I. Opinion of Thomas Aquinas about Each Question

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]).Scotus Rep. A d.13 q. un.: “By this word ‘intention’ is meant in one way an act of will; in a second way the formal idea in a thing (as the intention of a thing from which the genus is taken differs from the intention from which the difference is taken); in a third way a concept; in the fourth way the idea of tending to an object (as a likeness is said to be the idea of tending to that of which it is the likeness).” 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.

B. Rejection of the Opinion

1. As to the First Question

284. Against this opinion as to its position on the first question I argue as follows:

a. First Argument

285. First as follows: a creature cannot act instrumentally for a term of creation, according to him [nn.276-280], and this, as he says elsewhere [ST Ia q.45 a.5], is above all manifest about corporeal substance (of which sort a sacrament is). But the disposition previous to grace, of the sort he posits [n.279], is a term of creation;     therefore etc     .

286. Proof of the minor:

The previous disposition is a supernatural form, and anything such is as equally incapable of being drawn from the natural potency of the receiving subject, as the subject too is equally in obediential potency to any such form.

Again, since the disposition, according to him, is a disposition that necessitates for grace when there is no impediment in the receiver, it follows that in a non-indisposed soul the disposition and the grace come to be at the same time. Therefore this disposition comes to be in an instant, just as grace does. And the fact is plain, because in the introduction of a form there is succession only as to parts of the movable subject or as to parts of the form itself. But neither is present here. The first is not because the subject is indivisible. The second is not because then there could only be degrees of grace if the disposition were to be continuously larger and smaller. But it is possible for a smallest disposition to be introduced in someone who receives a sacrament, just as it is possible for a smallest grace to be infused into him. But the smallest grace only requires the smallest disposition, so there is no succession there as to different degrees in accord with which the disposition is successively introduced.

The minor is also plain in a third way, that an instrument only acts in virtue of the principal agent. Therefore, if the instrument can act over a period of time for the disposition, then it follows that God would be acting over time or successively for the same disposition. The consequent seems unacceptable, both because of the infinite power of the agent, and because of the supreme capacity of a receiving subject that does not have a contrary.

287. So therefore we may suppose from these three proofs that this disposition preceding grace that they set down could be introduced in an instant.a

a.a [Note added by Scotus] But the minor is denied [sc. by Aquinas], because what does not per se come to be is not created; a form does not per se come to be while the composite does, just as the form is not per se existent. Therefore the form is not created, because the form would not come to be by the creation.

     Again, a form that lacks an operation that the subject has no share in along with the form is not created (the proof is from On the Soul 1.1.403a10-12, “If the soul has nothing proper to itself, it is not separable from the body,” and from Generation of Animals 2.3.736b27-29, “It remains then that the intellect alone comes from outside and alone is divine; because the operation of the body has no share in its operation”). Therefore only the intellect that comes from outside, because it has an action that the body does not share any supernatural accident with, lacks an action that the subject does not share in with it. The same point is admitted about grace.

     In response to the proof of the minor it is said that the disposition is drawn from the obediential potency of the subject, therefore it is not created.

     On the contrary: every obediential potency has regard to a natural form in the subject; therefore it also has regard to some agent, because to every natural passive power there corresponds an active natural power, according to the Commentator [Authorities from Aristotle 1.137].This reply seems to be against all three of the arguments given here against the truth of the minor premise [sc. the minor that the disposition previous to grace, if it is posited, will be something that has to be created directly by God, and so not an instrument God uses for creation, n.285]. For if, as the reply says, the obediential potency in a creature is relative to the active power that realizes it, and if this active power is God acting alone without a created instrument, and if the disposition previous to grace is drawn from the obediential power, then it will be something created, regardless of whether it is a form, and regardless of whether it is unlike the intellect and grace (which are confessedly created). ⁵

288. But sacraments commonly cannot have their action in an instant, the proof of which is that words and many other things are commonly required for sacraments (as will be plain below [about each sacrament individually]), and these cannot have their being in an instant; and so they have it in time. Therefore they cannot do their natural action in an instant, and so not their supernatural action either. For, according to them [n.278], an instrument has its own action when it has the action that surpasses its own virtue.

289. Also, if any single syllable of the whole wording that is instrumental to the sacrament is imagined to have its being in an instant (which is a fiction, because the formation of this syllable involves local motion of air and motion is not in an instant), the claim is not saved. For this syllable will be either the first syllable or the last or in between, and, whichever one it is posited to be, from the fact that it and no other syllable acts for the disposition caused in an instant, it follows that it alone would suffice, and that it alone among all the others would possess the nature of the sacrament. For all the others beside it do nothing either instrumentally or in any other way for the preceding disposition. And this is unacceptable, because in such sacramental wording no single syllable is posited as the sacrament but the whole of it is.

