A transubstantiation question

[laocmo]

We accept that the Catholic concept of transubstantiation states that the accidents of the bread and the wine remain the same, but their essence changes to that of God.

My question is this. It would seem that in the real world, a things essence is defined by the sum total of its accidents. Logically, how can a thing have absolutely all of the accidents, and no others, of an orange, and not be an orange? Calling it an apple or a guitar would be considered ludicrous by any sane person. Yet we accept it with a communion wafer. Is our faith causing us to play with less than a full deck? Discussing this with my protestant friends just causes them to smile and shake their heads. This really bothers me.

 

[Della]

The accidents are not its substance. Accidents and substance are philosophical terms. Accidents means all that we can see, taste, and touch, IOW what we can know from our physical senses. Substance refers to what it is. So yes, an orange may have all the accidents of an orange and yet its substance can be transformed into something else.

Jesus used bread and wine for certain reasons. In no particular order:

1. Bread and wine were the offerings given to Melchizedek by Abraham as an offering to God, which predates the Mosiac offerings of blood sacrifices. Jesus brings them together in employing the Passover sacrifice of a lamb (he is the Lamb of God) and the eating of bread and wine.
2. Jesus said “This is my body… This is my blood” It didn’t say they were symbols, but that they actually are his body and blood. The term transubstantiation is merely a definition of his meaning.
3. God uses ordinary matter, such as bread, wine, oil, water, salt, etc. as means of imparting his graces to us. He does this because we humans are not merely bodies and not merely spirits but are a combination of both. He wishes to reinforce his Son’s Incarnation by using physical things to remind us that his creation of us is completed in his Son.

We understand the Eucharist as a miracle, just as we understand the Incarnation was a miracle, as was the Resurrection. How can a baby be conceived without a father? How can a man dead for several hours be alive once again? How can a living, breathing physical body ascend into heaven without the use of a space craft? We believe many things that aren’t possible according to mere physical laws of nature, but since we believe in the Creator of nature, who can make it do whatever he wills, we believe the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ, even though its accidents appear to be bread and wine.

 

[Duane1966]

The accidents are not its substance. Accidents and substance are philosophical terms. Accidents means all that we can see, taste, and touch, IOW what we can know from our physical senses. Substance refers to what it is. So yes, an orange may have all the accidents of an orange and yet its substance can be transformed into something else.

Jesus used bread and wine for certain reasons. In no particular order:

1. Bread and wine were the offerings given to Melchizedek by Abraham as an offering to God, which predates the Mosiac offerings of blood sacrifices. Jesus brings them together in employing the Passover sacrifice of a lamb (he is the Lamb of God) and the eating of bread and wine.
2. Jesus said “This is my body… This is my blood” It didn’t say they were symbols, but that they actually are his body and blood. The term transubstantiation is merely a definition of his meaning.
3. God uses ordinary matter, such as bread, wine, oil, water, salt, etc. as means of imparting his graces to us. He does this because we humans are not merely bodies and not merely spirits but are a combination of both. He wishes to reinforce his Son’s Incarnation by using physical things to remind us that his creation of us is completed in his Son.

We understand the Eucharist as a miracle, just as we understand the Incarnation was a miracle, as was the Resurrection. How can a baby be conceived without a father? How can a man dead for several hours be alive once again? How can a living, breathing physical body ascend into heaven without the use of a space craft? We believe many things that aren’t possible according to mere physical laws of nature, but since we believe in the Creator of nature, who can make it do whatever he wills, we believe the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ, even though its accidents appear to be bread and wine.

Yes. If I can believe all those miracles in the bible really happened, why would I believe all of a sudden that God cannot transubstantiate bread and wine?

 

[thirsty_cherUM]

We accept that the Catholic concept of transubstantiation states that the accidents of the bread and the wine remain the same, but their essence changes to that of God.

My question is this. It would seem that in the real world, a things essence is defined by the sum total of its accidents. Logically, how can a thing have absolutely all of the accidents, and no others, of an orange, and not be an orange? Calling it an apple or a guitar would be considered ludicrous by any sane person. Yet we accept it with a communion wafer. Is our faith causing us to play with less than a full deck? Discussing this with my protestant friends just causes them to smile and shake their heads. This really bothers me.

