafter, as Christ actualizes His presence in greater intimacy, of
the species assumed into the communitys action of cultic worship.71 Such
radical subjectification of faith does not seem to be Rahners intention.
Though Rahner holds that the entirety of revelation is contained in a
transcendental experience, this experience is never without reference to
history, precisely because his starting point has a reference to materiality in
the phantasm. If grace is given to all and the human nature receptive of
grace is both visible and social, one expects to find other symbols of grace
in history. Given ones own inappropriate response, one should search for
the most appropriate response. That is Jesus Christ, who has been intended
from the beginning of creation and whose advent makes Gods offer of
grace unsurpassable and irreversible.72 Although there are problems in
Whereas previous theological pluralism concerned the interpretation of dogmas, Rahners
pluralism involves the very reformulation of the dogmas.
69. Karl Rahner, S.J., Das Christentum und die nichtchristlichen Religionen, in Schriften, V,
14358; idem, Die anonymen Christen, in Schriften, VI, 54554; idem, Atheismus und
implizites Christentum, in Schriften, VIII, 187212. For critiques: Leo Elders, Die Taufe der
Weltreligionen, ThGl 55 (1965), 12431; Heinz Kreuse, S.J., Die anonymen Christen
exegetisch gesehen, MThZ 19 (1968): 229; Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cordula oder der
Ernstfall (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1966), 8597; Henri de Lubac, S.J., Geheimnis aus dem wir
leben (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1967), 13354. Yves Congar, O.P., Dekret ber die
Missionsttigkeit der Kirche: Theologische Grundlegung (Nr. 29), in Mission nach dem
Konzil, ed. J. Schtte (Mainz: Grnewald, 1967), 163, notes that at Vatican II in the debate
over Ad Gentes the Council Fathers were very upset and strongly resisted an attempt to define
the missionarys task as a bringing to consciousness of what was already present in nonChristian religions. For Rahners responses: Zur Theology des kumenischen Gesprches, 49,
n. 15; idem, Anonymes Christentum und Missionsauftrag der Kirche, Schriften, IX, 498515;
idem, Mission und implizite Christlichkeit, in Sacramentum Mundi, III, 549f.
70. Donna Steichen, Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1991), 13, 1313, 136f., 166f., 183, 187, 221, 236, 302, 347, 353f., 3602,
3657.
71. Piet Schoonenberg, S.J., Presence and the Eucharisitic Presence, CrossCur 16 (1967):
esp. 524; idem, The Real Presence in Contemporary Discussion, ThD 15 (1967), esp.
711. This view is recently revived by Judith Kubicki, C.S.S.F., Recognizing the Presence
of Christ in the Liturgical Assembly, TS 65 (2004): 82730.
72. Karl Rahner, S.J., Die Christologie innerhalb einer evolutiven Weltanschauung, in
Schriften, V, 21316; idem, Christologie im Rahmen des modernen Selbst- und
Weltverstndnisses, in Schriften, IX, 231f., 236f., 239f.; idem, Erlsung, 11713; idem, Jesus
Christus, 930, 9435; idem, Grundkurs, 194f., 201, 210, 31012. For an overview, cf. John
McDermott, S.J., The Christologies of Karl Rahner, Greg 67 (1986): 87123, 297327.
171
explaining how any finite symbol can be ultimate, Rahner affirms strongly
Jesus unicity as the highest of the genus in which all others participate.73
Later in Grundkurs des Glaubens he bases the Church squarely upon the resurrection. He applies the fundamental insight that revelation consists not
primarily in propositions objectively given, but in a personal relation of
love and understanding. Since Easter represents no private event but is
intended for witnesses who see and comprehend, the disciples faith constitutes an intrinsic part of the resurrection itself.74 This juncture, in faith
and freedom, of faithful witnesses to the supreme self-revelation of God in
Christ establishes the essential elements of the Body of Christ, the Church.
Joined to Christ in grace, the members of the Church continue to
announce His saving deeds in word and sacrament in order that all may
come to full belief. Just as grace found its perfect historical expression in
Christ, so also grace continues to realize itself as a real symbol in the members of the Church that continues in time.75 Consequently the historical,
hierarchical Church serves as a norm for belief and he reincorporates into
his theology many arguments of the traditional conceptualist apologetics
for the Catholic Church as the one, true Church of Christ.76
Rahners whole theology involves a subtle dialectical analogy which
switches perspective frequently in an attempt to do justice to the both
and characterizing Catholic reality. Often difficulties arise with his disciples who emphasize one side of his thought. Thus his teaching that nature
finds its fulfillment only in grace, that God is experienced unthematically,
that theology is anthropology,77 and that dogmas can and should be
reformulated for modern man leads to Modernism. Besides some basic
