In traditions with a rich sacramental theology grace is mediated through some visible and material encounter with the world. The paradigmatic example here is Catholic theology regarding the Eucharist. Grace is mediated through the host, physically ingesting the body of Christ. Grace comes to us visibly and materially. Consequently, our access to grace demands being materially connected to these sacraments.
Phrased perhaps a bit too loosely, sacramental theology describes an objective encounter with God. That is, the presence of God is encountered as a material reality independent of my own. Per the doctrine of transubstantiation, for example, God is literally and materially "in" the Eucharist. This makes God an "object" in the world that I can meet in a material and physical encounter. In the Eucharist God is literally there in the room, the same way a tree or rock is there in your yard.
Now, the material, objective "thereness" of God in the sacramental encounter doesn't mean that God is somehow "trapped" or "confined" to that location, like a genie in a bottle. God remains omnipresent even when met in sacramental thereness. But our encounter with grace is materially constricted by the sacraments. There is a grace that comes only through eating the body of Christ in the Eucharist, a grace that is available nowhere else. Grace has a physical location in the material world, and you have to be at that location in order to encounter it.
This is why, incidentally, excommunication in liturgical traditions is so high stakes. The issue isn't about a breaking of some sort of social affiliation, like getting a divorce. Though losing a church family is painful. No, the real pain of excommunication isn't relational loss but being physically cut off from the material means of grace. If you can't physically participate in the Eucharist your material access to God has been severed. And that lack of material access to grace places you at eschatological hazard.
Now, everything I've just described about the "thereness" of grace probably sounds incredibly odd if you're a low-church Protestant. Lacking a rich sacramental theology, low-church Protestants don't think grace has a material location in the world. Though there are some exceptions. For example, my tradition, the Churches of Christ, has historically believed that grace comes in the physical act of baptism by full water immersion. This is the material, physical location of grace. Grace is encountered "there" and nowhere else. Consequently, if you are not baptized by water immersion then you haven't yet been saved.
But generally speaking, low-church Protestants tend to believe that grace comes to us subjectively via faith. Sola fide, sola gratia. Faith alone, grace alone. In this scheme, material conduits of grace have been removed. Grace comes to us through a subjective experience, the act of faith, rather than an objective, material encounter.
To be sure, this isn't quite so simple. In both the Catholic Eucharist and in Church of Christ baptism the faith of the believer in those material encounters are vital and necessary ingredients. But key to the sacramental imagination is that faith must have a material encounter in the sacrament. That material encounter--the sacrament--is what mediates grace.
All this is prolegomena to understand what I mean by the "sacrament of affectivity," which I'll explain in the next post. What I want us to appreciate here is the shift from an objective to subjective encounter with grace. The contrast I want to set before us is the material "thereness" of grace versus a grace that comes through an internal psychological experience.
