Swear to God: The Promise and Power of the Sacraments
Overview
The most solemn, majestic, and beautiful gifts that Jesus Christ gave to the world are His sacraments. He endowed them with unprecedented and unparalleled power—power to change lives, save souls, and share God’s very life. The sacraments are the ordinary means by which God directs the course of each human life and all of world history.
The Church celebrates seven sacraments: baptism, Eucharist, confirmation, matrimony, holy orders, confession, and anointing of the sick. Each was established by Jesus for the sake of salvation. When Jesus spoke of the sacraments, He made clear that they were essential: Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God (Jn 3:5) . . . unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you (Jn 6:53).
In Swear to God, Dr. Scott Hahn explores the richness of Christ’s sacraments—their doctrine, history, symbols, and rituals. Drawing upon the Bible and the Church’s tradition, he shows how God’s covenants—with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David—became the driving forces in history.
When Jesus came to fulfill all these covenants, he established a new covenant, with greater power than ever before. Christians are God’s children now. Joined to Christ by baptism, we can already share in the eternal life of the Trinity, a life we hope to know fully in heaven. But heaven is with us, even now, in the sacraments.
Key Features
- Explores the meaning and history of all seven sacraments
- Connects the power of the sacraments to the power of the new covenant
- Helps Catholics and Protestants to fully appreciate the beauty of the sacraments
Contents
- “A Bore,” I Swore
- Signs and Mysteries
- Sacraments in the Scriptures
- As High as Seven
- What’s the Big Idea?: The Meaning of Covenant (and Everything Else)
- Do YOU Solemnly Swear?: Sacraments as Covenant Oaths
- When Words Are Deeds
- The Engine of History
- Trust and Treachery
- To Tell the Truth
- Sunday Swearing
- Sex, Lies, and Sacraments
- The Sacred Realm of Risk
- Real Presences
- Stretching Toward Infinity
Top Highlights
“Sacraments are ‘powers that come forth’ from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in His Body, the Church. They are ‘the masterworks of God’ in the new and everlasting covenant’” (Page 13)
“Jesus came to bring salvation, a word that, in the ancient languages, is synonymous with health and safety. His physical cures were ‘outward signs’ of a deeper and more lasting spiritual healing. Presumably, all of the people He cured during His ministry eventually died. Presumably, then, their physical cure was of secondary importance, subordinate to an enduring healing, a spiritual healing, that would survive even the death of the body.” (Page 14)
“I noticed that God had a particular and characteristic way of dealing with His people down through the ages. He made covenants with them, and He always sealed those covenants not with an abstract lecture on the nature of salvation, obligation, and law but with an outward sign, a physical sign. When God made His covenant with Noah, He set a rainbow in the sky as a ‘sign of the covenant’ (Gen 9:12). When God made His covenant with Abraham, He instructed the patriarch to have ‘every male among you … circumcised’ (Gen 17:10). When God made His covenant with Moses, Moses extended it to the people by sprinkling them with the blood of sacrificial animals: ‘Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you’ (Ex 24:8).” (Pages 5–6)
“Yet, for Christians, it is His divine nature itself that guarantees the oath. Both the Old Testament and the New report that God swore by Himself (see Gen 22:16, Heb 6:13). ‘So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of His purpose He interposed with an oath’ (Heb 6:17). Moreover, because of the incarnation, God has sent ‘His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin’ (Rom 8:3). The very reason for the incarnation was so that God could bear the covenant curse for us. ‘For our sake He made Him to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor 5:21).” (Page 178)
Praise for the Print Edition
This book, easy to read but profound in its implications, draws on the Bible, on Catholic teaching, patristic wisdom, and rabbinical learning to explain the meaning and importance of sacraments. What the author tells of his own discovery and experience of sacramental life is illuminating and heartwarming. It will help Catholics grasp better the wonder and necessity of sacraments in God’s plan of salvation and allow other Christians to see their significance for the following of Christ
—Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., Archbishop of Chicago
As one who has lived with a lifelong realistic understanding of the sacraments, especially of the Holy Eucharist, I found Scott Hahn’s journey from Calvin’s devout but symbolic understanding to the traditional realism of the Church Fathers most enlightening. This book will be a big help to Catholics confronted by careless and inaccurate teaching about the sacraments. It will also aid Protestants, who have often lost even the sacramental piety of the Reformation and who are beginning to rediscover the sacraments instituted by Christ.
—Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R., author of In the Presence of Our Lord
Dr. Hahn has done it once again: he has given us a crisp, clear and compelling look at the very essence of Catholic life, the sacraments. Simply put, Scott believes the sacraments really do work. And he believes that the sacraments are God’s wok for us, not our work for God.
—Most Rev.Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of Milwaukee
Product Details
- Title: Swear to God: The Promise and Power of the Sacraments
- Author: Scott Hahn
- Publisher: Doubleday
- Publication Date: 2004
- Pages: 240
- Christian Group: Catholic
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Sacraments
About Dr. Scott Hahn
Dr. Scott Hahn is the bestselling author of over forty titles, including The Lamb’s Supper and Reasons to Believe. Professor Hahn holds the Fr. Michael Scanlan Chair of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he has taught since 1990. As Founder and President of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, he is Editor-in-Chief of Emmaus Road Publishing. His Emmaus Road titles include Understanding “Our Father”, Spirit and Life, Scripture Matters, Answering the New Atheism (co-author), and Catholic for a Reason Vols. I-IV (co-editor). He also serves as the McEssy Distinguished Visiting Professor of Biblical Theology at Mundelein Seminary. Dr. Hahn has six children and thirteen grandchildren. He lives in Steubenville, Ohio.