metaphysical problems, one should also note that his understanding of
person changes according to need and is contradictory.78 In regard to
sacramental causality, ambiguities abound. The causality involved seems
to be final causality: God wills that His grace find an appropriate visible,
73. Karl Rahner, S.J., Der eine Mittler und die Vielfalt der Vermittelungen, in Schriften,
VIII, 223, 22633; idem, Die ewige Bedeutung der Menschheit Jesu fr unser
Gottesverhltnis, in Schriften, III, 25760.
74. Ibid., Grundkurs, 31325; idem, Jesu Auferstehung, Schriften, XII, 350f.; Karl Rahner
and Wilhelm Thsing, Christologie: Systematisch und Exegetisch (Freiburg, Herder, 1972), 38.
75. Rahner, Wort und Eucharistie, 31825; idem, Kirche, in Kleines theologisches
Wrterbuch, 199202; idem, Kirche und Sakramente, 17f., 21f.; idem, Offenbarung,
Sacramentun Mundi, III, 841f.; idem, Geist, 17589.
76. Ibid., Grundkurs, 33247, 35887.
77. Ibid., 54; idem, Probleme, 205; idem, Theologie und Anthropologie, 43.
78. For problems, cf. McDermott, Christologies, 30825; idem, Karl Rahner on Two
Infinities: God and Matter, IPQ 28 (1998): 4557; idem, Metaphysical Conundrums at
the Root of Moral Disagreement, Greg 71 (1990): 71826, 73642; and idem, Karl Rahner
in Tradition: The One and the Many to be published shortly in Fides Quaerens Intellectum.
For the various notions of person: in Trinitarian doctrine mode of subsistence and mode
of presence [Rahner, Trinitt, in Sacramentum Mundi, IV, 1019f.; idem, Der dreifaltige
Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte, in Mysterium Salutis, ed. J. Feiner
and M. Lhrer, II (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1968), 38993]; point of freedom vis--vis nature
understood as the necessity of the past [Rahner, Gliederschaft, 8691; idem, Zum
172
social expression. But on whom does it work? Man has already received
grace. The sacramental sign seems to be Gods purpose, but how can God
be caused by anything less than Himself? Probably for that reason
Schillebeeckx maintained the non-coincidence of symbol and cause in
the sacrament and identified God as the efficient cause who enjoys the
complete initiative in effecting salvation. Admittedly Rahner allows in
Christology for God to be mutable in the other while remaining
immutable in Himself, and Christology is but the highest exemplification
of the Godcreature relation.79 Such a statement accords with his
dialectical method which switches from an ontic, abstract viewpoint in
which God can be designated Actus Purus to an ontological viewpoint
in which all things stand in dynamic relation and the first and last [reality] is said to be the ultimate unity of God and the world.80 But it is confusing; the late Rahner admits that contradictory dogmatic propositions
can be affirmed simultaneously as long as each stays open to the others
positive content.81 Such is the difference between the infinite God
unthematically experienced and conceptual formulations that one wonders whether the analogy of being has been ruptured. Though Rahner,
unlike Schillebeeckx, never surrenders to an irrational dynamism, the
human minds ability to attain reality consistently is put into question.
Otto Semmelroth
Rahner often speaks of the free dialogue between God and man in the
offer and acceptance of grace. Insofar as the natural order is distinguishable from the supernatural order, man remains free before Gods free offer
of grace. Freedom on both sides accounts for dialogue.82 Yet insofar as
God is the gift, giver, and foundation of mans acceptance grace effects
its own acceptance ontologically prior to its resultant symbolic expression83 the confrontation involved in dialogue is not highlighted. Yet
this dialogical element of revelation in word and sacrament is dear to O.
Semmelroth, whose theology of the Church as primordial sacrament is
basically shared by H. de Lubac and P. Smulders. Emphasizing Gods
revelation in its correspondence to human nature as corporeal and social
theologischen Begriff der Konkupiszenz, Schriften, I, 3935]; self-conscious, free center of
activity, which becomes nature in Christology [Rahner, Person, in Kleines theologisches
Wrterbuch, 283; Jesus Christus, 935f., 948]; the divine final subject or carrier expressing
Himself in the human nature [Rahner, Jesus Christus, 949; idem, Der dreifaltige Gott,
3336]; dynamism uniting with God in beatific vision, distinguished from more static concept of nature [Rahner, Jesus Christus, 952f.]. Cf. also Rahner, Grundkurs, 3746, which
describes as person what earlier articles on nature and grace identify as nature.
79. McDermott, Christologies, 104f., 108, 11214, 302.
80. Rahner, Grundkurs, 648, 71f.; McDermott, Dialectical Analogy, 6904.
81. Rahner, Zum Begriff der Unfehlbarkeit, 31820. Cf. Burke, Reinterpreting, 20425.
82. Cf., e.g., Rahner, Gnade, 452f., 454f., 460f.
83. Rahner, Grundkurs des Glaubens (Freiburg: Herder, 1976), 119, 124f., 131, 134f., 174f.
173
as well as spiritual and individual, they prefer to see the Church as a

