Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Rites of the New Humanity: Essays on Sacramental Theology > Status Update

Leithart believes that defining the sacraments as "means of grace" is potentially unhelpful even detrimental, in that the word "means" adds nothing while introducing unnecessary pitfalls. Saying food is a "means for nourishment" is not more clear or precise than saying that food is nourishment. Saying a friendly wave is a "means for greeting" is not more clear or precise than saying that a wave is a greeting.

Besides adding nothing to our understanding, "means of" potentially depersonalizes the sacraments, as if they are channels through which grace flows to the recipient (whether automatically or if participated in correctly) rather than loving acts performed on the recipient by God Himself. This understanding then further leads to a very individualistic view of the sacraments. They are a means of grace to me, personally, while their corporate nature is all but ignored.

To explain, a baptism does not just affect the individual, welcoming him or her into the covenant community, but it is the rite by which the community itself is changed by an addition of a new (Body) member forming a new web of relations and corresponding responsibilities. Like a wedding, an ordination, or an inauguration ceremony, the individual themselves, and the way the community relates to that individual, changes. Similarly, the Lord's Supper eaten together by the whole congregation (all baptized members including children) from one loaf, embodies even as it establishes their corporate union with Christ and to one another.

Similarly, Leithart finds the traditional designations of sacraments as "signs," "seals," or "visible words" salvageable, but potentially unhelpful as each can and has been used to say that the sacramental elements were given to us to bring to mind (or remind us, as in a memory of) gospel truths to contemplate, rather than actually accomplishing anything by themselves. (This lends itself to the gnostic/dualist modernistic separation of the spiritual from the material highlighted last chapter. It also leads to the question, "Why baptize an infant if it doesn't do anything observable for them?")

Thus, Leithart prefers the term "rite" (or ceremonial ritual). Rites in this sense actually accomplish what they signify. Indeed, the two can not be separated. They are actions performed by God towards us, Christ washing us with the water of the regeneration in Baptism to incorporate us into His Body, and Christ weekly welcoming us to His table to feast with Him (and on Him) in the Eucharist.

Most interesting thought: Insisting that it is God who performs the rites on us through His ordained ministers not only personalizes the actions, but it prevents us from slipping into the presumptuous (and deadly) Pelagian error of assuming that we could use the sacraments as mechanistic means to automatically accrue grace or salvation.