Thomas Aquinas passage refuting transubstantiation

I was quite surprised when I saw this passage, because we often hear of Aquinas as one of the first to have established Transubstantiation. However in reality he had little to do with this doctrine, which was actually promulgated by various Papal institutes quite independent of Thomas or his writings. And in his famous Summa Theologiae, he had this to say:


Summa Theologiae, Pars Tertia, q. 76

We have now to consider the manner in which Christ exists in this sacrament; and under this head there are eight points of inquiry: (1) Whether the whole Christ is under this sacrament? (2) Whether the entire Christ is under each species of the sacrament? (3) Whether the entire Christ is under every part of the species? (4) Whether all the dimensions of Christ’s body are in this sacrament? (5) Whether the body of Christ is in this sacrament locally? (6) Whether after the consecration, the body of Christ is moved when the host or chalice is moved?


q.76, #5, answer:

The place and the object placed must be equal, as is clear from the Philosopher (Phys. iv). But the place, where this sacrament is, is much less than the body of Christ. Therefore Christ’s body is not in this sacrament as in a place. I answer that, As stated above, Christ’s body is in this sacrament not after the proper manner of dimensive quantity, but rather after the manner of substance. [still a partial nod to transubstantion]. But every body occupying a place is in the place according to the manner of dimensive quantity, namely, inasmuch as it is commensurate with the place according to its dimensive quantity. Hence it remains that Christ’s body is not in this sacrament as in a place... Hence in no way is Christ’s body locally in this sacrament.


q.76, #6, answer:

It is impossible for the same thing to be in motion and at rest, else contradictories would be verified of the same subject. But Christ’s body is at rest in heaven. Therefore it is not movably in this sacrament. I answer that, When any thing is one, as to subject, and manifold in being, there is nothing to hinder it from being moved in one respect, and yet to remain at rest in another just as it is one thing for a body to be white, and another thing, to be large; hence it can be moved as to its whiteness, and yet continue unmoved as to its magnitude. But in Christ, being in Himself and being under the sacrament are not the same thing, because when we say that He is under this sacrament, we express a kind of relationship to this sacrament. According to this being, then, Christ is not moved locally of Himself, but only accidentally, because Christ is not in this sacrament as in a place, as stated above ( #5, answer ). But what is not in a place, is not moved of itself locally, but only according to the motion of the subject in which it is... Hence it is clear that Christ, strictly speaking is immovably in this sacrament.


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This of course follows Aquinas' denial of Mary's Immaculate Conception, therefore making it quite a corpus of doctrines where he and the Roman church have disagreed.

 

It seems to me that Aquinas's view of the Real Presence seems to align more with the Traditional Anglican view...
And it seems quite a few of his views do as well. Just goes to show the inventions later in the Roman Catholic Church. Thomas wouldn't have agreed.

 

Yes but Anglicans also; invented, and changed their minds later from Cranmer's (probably) earlier 10 Articles agreed under convocation in 1536 part of article 4 reads.

" that all bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach our people committed by us unto their spiritual charge, that they ought and must constantly believe, that under the form and figure of bread and wine, which we there presently do see and perceive by outward senses, is verily, substantially, and really contained and comprehended the very selfsame body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which was born of the Virgin Mary, and suffered upon the cross for our redemption. And, that under the same form and figure of bread and wine, the very selfsame body and blood of Christ is corporally, really, and in the very substance exhibited, distributed, and received unto and of all them which receive the said sacrament."

 

There was a pretty wide range of views that took place in the Reformation, when there was a huge amount of chaos, persecution, and instability. The 10 Articles were issued under Henry VIII. But nothing signed under Henry VIII is considered to be valid reformed catholic and Patristic doctrine that began to be recovered under his son Edward VI. Henry VIII isn't considered as anything more than a very typical Roman Catholic.

 

Our rector (who is an archdeacon, btw) made mention of Aquinas in today's Sunday School class after the service. It was quite interesting (to me at least).

