General Principles of Sacramental Theology by Roger W. Nutt

Abstract

Reviewed by: General Principles of Sacramental Theology by Roger W. Nutt Michael Heintz Roger W. Nutt General Principles of Sacramental Theology Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017 viii + 206 pages. Paperback. $34.95. In looking for an introductory text for a course in sacramental theology secundum mentem ecclesiae, the go-to volume has for some time been Colman O'Neill's Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, first published in 1964 but updated to accord with more recent liturgical and canonical material by Romanus Cessario in 1991. O'Neill has [End Page 113] subsequently published (1983) Sacramental Realism: A General Theory of the Sacraments. Students and teachers of sacramental theology would do well to keep these on their shelf. Paul Haffner's The Sacramental Mystery (1991) is another fine contribution to the subject, as is the late Stratford Caldecott's little book The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God (2006), which is more basic in tenor and directed at a more popular readership. The Regensburg theologian Johann Auer's volume, A General Doctrine of the Sacraments and the Mystery of the Eucharist, another trustworthy volume translated into English in 1995 (the German was published in 1971), has just been reprinted. However, those entrusted with teaching graduate students and seminarians will be delighted to know of Roger Nutt's new volume. Nutt, professor at Ave Maria University, has previously published a translation (the first in English) of St. Thomas's disputed question De unione Verbi Incarnati in the series dallas Medieval Texts and Translations (2015), so, unsurprisingly, his knowledge and use of Aquinas is deep and broad. Nutt's new book begins with a chapter on the nature of theology as a sapiential discipline, one which any serious theological student would do well to heed: what we call theology, and what St. Thomas calls sacra doctrina, is not merely one more subject to be mastered, nor another academic discipline among many others; what Nutt offers could (and perhaps should) serve as an introduction to just what theology is (and is not). Having established this, he relates this approach or methodology to the sacramental system of Catholicism (chapter 2). The remaining ten chapters are divided into two parts: chapters 3–6 treat the sacraments as a particular kind of sign, as well as sacramental matter and form, sacramental intention (in which he deals with liceity and validity), and their necessity. Chapters 7–11 address sacramental causality, sacramental grace, character, and the institution of the sacraments. Perhaps the richest section of the book is his treatment of the grace of the sacraments. Like St. Thomas, Nutt is careful about distinctions, and he employs such distinctions to clarify particularly knotty or contested questions (for example, whether sacramental grace is merely dispositive). It is also within these chapters that Nutt discusses [End Page 114] the classical distinction regarding what might be called aspects of each sacrament: sacramentum [tantum], res et sacramentum, res [tantum]. Again, Nutt deals with this in a way that nuances and deepens the reader's appreciation of such distinctions. The book concludes with a short essay "Principles of a Sacramental Spirituality," which forms—in light of the first chapter in particular—a lovely inclusio. In just over two-hundred pages, Nutt has offered the reader a solid, informed, and most helpful introduction to sacramental theology; what he does not do (nor does he claim to offer) is to address the particulars of each of the sacraments. His style is easy and accessible, his knowledge of the Tradition (St. Thomas in particular) is excellent, and, in a field that has witnessed a variety of approaches, which can leave matters confused and fuzzy, his approach is not polemical. When he does, for example, engage with Louis-Marie Chauvet (99–101), he does critically but also with fairness: he identifies a weakness in his metaphysics which leads (in Nutt's view) to deficiencies in Chauvet's understanding of sacramental causality. Nutt is clearly a student of Aquinas and his approach consistently throughout is Thomistic, though he also draws upon Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, and the Damascene (as, of course, did St. Thomas). Contemporary students of sacramental theology might do well also to consider...