social whole which, existing previous to the individual, invites him to
encounter Christ and make the decision to accept the grace offered
through the visible mediation of the Church. In de Lubacs words, it is
through His union with the community that the Christian is united to
Christ.84 Concerned to preserve human freedom before revelation,
Semmelroth writes:
Man must be able to perceive and recognize the order of salvation
and in a free decision to say Yes or No to it. Because, however, mans
spiritual-personal possibilities are tied to the body and meet the
other (Gegenber) only through the mediation of corporeality, Gods
salvific order must also come to man as a corporeal other. So the fact
of a representational form of the salvific order confronting man in
need of salvation is necessary. A purely spiritual encounter with God
is an illusion.85
As Christ took up a human nature in order that through it men might
have contact with His divine person and thus became the original
sacrament of God and His grace, so He remains present in the Church
as His Body, offering men in dialogue the possibility of joining themselves freely to Him until the end of time.86 Through the seven sacraments, which the Church employs to express her inner reality of grace,
Christ makes His life present to men ex opere operato. Established by
Christ, the Church is both source and goal of the sacraments; she can
even be identified as the res et sacramentum, for she is the unity of love
between God and man which every sacrament intends. The Eucharist
is identified as the central sacrament, where the Church as Christs
84. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Catholicism, trans. L. Sheppard (New York: New American
Library, 1964), 48; O. Semmelroth, S.J., Die Kirche als Sakrament des Heils, in Mysterium
Salutis, IV/1 (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1972), 311f. Some others follow the same basic interpretation: e.g. Cyril Vollert, S.J., The Church and the Sacraments, in Sullivan (ed.),
Readings, 89103; and, to some degree, Frank Noris, S.S., The Response of Faith in the
Sacraments, in Sullivan (ed.), Readings, 538.
85. Otto Semmelroth, S.J., Die Kirche als Ursakrament, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1955),
79; idem, Die Kirche, 317f., 319, 321, 333, 348; idem, Personalismus und
Sakramentalismus, in Theologie in Gegenwart und Geschichte (Festschrift M. Schmaus), ed.
J. Auer and H. Volk (Mnchen: Zink, 1957), 200; idem, Church and Sacrament, trans. E.
Schossberger (Notre Dame, IN: Fides, 1965), 103f.; idem, The Church and Christian Belief,
trans. M. Milligan (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist, 1966), 11921; idem, The Integral Idea of the
Church, Theology Today, 139, 142f.; Henri de Lubac, S.J., The Splendor of the Church, trans.
M. Mason (1956; rpt. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986), 20510.
86. Semmelroth, Kirche, 3843, 49f., 56, 1917; idem, Die Kirche, 31922, 326; idem,
Church and Christian Belief, 79, 86; idem, Church and Sacrament, 3845; idem, Integral Idea,
1379, 143f.; de Lubac, Catholicism, 42f.; idem, Splendor, 203f., 21012, 215, 220f.;
Smulders, 37784. Although Smulders, Chiesa sacramento, 376, 384, cites Rahner and,
377, like Schillebeeckx, presents the incarnate Word as the man who is fully confident that
the Father hears Him, he is listed with Semmelroth and de Lubac because of his strong
insistence on the free response before the historical mediation of grace, especially as tied to
174
Body manifests her reality most clearly around the altar in the hierarchically structured community destined to endure from Good Friday
until the Parousia in order that the faithful, nourishing themselves with
Christs Body, might persevere and grow through love ever more deeply
into the mystery of the Church. Baptism is understood as an initiation
into the Eucharistic community and cult, and the other sacraments are
interpreted as extensions and supports of the Eucharistic grace. In such
a perspective the sacraments can never be confused with magical rites,
but are understood as calls of love for mans response. The symbol
should offer to the living other its own personal content, without forcing the other; if he accepts the symbol and exerts himself with regard
to its content, the encounter occurs.87
Similarly the Church efficaciously proclaims Gods word in her preaching, which is seen as the initiation of a dialogue calling for men to respond
in faith by taking the sacrifice of the cross into their lives. For the Word
of God become flesh still speaks through the Church to whom He
entrusted His words. The Church continues in time the incarnate Christs
ministry. Preaching, so far as it is really carried out as the churchs living
act, is a saving image and sign of the incarnation of Gods son. Not only
are the preached divine words effective of themselves but also they stand
in the closest union with the sacraments. Sacraments include words and
preachers join symbolic gestures to their words. At a more profound level
