Tag Archives: Analogy

Why Are There Seven Sacraments?

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Within a generation or two of the first Protestant revolutionaries, the Sacraments became one of the shovels that were used to widen the chasm between Christians.  The debate began mostly over the number of Sacraments with Luther, Calvin and friends reducing the number to two or three.  Eventually, the Protestant Sacraments became unrecognizable, more because of a flawed philosophy than flawed theology.  They became mere signs, given power by the faith of the believer, rather than signs empowered by Christ to bring about the thing signified.  Because the reduction of the number of Sacraments was at the heart of their error, it is worth examining why there must be seven Sacraments so that, by removing one, you necessarily set yourself down a path of rejecting all.

To grasp the reasoning for seven Sacraments, it is first necessary to take a theological diversion into the use of analogy.  Analogy, in the theological sense, takes what would otherwise remain a mystery in the spiritual life and examines it “in the mirror of sensible realities”.  God is the author of both the natural and supernatural and He made them both for the same reason; to reveal Himself to mankind.  If they share the same purpose, then we can take the principles behind the things we can see and apply them to the things we can’t see.  This follows directly from a principle articulated by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans that “His invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things He has made” (Romans 1:20).   

How Analogy Fits into Theology

This parallelism comes with a caveat however.  Creation could never exhaust all that God has to say about Himself, falling short in fully revealing Him.  To supplement the “Book of Nature” God gave man Divine Revelation.  There are things that we can discover about God on our own, but if we are to know Him, rather than just about Him, He must reveal Himself to us.  This means that while we can use the principles in nature and extrapolate them to Supernature, we cannot do so indiscriminately or univocally.  There is a similarity, but there is also a difference at the same time. The analogical concept of existence is powerful in theology because it allows us to say things about God we would not otherwise be able to say.

Knowledge of this principle is important because when God reveals Himself as say Father, neophyte will tend to equate the visible fatherhood with the invisible Fatherhood.  “If God is Father then how could a father watch one of his children die without doing anything?”  But God as Father is an analogical concept.  God is like an earthly father, but also unlike an earthly father.  In fact He is the only true Father, while all fatherhood on earth is a mere reflection (c.f. Familiaris Consortio, 32). 

Analogy then become a necessary tool to understand Revelation.  God reveals Himself as a Tri-unity of Persons.  Human reason is hardwired to never be satisfied with mere facts, even of Revelation, but instead seeks understanding.  Now we could never reason to the Trinity, but the analogy of marriage that undergirds St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body helps us to better understand it.  Likewise, we could never use reason to prove our supernatural destiny, but by examining our natural life, we can better understand it because both have the same purpose.

St. Thomas Aquinas and the Use of Analogy

St. Thomas Aquinas took advantage of the power of analogy better than any theologian in the history of the Church.  He includes these types of arguments throughout the Summa, our topic at hand being one such example.  He articulates the principle saying  that the “spiritual life has a certain conformity with the life of the body: just as other corporeal things have a certain likeness to things spiritual ” (ST III, q.65, art. 1).  Drawing on this analogy, he then goes on to explain why there are seven Sacraments.  Keep in mind that this is not proof that there are seven Sacraments, but explains why there are seven, and how ultimately, to remove one leaves the Christian wayfarer at a loss.

Always profound in his common sense, St. Thomas says that there are two ways in which a person reaches perfection in his bodily life; personally and as a social animal, as part of a community.  Personally, the man reaches perfection in the life of the body directly by being generated (i.e. birth), through growth and through nourishment.  But because he also encounters hindrances and is prone to disease he needs both medicine and those things that will strengthen him against the diseases.

The corporal needs are signs of spiritual needs.  A man is generated bodily by birth and spiritually by Baptism.  He grows to perfect size and strength which corresponds to Confirmation where the indelible mark of Christian growth is given.  This bodily life and strength is preserved through regular nourishment just as in the spiritual life there is the Eucharist.  Finally, to restore health to the spirit after sin, Confession becomes the medicine of the soul.  To strengthen the soul against the wages of sin, Anointing of the Sick is performed, “which removes the remainder of sin, and prepares man for final glory. Wherefore it is written (James 5:15): ‘And if he be in sins they shall be forgiven him.’” (ibid).

Man is a social animal and so he is perfected in relation to others.  “First, by receiving power to rule the community and to exercise public acts: and corresponding to this in the spiritual life there is the sacrament of order, according to the saying of Hebrews 7:27, that priests offer sacrifices not for themselves only, but also for the people. Secondly in regard to natural propagation. This is accomplished by Matrimony both in the corporal and in the spiritual life: since it is not only a sacrament but also a function of nature.” (ST III, q.65, art.1).

It becomes obvious then why a rejection of one Sacrament ultimately leads to the rejection of all.  They are a complete package meant to meet all of our spiritual needs.  A deficiency in one area always leads to a poverty in another.  That is why Jesus left the Sacraments to the Church in order to provide for all the spiritual needs of the members of His Mystical Body.  At each stage of life, Christ bestows supernatural aid to facilitate the growth of each person into a saint.  To remove one of them means that a need is left unmet and spiritual growth is stunted.  The Sacraments protect Christianity from becoming a “works-based” religion because they reflect our radical need upon God to save us, not just once, but throughout our earthly pilgrimage.  There are seven because God made us to need them.

