Academic & Crossref DOI Search

Abstract: The fourth chapter explores Foucault’s passing remark that the problem of the relation between politics and religion in modernity is uniquely concentrated in the ambiguous figure of the “minister.” Its point of departure is Aquinas’s definition of the minister as the “instrumental cause” of sacramental efficacy (the administration of the sacraments being the liturgical operation par excellence). Following a detailed examination of the philosophical history of the instrumental cause, this chapter is able to demonstrate how, far from constituting a mere adaptation of Aristotle’s fourfold aetiology to the ends of Christian theology, the articulation of a notion of instrumental causality is in fact the vehicle through which theology seeks to assert its superiority with respect to philosophy. But to the extent that it defines the figure of the minister, it also in turn supplies the theoretical justification for the vicarious character of all liturgical power.