sacrament and word mutually refer to each other, and each cannot exist
without the other:
The churchs preaching of Gods word is intended to be witnessed to
and answered by listening believers through their reception of the
sacraments. And the reception of the sacraments is determined by
the preaching of Gods word to such a degree that it can be meaningful only if it takes place in response to that preaching.
Clearly, if the sacrament is an invitation to personal encounter, men
must understand to what they are being invited. Admittedly the word
only communicates Gods redemptive will; it does not, like the
the apostolic Church which is similar to the Words humanity as instrument. In Smulders,
Sacramenta et ecclesia, Periodica 48 (1959), while citing Semmelroth and Schillebeeckx,
he oscillates between a more Rahnerian view whereby internal grace tendentially brings
about external cult and juridical adhesion to the Church (8f., 3840, 448, 52f.) and the
view whereby juridical incorporation in the Church, through whose public cult Christ
works, brings about character and grace (269, 347, 424, 4951): per se Ecclesia juridica
est Ecclesia pneumatica.
87. Semmelroth, Personalismus, 208; idem, Kirche, 4667; idem, Die Kirche, 333f.,
34951; idem, Church and Christian Belief, 12, 85; idem, Church and Sacraments, 50f., 6881,
847, 95101; idem, Integral Idea, 139f., 141; de Lubac, Catholicism, 4863; idem,
Splendor, 133f., 15261; Smulders, Chiesa sacramento, 383f.
175
sacraments, communicate the divine life; it prepares man for the actual
communication of God in grace.88
While the sacraments, as human signs, can also be understood as expressions of man worshiping God, the emphasis lies on the assimilation of man
to God through the divinely given sign. As Smulders notes, the sacrament is
not just a means of grace, but the very form of grace itself, the visible sign of
Gods one act, in which He established community with men.89 In all sacramental service the institutional element of the teaching, ruling, sacerdotal
office remains in polar tension with the communal element, the Church as
assembly of believers, and can never be loosened from it. For it stands for
Gods bestowal of grace from above, continuing the possibility of mans
encounter with the visible other representing God and manifesting that
redemption is Gods work, not mans.90 Yet insofar as Christs sacrifice to the
Father is represented in the sacraments and the one receiving them joins
himself to Christ, alongside that descending movement of graces offer there
is an ascending movement from man to the Father in Christ and in the
priesthood established by Him. The reception of a sacrament is the legitimate expression established by Christ, in which man should encounter God
the Father.91 Insofar as Christ is active in His priest to conduct men back to
the Father, Semmelroth first acknowledges a personal, or moral, causality
in the sacraments.92 Later he explains sacramental causality as a type of personal fidelity deriving from Christs total entrusting of Himself to the
Church, the sign of His promise to be with men, in such a way that the
divine presence summons a total human response of love.93
Although this view resembles the conceptualist ecclesiology in the measure that the Church and the sacraments function as institutional givens, as
mediators effecting or offering grace, their efficacy is no longer defined in
terms of various causalities but interpreted as personal encounters. In this, as
Semmelroth indicates, the closest category from the old theology is moral
causality, but he goes far beyond that. He strongly emphasizes human freedoms response, finds a unity among the sacraments in their vital continuity
with Christ and the Church, and makes room for many aspects of the
88. Otto Semmelroth, S.J., The Preaching Word, trans. J. Hughes (New York: Herder, 1965),
224, 119, 201; idem, Die Kirche, 35155; idem, Church and Sacrament, 516; cf. also de
Lubac, Splendor, 2208.
89. Smulders, ibid., 376; Semmelroth, Kirche, 805; idem, Personalismus, 211, 215f., 217;
idem, Church and Sacrament, 105f.; idem, Church and Christian Belief, 95; idem, Integral
Idea, 1379, 145f.
90. Semmelroth, Kirche, 17097; idem, Die Kirche, 333f., 336f., 3458; idem, Church and
Sacrament, 1934, 48; idem, Church and Christian Belief, 92f.; idem, Integral Idea, 142f., 146;
idem, Warum Kirche? (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercher, 1959), 2330; de Lubac, Catholicism, 42f.;
idem, Splendor, 8791, 11025, 140f., 14452; Smulders, Sacramenta, 43f., 49.
91. Semmelroth, Personalismus, 210, 209; idem, Kirche, 190f.; idem, Die Kirche, 354;
idem, Church and Sacraments, 59f.; idem, Integral Idea, 141f., 145f.; de Lubac, Catholicism,
62f.; Smulders, Sacramenta, 3440.
92. Semmelroth, Personalismus, 209, 215, 218; idem, Church and Christian Belief, 119;
idem, Church and Sacrament, 457; de Lubac, Splendor, 13444.
93. Semmelroth, Die Kirche, 3324.
176
Church besides the hierarchy. Unfortunately the notion of person is nowhere

