Book Review

Swear to God:
The Promise and Power of the Sacraments

By Dr. Scott Hahn (Doubleday, 2004, 232 pp.)

Reviewed by Roy Hanu Hart, M.D.

As the subtitle, The Promise and Power of Sacraments, states, Swear to God is about sacraments, a subject that at first "bored" Dr. Hahn before it became an integral part of his theology.

Dr. Hahn has arranged the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church into groups. There are three sacraments of initiation -- baptism, confirmaion and Eucharist -- that "initiate someone into the Body of Christ."

The anointing of the sick and penance, which "repair what is broken in the body and soul," are paired as sacraments of healing.

A third group, sacraments in service of communion, consists of marriage and holy orders. These "are directed toward the good of others rather than oneself."

So what are sacraments? As can be expected, the author defines the term early on. He begins with the old Baltimore Catechism definition of a sacrament as "an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace...." The newer Catechism of the Catholic Church's definition is broader in scope, while retaining the core point of its origination "from the Body of Christ."

Thus, sacraments, based on such a definitional approach, are the unique province of Christianity, since other religions do not view Jesus as God. Protestants, by the way, acknowledge three sacraments. Judaism does not speak of sacraments, but has rites or rituals that are their equivalents, such as a marital rite, the bar mitvah, et cetera, whch, like the sacraments, are infused with a sense of the sacred.

Essentially, sacraments mediate divine grace. A universal definition would consider a sacrament as a formal religious act that confers a specific grace on the person receiving it.

Delving into the origin of the word "sacrament," Dr. Hahn goes back to Pliny the Younger early in the second century, who used it as sacramentum to signify an oath. The sacramentum was originally the sacred oath that men about to enter the Roman army took, and it was the most sacred oath in the Empire.

The sacramentum was to the gentile world what covenant oaths were to ancient Israel. Covenants are more than mere contracts. Dr. Hahn speaks of them as "the defining feature of God's relations with humankind."

He defines "oath" according to the Code of Canon Law as "the invocation of God's name as a witness to truth" -- you swear in God's name. A wedding vow is thus an oath and the celebration of a sacrament under the auspices of the New Covenant.

The author devotes more discussion to baptism and Eucharist than to the other five sacraments, but he waxes poetic when it comes to the sacrament of marriage.

In ancient Israel marriage was considered a covenant, ratified by a verbal pledge (oath) and consummated by sexual union. Since "married love is a sacramental sign of God's love for His people," then the sexual act itself "must be faithful, monogamous, indissoluble, and fruitful." Christian sexual morality rests on this foundation, Dr. Hahn maintains.

I was particularly interested in the author's comments on the number seven (given my own interest in Kabbalah). He writes that God blessed the seventh day of the world and made it "the sign of the covenant -- the sacrament of the covenant."

He quotes from the 19th-century German rabbi, Samson Raphael Hirsch, master interpreter of the Torah, on the seven days of Genesis: "...real completion [beyond the completion of the physically perceptible world] came only with the Seventh Day...[by adding] "the invisible to the perceptible...[which] established the bond between the Creator and His creation...between God and His world" [p. 101].

Dr. Hahn explains that the Hebrew word for seven, sheva, is the root of the word saba, meaning fullness and completion: "The earth was full and creation complete on the seventh day." The word sheva, he continues, is also related to shava, the verb for swearing a covenant oath. Literally, he states, it means "to seven oneself. The verb for swearing a covenant is built upon the number seven." We seven ourselves "because that is what God did at the dawn of creation."

Oaths, he points out, have become religious relics in our modern secularized world. He quotes George Santayana: "Oaths are fossils of piety."

"J'ai donne ma parole" [I gave my word], said the handsome, tall rider of the plains, the personification of the man of honor for the Swiss. I remember only too well when I lived in Lausanne in 1956 how the Swiss flocked to the movie houses to watch Hollywood westerns. Those words -- J'ai donne ma parole -- were the equivalent of swearing an oath. Such honor and dignity are no longer part of the new landscape.

The sacred power of the oath has been lost on a frenetically paced generation that is also cut off from its past roots. Even one of the most famous oaths, the Oath of Hippocrates, has been abandoned, and what is now offered to graduating medical students in our postmodern age are watered down oaths, such as the Declaration of Geneva and the Oath of Lasagna.

There was no difference between the sacred and the secular in the ancient world. Dr. Hahn is on a mission to salvage what is left of the sacred for us. Read Swear to God if you still value what is holy. It will enrich your life the way precious stones and the many other desiderata of secularization most people clamor for cannot.

© Copyright 2006 by InfoFaith Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.