VENCIO, OZELLE

IIREF - SACRAMENTS
Sin, Redemption, and the Sacramental Economy of Salvation: The Theological
Foundations of the Seven Sacraments

Guide Questions

1. According to St. Thomas, What is the ultimate root or foundation of the Sacraments?

Answer: The sacraments are rooted in the historical reality of the Word’s
Incarnation, life, and human culminating in his death on the cross. The first point
leads us in understanding with the reciprocity of the relationship of Faith and
Sacraments which is also the central idea in the Summa Theologica of Aquinas about
faith and reason the most influential theological work during the middle age. He
pointed that Jesus Christ as Word in the prima par, that God is the subject of the
science sacred doctrine. The one who saved mankind for sin. To speak of the Word,
it will lead us to the other divine person and the sacredness of theology has to say
about creation to the moral life and redemption proceeds from this causality and the
order of the discipline through divine revelation. The Incarnation of the Word and
the sacraments instituted by Christ constitute this opening up by God and the
capacitation of humanity for communion with him. The second point in the book is
the eternal and eschatological significance of his Resurrection and Ascension into
heaven. That still focus on the understanding theology above and below. We have also
learned that everything is directed by the Good Father through Him, that everything is
inspired by Him, and that everything is enkindled in Him understanding that the
sapiential nature of the sacred doctrine subsists in the incarnated Word because are
all ordered by His perfect word ordered of holiness unto salvation.

2. According to St. Thomas, In what way are the sacraments considered “sign”?

Answer: Even now a days this question and discussion in the sacraments continued
to be explained. As St. Thomas stated “Sacraments are not human creation but signs
instituted and commissioned by God as the means of communicating life of grace
and merits of His Son work. For Aquinas an understanding of soul and body, the
soul does not pre-exist in Genesis “And then the Lord God formed man from the clay
of the earth, and he breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living
soul.” Fittingly created in its body, not before it. As human as we are we sinned, in
this way a sacrament is a kind of sign where the structure of the sacraments as both
physical and spiritual respond to our human capabilities. Stated in Article 1
question 60 of Summa Theologica “A thing may be called a "sacrament," either from
having a certain hidden sanctity, and in this sense a sacrament is a "sacred secret.”
The minister or priest administer the sacraments involving objects, gesture and
word that focus on an understanding from theology from below. Through Divine
wisdom Christ leads us from things earthly and sensible thing to spiritual
transformation.
3. Why would God institute the sacraments as a means of Grace and merits of the work
of Jesus?

Answer: Do we need Sacraments? Yes! As stated in CCC God is present in his

creation and that he transcends creation. “With creation, God does not abandon his
creatures to themselves. ( “creatio continua,”) The graces gives us opportunity to be
in communion with God. Grace is something that only God can give himself, God is
the author of grace. Jesus wills to give us grace both divinely as God and humanly as
man through our desire which means Christ works to sanctify us. As Aquinas talk
about Jesus as instruments because it is the humanity of God himself associated with
the Incarnate Word, not united with Jesus but instituted by him and He works
through them. We’re wounded by sins and poor to the rightly ordered knowledge
and love of God. As Thomas sited in Summa Theologica “Justification by grace is
transformative.” Understanding that we ask and be forgiven by our sins through
salvation but understanding communion that allow us to reorder our lives toward
God.

4. Why is the concept of Original sin important in understanding sacramental

theology?

Answer: Now a days, most of my students I hear share that they are depressed, lost,
or finding something that makes them complete but not considering God of the faith.
As I continue my reading, I have understood how important balance and order are.
Today, there are so many truths and pleasures that we try to bounce from one truth
to another and lose our balance. In Genesis, we are reminded that we were created
by grace. St. Thomas idea is that we were always meant to live in God’s grace. It was
this grace that holds into order that the reason of man is subjected to God, as the
body and act are guided by its will and reason. And because of the inordinate nature
of nature because of the original sin, we are no longer born in grace. Original sin is
not an inclination to evil; it doesn’t direct us to failure, but it keeps us confused and
jumbled for the reason we need grace after Adam and Eve sin. We need grace to be
in communion with God. We need grace to direct and order our lives toward God
and to order all the things we pursue towards God. Humans need healing grace.

5. What is Original Sin?

Answer: Man should be a steward of the land, not the God of destruction and change.
All humans are associated with the first man’s sin, as St. Paul states, “By one man’s
disobedience, many were made sinners." This is a sin that leads to the death of the
soul, which is different from the death of the body. When the body dies, the soul
departs. Death of soul is an abandonment to God. For Thomas Aquinas, original sin
is the privation of original justice and the inordinate disposition of the soul, as he
describes the “languor of nature" By understanding the indorenates of nature, there
is a deprivation of original justice where God had given man the grace. It leads man
 to the act of concupiscence, a strong desire to make earthly choices. As before, man’s
must be subject to God, but as the will turns away from God, all the power of the
soul becomes inordinate.

