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The Sacramentality of Things

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Patrick Sherry
Patrick Sherry*
Affiliation:
Religious Studies Dept., Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YG
*
Email: P.Sherry@Lancaster.ac.uk
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Abstract

I discuss the recent tendency to extend the concept of sacramentality by applying it to the world or to aspects of it like beauty, e.g. by David Brown in his God and the Enchantment of Place. I look at the Church's traditional teaching on sacraments, in terms of signs, words, and effectiveness, making use of J.L.Austin's work on Performative Utterances, and explore how these three features might apply to the extended concept of a sacrament. I argue that we can perceive signs-by-likeness of God in the world, especially in beauty, and that we can often discern the effectiveness of such signs. We lack, however, anything here corresponding to the words of the sacraments of the Church. I conclude, therefore, that the parallel between sacraments in an extended sense and the sacraments of the Church is only partial; nevertheless the extended usage is justifiable, provided that we realize its limitations.

Keywords

SacramentSacramentalitySignLikenessBeauty
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 89 , Issue 1023 , September 2008 , pp. 575 - 590
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2008. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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References

1 Schmemann, Alexander, The World as a Sacrament (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966Google Scholar. See also Sherrard, Philip, The Sacred in Life and Art (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1990), pp. 22–31Google Scholar.

2 Morgan, Vance, ‘Simone Weil and the Divine Poetry of Mathematics’, in Doering, E. Jane and Springsted, Eric (eds.), The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), pp. 95–114Google Scholar, at p. 105.

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5 Mayne, p. 152.

6 Brown, David and Loades, Ann (eds.), The Sense of the Sacramental: Movement and Measure in Art and Music, Place and Time (London: SPCK, 1995), p. 8Google Scholar.

7 Brown, David, God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Quoted in Chitty, Derwas J. (ed.), The Letters of St Antony the Great (Oxford: SLG Press, 1975), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

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11 Ibid., pp. 143–79; see Williams, Rowan, Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love (London: Continuum, 2005), pp. 82–9Google Scholar, for an interesting discussion of the essay.

12 Austin, J.L., How to do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 5–6Google Scholar, 40, 45–6.

13 Louis-Marie Chauvet discusses Austin's work briefly in his Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Experience, trans. Madigan, P. and Beaumont, H. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1995), pp. 131–5Google Scholar, and makes use of it later on (pp. 425–9, 435–6), but he is so anxious to reject some aspects of traditional sacramental theology, e.g. its stress on instrumental causality, leading to what he calls ‘productionism’ (verging on magic), and more generally its ‘onto-theology’, that he fails to really exploit Austin's thought here. Surely what Chauvet calls ‘symbolic efficacy' is a kind of causality?

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16 See my Spirit, Saints and Immortality (London: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 65Google Scholar, and 94 n. 6, for a list of some central texts.

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19 Ibid., p. 241. See also Rahner's, The Church and the Sacraments, trans. O'Hara, W.J. (London: Burns and Oates, 1963)Google Scholar, for a further development of this line of thought.

20 Schillebeeckx, Edward, Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God (London: Sheed and Ward, 1963)Google Scholar, esp. chs. 1–2. The Second Vatican Council describes the Church as a ‘kind of sacrament of intimate union with God and of the unity of mankind’ (Lumen Gentium 1), ‘the visible sacrament of this saving unity’ (ibid. 9), and as ‘the universal sacrament of salvation’ (ibid. 48).

21 Ibid., pp. 258–62. Cf. Sherrard, p. 28, for the same idea, which is also a favourite theme of von Balthasar. Pursuing the idea, not only are saints like God, but they are produced through the efficacy of God's grace, and may help to bring about the conversion of others. Many theologians also regard holiness as a form of beauty, which I go on to discuss later.

22 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. II Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles, trans. Louth, A. et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1984), p. 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Cf. my Spirit and Beauty (2nd edn., London: SCM Press, 2002), pp. 56–60Google Scholar; also pp. 122–8, where I discuss the relationship between earthly and divine beauty, which has traditionally been described in many ways: as resemblance to an exemplar or archetype, as participation or vestige, or, more poetically, in terms of reflections, mirrors, or even jewels refracting God's light.

24 Weil, Simone, On Science, Necessity and the Love of God, trans. Rees, R., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 129Google Scholar.

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26 Idem, First and Last Notebooks, trans. Rees, R. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 139Google Scholar.

27 Idem, Waiting on God, p. 124.

28 Schweitzer, Albert, J.S. Bach, vol. 1, trans. Newman, E. (London: A. and C. Black, 1923), p. 245Google Scholar. See my Images of Redemption (London: T. & T. Clark, 2003), p. 10Google Scholar, for this and other examples.

29 See also Turner, Denys, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 224–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He too wants to widen our use of the term ‘sacrament’, though not with reference to aesthetics but rather both Creation and the form of our intellects (pp. 116–20).