Sacraments Before Christ I: ‘The Law of Nature’

The Catholic sacramental system is a marvel of Divine Wisdom that human creativity, no matter how ingenious, could not possibly have imagined. These seven fonts of divine grace — so variously and so perfectly accommodated to the spiritual needs of humanity, both personal and social — are masterpieces of God’s lavish munificence. Corporeal yet divine, like the One who instituted them, they are collectively and singly custom fitted to the composite of body and soul that is man. They are central to the true religion revealed in the New Testament and derive all their efficacy from the Passion of Man-God, Jesus Christ, who is the principal Minister of each sacrament.

Is it, then, appropriate for us to speak of “sacraments before Christ”?

If, by sacraments, we mean, strictly speaking, those seven efficacious signs of divine grace instituted by Jesus Christ, then it is certainly not appropriate for us to speak of them existing before Our Lord’s advent — neither in the Mosaic Law, nor in the Abrahamic Covenant, nor in the so-called “Law of Nature” that came between the Fall and the call of Abraham, nor in the Edenic state of Adam and Eve before the Fall.

But if, by sacraments, we mean sensible signs of interior sanctification instituted by God Himself,¹ then the answer is in the affirmative; it is certainly appropriate to speak of sacraments before Christ, for the Church herself does so. Here is the Council of Florence:

There are seven sacraments of the new Law: namely, baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, orders, and matrimony, which differ a great deal from the sacraments of the Old Law. For those of the Old Law did not effect grace, but only pronounced that it should be given through the passion of Christ; these sacraments of ours contain grace, and confer it upon those who receive them worthily.²

And here is the Council of Trent:

If any one saith, that these said sacraments of the New Law do not differ from the sacraments of the Old Law, save that the ceremonies are different, and different the outward rites; let him be anathema.³

The Florentine decree gives us the essential difference between sacraments of the New Law and sacraments of the Old Law. Christian sacraments “contain” grace and “confer” it upon their recipients by their own intrinsic power (as long as the recipients put no obstacle in their way); on the other hand, the sacraments of the Old Law did not effect grace.

This is not to say that there was no sanctifying grace or justification in the Old Testament (there certainly was); the Old-Testament sacraments “pronounced that [grace] should be given through the passion of Christ,” meaning that, while they did accomplish a legal purification according to the dispensation in which they were promulgated, they were also professions of faith in the Christ to come, and that faith itself, working by charity, was justifying faith in Jesus Christ.

The big difference between the two sacramental economies is further expressed by Catholic theology in the contrasting terms ex opere operato (“by the work performed”) and ex opere operantis (“by the work of the worker”). These products of the scholasticism of the High Middle Ages have been a commonplace since that time because they are so useful in explaining the efficacy of the sacraments of the New Law in contrast with those of the Old Law, and also with Christian acts of devotion that are not sacraments (sacramentals, prayer, almsgiving). Ex opere operato was, in fact, employed by the Fathers of the Council of Trent, so it is an official part of the Church’s own dogmatic lexicon to describe how the sacraments work. These terms are explained at greater length in Distinguishing Channels of Grace on this site; here we can say, in brief, that “by the work performed” means that Christian sacraments effect their purpose by their own intrinsic power (again, as long as we put no obstacle in their way), whereas graces bestowed “by the work of the worker” depend on the subjective devotion of the individual, which God both precedes and assists by His actual grace. This makes a great deal of sense when we consider that the One who administers each sacrament of the New Law is Jesus Christ, who applies to us the merits of His own blessed Passion in the sacraments.

So what are the Pre-Christian sacraments whose grace-aided efforts depended upon “the work of the worker” and which did not effect grace “by the work performed”?

The Hebrews had their divinely established sacraments, beginning with the covenant of circumcision between God and Abraham. We will discuss that and other Old-Testament sacraments in the next Ad Rem, but here I would like to consider what existed before circumcision, and continued among non-Hebrews even after the institution of circumcision: the so-called “sacrament of nature” (sacramentum naturae).

There were no sacraments before the Fall. At least, this is the position of Saint Thomas and most Catholic theologians. A minority of theologians, from a reference in Saint Augustine’s writings, believe that both marriage and the Tree of Life were sacramental in character, but this is most likely a misreading on Saint Augustine, who was using the term sacrament in the much broader sense in use among some of the fathers, meaning any “holy and hidden thing” (res sancta et arcana). Saint Thomas has it that, before Christ, marriage was a natural office that did not have a sacramental character.

The “sacrament of nature,” then, did not come into being until after the Fall, during the so-called “State of the Law of Nature,” which lasted from the Fall to Abraham. For non-Hebrews, this sacrament of nature continued to have efficacy until the proclamation of Christ.