fully developed, and Semmelroth never explains his underlying metaphysics.
There de Lubac might be of some help. For, given all the bipolar tensions in
Semmelroths ecclesiology: verticalhorizonal, hierarchycommunity, institutioncharism, ascendingdescending, that de Lubac should find paradoxes
everywhere in ecclesiology is hardly surprising. His basic Godman relation
is based on a paradox, the Trinity is a mysterious unity in diversity, and the
Church is a continuation of the paradoxical mystery of the Incarnation. He
revels in listing all the apparent opposites that the Church composes: divine
and human, city of God and historical institution, eternal and temporal,
becoming what she always is, mystical and institutional, invisible and visible,
baptizing and baptized, virgin-mother and daughter, bride and widow, saint
and sinner, summons and congregation, goal and way, end and means, offering a salvation both individual and social. The Church is the complexio oppositorum where salvation consists in the balance assured by the bond of love.94
In this way, though the paradoxes of faith remain, they at least find a place
in the wider structure of theological thought. The difficulty with a metaphysics constructed on paradox is that it is never shown why the apparent
contradiction is merely apparent. Many Protestants build a dialectical theology upon paradox as a deliberate confession that reason is incapable of prescribing categories for God and should abdicate its pride and accept, not
judge, Gods word. But once contradiction is established at the foundation of
any system of thought, no further coherent thought is possible.95
Conclusion
What results from our survey? First, no particular theology of the
Church as sacrament is without difficulty. But that does not affect
the Councils decree. In the words of C. Moeller, The Council did not use
the expression primordial sacrament Ursakrament, because a council never
adopts, as such, a theological theory or interpretation. Indeed, by the end
of the Council, Schillebeeckx was already moving to another theory
whereby the Church as sacramentum mundi expresses most clearly the
prereflexive religious awareness of mankind. Such an expression is not
employed by the Council nor does its interpretation fit into his previous
94. De Lubac, Catholicism, 3942, 97f., 1446, 1818; idem, Splendor, 66f., 88f., 109, 124,
1635, 250, 253, 306.
95. De Lubac was strongly criticized in Catholic theology: cf. Leopold Malevez, S.J., LEsprit
et le dsir de Dieu, NRTh 69 (1947): 131; Jacques de Blic, S.J., Bulltin de morale, MSR
4 (1947): 93113; Charles Boyer, S.J., Nature pure et surnaturel, Greg 28 (1947): 37995;
M.-R. Gagnebet, O.P., Lamour naturel de Dieu chez s. Thomas et ses contemporains,
RThom 48 (1947): 394446; 49 (1949), 31102; Philip Donnelly, S.J., Discussions on the
Supernatural, TS 9 (1948), 21349; idem, The Gratuity of the Beatific Vision and the
Possibility of a Natural Destiny, TS 11 (1950): 374404; William OConnor, Natural
Beatitude and the Future Life, TS 11 (1950): 22139; J. Alfaro, S.J., El problema teolgico
de la trascendencia y de la inmanencia de la gracia, Cristologia y Antropologa (Madrid:
Cristiandad, 1973), 25889. Cf. our presentation of de Lubacs thought, which also indicates
how his difficulties can be resolved and his position reconciled with Rousselots (and
Wojtylas): John M. McDermott, De Lubac and Rousselot, Greg 78 (1997): 74158.
177
sacramental ecclesiology.96 Whereas Rahner and Semmelroth, in

