Sacraments Part 1

Taken from Peter Leithart's book Against Christianity (Cannon Press, 2003):

This has become one of my favorite citations: when Aquinas considered the "necessity" of the sacraments, his answer cited Augustine's dictum (Against Faustus 19.11) that no religious body or group can exist without signs and symbols. Signs and rites are necessary because Church is necessary, and the Church is necessary because salvation is a restoration of man not just in his individuality but in his social relations. The new creation must take a social form, and since there is no social interaction, common goals and programs, or harmonization of disparate melodies without the use of signs and symbols, common languages, common allegiances, and common participation in rites and ceremonies, so there can be no Church without sacraments. Since there can be no salvation without the Church, since indeed, the Church is salvation, there is no salvation without the sacraments.