In his Against Julian (the Pelagian heretic), Saint Augustine writes that, though baptism was not instituted in the Old Testament,

…yet, it is not a reason for thinking that, even before circumcision had been given, the servants of God did not help their children by any sacrament of the Mediator, since, indeed, faith in the Mediator who was to come in the flesh existed among them; although for some necessary reason Scripture did not reveal the nature of their sacrament. For we read of their sacrifices, by which was figured the blood which alone takes away the sin of the world….⁴

Saint Thomas, writing of the time before the institution of circumcision, says,

It is probable, however, that parents who were believers offered up some prayers to God for their children, especially if these were in any danger. Or bestowed some blessing on them, as a “seal of faith”; just as the adults offered prayers and sacrifices for themselves.⁵

Rev. Dr. Ludwig Ott, writes the following brief explanation, with explicit references to these passages:

On the ground of God’s general will of salvation, theologians generally postulate, with St. Augustine and St. Thomas, that during the period from the Fall to Abraham and for the pagan world up to the promulgation of the Gospel, there was a so-called “sacramentum naturae” by which young children were liberated from original sin. This “nature-Sacrament” consisted in an act of faith in God and at least implicitly in the future Redeemer, made in the name of the children by the elders, and which was probably outwardly manifested by the use of an appropriate outward sign such as prayer or blessing.⁶

Msgr. Joseph Pohle says that, “It is theologically certain, and admitted by all Catholic divines, that from Adam to Moses mankind possessed a Sacrament of Nature.” In explaining why this must be so, he references God’s universal salvific will (1 Tim. 2:4), and he quotes the eminent Jesuit theologian, Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), to this effect:

It is impious and repugnant to the universal tradition and sentiment of the Church, to hold that, under the natural law and under the law of Moses, infants were without a remedy against original sin, and that consequently all who died before attaining to the use of reason, were damned.⁷

Msgr. Pohle frankly admits that the details of this sacrament are unknown to us

The exact character of this sacramentum naturae is a matter of conjecture. All that can be said with any degree of certainty is: (1) As a medium of regeneration, the Sacrament of Nature must have been based in some way on belief in the future Redeemer, because “there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.” [Acts 4:12] (2) This faith in the Messias most probably found expression in a prayer and was symbolized by a visible sign. [This is the common opinion of theologians, including St. Thomas (Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 61, art. 3), against Bonaventure and Vasquez.] (3) As no one but God can cleanse the soul of original sin, the “Natural Sacrament” of the pre-Abrahamic period must have been instituted by Him, at least in substance, though He may have left the determination of its form and the selection of the grace-conferring symbols to the free choice of men.⁸

The reader may have noticed, and may have even found it irksome, that I twice referred to “the so-called Law of Nature,” rather than just calling it “the Law of Nature.” The reason for my doing so deserves an explanation. When we speak of the Natural Law today, we are distinguishing (a) what is knowable by the proper use of our unaided human reason from (b) what can only be known by divine revelation (e.g., the Trinity and the Incarnation).⁹ The pre-Christian period of salvation history under discussion here was not bereft of supernatural revelation. Our father Adam passed on the supernatural revelation he had received through the line of the holy patriarchs down to Our father Abraham, and Abraham did likewise down to Moses, at least by a reliable and divinely-protected oral tradition that Moses used as the inspired author of the Torah.¹⁰

The point here is that the nomenclature is a bit deceptive, for neither “the Law of Nature” nor “the Sacrament of Nature” were purely natural. Divine revelation was available to man and so was divine grace. There never was a state of “pure nature,” which is merely conjectural, for man was created for a supernatural end for which he needs both actual and sanctifying grace, and to have sanctifying grace, man needs faith that operates by charity.

While God is generous in bestowing grace to effect His universal salvific will, there are and have always been — since the beginning — serious obstacles to His merciful designs put up by our often perverse race. He gave us free will, and, in so doing allowed this. Hence we see, all through salvation history as related in the Old Testament, the rise of false religions from those descended from God’s faithful people. This perversity led to the Flood, but rose up again among Noe’s progeny after that catastrophe from which they were spared. From the statements of Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas about the “sacrament of nature,” it is clear that it was administered, not by unbelievers, but by those who had true faith, from supernatural revelation, in the true God — even if they were not of the often very thin line of God’s covenant people. Job, for instance, was an Idumean (descended from Esau, not Jacob), but had true supernatural faith, and we are explicitly told that he offered sacrifice for the benefit of his children (Job 1:5).

It is worth noting that the period of time under discussion here when this sacrament of nature was in effect was very long. We must keep in mind that, the Book of Genesis, which ends with the death of Jacob’s son, Joseph, narrates roughly half the history of the world. I have done the math, and, depending on how one reckons it — based upon the Hebrew-Vulgate or the Septuagint reckoning, and when precisely one dates the death of Joseph — it appears that Genesis covers anywhere from 41% to 66% of the world’s entire history!

Saint Paul, preaching to pagans in the Areopagus, said this, showing God’s nearness and accessibility to all men, and also the perversity of idolatry — which was the dominant false religion of mankind B.C.:

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man (Acts 17:24–29; RSV, Second Catholic Edition [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006]; click here for the DR version).

There was a continuity of religion that existed from the time of Adam to the time of Christ and right down to our own times. The true Church of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, is the heir and the fulfillment, as Christ’s Mystical Body, of the authentic pre-Christian religion of each dispensation. Baptism is superior to the “sacrament of nature,” just as it is to circumcision, but our Christian sacrament is also a fulfillment of these pre-Christian sacraments; which implies that those who administered it, and to whom it was administered, are indeed our spiritual ancestors. Indeed, understood in a broad sense, the one, true Church has existed since the time of Genesis. That is too broad a subject to be developed here, but it is developed capably elsewhere on our site.

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