Sacrifice in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas

This dissertation sets forth Thomas Aquinas’s mature teaching on sacrifice, specifically as presented in several key contexts throughout the Summa Theologiae. By tracing Thomas's concept of sacrifice, we cast light on the relationship between several other topics. Attention particularly to its interior-exterior dimensions as an act of the virtue of worship (religio), and as exhibited in the Old Law sacrifices, shed light on how to read Thomas's discussions of the Passion and the Eucharist each in terms of sacrifice. According to Aquinas, sacrifice is integral to Christ’s own pilgrim journey and thereby to ours as well. Christ does not offer sacrifice merely in response to our sin. He offers out of his perfect charity and religio a sacrifice of worship to his Father for the sake of overcoming our sin and, what is more, accomplishing our salvation by incorporating us into his sacrifice. Five main chapters analyze the five points at which Thomas considers sacrifice in relation to other significant theological themes. The first chapter analyzes sacrifice as fundamentally an act of the virtue of religio, noting Thomas's dependence on Augustine's Ddee Civitate Dei for articulating his conception of sacrifice. The second chapter evaluates the sacrifices of the Old Law as divinely ordained laws for ancient Israel, by which the ancient Israelites were pedagogically formed into and prefigured the worship of Christ and his Church. The third chapter analyzes the development in Thomas's mature concept of sacrifice of the necessity of the priesthood, by which sacrifice becomes an offering for the sake of others, exemplified by the sacrifice of Christ in the Passion, in which he was both priest and victim. The fourth chapter looks at Thomas's understanding of the sacrifice of the Passion. Rather than being one among many ways by which the Passion brings about human salvation, Thomas presents sacrifice as the act by which satisfaction and merit are gained, for the sake of redemption for sin. This all happens by way of Christ's sacrifice, which, while indeed overcoming sin, aims at honoring God and clinging to him in charity. The fifth and final chapter considers the Eucharist as the means by which the sacrifice of Christ becomes the sacrifice of the Church, thereby teaching the Church true worship by participating in Christ's own.