![]() ![]() Christ’s presence on the altar is not a matter of his appropriating the “where” of the transubstantiated bread, or of his retaining this particular accident and not others. Christ could be there on the altar now without transubstantiation, and the bread could be transubstantiated without Christ being there on the altar. The subtle Scot distinguishes between presence and transubstantiation, claiming that one can exist without the other (Ordinatio IV d.10 q.1). One might call their position “exclusivist Thomism.” Unfortunately, some Catholic intellectuals seem still to be constricting themselves in this way. This was an unnecessary constriction of Catholic thought. But for a long time Thomas’s answer was accepted just because it was his. It is a question that many others besides Thomas Aquinas sought to answer, and a seriously inquiring intellect might rightly be disturbed, even scandalized, if forbidden to ask it. But the question of Christ’s presence now on the altar is a genuine one, and central to the consecration and adoration of the Eucharist. These questions may seem abstruse, perhaps even improper, since the sacrament is rather to be adored than quibbled over. ![]() Since I do not, I must leave it, as the writers of textbooks say, as an exercise for the reader” (A Path from Rome, 1986, 167–168). “I do not know of any satisfactory answer to this problem,” Kenny continued. But in that case, how can we say that Christ’s body is there on the altar-since, ex hypothesi, it cannot get its “where” from the “where” of the consecrated bread? The doctrine of transubstantiation, as explained by Aquinas, thus fails to secure the real presence of Christ’s body on the altar. For what a thing is, its substance, is no more the same as where it is than it is the same as how it looks (round and white). So far, so good.Īmong the other accidents of the bread, however, is its location, there on the altar. The “accidents” of the bread-for example, its whiteness and roundness-remain, but these do not belong to the body of Christ otherwise that body would have to be white and round, which it is not. Thomas Aquinas that Christ’s body is present on the altar because something that was there before, the substance of bread, has been converted into that body. It turns out he may explain the Mass better than Aquinas because transubstantiation makes Christ’s presence dependent on the location of the bread (sort of like “bread presence” rather than “real presence”): Duns Scotus has his own explaining to do. Now it turns out that Ockham was not the only one who challenged Aquinas, the theologian Jesus founded. Why Christendom itself doesn’t receive the blame for Ockham is one of those chicken-and-egg questions, I guess. Historians and apologists for Rome heap a lot of blame on William of Ockham for philosophical and theological ideas that unleashed Protestantism and produced the West’s decadence and Walmart. ![]()
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