Can God Suffer?

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In a recent homily on the Biblical narrative of the Flood, Pope Francis challenged those gathered to have a heart like God’s, especially in the face of human suffering.  The Holy Father said that “God the Father…is able to get angry and feel rage…suffering more than we do.”  So common has this assertion that God suffers become that it is practically becoming an assumption.  But upon closer inspection we come to find that there are a number of faith altering and faith destroying consequences that follow from this false view of God.  Therefore, it merits further reflection why it is that God does not suffer.

The Need for Analogy

We must first admit that our language inevitably fails us when we attempt to speak about God.  In fact, we can say nothing positive about Him.  This is not because we are pessimists, but because we can only speak definitively about what He is not.  He is omniscient because there is nothing He doesn’t know.  He is omnipotent because there is nothing He can do, etc.  To speak of what He is, is impossible because He transcends our categories.  This linguistic limitation can be partially overcome once we allow for the use of analogy.  For example, God reveals Himself as Father because His fatherhood is something like the human fatherhood that we are all familiar with.

The problem with this approach of analogy is that we often get it backwards.  Properly speaking it is human fatherhood that is like God’s fatherhood.   Keeping the primacy of God’s fatherhood in mind keeps us from assuming that it is just like human fatherhood and making God in our image instead of us in His.  Human fatherhood is only true fatherhood to the extent that it images God’s fatherhood as St. Paul is wont to remind the Ephesians (c.f. Eph 3:15). 

More closely related to the topic of God’s suffering is the dictum that God is love.  To say that God is love is to say that God loves fully and for all eternity.  He cannot love any more than He does because it is His nature to love.  We speak of different “kinds” of love from God such as mercy, compassion, kindness, etc. but in God there is no distinction.  He loves fully.  We, however, cannot receive His love fully.  “Whatever is received,” St. Thomas says, “is received according to the mode of the receiver.”  To the sinner, God’s love is received as mercy.  To the suffering His love is received as comfort.  Yet, from God’s perspective it is a completely active and full love.     

To say that God suffers with us reverses the analogy.  The assumption is that because compassionate human love includes suffering, then Divine love must also.  But the fact that it includes suffering does not mean that it must include suffering.  It is the love that is given that makes it love, not the suffering.  In fact you could remove the suffering, the love would still be love.  In fact, it would be a purer love because there would be no need on the lover’s part to succor his own suffering.  Instead it would be a completely free love with no compulsion towards self-interest.  Rather than being somehow cold and indifferent, it is complete and free.  So God, by not be able to suffer, actually loves us more than if He could suffer.  To insist otherwise makes God love us less, the very thing that they think they are avoiding by positing that He must suffer.  As Fr. Thomas Weinandy puts it, “what human beings cry out for in their suffering is not a God who suffers but a God who loves wholly and completely, something a suffering God could not do.”  God is compassionate not because He suffers with but because He is able to fully embrace those who are suffering

Further Consequences of the Suffering God

If reversing the analogy was the worst part about this, then we might simply chalk it up as a misunderstanding.  But the fact that it represents an attack on God’s nature eventually leads us into a theological pitfall that destroys our faith in God.  God, in order to suffer must be capable of change.  But we believe in a God who is immutable.  His immutability comes about not because He can’t change, but because as the fullness of being there is nothing for Him to change into.  No change would make Him more than He is because He is already “I AM WHO AM”, pure act.  He fully alive.  To posit that He can suffer is to posit that He can change and to posit that He can change is to say that He is not the one true God.

He must also be incapable of suffering, that is, impassible for a subtler reason as well.  Suffering is caused by a lack of some good that ought to be there.  If God, in Himself is lacking some good, then He is not All Good.  If the suffering comes about because of the lack of some good in creation, then He becomes a part of creation itself and is no longer transcendent.  As part of creation He is no longer Creator.  Evil and suffering must be seen as having real existence (rather than a lack of some good) since nothing is immune to it.  Our new God is the god of pantheism or process theology and an ontological dualism becomes the result.

The suffering God hypothesis ultimately means the destruction of the Christian God.  If God is not free from suffering, then no one is.  And if no one is, then there is no possibility of redemption.  God simply becomes one being among many striving for perfection.  If He cannot save Himself from evil, then how can He save anyone else?  The Incarnation becomes totally incomprehensible.  The God-Man cannot offer redemption, nor can He sanctify suffering.  In truth, a suffering God need not stoop to our level because He is already there.  The truth that He could love fully without suffering, yet still chose to add suffering carries the assurance of His total love for each one of us.  If He could already suffer, then it looks like little more than masochism.

In short, ideas have consequences. Serious ideas have serious consequences.  The idea of divine passibility has nothing but negative consequences.  Therefore, despite its present popularity, the assertion that Divine suffering is possible must be wholly rejected in favor of the Traditional teaching of the Church so that the Faith may remain intact.