6. What is sin?

Answer: In the Summa Theologica, St. Aquinas describes the difference between an
actual sin and an original sin by understanding the act and nature. For him, sin is
inordinate action that distorts the truth and goodness in its intention, object, and
circumstances. As he describes sin as a habit, he divides it into two points: the first is
whereby a sin power is inclined to an act, and the second is a kind of habit that is the
disposition of the complex nature. There are also what he describes as mortal sins
that turn us directly away from God and venial sins that keep us away from God but
keep us going. Therefore, sin is the reason for the inordinate disposition of reason
and will, whereas, in our understanding of original sin, sin is the reason for the
privation of original justice.

7. What is the importance of sacrifice? In the Old Testament?

Answer: For Aquinas “ A sacrifice as commonly understood is the visible of an

invisible sacrifice. It is a sacred symbol. One of the first commandments that was
given by God in the times of the Old Testament was to worship God and present the
first flock as an offering unto the Lord (Genesis 4:4). The law of sacrifice in the Old
Testament let the human discern the importance and necessity of sacrifice. It led
them to act of Sacrifice and Offering. There are two kinds of offering during the
Israelites times the voluntary offering and obligatory offering. Domesticated animal,
a place of offering which is the tabernacle, a priest which is the mediator, salt, fire,
and blood are symbols things that are need in the offering. This offering is done
through symbols. It symbolically dying in my place and the biblical word for this is
atonement, which means to cover over someone’s death. A type is something that
represents spiritual truth through symbolic means and a similitude is something
like something else such as offered animal as a symbol of Christ. Through its God
was able to teach people of the coming of Christ and the detail of saviors and atoning
sacrifice where in fallen man could be forgiven of his sin and be reconciled with God.

8. What is sacrifice in the New Testament context?

Answer: In the Old Testament in the Jewish religion sacrificial offering as a vehicle
of sins escaping slavery from Egypt but there no experience offered the blood of a
human being. It was the blood animal worthy of God. The sacrifice of Jesus was the
blood of the innocent man being shed for the salvation of many. The sacrificial
aspect to Jesus’ death was a sacrificial offering for the atonement of the world’s sin.
Where we can refer it to 1Cor. 15;3-4, Rom. 3: 21-25, Eph 5:2. Atoning or expiatory
sacrifice for sin which draws together, perfects, and brings to fulfillment the
sacrificial system of the Old Law.
9. What is the significance of Christ’s death in the New Testament?

Answer: Christian message of salvation in Christ includes the full restoration of the
order of justice between God and humanity in Christ, not merely the granting of
pardon or liberation without reference to the disorder caused by sin. A sacrificial
death for the forgiveness of the sins of the world. Discerned by Jesus when the
forces of opposition and death were on him and by the early Christians when they
felt what Jesus felt as they face persecution because of following Jesus. Jesus’ death
was the most meaningful death in the history. The Early Christians discerned the
insights into the sacrificial meaning of Jesus’ death who eventually understood
Jesus’ death in the light of the suffering. A martyr who has offer his death for the
sins of others and a sacrificial blood to atone for sins. Jesus en-fleshed the prophecy
to figure out the Messiah as a Sacrificial Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.
Jesus’ death was a faith experience, the fruit of mystical seeing and experiencing the
faith. Jesus’ death on the cross serves a stronghold to give the most meaningful
death for the most meaningful life. For Aquinas the causality of Christ’s death to be
rooted in his free obedience animated by love. Christ’s death on the cross,
understood as a priestly sacrifice in which the perfect victim is offered by the
perfect priest, is the efficient cause of this perfect cleansing. The full restoration of
justice between God and humanity in Christ is included in the Christian theology of
redemption in Christ, not merely the provision of freedom or pardon without regard
to the disorder caused by sin.