commenting on Lumen Gentium, shade the interpretation to their own theories, other Council participants see in the notion of Church as sacrament
only a confession that her visible and invisible elements belong infrangibly
together, while some also stress the Churchs efficacy qua instrument.97
Second, the problem of a sacramental structure reflects the problem of dogmatic development: how does a finite sign mediate the knowledge or the
grace of the infinite God experienced? Since the sacrament employs a sign,
some meaning is intended for finite intellects through which God is mediated. But such is the structure of analogy. The underlying question is metaphysical and epistemological: how can man know God? But the same
structure applies to Jesus Christ, who joins to His divine person a human
nature that employs words to communicate Himself and the Father. Hence
the parallelism between Christ the sacrament and the Church as sacrament
is manifest. Third, though all theories offer a personal understanding of
sacrament, none explains clearly what person means. Admittedly, traditional theology has employed two apparently contradictory notions: individual substance (subsistence) of a rational nature (in se) and subsistent
relation (ad alium). Nonetheless in the structure of Christs person, not
existence nor nature nor mode, provides the link between the finite human
nature and the infinite divine nature. Person deserves more study and
might preserve the tension between finite and infinite, concept and judgment, essential and existential orders that characterizes Thomistic
thought. Christianity brought the notions of person and freedom into the
center of Greek speculation, and both go together. K. Wojtyla is outstanding among modern Catholic thinkers for insisting that ultimately the
person acts through a nature because person is the ultimate subject of freedom. Going beyond both conceptualist and transcendental theologians he
seeks to think nature from personal freedom, not vice versa.98
96. Moeller in Session IV Discussion, 177, and Moeller, History, 146, n. 7; E.
Schillebeeckx, O.P., The Real Achievement of Vatican II, trans. H. Vaughan (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1967), 32, 5866, 71f., 81; Ambaum, Glaubenszeichen, 172, has the two
interpretations standing alongside each other. Cf. note 69 above for the Councils rejection of the idea underlying sacramentum mundi, and the strong critique of Schillebeeckxs
new interpretation by H. de Lubac, S.J., Petite catchse sur Nature et Grce (Paris: Arthme
Fayard, 1980), 13763. Because of such possible misinterpretations de Lubac, in the opinion of Donath Hercsik, S.J., Jesus Christus als Mitte der Theologie von Henri de Lubac,
Frankfurter Theologische Studien 61 (Frankfurt: Josef Knecht, 2001), 1807, prefers, after
the Council, to speak of the Church as mystery rather than sacrament.
97. Karl Rahner, S.J., The Hierarchical Structure of the Church, with Special Reference
to the Episcopate, in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, I, 186; Otto Semmelroth,
S.J., The Eschatological Nature of the Pilgrim Church and Her Union with the Heavenly
Church, in Commentary, 281f. Infrangible unity of visible (human) and invisible (divine)
elements: Grillmeier, Mystery, 1468; J. Jungmann, S.J., Constitution on the Sacred
Liturgy, in Commentary, 12; Philips, Dogmatic Constitution, 111; idem, The Church:
Mystery and Sacrament, in Vatican II, 188; with efficacy: Philips, Lglise, 115, 118; Y.
Congar, O.P., The Church Universal Sacrament of Salvation, This Church That I Love,
trans. L. Delafuente (Denville, NJ: Dimension, 1969), 40, 43, 4851, 59f.
98. Moving in that direction, Wojtyla is not alone. Rousselot, Maritain, Mouroux, de
Finance, and Clarke share the same insights: cf. John McDermott, S.J., and Glenn Comandini,
178
Elsewhere we have sought to develop Wojtylas thought so as to recognize realitys basic sacramental structure: in and through a finite form the
infinite God makes Himself present in a call for the total dedication of
love, and upon mans response depends his salvation or damnation. The
paradox of thought reflects the paradox of love, that is, the reality of Gods
omnipotence that addresses man through finite figures as the condition of
possibility for his freedom. Such a structure maintains the difference which
Semmelroths dialogue demands, yet, in view of Gods omnipotent initiative in creating man and calling him to a higher destiny, preserves Rahners
emphasis on God as the one responsible for mans free decision. Before the
gift of love, freedom is not merely indifference but also the compelled
response; neutrality is no longer possible. Once the paradoxical, sacramental structure of thought is recognized, all central Catholic dogmas can be
