Significación y causalidad sacramental según Santo Tomás de Aquino

Abstract

326

In present-day sacramental theology one can detect a need for a unified approach which, taking the notion of sacrament as base, would give coherence to the multiple aspects which can be considered under the umbrella of sacramentality. What could be called theologies «of the sacramental sign» arrive with difficulty to centred approach; they rather lead to a subjective diversification of the sacramental concept. Study of texts of St Thomas Aquinas has brought the authar to a notion of sacramentality which, from a basic standpoint, enriches all aspects of the sacramental reality while maintaining their unity.

The essence of sacramentality, as deduced from the theology of the Common Doctor, is rooted in the «relation to» human sanctification when this latter is understood as that form which sanctifies man actually, truly and intimately: in other words, grace. lt is a relation which can be established in different ways and which, therelore, gives rise to the term sacrament being capable of being predicated analogically of different objects. From whence comes it semantic richness and, also, the necessity of determining its meaning.

The two principal relations of the sacramental reality with human sanctification are those of sign and cause. Both constitute sacrament, but the fulness of the relation and the sacramental notion belongs to that which produces, instrumentally, sanctification.

Nevertheless, there is a deeper reason for giving priority to the causal relationship. lt is veiledly expressed by St Thomas and is the key to that coherence which the author seeks. Although, at first sight, to signify and to cause appear to be independent and even opposed concepts, in the case of the sacraments, one can establish a clear dependence: a sacrament is sign of santifying grace because, previously, it is the cause of it. This ontological, and not chronological, priority characterises everything that has the name of sacrament with the full meaning of the word. The article analyses how that dependence is hidden in the condition of instrument, in view of the definite metaphysical characteristics which it poserses.

The result it that the sacramental signification is found to be «objectivised» by its dependence on the causality. Thus one avoids that the varied and rich subjective attention paid to the person who receives the sacrament, which in general is dependent on the signification, becomes a danger to the unity and coherence of the notion of sacrament. The importance of this latter notion is strengthened by the transcendence of the real sanctification which it produces.