290. But if you further imagine that the last syllable is the sacrament by way of completion, and that it performs the action attributed to the sacrament not by its own virtue but by virtue of all the preceding ones (just as “the last drop wears away the stone in virtue of all the preceding ones,” Physics 8.3.253b14-21), this is nothing. For in such cases the last stage only ever finally causes the effect in virtue of the preceding stages because the preceding stages have left behind some disposition preparing the way for the term. But these preceding syllables do not leave any such disposition behind before the last syllable;     therefore etc     .

b. Second Argument

291. Again, in the case of one of the sacraments, namely the Eucharist, the causality does not seem to be possible, whether we are speaking of the full sacrament, namely the now consecrated Eucharist, or of the sacramental consecration itself, which is the way to the sacrament.

For, if one speaks of the first way, the species of bread does not seem to be an instrumental cause that reaches the effect, that is, the real existence here of Christ’s body, or that reaches any disposition for the effect.

The same is also plain about the consecration, because the spoken words do not reach transubstantiation (which is the term of the consecration), for transubstantiation only happens by the infinite virtue of God, and this infinite virtue is equally or more manifest here than it is in creation. Nor does it reach any disposition preceding transubstantiation, because the disposition would be either in the bread or in Christ’s body. But it cannot be so in either way. For it cannot be in Christ’s body since then it would not be a disposition; nor can it be in the bread, because since the disposition would be a necessitating factor for transubstantiation it would exist in the same instant as transubstantiation does, and so in that instant there would be bread. For when the disposition exists, then the subject of it exists also at the same time. Therefore the bread where the disposition is would exist in the same instant as the transubstantiation does, which is contradictory. Likewise, it seems a pure fiction that the bread would be really altered by the words ‘for this is my body’ more than it would be altered by other spoken words, as ‘this bread is white’ and the like, since sound does not have an active virtue for causing a real alteration in bread.

c. Third Argument

292. The argument can also be made here that was made before [n.288], that sacramental words have their being in time and so they precisely have their action in time. But the disposition for the Eucharist [nn.285, 279], if it is imagined to exist, cannot be posited as caused in time, because of proofs like those mentioned above in the second argument [n.291].

293. In the matter at issue, then, there is a special reason that the words of consecration of the Eucharist cannot do anything with respect to transubstantiation, or the disposition necessary for transubstantiation, because they do not act on the passive subject until they mention it, according to them and to Aristotle (Physics 7.2.244a17-18 about the simultaneity of agent and patient). But as it is, at the instant when the speaking is complete, the species of the words are not mentioning the species of bread, because the multiplying of words only takes place in time, according to the Philosopher (On Sense and Sensible 6.446b5-9, the penultimate objection). Therefore during the time after the last instant of the complete speaking of the words, transubstantiation and the disposition preceding it have not yet happened. Therefore the bread remains throughout the whole time - which is contrary to the common opinion about the Eucharist.

d. Fourth Argument

294. The fourth argument is that this opinion posits plurality without necessity, which is against the teaching of the philosophers, as is plain from Physics 1.2.184b15-16, about the opinion of Melissus against Anaxagoras, and also from On the Soul 3.4.429a18-20 and Physics 8.3.354a24-27, that “nature does nothing in vain.” For fewness, when it suffices for saving the appearances, is always more rationally to be posited [Metaphysics 4.6.1011a17-21, Ord. I d.3 n.315]. But that such a disposition should be brought about in the case of the sacraments seems altogether superfluous. There does not seem to be any necessity for this plurality in the Eucharist, as is plain, because it seems the purest fiction to posit there some preceding disposition, or to posit some intermediate disposition in the species of bread (which are the sacrament [Ord. IV d.8 q.1 n.15]) or in the existence of the body of Christ (which is the thing signified).

295. There is proof of this in the other sacraments too, for in those that do not impress a character there seems no necessity to posit the disposition that they call an ‘ornament’ [n.279]. Indeed, this seems to be against the common opinion of the theologians. For they posit a disposition for the principal effect in some sacraments if, because of some obstacle in the receiver, the final effect is not then caused; but when the obstacle ceases the disposition suffices for the principal effect (this appears in sacraments that cause a character, which sacraments for this reason cannot be repeated). But in the case of a pretended penitent, there is nothing, when his pretense ceases, that suffices for the effect of true penitence; otherwise it would not be necessary for such a pretended penitent to be confessed another time. Therefore, no disposition is impressed in such a sacrament as if to necessitate the effect of the sacrament.

2. As to the Second Question

296. Against this opinion as to the second question I argue as follows:

If there is a supernatural virtue in the sacrament, it is there either indivisibly or divisibly, that is, either as whole in the whole and in each part, or as whole in the whole and as part in a part. Not in the first way because among all forms that perfect matter only the intellect is posited to be such. Not in the second way because the supernatural virtue would be per accidens extended in the subject, which is against the idea of a spiritual virtue.