explained in terms of it.99 Thus the problem of historicity can also be overcome. Precisely because a divine person has become man, the Absolute can
be found in history. Moreover, since Christ is really and personally present
in the Eucharist, the Absolute still raises His liberating claim for our total
adherence in the Church. Because some finite understanding is necessary
for freedom to respond to Gods call, the Churchs faith, which has to be
preached, must enjoy the gift of infallibility. All that belongs to the ultimate mystery of Gods love that freely creates, actuates, and liberates
human freedom. Finally, Semmelroths stress on the definitive givenness of
the external sacrament can be joined with Rahners emphasis on graces
growth in individuals to full exterior expression, which reflects the early
Schillebeeckxs tension between the objective, historically given substance
of the sacrament and the ever new expression of grace in individuals constituting the Church. The Absolute has already entered time, establishing
salvation, but men in freedom must still appropriate it by receiving Him as
a gift. Eternity and time, the already and the not yet are joined in Gods selfgift and mans response, the very structure of K. Wojtylas understanding of
freedom. On the basis of their lived experience of the Christian mystery
these four thinkers participated actively in Vatican II, shaping its thought
and defining its destiny. Deo gratias!
JOHN M. MCDERMOTT SJ, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, 2701
Chicago Blvd., Detroit, MI 48206, USA. McDermott.John@shms.edu
The Problem of Person and Jean Mouroux, Sapientia 52 (1997), 7597, esp. 94f., where references to the others beside Mouroux are found. B. Ritzler, Freiheit in der Umarmung des ewig
Liebenden (Bern: Lang, 2000), 409527, explains Maritains thought in great detail on this
point, and Moretto, Dinamismo, 35964, shows how the late Marchal is also moving in the
same direction. After a criticism of Schillebeeckxs Christology, Brambilla, Cristologia,
58998, calls for a symbolic understanding of reality that opens the way for a free response
to the absolute revelation of God in Christ.
99. Cf. most recently John McDermott, S.J., Faith, Reason, and Freedom, ITQ 67 (2002):
30732; idem, La struttura sacramentale della realt, ScC128 (2000): 27399.

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Irish Theological Quarterly

Vatican II and the Theologians on the

IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

emphasized non-conceptual ways of approaching reality. This leads to a

THE CHURCH AS SACRAMENT

He must have intended them to be understood. Vatican I affirmed that

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incomplete, transient quality as the effect of Gods action.6 As in Galilean

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In greater accord with the notion of Gods efficient causality, the

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the primary designation of the Church is Body of Christ.12 Such an

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sacrament in the Constitution and no explanation of how exactly the

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necessary for us some continuing corporeal sign of His presence. Hence

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Sacraments are the redemptive act in sacramental visibility applied to

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Despite the parallelism between Christs humanity and the instrumenta

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from Gods salvific will, which comes to expression in the Incarnation

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by Christ in history and produced by His prayer from heaven. In Him

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corporeal53 the Churchs apostolicity is understood no longer in terms of

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diverse from the revelation she proclaims but as an internal constituent

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the sacramental efficacy of prayer in Extreme Unction beyond private

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anonymous Christianity69 but also, within the Christian community, to

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as well as spiritual and individual, they prefer to see the Church as a

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Church besides the hierarchy. Unfortunately the notion of person is nowhere

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sacramental ecclesiology.96 Whereas Rahner and Semmelroth, in

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