He began by citing Paul's warning to the Galatians, written a mere 15 (or thereabout) years after Christ ascended:
Gal 1:6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
Gal 1:7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
Gal 1:8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

He then called to our minds that the gospel is, essentially, 'Christ crucified,' meaning that Jesus Christ did all the works of redemption for us who believe when He gave His life on the cross. The Galatians had heard the gospel and had believed, but at this point they were (already!!) falling into a heretical error, an error which added something to our faith in Christ: namely, works.
Gal 3:1 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
Gal 3:2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Gal 3:3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?.....
Gal 3:11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.
Gal 3:12 And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.
Gal 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
Gal 3:14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Our rector then told us that Thomas Aquinas, in the 12th Century, wrote (among many other good, true, and correct things) that our works must be in response to grace. Aquinas himself acknowledged in his writings that we are saved by grace through faith; nevertheless, over the course of the following 2-3 centuries this thought that our works must be in response to grace became misinterpreted as meaning that our response of good works is necessary to our justification and salvation. And this became a defining feature of RC theology which sets it apart from the theology of the Anglicans, of the reformation Protestant churches, and so on.

In other words, the gospel is something which God does and which we respond to. But in the church, and in the individual, it is all too easy for the gospel to drift toward 'something we must cooperate with' as a condition to justification. 'God's work' versus 'our works' is a constant battle. Our spiritual transformation is a work of God's grace alone, not that plus our own striving.

As it applies to the Sacraments, he commented, the transformation is not in the sign, it is in the person.

When he said that, it occurred to me that this is where the RCC added another plus to the gospel, in that they teach a dependence on receiving their Eucharist (a transubstantiated host and cup in which are said to dwell the complete physical body and spirit and soul and divinity of Christ) as a necessary deed to perform with regularity for one's justification. This is an addition to the gospel of Christ, because the transformation of the believer takes place in his person by grace through faith and not by receiving the sign (the Eucharist). And the transformation of the Eucharist is meant to serve not as a vehicle or conveyance of inner transformation, but it is meant to serve as a sign to the believer and a reassurance to him that (when he ingests the bread and wine which become for him Christ's spiritual body and blood) 1. Christ already dwells in him, and 2. he is in Christ (a part of His body on earth, the church) because Christ has sacrificed Himself for us, once for all, upon the cross. When we say "amen" in response to the body and blood of Christ, we are saying "yes, Lord, I believe in You; it (what we have just heard and witnessed in the consecration) is so."

The need for this reassurance was seen by Cranmer is his day, for the typical peasant RC Christian was exceedingly poor and sick from malnourishment, and their life expectancy was very short (many died in infancy or childhood, too). When they went to mass, these poor, unwashed, thin, sickly peasants were often greeted by the sight of grand murals on church walls depicting people (even lords and kings) being dragged into perdition, and their priest likely was telling them that if they would try their hardest to be good and if they would buy enough indulgences, then perhaps at the time of death they might be found good enough to be spared the doom of hell and instead only suffer ten million years in purgatory. So of course one can imagine these peasants listlessly dragging themselves back home, filled with a sense of hopelessness. Because of these prevailing conditions, we largely have Cranmer to thank for the presence of The Comfortable Words in our Anglican liturgy.

 

Aquinas’ position was straightforwardly transubstantiationist. Because medieval Western theologians in the 12th-13th centuries tended to reify the Aristotelian Categories, “substance” stood for the ultimate metaphysical subject of an entity, explaining both its existence and its ability to be the recipient of accidents. “Place” is one of the accidents. So transubstantiation is the replacement of the metaphysical subject of the bread and wine with the bare “humanness” of Jesus’ human nature, which includes his soul (and is united with his divinity), but without any of the other properties that attend his body in heaven. So when the priest carries the host, the body of Christ yet does not move.

Later medieval theologians (Scotus, Occam, etc.) either thought this was nonsense and accepted transubstantiation by faith alone, and/or defended consubstantiation instead, in which it is held that two separate substances remain in subjects that occupy the same physical space at the same time.

“Spiritual presence”, if posited as an alternative to transubstantiation, either means consubstantiation or receptionism; there’s no middle ground between them. Memorialism on this understanding is just a species of “spiritual presence”, differing only in emphasis from earlier (or later?) versions of “spiritual presence”.

At the far end of the hypothetical spectrum is “No Presence”, and I’m not aware of any Christians at any time that have defended this view.

