Swear To God: The Power and Promise of Sacraments
Doubleday
240 pages
$19.95
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By Cindy Solomon
Catholic Quarterly

Scott Hahn is a busy man. He's Professor of Biblical Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He also holds the Cardinal Laghi Chair in Theology at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. He is President of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and Director of the Institute of Applied Biblical Studies. An internationally renowned Catholic lecturer and theologian, he is the author of many books, including the international bestsellers, The Lamb's Supper and Lord, Have Mercy. 

In his most recent book, Swear to God: The Promise and Power of the Sacraments, Hahn draws richly from the Bible to show that the Church's sacraments are the greatest sources of power, life, and belonging. They are covenant oaths that bind people into God's family. They are the ordinary means by which God directs the course of each human life -- and world history, too.

Recently Catholic Quarterly talked to Scott about his book and his experience writing it:

Q: At the beginning of your book you describe an experience early in your theological training that changed your view on the importance of the sacraments. What was that experience and how did it change you?

A: I was an evangelical Protestant, then, and I was studying for ministry. One day, I was talking with my new bride, Kimberly, and another fellow student, when I blurted out, "Sacraments bore me." Kimberly and the other student seemed stunned by what I said, and Kimberly said she didn't think it was "safe" to talk that way. Her mild correction got me thinking about what sacraments are in the Church, what they were in my life, and what Jesus had originally intended them to be.

Q: All the sacraments are so important in this book. Would you remind us what they are?

A: There are seven. The sacraments of initiation are baptism, Eucharist, and confirmation. The sacraments of healing are penance and the anointing of the sick. The sacraments of vocation are matrimony and holy orders. In the east, confirmation is often called "chrismation." In the west, penance is sometimes called "confession" or "reconciliation."

Q: What is a sacrament?

A: The old catechisms defined it as "an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace," and that definition still works. But Christ Himself was building on something when He established the sacraments. He was building on the covenant rituals of ancient Israel. These were the Chosen People's essential acts of worship, and acts of belonging to God's family. The covenant rituals either established that family bond (think of circumcision) or restored it when it was broken (think of the Old Testament sin offerings). Covenants almost always involved an oath -- at least implicitly. They often included a sacrifice and a sacred meal as well. The word sacrament originally made the connection for Christians. It comes from the Latin word sacramentum, which means "oath."

Q: In your book you talk about the differences between a covenant and a contract. What is the most important difference?

A: A contract exchanges goods and services; a covenant exchanges persons. A contract says "this is yours, and that is mine"; a covenant says "I am yours, and you are mine." A covenant forms a family bond. Marriage and adoption are covenant relationships.

Q: Did Jesus intend to carry over the Old Testament idea of covenant?

A: Yes. In fact, He stated this explicitly when He established the sacrament of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. When He blessed the cup, He called its contents "the blood of the covenant." Later in the New Testament, the Letter to the Hebrews uses the term "new covenant" to describe the redemption won by Jesus Christ. The Letter to the Hebrews takes great care to demonstrate the relationship between the old covenant's rituals and the new covenant's sacraments.

Q: If the sacraments are covenant rituals, what difference does that make?

A: It's a big difference. It means that our salvation is not merely a courtroom decree by a judge. It's the beginning of life in a family. We are God's children now. Incorporated into Christ by baptism, we already -right now - share in the eternal life of the Trinity, a life we hope to know most fully in heaven. All of the Old Testament covenants were about belonging to God's family and enjoying the life that goes with that inheritance: living in peace, amid plenty, in the promised land. Jesus came not to abolish that covenant but to build on it and perfect it. We know now that our promised land is greater than any tract of ground. It's heaven.

Q: What role did oaths play in the ancient covenant rituals? How do oaths relate to the sacraments?

A: The old covenant rituals almost always included oaths, either explicitly or implicitly. When people make an oath, they invoke God's name, and that's how they gain access to His power. But they also submit themselves to His judgment: blessings upon fulfillment of the oath, curses if they break the oath. When a witness in a courtroom places his hand on the Bible, he is taking upon himself all the blessings found in that book if he should tell the truth, and all the punishments found in that book if he should not. That's why he ends his oath with "So help me God."