10. Should Christ need to die?

Answer: Jesus can not die as a God, He is the fountain of Life as God, but He died not
as a God but as a man. He stops the waves of the ocean and walk through it, he can
turn water into wine or bring many fishes in the net. Jesus was innocent, he did not
do wrong. He was doing what is just and followed the plan of God for all humanity.
They have taken away everything to him except the point that the image and
likeness of God inscribed in the person of Jesus. It was a mission on the cross. Jesus
proclaimed and actualized the final and definitive salvation he termed the Reign-
Kingdom of God through healing, exorcism, liberation and most especially justice to
poor and oppressed. Jesus Christ gave more than what God was requiring him to
compensate for the whole human race. It was a suffering out of love and obedience,
because of his exceeding charity from which He suffered, on account of the dignity of
His life which He laid down in atonement, for it was a life of God and a man and the
endured grief and passion. So therefore the causality of Christ death is rooted in
animated love and free obedience both a revelation of God and accomplishes our
salvation.
11. How did Christ “consummate” all the precepts of the Old law?

Answer: Aquinas teaches Christ “consummated “ all the precepts of the Old
Testaments. In Galatians 2:20: “He loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.” Christ
likewise by His Passion fulfilled the ceremonial precepts of the Law, which are chiefly
ordained for sacrifices and oblations, in so far as all the ancient sacrifices were figures
of that true sacrifice which the dying Christ offered for us”. He offers to God a human
love of righteousness that us untold worth. Christ self – offering us distinct from that
of all others because he is not only human but also God so human actions ate pf
infinite dignity. It covered the debt that human owe God for contributing to all evil
and death in this world. To atone and reconcile is an act toward sin that is
commanded in the Old testaments. To put God and man through atonement, as
Christ can do this in virtue of his merits as a sinless man and his infinite being as
Him and through the suffering of the Passion out of love, we are free from sin, evil,
freed from the debts of punishment our own sins and reconciled with God. Christ
came through the words of Isaih to serve and give his life as a ransom for many
which is seen in Mark 10:45. Jesus blood as a symbol of his life purified us from evil
so we can now live at peace with God. It is this consummation of the Old Law that is
lived and perpetuated in the sacramental liturgy of the Church.

12. How does the human being participate in the Divine life?

Answer: Christ as the head of the church and as the sacrifice in the altar, liturgy as the
highest degree of worship and in participation and communion the Church as the
body leads us in understanding the mystical body of Jesus Christ that us the head
and the member, is together giving complete and definitive public expression to
worship. One of the earlier issues in our concept of participation that might have
centered on variety is whether reality ultimately consists of a unity or a plurality
and how they connect. Aquinas acknowledges the unity derived from the
universality of existence, but he also tries to defend the actuality of plurality,
diversity, or multitude of realities. Imago Dei, Aquinas distinguishes the image and
likeness of God in us human. Aquinas describe the three modes of participation that
specific to us human being rational. Moral law governing human conduct
understanding natural law. He pointed the three modes through nature, grace, and
glory. Understanding nature that we are created in the image and likeness of God
which is the general sense in all of us because we are rational being, the very nature
of mind is common to all men. As we understand the grace as a believer who
conformed to the grace of God in a richer sense of the image of God despite our
imperfections. And lastly the glory that leads us to the highest sense of image by
knowing and loving God perfectly, a believer who have been glorified. Christ
restores believers back to the image and likeness of God.

13. What is the significance of Christ’s passion, death, and Resurrection?

Answer: Sacramental participation Aquinas pointed out that “ As a kind of universal

cause of the forgiveness of sins, it needs to be applied to each individual for the
 cleansings of the sins.” Passion of Christ cannot be viewed only in the remedy of our
sin. The effect of the Passion of Christ in us are; we are freed from the sin, as well as
deliverance from evil, we are pardon form debt of punishment, reconciliation with
God as we are offered eternal life which are reasons for us to conformed with Christ.
As we received these graces we must participate and cooperate as the term
conformed means to submit to be involve. Christ as God and as man can conform as
not only in His glory but as well as in the descending mediation. This sacramental
application is merits of the Christ’s priestly mediation. Christ’s exercise of his
priestly- mediatorial office is continued and applied to each of us in the sacramental
life of the Church. It becomes possible to be in communion with God in the divine
life even if we are sinners. St. Thomas also pointed out reasons why Christ should
rise. For his love and obedience, be exalted and his innocence justified, we commend
the divine justice which was corrupted due to our sins. To enlighten one in faith by
having faith in his Godhead, which is demonstrated via the Resurrection and proves
that He is the eternal Son of God. Since His Resurrection was the first fruit, it gives
us encouragement to have hope. Finally, as we understand the significance of the
Resurrection, it assists us in putting our lives in order by orienting us to the new life
while we value the Beatitudes' teachings. The principal celebrant of the Christian
sacraments is Christ, who is the head of the Church. According to Aquinas, Christ
acts from above as he continues to advocate for his followers and send gifts to earth.