 

The thing is though, in the Aristotelian model, place is not an accident of a substance. Accidents are things like color, shape, smell. Place is a relation, one of the Categories. So when the priest transubstantiates the host into the Body, the original accidents remain the same: color, shape, smell, but "place" being the category of relation would now begin to apply to the new substance. It should be possible to move it.

For example, the RCs believe(d) that it was possible to drop the host/Body to the ground and trample it. Hence the paten under under the communicant. The RCs clearly believed that if the host is transubstantiated, it must mean that it can move around, can be dropped, can be stepped on, can be stabbed (by witches). Anything we might do toward any other physical substance, they believed would be done to the host/Body of Christ. They never made the distinction Aquinas makes, that "oh yes this is the Body of Christ, but actually you can't physically do against it because it actually remained in heaven the whole time".

At the very least we can say that:
1. Aquinas was heterodox (qua Romanism) on transubstantiation, or illogical/irrational in his terms.
2. The doctrine itself is illogical/irrational, and simply cannot sustain philosophical analysis (to say nothing of theology).

 

In the Categories and the Metaphysics, place is treated separately from relations:

Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection.
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/categories.1.1.html

If the categories are classified as substance, quality, place, acting or being acted on, relation, quantity, there must be three kinds of movement-of quality, of quantity, of place.
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.11.xi.html

‘Relation’ is listed as distinct from ‘place’ in both lists. I’m not saying Aristotle was right. (Indeed, later theologians such as Scotus argued that talking about “place” is just to talk about a certain set of relations, and this seems correct.) I’m saying the way he structured his categories, and the way some of his medieval interpreters reified them, is what made it possible for the latter to say that the bread was transformed into the substance of Jesus’ body, yet his body did not move when the host moved. The reason that seems counterintuitive, if not meaningless, is because it is. But if you read standard works of RC dogmatics, like those of Ludwig Ott or Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, they track very closely with what Aquinas said in the Summae. On the other hand, it’s easy enough to see what Aristotle was getting at, if we remember that the categories aren’t metaphysical entities, but rather are terms intended to classify everyday observations that all human beings make, usually without the benefit of a sophisticated vocabulary.

 

Okay I’m down with distinguishing place from relation. Either way, place is not an accident, right? The only thing that remains after the consecration are the old bread’s accidents. In every other way it is the physical body of Christ.

The RCs believe that it is possible to drop or stab the Body of Christ, right?

 

In Aristotle’s system you either have substances or you have accidents, and place clearly is not a substance. A thing is either the bearer of properties (substance), or something that inheres in something else (accidents). There’s no third option. After all, I am a human being whether I’m in Italy or at the South Pole. ‘Place’ is a property I can gain or lose without it affecting the answer to the question, What am I? Ergo, in Aristotelian terms, it’s an ‘accident’. (Kant completely turned this on its head and taught that substances and accidents were both instances of relation, viz., specifically, those of inherence.) The bread’s quantity (mass, volume), quality (shape, color, etc.), place/location, temporality, etc., all remain. Only the bearer of the properties has changed, and this in a twofold way: the substance of the bread is no longer there, and the substance of the body of Jesus does not become the bearer of the former’s accidents. A human body does not have the characteristics of bread, nor do the accidents of bread suddenly become descriptive of Jesus’ body. Jesus is a man, not a loaf of bread, and his properties are those of a human being, not of an inanimate object. So the accidents persist supernaturally, inhering in nothing. So the theory intends to assert something that is above nature, not against it.

I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to the question raised in the 2nd paragraph.

 

But you've said it yourself: the medievals reified Aristotle's categories. They believed that all of the categories, not just substance, had a separate existence. It is a well known problem in medieval scholasticism, their tendency to reify abstractions. So for instance, if you have an Object A related to Object B, the medievals would say there are three entities here: Object A, Object B, and "The relation between A and B".

As a result of this overall metaphysical issue, I don't see how they could agree with 'relation' being an accident. For the medievals, 'location' or 'relation' category of the consecrated host behaves independently of what is going on with its substance. Its substance may change, but its location does its own thing. If you move the entity, maybe it substance is altered, but its place, which has its own existence, will behave by its own rules.

