Does God indeed bind Himself in Scripture, or does He rather reveal Himself? If the Written Word is the revelation of the Living Word, then every covenant and promise in Scripture is an expression of God’s nature, we might even say His personality. Then what we see is that the distinction between promise and guarantee in terms of >certaintyimmediate efficacyimmediately<. Catholic doctrine allows for this, e.g. Marriage when the Sacrament would be unable to confer any grace, i.e. be 'unreleased', if either party is in a state of mortal sin and only be efficatious once this is removed by repentance. (Cf R. Cantalamessa OFMCap 'Sober Intoxication of the Spirit' ch. 3) The state of the Priest's moral life is irrelevant, (ex opere operato) but the worshiper's is not.

We have therefore an 'opus operatus' and 'opus operantis', roughly God's part and our part, (again Cf Cantalamessa). The act of the worshiper in receiving the Word and Eucharist alike, is faith. Does this make it any less grace? Not at all, but it does allow us to resist God, as that is the prerequisite of love. (Again, cf 2 Tim 2:11-13 for an excellent treatment of this).

I am quite possibly deviating far from Barth's original treatise here, but the arguments you both make seem to me quite possible to harmionise.

This seems like nothing more than a semantic distinction to me, I’m afraid.

You say, “The Eucharist, according to Catholic thought, when properly performed always mediates God’s grace. It’s a guarantee.”

But it’s not a guarantee, it’s a promise. As a Catholic priest, even if I screw up the Mass, God will, according to his promise, find a way to share his life with us. I have no control over God’s promises. And it’s not true that the Eucharist is the only way Catholics believe God can communicate, although we “do this in remembrance of me.”

And the other way its different is that preaching cannot assume its ability to become God’s Word. The Eucharist, according to Catholic thought, when properly performed always mediates God’s grace. It’s a guarantee. For Barth the confluence of the Word of God with preaching is never a guarantee in this sense. Again, I’m not saying he’s right and you’re wrong, necessarily. Just that there is a real distinction between what Barth’s doing with Preaching and what Catholics do with the Eucharist.

I wouldn’t say at all that there is an if/then at work in Catholic sacramental theology. God is in no way constrained by our proper “execution” of the sacraments. This is actually the point of ex opere operato, in a sense. That doesn’t change the fact that God has specific forms of worship in mind which are more pleasing to him (nothing could be more obvious from the Scripture) and that we ignore the proper execution of these at our peril. None of these things bear on God’s freedom, however.

That, I think is precisely where the difference lies, for this is manifestly not Barth’s position (or the Reformed tradition’s more generally). Preaching becomes the Word of God only through the utterly free act of God’s grace; it cannot be presumed that if we obediently preach, that it will automatically become God’s Word to us.

Barth would say the same thing about the Eucharist, though and that’s precisely what puts him at a distance from Roman Catholicism here, for in Catholic theology, the dynamic is the very one you’ve described. From the Catholic perspective, if the church does things according to given criteria=channel of grace, regardless of faith, obedience, or whatever on the part of the people involved (that whole messy ex opere operato thing). Barth’s going to throw down a nein! on that every time because of the different way he conceives the event of grace.

None of this is to say that Barth is right and Catholicism wrong. I’m really just trying to get at Barth and really understand him through this reading. Though, as you know my sympathies lie more with him, at least currently.

Basically: a human or group of humans does what God told them to do, and then God does the rest. Seems to be more or less the same whether it’s the Sacraments or “preaching.” I would also add that there isn’t really a space for a “vice versa” within Catholicism, as the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist are both inseparable parts of the Mass. I think this formulation severs what is actually a much more organic whole in Catholicism, which has to do with my preference for it.

Peace,
Lee Wyatt

Seems to be a false dichotomy. Could one not just as easily say that in the emphasis on preaching, the church seeks to cause the grace of conversion through the effectively of its rhetoric rather than the objective presence of God in the sacraments (which is not “caused” by the Church in any meaningful sense).