That is one way to ask the question. Another is in terms of sacramental theology: the church cannot exist without rites, any more than any society. For there is no religious society, Augustine insists, whether true or false, whose separate members are not “coagulated” into common life by sacraments and signs. According to Augustine, old figural and prophetic sacraments are fulfilled in new sacraments, more powerful, easier and fewer than the sacraments of old (virtute maiora, utilitate meliora, actu