All this actually explains well why the RCs believe that one can drop a host (and thus have to catch it with a paten). It's a coherent system.

The only thing out of place in it is Aquinas himself. Maybe he didn't reify abstractions like everyone else around him. Perhaps he did believe that 'place' was an accident. But again, if so, that would make him very much an outlier against medieval philosophers. And his explanation of transubstantiation for that very reason would be heterodox as well.

 

Ordinarily, a relation was reified in (at least) one of its relata. It wasn’t a third thing apart from them, as that would lead to an infinite regress. Richard Cross covers this issue (in painstaking detail) in several of his articles and books, especially in Duns Scotus on God. A (created) relation in the Aristotelian understanding can only inhere in something else, therefore it cannot be a substance and must be an accident. That’s part of what made Aquinas’ doctrine of the trinitarian persons as ‘subsistent relations’ so compellingly innovative: insofar as the relation is ‘real’, so is the distinction of persons, and insofar as it is ‘subsistent’, it is simply identical with the one divine existence (since the divine essence cannot receive accidents, any properties it has must be identical with it and with each other, with the only exception to the latter being the relations of the persons themselves). My reading of other medieval theologians leads me to conclude that Aquinas’ Eucharistic teaching was quite conventional. He doesn’t veer off the beaten path in either his ontology or his reading of ecclesiastical decrees.

 

The Eucharist is no more a work than faith is.
Both are gifts from God.
Paul is obviously talking about the belief that the Jewish ceremonial laws saved you, and not God.
“The law” to a Jew meant the Jewish law.
We Catholics also believe we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by works of the law.

 

I have had many RCs tell me the belief they've been taught, that there is grace unto salvation in the receiving of the Eucharist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the RCC require that the laity receive the Eucharist at least once per year to remain in a state of grace? When a religious act or duty is performed as a means of obtaining saving grace, that is a work, and that stands in stark contrast to resting in God's gift of grace.

The law was both the Mosaic Law and the ceremonial law, both of which involve instructions like: you must do this and that, and you must not do the other.

I have also had many RCs argue that works must be performed for one's justification, and they cite the 2nd chapter of James. When I explain how to reconcile and harmonize the words of James' letter with the letters of Paul and the words of Jesus, they refuse to accept that they are saved only by grace through faith; they continue to believe that they must perform works of penance, works of receiving the RC Eucharist, good deeds, and almsgiving as additions to their faith in Christ. It is greatly heartening to know that you have been enlightened by the word of God and see the truth, but I observe that many of your brethren are not so perceptive as you.

 

Well, we believe justification actually makes you just. So if you mortally sin, you are willingly walking away from God.
Faith is not an intellectual assent, it is living faithfully and obediently with God.
I’m sure you’d agree a Christian who murders someone and doesn’t repent will most likely go to hell, right?
Our actions need to line up with our belief in Christ. None of our good works are considered works until salvation, because it is God who works in us to His good will and to his pleasure.
But justification is not a legal fiction, it actually affects you and renews you.
How can you be mortally sinning while being part of the body of Christ? You cant.
If the Catholic Church requires the Eucharist be taken at least once per year, this doesn’t make it a work anymore than God requires we don’t live in unrepentant adultery or murder.
The church has the power to bind and loose. If you willingly go against it’s rules, you put yourself outside of the body of Christ.
There is not a works vs faith distinction. We all work in synergy with God to achieve salvation. The minute we stop responding to grace we have walked away from it.
“Faith without works is dead.”
A Christian who performs no good works is no Christian at all, because again “it is God who works in you, both to his good will and to his pleasure.”
If Gods work is not manifested in your actions, how can you call yourself justified?

