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A. Exposition of the Opinion
1. As to the First Question
276. One opinion [of Thomas Aquinas, Sentences IV d.1 q.1 a.4] on these questions maintains the affirmative side of the first question. For it speaks as follows: All are compelled to posit that the sacraments of the New Law are in some way causes of grace, both because of the authority of the saints (namely of Augustine, adduced for the main question [n.267], and of others), and because of the common saying that ‘the sacraments of the New Law effect what they signify’.
277. According to those who hold this opinion, the sacraments cannot be posited as causes of grace only ‘sine qua non’, because a cause ‘sine qua non’, which has no power for the effect either by effecting it or disposing for it, has no causality over the thing save as a cause per accidens. But a sacrament is not cause of grace per accidens, both because it would not then be put in the definition of a sacrament, and because that which is per accidens does not belong to art (in Porphyry). But the saints, when treating of the sacraments, deal precisely with their causality in respect of grace [n.276] - the thing is plain, because the sacraments of the New Law and of the Old are distinguished by this fact (and it is in Lombard’s text). But if the former and latter sacraments were to signify grace only, then although the former could signify more perfectly than the latter, there would be no distinction in them as to idea of cause and non-cause. For there would only be a distinction in different ideas of signifying, which in no way bestows the idea of causing or not causing.
278. How a sacrament, then, is a cause of grace is posited as follows. An efficient cause is distinguished in two ways. In one way, on the part of the effect, into the dispositive (which induces a preceding effect) and the perfective (which induces the principal effect). In another way, on the part of the efficient cause, into the principal and the instrumental cause. Now an instrument has a double action: one by its own nature, and another as it is moved by the principal agent. And when it has the second action it also has the first at the same time. Also, by the second action it always attains something beyond what it attains by the first action, otherwise it would not be an instrument. And that which it attains by the second action (which belongs to it as it is moved or is an instrument) is sometimes the principal term of the agent, and sometimes only a disposition for the term.
279. Applied to the issue at hand, water by its natural form has its own operation, namely to cleanse or moisten the body. But beyond this, as it is an instrument of divine mercy, it has a further effect, not indeed for grace (as if it also attained it in virtue of the principal agent), but for preceding disposition, and this in some sacraments is the character, but in others it is some ornament of the soul proportionate to the character. So a sacrament does not, therefore, act instrumentally for grace but dispositively, for by its action (which belongs to it as instrument) it does not attain grace but a disposition preceding grace.
280. And this view, according to those who hold it [Thomas Aquinas, Sent. d.1 q.1 a.4], is consonant with the statement of the Master in the text, who says that “man does not seek salvation from the sacraments as if coming from them, but as coming from God through them.” For the preposition ‘from’ denotes the principal agent cause, and the preposition ‘through’ indicates an instrumental cause.
2. As to the Second Question
281. To the second question it is said [Thomas Aquinas, Sent. d.1 q.1 a.4], in accord with this opinion, that there is in sacraments a supernatural virtue that is not just an ordering to an effect, because ‘virtue’ always indicates the principle of acting. But the principle of an action, as proved in Physics 5.2.225b10-13, is some absolute form.
282. Of what sort is this virtue is shown by a distinction:
For a virtue that is the principle of acting is always proportioned to the agent, and a principal agent acts according to the exigency of its form; and so the active virtue in the agent is a form possessing complete being.
An instrument, however, acts as moved by another, and so virtue belongs to it as proportioned to the motion; but motion is an incomplete being, as a being that is in between potency and act, Physics 3.1.201a9-11. And so the virtue of an instrument as instrument has a being that is incomplete, not fixed in nature (just as the virtue of affecting sight is in the air as it is an instrument moved by a body). But these sort of imperfect beings, which are in a state of becoming, are customarily wont to be called intentions (in the way that the virtue in air for affecting sight is called the ‘intention of the color’ [cf. Ord. II d.13 n.15, d.38 nn.8-10]).4 The spiritual virtue, therefore, which is in a sacrament as it is an instrument, is in it as in a state of becoming, like an incomplete or intentional being.
283. And if it be argued that there cannot be any spiritual virtue in a body, the response, according to what has been said [n.282], is that although there cannot be a spiritual virtue there according to complete being, yet there can be a spiritual virtue there incompletely, by way of intention, as is illustrated in many examples:
First, surely, because ‘audible speech’ is in this way ‘an existent cause of learning’, as the Philosopher says in De Sensu et Sensato 1.437a12-13, and it in some way contains the intentions of the soul, whose concepts are somehow expressed in speech.
Second, because thus is the virtue of art present somehow in the instrument moved by the artisan.
Third, because thus is there somehow in the motion of a celestial body the virtue of the separate substance that moves it, according to the philosophers.
Fourth, because semen acts thus in virtue of the soul, as is said in On the Generation of Animals 2.1.735a4-26, and this is touched on by the Commentator in Metaphysics 7 com.31.