The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 217 ily recognize sacramenta in the Old Testament as temporary types which foreshadowed the manner by which Christ would institute a lasting sacramental structure. Accordingly, the flood points us to the sacrament of baptism, the genealogies point us to the coming of Christ, the manna in the desert to the Eucharist within the church, and the crossing of the Red Sea to Pentecost.73 All of these Old Testament "sacraments" have been fulfilled in the enfleshed Word of God and consequently a sacrament can now only be understood as a divine Word made flesh. Presented in terms of an extension and prolongation of the Word's own incarnation, Augustine likewise calls a sacrament a uisibile uerbum.74 Furthermore, as he will repeatedly emphasize, take away the words of the presbyter spoken at the sacrament and you have only ineffectual matter; take away the matter and the words are left with no point of contact with the creature.75 Creation and the history of Israel have been filled with such sacred signs (in that God can use any visible reality to lift the human soul up to him). However, with Christ's incarnation the church is now able to celebrate very few, yet very evident, sacraments (paucissimis et manifestissimis celebrationum sacramentis), with Augustine limiting his examples here to baptism and Eucharist.76
The letter to Januarius from which we have just quoted provides a helpful illustration for what constitutes a sacrament for Augustine. Let us examine a rather curious instance of how he distinguishes between what is and what is not a sacrament. The main question posed throughout these two letters is the importance of local custom when celebrating the universal church's sacraments. From within this discussion,
73. Cf. diu. qu. 58.2. 74. Jo. eu. tr. 80.3; CCL 36.529. 75. Cf. Jo. eu. tr. 15.4; s. 272. 76. inq. Jan. 1.19.35; CSEL 34.210. Note that ep. 54 and ep. 55 are brought together, following Augustine's suggestion at retr. 2.46, as the ad inquisitiones Ianuari libri duo; therefore ep. 54 is cited as inq. Jan. 1 and ep. 55 as inq. Jan.2.