The fact that sacraments have no supernatural power without God in the picture does not make the sacrament symbolic.
If you are now changing things to say there can be symbolism within a sacrament, I could go along with that. But even that doesn’t make the sacrament itself symbolic.
Whoa there, no need to get defensive, or aggressive. We are on the same side. I indicated what I meant and didn’t mean in my original post when I stated that the symbolic nature of the sacraments is not in question, but rather the efficacy of the sacraments. Maybe I should have said “dimension” instead of “nature” to avoid confusion. Anyway, this is the only point I wished to make on this thread and I’ll stick with it until it sinks in.
Maybe we should give a definition of symbol first. Here’s Merriam-Webster’s online definitions of the word:
1: an authoritative summary of faith or doctrine: creed
2: something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; especially: a visible sign of something invisible
3: an arbitrary or conventional sign used in writing or printing relating to a particular field to represent operations, quantities, elements, relations, or qualities
4: an object or act representing something in the unconscious mind that has been repressed
5: an act, sound, or object having cultural significance and the capacity to excite or objectify a response.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/symbol
Several of these definitions could touch on the sacraments in interesting ways, but for this post I’d focus on the second definition (the definition itself, not necessarily the example that they gave, which was only one of many different kinds of examples of the definition that could have been made). Notice in particular that there are many ways in which a symbol may relate to that which it symbolizes, not just one.
In the Catholic sacraments, there is first of all an outward sign performed by the human minister of the sacrament. This outward sign signifies, symbolizes, a hidden but much more important action that is performed by God simultaneously. The outward sign is something physical, something sensible, something within the capacity of human nature: saying certain words, pouring water, anointing with oil, laying hands on someone, etc.
This sign in and of itself is impotent. It’s not some magical formula that brings about a spiritual result simply by the fact that someone has performed it. The physical act itself, isolated from every other consideration, I guess you could call merely symbolic. But the sacrament as a whole is not merely that symbol, because God has promised us that when we perform these signs He will act in a certain way. When we perform the symbolic bath called baptism using the Trinitarian formula Our Lord Himself gave us, we know that God will cleanse the person’s soul and give them second birth. When the validly ordained priest, symbolizing Christ (it is already more than
mere symbolism in that case because of the Sacrament of Holy Orders which the priest has already received), says certain words in the Person of Christ over the elements of bread and wine (symbolizing His body and blood), we know that God will transubstantiate the bread and wine into the Resurrected Christ and will make Christ’s eternal sacrifice present in a unique, mysterious way.
We can validly speak of God working though the human minister of the sacrament and even of the minister of the sacrament performing this or that action (consecrating, absolving, ordaining, etc.), but we must always realize that the spiritual element of the sacramental action is an act of God.
I’m not saying this isn’t what you already believe. I suspect it is. What I’m going for here is a little clarity of thinking and language. For something to be symbolic doesn’t mean it’s not also efficacious. A sacrament is a sign that affects what it signifies. It does this (or, more precisely, God does this) because the sign, the symbolic act, was instituted by Christ Himself, and the same Christ promised that He would act in a certain way when the sign is given.
For this reason I think it is a mistake to assert to Protestants, or to whomever, that the sacraments are not symbols. We agree that the sacraments are symbols (or signs, if you prefer, but a sign is a kind of symbol) of some sort. What we disagree on with some Protestants is if they are efficacious (through the supernatural action of God).