297. Again, many words are commonly required in sacraments (as will be clear below [in the discussion of each sacrament]). Either then the same virtue would exist altogether in each syllable, or there would be different virtues in different syllables. If in the first way one would have to say that the same accident moved from subject to subject and would remain after the subject ceased to be. If in the second way the result would be that the sacrament (which consists in the whole utterance) would not have a single virtue.

298. And if you say that the sacrament has a single virtue combined from the many virtues of the many parts, this is refuted by the second argument against what the opinion says about the preceding question [n.291]. For it would not be possible to say which of these virtues was the principle of causing the spiritual effect in the soul. Nor does it seem probable that a sacrament formally one (since the formal idea of it comes from the idea of supernatural virtue) would have so many combined spiritual virtues.

299. Again, I ask when this supernatural virtue is caused in the sensible reality that pertains to the sacrament - is it before the application of it to act and use or in that very application?

If before, then the sacrament’s causation is purely miraculous, because it is by divine act and not by any disposition that abides or is stabilized in the Church; for it does not follow on anything that would enable one to say it followed naturally, as it were, without a miracle (like animation [Ord. IV d.43 q.2 n.20, on the natural animation of the body]).

But if the supernatural virtue is caused in the very application to use, this seems unacceptable. For an instrument is not formally adapted for use because someone uses it as an instrument. The point is plain by induction; and by reason, for the suitability of an instrument naturally precedes the use of the instrument as instrument (for it is not because I immerse a child in water, or use some sensible sign for the act of the sacrament, that the child receives the spiritual virtue; therefore, it is not possible to say when the child receives it).

300. A final argument is, as before [n.294], that here plurality is posited without necessity. For that there is any necessity for such a virtue as is imagined to exist in the sacrament is not plain either by natural reason (as is manifest) or by faith. For just as he who follows natural reason should not posit more beyond what is concluded by natural reason [Physics 1.4.188a17-18, 8.6.259a8-9], so he who follows faith should not posit more than what is required by the truth of faith. But the truth of faith does not require the positing of such supernatural virtue in water or in words (as will be plain below [in the discussion of the individual sacraments]), nor does reason compel this plurality.     Therefore etc     .

301. The examples that are adduced for virtue received by the instrument do not prove it.

302. The first about sensible speech [n.283] assumes something manifestly false, for audible speech does not formally have any intention of the soul in it.

As proof is that speech that does not have the signifying of anything imposed on it has no such form (as is plain to everyone); and speech does not receive any absolute form from the imposition, nor any relation save perhaps a relation of reason.

There is also proof in another way, that when there is the same principal agent and an instrument sufficient for it the same action follows. But if a Latin speaker speaks Latin words to a Greek, there is the same principal agent and the same instrument that there would be if he spoke to another in Latin, but no effect follows because no concept is caused in the Greek hearer. Therefore, the speaking was not of itself an instrument for causing a concept of the soul in the hearer.

303. The example fails, then, to this extent, that audible speech is a sign that brings a concept to memory, so that when the sense of hearing is affected by the speaking, and when further the nature of the concept as it is such a nature is understood, the intellect that knows the speech is imposed to signify such nature refers the speech to something else and understands that something else. Not, however, in such a way that the speech causes a concept of something by some form. Rather the concept is previous to what is conceived of the thing [spoken about] as caused in the soul by the proper species or phantasm of the thing.The sense of the Latin here is obscure. The point seems to be that the spoken word only informs us about the thing spoken of because, first, we already have the concept of that thing, and because, second, we are moved by the words to turn to the relevant species or phantasm of the thing so as thereby to bring actually to mind the concept we already have of it. The words, then, do nothing over and above stimulating us to turn to some species or phantasm in which to remember or rethink the concept (as the previous example of a Latin speaking to a Greek illustrates). ⁶ The point is plain because however much a speech is spoken, if the hearer does not have in himself the species of the thing spoken of, then no concept of the thing would be caused in him. Hence, we understand by spoken words only things of which we have the species. But that we actually consider these things is because we refer the sign to the thing signified.

304. The second example about the instrument of an artisan [n.283] fails, for it seems highly improbable that a spiritual form would be caused in the saw as many times as it was moved by the artisan, and that a spiritual form would cease to be as many times as the saw ceases to be actually moved.

305. The third example about motion [n.283] is not compelling because, in whatever way substances are caused by the heavens, at least the local motion of the heavens cannot be the formal principle of producing them.

306. But as to what the formal principle is, and likewise about the fourth example [n.283] from the Generation of Animals, see Lectura II d.18 nn.70, 72.