All right, so what we're going to do this morning is look really at some of the key ideas in question 62

of the sacraments' principal effect, which is grace, the grace of the sacraments.

And there's a lot of really important and in some ways innovative thinking going on in Aquinas in this question,

trying to clarify what sacramental grace is,

the mystery of sacramental grace, and to think about it.

So we'll read, we're going to concentrate on articles 1, 2, 4, and 5,

and read through them a little bit.

And the most important is actually the first, whether the sacraments are the cause of grace.

Now, he goes back and he quotes Augustine and the said contra. Augustine says that the

baptismal water touches the body and cleanses the heart, but the heart is not cleansed, safe through grace,

therefore it causes grace, baptism, that is to say. And for like reasons, so do the other sacraments

of the church. Okay. So, you know, the common doctor, as it were, of Aquinas' time, is Augustine,

the great doctor of Western theology. And he is cited here to show that what's

going to follow is not a sheer innovation. It's rooted in something that it has a kind of ground

in what Augustine will say, but what we're going to see is that there's a whole theory here

of instrumental causality of sacraments. It's quite unique to the Aquinas is really articulating this in a certain way for the first time

I answer that some needs say that in some way the sacraments of the new law cause grace for it is evident that through the sacraments the new law, man is incorporated with

Christ, thus the apostle says, of baptism, as many of you have been baptized in Christ have put on

Christ, and man is made a member of Christ through grace alone. Okay, that's straightforward. He's just kind of

going back and showing the biblical root of the idea that sacraments cause grace.

Some, however, say that they are the cause of grace not by their own operation,

but insofar as God causes grace in the soul when the sacraments are employed.

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