While I was preparing to teach my confirmation class on the sacraments a while back, I noted that according to its etymological root, the word ‘sacrament’ (from Lt. sacramentum) denotes an oath or a vow, in particular an oath taken by someone in the military.1 A Roman soldier, for example, performed a rite which initiated him into the military, and this constituted a swearing of an oath to his superiors, particularly the Emperor. The key term here, is promise.
From this, I made the point that it made sense that the Latin Church started to use this word, since the Eucharist, which is the principal sacrament or the sacrament of sacraments,2 is a covenant made by Christ. In the words of Christ, cited by Paul, the cup of communion is “the new covenant in my blood” (1 Corinthians 11:25 NRSV). I have been saying this for years, but this year it suddenly occurred to me how, exactly, we should understand the Eucharist as an oath or a vow.
In the case of the Roman soldier, the sacramental oath was the soldier’s vow or promise to remain obedient to the Emperor (and anyone the Emperor had put in charge). The oath, then, was performed by the soldier, for the Emperor. What we see in the case of Christ, however, is the same, yet also a reversal. Where the Emperor was the object of the soldier’s sacrament, God, through Christ, is the subject. Christ, acting on our behalf, is making an oath, yet He is also the one to whom the oath is made. But when we receive it, we are not making any oaths. When we receive baptism or the Eucharist, for example, we are not promsing anuthing. Rather, these sacraments are, amongst other things, signs of the covenant which is instituted by God in Christ (and which truly enact and participate in this covenant, in the work of Christ).3 The one who makes an oath, or a promise, is God, not us, and we receive the promise.
This is, perhaps, the central feature of a proper Christian understanding of the sacraments. Though we take part in them, and though God communicated or mediates them to us through human actors,4 they are not, ultimately, our work. The sacraments are divine gifts to us, and through these sacraments God gives us a promise that He will give us His grace. It is all grace. We are saved, not because we performed great works for God but because He took matters into His own hands through Christ, reconciling us with Him. Allow me, therefore, to end with a great sacramental text of St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:17-19 (NRSV), as this truly showcases as Christian understanding of the sacraments as divine gifts and the divine promise of salvation:
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
Notes:
Everett Ferguson, “Sacraments in the pre-Nicene period,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, eds., Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering, 125-139, here: 125.
Kjetil Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation: On Theurgic Participation in God, PhD dissertation (Durham University, 2021), 22, 60, cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia), III (424C); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q.65, a.3. For critical editions of the Corpus in Greek, see Corpus Dionysiacum I, ed. Beate Regina Suchla (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990) and Corpus Dionysiacum II, 2nd ed., eds. Günter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012). For English translations, see Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid, in collaboration with Paul Rorem (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987) and The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, 2 vols., trans. John Parker (London: James Parker and Co., 1897, 1899). If not otherwise noted, I use Parker’s translation. See Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 4, n2. For Aquinas’s works, see Opera Omnia of St. Thomas Aquinas (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012-).
Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 22, 60, 171-172, 214, 222.
Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 165-198, esp. 183-185.