I would like to point out that the sum of accidents for CONSECRATED bread and wine includes consecration, which actually by definition, can be no accident!

After further reflection, I almost think of consecration as multiplying the bread and wine by infinity. Doesn’t matter what the starting sum of the bread and wine were, once they are multiplied by infinity, they are infinity!

 

[Polycarp1]

We accept that the Catholic concept of transubstantiation states that the accidents of the bread and the wine remain the same, but their essence changes to that of God.

My question is this. It would seem that in the real world, a things essence is defined by the sum total of its accidents. Logically, how can a thing have absolutely all of the accidents, and no others, of an orange, and not be an orange? Calling it an apple or a guitar would be considered ludicrous by any sane person. Yet we accept it with a communion wafer. Is our faith causing us to play with less than a full deck? Discussing this with my protestant friends just causes them to smile and shake their heads. This really bothers me.

Your question causes me to ask questions. By logically do mean materially? And by the real world do you mean the physical world. Is believing in something not solely material not playing with a full deck? Don’t Protestants believe in spiritual concepts?

 

[Gorgias]

My question is this. It would seem that in the real world, a things essence is defined by the sum total of its accidents.

Keep in mind that the definition of ‘transubstantiation’ is a philosophical one, not one of physical science. Moreover, it’s a definition that comes to us from 800 years ago, so we have to understand its phrasing in its own context, not ours. (In other words, we might need to ‘translate’ it into something more understandable for a 21st century audience.)

With this in mind, please note that your discussion of ‘essence’ is really just a physical definition: you’re proposing that a thing is nothing more than the sum total of its physical, observable, sensory-perceptible characteristics. Among other things, that would imply that identical twins aren’t distinct in their ‘essence’, but are, in fact, one person. That just doesn’t hold up, though.

Logically, how can a thing have absolutely all of the accidents, and no others, of an orange, and not be an orange?

Aquinas addresses this, too. He points out that, in all of nature, this just doesn’t happen, and it’s the most unnatural of occurrences – and yet, through the “eyes of faith”, we recognize that precisely this thing happens! How can that be???

As others in this thread have pointed out, what we’re discussing here is a miracle – something that doesn’t occur in the natural world, but occurs only through the particular action of God.

Is our faith causing us to play with less than a full deck? Discussing this with my protestant friends just causes them to smile and shake their heads.

Ask them if Moses really saw a burning bush… or if the walls of Jericho really came tumbling down just from trumpet blasts… or if Jesus really turned water into wine or multiplied loaves and fishes… or if Jesus really calmed the seas or raised Lazarus from the dead. If God and Jesus really did any of those things – if they really performed those miracles – then why do they believe that God isn’t able to this miracle today?

 

[Mary_Ellen]

We accept that the Catholic concept of transubstantiation states that the accidents of the bread and the wine remain the same, but their essence changes to that of God.

My question is this. It would seem that in the real world, a things essence is defined by the sum total of its accidents. Logically, how can a thing have absolutely all of the accidents, and no others, of an orange, and not be an orange? Calling it an apple or a guitar would be considered ludicrous by any sane person. Yet we accept it with a communion wafer. Is our faith causing us to play with less than a full deck? Discussing this with my protestant friends just causes them to smile and shake their heads. This really bothers me.

Your question may rest in the definition of the “real world.” If reality is limited to only what we can touch, taste, see, or hear than God Himself is not part of the “real world.”

I am not the sum of the accidents of my body, I am more than that, I am Mary_Ellen. I am real.

God is even more real than the accidents of any created thing as He, Himself, is the Creator. If He can create the accidents and substance of all creation out of nothing can he not change either the accidents and/or substance of any of those created things at will? Changing the substance of bread and wine into His own Substance cannot be beyond His abilities and He has said that this is so. He said, while holding bread, ‘take and eat, this is my Body,’ and while holding the chalice of wine, ‘this is my Blood.’ Yes, this is ludicrous, by definition, especially in light of the rejection He experienced described in John Chapter 6: people could not accept what He was saying and walked away. Was He playing with less than a full deck? No, His ‘deck’ was more full than any of ours. Just because we believe what He has said and promised does not mean we’re a few cards short of 52, either.