When people swear an oath, we really do need God's help. Sometimes the old-covenant oaths were unspoken -- or, rather, enacted rather than spoken. Abraham cut the carcasses of sacrificial animals and walked between their divided entrails. In effect, he was saying: "If  I'm not faithful to the covenant, may I suffer the same fate as these animals." Sometimes, however, the covenant terms were explicit, as when God told the Israelites: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live...that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers" (see Deuteronomy 30:19-20). That is a classic oath-form, calling heaven to witness, and invoking blessings and curses.

Q: How do these ideas continue in the Church of Jesus Christ?

A: The earliest Christians understood the sacraments as covenant actions, and thus covenant oaths. St. Paul certainly understood the sacraments that way. He warned the Corinthians that "anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died" (see 1 Corinthians 11:29-30). Remember, every oath called down curses that could be enforced only by acts of God. Those who did not fulfill their promises could expect God to visit them with severe judgments that they themselves had invited. Sickness and death are classic examples of the divine punishments invoked in the ancient covenants.

Q: But when do Catholics swear oaths at Mass or in the other sacraments?

A: Most of the time, it's implicit. Like the ancient oaths, our oaths are often nonverbal gestures. Remember Abraham walking through the severed animals? Well, as a sign or symbol, that's little different from the priest raising the eucharistic bread and wine in separate vessels. That action symbolizes the separation of the body and blood of Christ in the action that we retraced on our own bodies at the beginning of Mass - the sign of the cross. That sign, like the word "amen," is an ancient oath formula. When we celebrate the sacraments, we are sealing and renewing our covenant with Jesus Christ. And that action has consequences.

Q: The consequences are intimidating. Can Christians opt out of the sacraments?

A: No, the consequences of that are far worse, and everlasting! Jesus Himself warns us away from this. Of baptism, He said, "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (see John 3:5). Of the Eucharist, He said, "Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you" (see John 6: 53). That word unless should ring loud and clear for us.

Q: If these ideas were so important to ancient peoples, why are many modern Christians unaware of them?

A: We live in a society that thinks little of breaking oaths. It's not too many years since a U.S. president was credibly accused of perjury -- lying under oath. How many other men and women have scandalously violated their oaths of office or their wedding vows? This situation comes fairly recently in history. It's a sign of a culture's lack of faith in God's power to act upon our oaths. At the founding of our country, George Washington said that a nation is held together by its oaths. Not too long before that, Miguel de Cervantes considered oaths so powerful that he hesitated to place them on the lips of his fictional characters! The philosopher John Locke said that atheists should not be civil servants, because their oaths would be meaningless. We need to recover - and I don't just mean Catholics - but we all need to recover our sense of the sacredness of oaths. One way to do this is by recovering our sense of the most sacred oaths, the sacraments. But I think a general restoration of secular oaths will lead non-Catholics to an appreciation of sacraments as well.

Q: The Eucharist is defined by most church fathers, popes and teachers as the most important sacrament of all. What, in your opinion, is the second most important sacrament and why?

A: I'd say baptism, because it makes all the other sacraments possible. Baptism is the covenant ritual by which we are born into God's family. All the other sacraments renew, restore, and intensify that covenant bond. In Swear to God, however, I spend a lot of time talking about the sacrament of matrimony, because marriage is, throughout the Bible, God's favored sign of the covenant.

Q: Do you think this book will have any ecumenical interest?

A: I hope so. My great influences have been Catholic thinkers, not least Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. But the men who introduced me to the idea of baptism and the Lord's Supper as covenant oaths were my mentors in Protestant seminary, Meredith Kline and Gordon Hugenberger. And the research of another Protestant scholar, George Mendenhall, proved very valuable to me. The idea at the heart of Swear to God is a biblical idea, and the Bible is the common patrimony of all Christians.


Cindy Solomon is editorial coordinator for Catholic Quarterly. If you have an article idea or a story for a future issue, contact her at solobiz@bellsouth.net.