The Sacraments of the Law and the Law of the Sacraments. By Judith Hahn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 350. £85.00.

This excellent work of scholarship makes one central and striking claim: that there is an intimate link between legal ‘ritual’ and religious ‘ritual’. That is, the law has a form of sacramental functioning; and Christian sacraments (especially in the Catholic understanding, although there are ecumenical voices here too) rely on law. Like most engaging works such as this, the premise is simple and easily grasped; yet the argument is fresh and deals clearly and fairly with contested issues. Turning the pages, then, one finds an argument which is comprehensively argued, judicious in its criticism, honest in the uncertainties of the author, and unsparing in its praise. It's not just that Hahn is perfectly qualified—as a Professor of Canon Law—to make this argument; it's also that—in the care taken and detailed exposition of the central claim—there is an evident delight.

Three key propositions govern the work (p. 3): (1) the law utilises sacramentality to effect changes in legal status; (2) the Church makes use of the law to give community members access to grace (this remarkable proposition deserves and indeed receives very careful handling—they are not ‘legal acts’ [p. 5]); and (3) through sacramental acts, the Church gives its members access both to grace and to the law. How so? Marriage is a means of grace, but also a conveyer of new legal status (although, as Hahn admits, not so obviously in countries where the religious and legal elements are kept strictly separate). Similarly, baptism cleanses from sin and confers status within a community. Ordination, with its religious significance and effects, also includes the conferring of power, establishing a new hierarchy, and assigns specific duties with legal consequence.

These propositions deserve careful definition and delineation. At every step, Hahn feels the reader's increasing discomfort and alleviates with a steady hand. First, sacramentality itself is defined and given an exposition which will point forwards to the rest of the book (p. 14). Hahn is clear that the law is not actually ‘sacramental’ (pp. 7-9), but the resemblances are what motivates the book, and what leads Hahn in the most illuminating chapter to address both using the philosophical-linguistic approach of speech act theory. ‘Sacrament’, if understood in a broader sense to refer to any symbol with a sensible sign and effecting that to which it points, has a clear and obvious presence beyond the Church, and the locus of law and society is an eminently sensible place to look, not least because of its ancient precursors.

For this reader the least satisfying (albeit still engaging) part of the book is the central two sections—‘The Ritual Frame of Sacraments’, and, applying those findings, ‘Sacramental Change in Status’. Hahn is a wide and critical reader of the principal material—Durkheim, Girard, Elizabeth Bell, and Roy Rappaport, the last of whom seems to have convinced Hahn the most. But, as Hahn honestly recognises, rituals are hard to pin down (pp. 130-131), and, remarkably, the old ‘I know one when I see one’ test still has a grain of sufficient truth in it. So, rituals are given a fair hearing, but it's not entirely clear once we emerge at the end of chapter 3 why or where rituals have actually been used in the central, striking claim of the book.

Which is why there is a sense of exhilaration, then, for this reader at least, when one reaches the final section, ‘Sacraments as Speech Acts’. This appears to have been the main idea to which the whole work has built: using speech act theory to hold the sacraments of the law and the law of the sacraments together in their resemblance. Arguably, although Hahn doesn't quite put it like this, this has been ‘the main aim’ of the book (p. 163). Hahn superbly and enlighteningly reads the literature from jurists on the law as speech act. Just to see this in a work whose main heart is the Catholic sacraments is fascinating enough. How does Hahn's reading of speech act theory itself hold up? Not quite so strong, as it turns out: Austin's How to Do Things With Words is read as one consistent work arguing one thesis, as opposed to the ‘fresh start’ which he himself admits he has to take halfway through. In a well-trodden move, Hahn then turns to Searle, and appears more and more drawn to his analysis, despite Searle's subsequent critical passing over. Mervyn Duffy's clear and illuminating work, How Language, Ritual and Sacraments Work, referred to briefly by Hahn, might have been more instructive here if read in extenso. But the outworkings of the analysis, despite some critical questions, still serve to enthuse: the nearness of Rahner's ‘sacramental’ ‘Word’ both to speech act, and to what might become a more ecumenical case for the liturgy (p. 209); an approach which is able to integrate hylomorphism with speech act theory (both/and) through foregrounding the performative effect of the sacrament; and early hints about what God's own speech act might mean for religious sacraments and their distinction from the legal (p. 239, p. 265).

What is the role of God in the sacrament, though? Hahn could well have brought this question more to the fore, or flagged it as something that has to wait for another day. Who institutes the sacraments? It is not simply that it ‘is a non-human, namely divine authority from which the church draws its authorisation to engage in public worship’ (pp. 239-240). How that authorisation comes about, and what it tells us about God, might have taken the analysis even further—albeit moving the argument beyond the attempt to establish the religious/legal resemblance. I also wonder whether more could have been said about the history of the Church's adoption of legal ritual in the early Latin Church: why, and how, and what does that adoption tell us about the resemblance Hahn is trying to secure? Whilst the book demonstrates such an excellent scholarly approach, reading widely, chasing down leads, covering abstruse areas, and bringing them into conversation, two names in particular for this reader felt like they needed a much broader reading and development: Giorgio Agamben, who has written on the sacraments and the law in more than the one place Hahn considers here, and who has consistently brought the two into connection; and Karl Rahner himself, who, whilst his essay ‘The Word and the Eucharist’ is undoubtedly pre-eminent, has written so broadly that a greater sense of his reach on this topic would surely have deepened the analysis. Finally, by following Austin into Searle, Hahn also moves much closer to an Anglican writer and a Reformed writer (neither referred to here), both of whom have used speech acts to analyse the liturgy: Anthony Thiselton and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Again, for another more ecumenically-focused day, perhaps.

All of these questions are far from deficiencies in this excellent work of scholarship. Rather, they are questions provoked in an enthused reader who is delighted that someone of Hahn's skills and personal humility has dealt so comprehensively and engagingly with this exciting topic.