 

[Gorgias]

To a materialist, yes. That’s why this kind of thought gets some traction in the 21st century: there are those who claim that all of existence boils down merely to that which is empirically observable. As Christians, of course, we would deny that notion.

 

[Gorgias]

Check out the philosopher Daniel Dennett, then.

 

[GEddie]

The problem is that most people do not speak Aquinas.

“Accidents” to an extent define who we are, but God can overcome them because He is God.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Della]

The problem is that most people do not speak Aquinas.

“Accidents” to an extent define who we are, but God can overcome them because He is God.

ICXC NIKA

Thinking of speaking Aquinas, I heard a cute story at Chesterton Conference about that. I seems a young Aquinas scholar was having difficulty with a particularly abstruse passage. So he consulted his wise, old master about it. The master read the passage and then said, “Will that’s the way tis, tisn’t it?” It appears even masters of Aquinas sometimes have to simply throw up their hands and admit they can’t understand everything such a deep thinker and profound saint had to say.

 

[Johnny_Local]

God wrote the laws of physics when he created the Universe, and in the very act of creating the Universe from nothing, demonstrated that he, himself, is not bound by these laws.

So when it comes to the ability to make himself completely present–body, blood, soul, and divinity–in the Eucharist while still maintaining the outward appearance of bread and wine, I personally give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

[laocmo]

God wrote the laws of physics when he created the Universe, and in the very act of creating the Universe from nothing, demonstrated that he, himself, is not bound by these laws.

I don’t think you are very savvy when it comes to understanding the laws of physics. The laws of physics are not rules that are arbitrarily made up by God, like “I think I’ll make two masses attract one another and call it gravity” Two masses would attract one another even if God did not exist. We don’t know exactly why yet, but maybe someday.

I suppose you think God invented the Pythagorean Theorem? The fact that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of its other sides is true even without a God.

 

[Della]

I don’t think you are very savvy when it comes to understanding the laws of physics. The laws of physics are not rules that are arbitrarily made up by God, like “I think I’ll make two masses attract one another and call it gravity” Two masses would attract one another even if God did not exist. We don’t know exactly why yet, but maybe someday.

I suppose you think God invented the Pythagorean Theorem? The fact that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of its other sides is true even without a God.

Ahem, no they’re not–laws that would apply with or without God. They are only called “laws” because they do not appear to change when observed. They are not laws because God cannot change them or they exist apart from him. He made everything there is. A triangle is a triangle because God made up the idea of a triangle, as he did the stars, flowers, you and me.

 

[GEddie]

And even triangles depend for their properties on the frame of reference they are in. On a sphere, (e.g.) a triangle having three right angles is possible.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[laocmo]

Ahem, no they’re not–laws that would apply with or without God. He made everything there is. A triangle is a triangle because God made up the idea of a triangle, as he did the stars, flowers, you and me.

A triangle, the kind we learned about in plane geometry, in no way depends on God for its existence. As a thing it came into existence in the mind of the first man who drew one. I suppose you would believe God could invent a square circle if He wanted to?

 

[davidv]

A triangle, the kind we learned about in plane geometry, in no way depends on God for its existence.

How do you know this?

As a thing it came into existence in the mind of the first man who drew one.

How would he have known what to draw if he hadn’t seen a similar shape in the things around him?

I suppose you would believe God could invent a square circle if He wanted to?

Why do you think I would believe that?

 

[Gorgias]

A triangle, the kind we learned about in plane geometry, in no way depends on God for its existence. As a thing it came into existence in the mind of the first man who drew one.

Not quite. The particular expression of the definition came into existence in the mind of the first smart geometer. The thing itself – three points connected by lines – came into existence with Creation. And, guess who we depend on for Creation…?

 

[GEddie]

I think we could safely say that God, if he cared to, could create a geometric space in which squared circles were a possibility. But as they are an impossibility in our world and the continuity of its basic laws are primary for Him, we will never see one.

ICXC NIKA

 

[GEddie]

Even if the first “triangle” was the work of a human head and hand, the category that defines them (spatial triplication) occurred first out in creation.

In fact, our own minds seem to be hard wired to recognize them (consider the optical illusion in which 3 facing circles with sections cut out, appear as a triangle, even though there isn’t one). Where do you think the wiring for our minds came from??

ICXC NIKA