 

Catholics believe Christ is sacramentally present, not physically present.
“In the first place, the holy Synod teaches, and openly and simply professes, that, in the august sacrament of the holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things. For neither are these things mutually repugnant, that our Saviour Himself always sitteth at the right hand of the Father in heaven, according to the natural mode of existing, and that, nevertheless, He be, in many other places, sacramentally present to us in his own substance, by a manner of existing, which, though we can scarcely express it in words, yet can we, by the understanding illuminated by faith, conceive, and we ought most firmly to believe, to be possible unto God.” (Council of Trent, Session 13, “Decree concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist”, chapter 1)”

All transubstantiation is, is pretty much trying to explain how Christ can be present in the sacrament while also not being present in multiple places physically and only in heaven.


http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2011/06/only-difference-between-christs-body-in.html?m=1


“must be insisted that the Real Presence is precisely corporeal, objective, and historical: it is a concrete Event — presence, whether the Event be termed transubstantiation, or the offering of the One Sacrifice. It is in this specifically Catholic understanding — that the Eucharist is concretely an Event, identically the Event of the Cross, that the Catholic Church parts company with those Protestants who affirm, with Luther, a Real Presence, but who, with Luther, deny the Sacrifice of the Mass, and deny transubstantiation”

https://adoremus.org/2002/03/the-reality-of-the-real-presence/

 

1. The Eucharist is no more a work than faith is. Both are gifts from God.
   This of course is correct, and perhaps some confusion on this important point arises when we speak of the Eucharist being offered, rather than they perhaps more liturgical concept of celebrated. Christ offered for our redemption, once for all, a reasonable holy and living sacrifice, and we in obedience to his command break the bread and share the cup as his anamnesis, calling the redemptive action into our present reality, confident he said he would be with us, and so we have cause for celebration, for God has acted in the redemption of his people and now stands with us and among us.
   
   
2. Paul is obviously talking about the belief that the Jewish ceremonial laws saved you, and not God
   I do not think that is what Paul is taking about, but rather a deeper understanding of the Jewish covenant that he expounds here and elsewhere that circumcision was a sign of faith, and that it was Abraham's faith that was the central component of redemption in the Jewish setting. This idea is set out in Romans 4, and is really consistent with the Pauline message.
   
   
3. “The law” to a Jew meant the Jewish law.
   This is true enough, though it is not always clear if it refers to the Decalogue, the Deuteronomy passages, or the Torah in general, or a wider setting of the things that God would require of us, such as we might find in Micah 6:8. There was also the question of the Rabbinic code, which Jesus at times appears to have been moderately critical of.
   
   
4. We Catholics also believe we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by works of the law.
   Of course this is absolutely true and I am genuinely glad to see you express this so clearly. Many in the Latin tradition have failed to make this point clearly, and indeed have often muddied over it, and done little to clarify the confusion. This was a matter that people like Martin Luther and Thomas Cranmer amongst many others were keen to highlight, and not loved much for it in Rome.

 

First of all… what, whaaaaat?

Second, don’t the very passages you cite disprove your statement?

 

No. Read the second link.
The doctrine is Christ is “substantially and truly” present. This is not any less real than local physical presence.
It is however a different kind of presence which is sacramental.
It’s kind of silly to believe aquinas goes against our own theology lol. Don’t you think we would’ve realized by now?
All he’s saying is that the body of Christ is locally in heaven. We have him present substantially but not locally. This is how he can be present in the Eucharist and in heaven. Because he is present sacramentally and substantially for us and locally and physically in heaven.
There’s a difference between the sacramental physicality and empirical physicality
Clearly our physical bodies are in a given location, but Christ’s is sacramentally with us and in heaven at the same time.


So yes he is “physically” present in his substance, but he’s not physically present like what you and I consider to be physical. That physical presence is in heaven.


It’s obvious even the sacraments of the church are like looking through a foggy window. Christ is with us, and yet very differently from when he walked on earth. We cannot see him.
Yet his body and blood are there, and we believe so by faith.


If by physical is meant, his physical body, yes of course he is present physically.
If by physical is meant LOCALLY physically, then no he is not locally physically present.
While he is not locally with us, he is substantially with us and physically in his corporeal body, and we must give Him reverence as if he were standing right in front of our face.

this is why we believe the fraction of the host, for example, does not split Christ in half. Because he’s not subject to what is happening locally nor to locality. In this we he is truly with us in his human physicality, yet not with us in the local aspect of physicality, where we could actually effect a change in him. We cannot do this because he’s substantially present, not locally.
It must be said that the Eucharist is no less the real Christ than he is in heaven, he is given to us in the sacrament, the sacrament becomes himself. This is why the Eucharistic Christ is to be given worship and adoration.