14. Is Christ’s ascension into heaven an end to his salvific act?

Answer: Christ Ascension therefore did not render his priestly mediation inaccessible to
the faithful. He instituted the sacraments as a means of communicating the benefits of his
death and the fullness of his heavenly life to the faithful of all places and times from his
location in heaven at the right hand of the Father. Christ Ascencion is the cause of our
salvation. It was the benefit of the human being, as to Christ he did not receive benefits
or grace by ascending into heaven because it is more on fittingness of place that leads to
well being glory. Christ entered in an immortal and incorruptible life. It has been
fulfilled and He continues to subsist and exists through the sacraments and giving us a
view of eternal life. Christ ascended into heaven to intercede for us. His ascension was
accomplished through the power of God, not as the end product of His redemptive
work. As God, he is omnipresent and heaven is the only place He belongs. By using both
divine authority and the power of the glorified soul, which can move the glorified body
at will and with the utmost dignity, He ascension into heaven is His own act as God. As
His Ascension awakens in us faith, hope, charity, and reverence, we can conclude that
Our Lord's Ascension is the reason for our salvation. Our Lord prepared the road for us
on our journey to heaven.

15. How can an invisible God mediate His presence in the Church?

Answer: As human as we are we are guided by our rationality through our intellect and
will and our body have the power of senses, thus sacraments as a sign is fitted to God’s
wisdom. So how do sacraments respond to our human condition? As Aquinas writes,
“Since the faithful do not see God visibly in faith, the Lord uses the sacraments to provide
visible mediation and facilitate participation with the unseen realities that are hoped for
in faith.” By the sacraments, the faithful are drawn closer and closer to the reality which
they have been created by God and redeemed in Christ. Sacraments are signs. Human
dynamics from sense, intellect to will, because of the corrupted origin and nature our
intellect is dulled with confusion especially our senses. The structure of sacraments
responds to our nature through physical and spiritual. Through words and gesture the
sacrament becomes physical and spiritual being moved by God. There’s a participation
of both minister and faithful in the sacramental experience. Christ grace move the
sacraments in the act of the sacraments. It becomes visible for each sacrament there is a
specific gestures, words and objects which signify to Christ’s action of sanctification.
Christ leads us from things corporeal and sensible to the things spiritually and
intelligible. Christ condescension to physical things for spiritual transformation for He
knows we are overly interested in physical. In Christ wisdom, he wants us to be
involved in salvific work as he incorporate the sacramental mercy through experience,
objects, gestures and words.

16. What is the deeper problem in the liturgical-sacramental worship of Christianity?

Answer: There are deeper with the rejection of the liturgical-sacramental worship of
Christianity namely, the reduction of prayer and worship to the status of private
spirituality instead of communal belonging and participation. wherein one's own
personal, likeness, and sentiments—rather than God—are the focus of prayers as a
spiritual approach from God. Cessario added that religion isn't usually used to refer
to a system of law of belief, but rather to the acknowledged relationship that a
person had with God. Thomas considers religion to be good. the part solemnity,
sanctity, and holy things and places play in igniting our devotion and focusing our
worship on the Father. It is how people demonstrate their duty of thanks and
submission to their Creator, both as individuals and as "cultic societies." It is
essential for Catholics to reclaim an emotional and personal connection.

17. Are the sacraments merely external rites and forms of worship?

Answer: Spiritual reality, should come to people through bodily forms of worship
and
external actions. Through the Son of God we become receiver of grace. Thomas’s
words, to stand “as signs of the internal and spiritual works, which are of
themselves acceptable to God. As Thomas describes the "principle of grace," the
sacraments, therefore, do not only show the institutional, institutional, and cold side
of Christianity. These sacramental signs elevate humanity by guiding it through the
signification of the sacramental elements to the spiritual and eternal realities in
which they participate, which they contain, and which they confer. The substance of
the New Law, grace, which is a spiritual reality, should be communicated to people
through outward displays of worship and physical behavior, Aquinas continues.

18. Are the sacraments impediments to intimacy with God in Christ?

 Answer: The sacraments are, as a result, not institutional impediments
to friendship and intimacy with God in Christ. Christ established the sacraments as a
means of passing on the New Law of grace in order to guide humanity. to the closest
possible connection with him by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and through this, to
communion with the Father.

19. What do you mean by “Sacramental Economy of Salvation?

Answer: Sacramental economy or plan of salvation culminates in the visible

Incarnation of the Word who is in himself a Mysterion of the presence of the Kingdom
of God on earth. sacramental theology in regard to sin and Christ's atonement. Christ
established the sacraments during his time on earth as a way for him to continue to be
present to the Church on earth from his throne in heaven, imparting healing and access
to his grace and heavenly life through the sacraments.