Aristotelian substance theory and transubstantiation

[Eleve]

Except that they aren’t. If there were no one to define the categories we create to have language, these wouldn’t exist at all, and there would simply be “this arrangement of matter” and “that arrangement of matter.” The term “dog” wouldn’t exist, nor would any underlying concept of category.

Let me get this straight, you think that substance theory is a relic invalidated by science, and you think we should be mereological nihilists instead?

 

[tafan]

He claimed to be and proved it.

He also claimed to change bread into his body and wine into his blood. If you do not believe the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Christ, you have to reconcile that against Jesus’ very explicit words and actions.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

And transubstantiation is how the RCC describes the Eucharist in the council of Trent. It is the official statement of doctrine. And it uses substance theory.

And Substance Theory was also used at the Council of Nicea to explain the Divinity of Jesus as being consubstantial (of the same substance) with God the Father. As I commented in Post 38 of this thread, New Advent (the Catholic Encylopedia) states on the subject of The Trinity,
NewAdvent:

Inasmuch as the relations, and they alone, are distinct realities in the Godhead, it follows that the Divine Persons are none other than these relations. The Father is the Divine Paternity, the Son the Divine Filiation, the Holy Spirit the Divine Procession. Here it must be borne in mind that the relations are not mere accidental determinations as these abstract terms might suggest. Whatever is in God must needs be subsistent. He is the Supreme Substance, transcending the divisions of the Aristotelean categories. Hence, at one and the same time He is both substance and relation. (How it is that there should be in God real relations, though it is altogether impossible that quantity or quality should be found in Him, is a question involving a discussion regarding the metaphysics of relations, which would be out of place in an article such as the present.)

If you reject Substance theory, then you must reject the Council of Nicea and the Divinity of Christ.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Muze,

Don’t forget to respond to yppop’s question, if you would please!

And of what are atoms and subatomic particles composed?

I think it is very germane to the discussion.

VC

 

[Love4All]

Well yes, I see what you mean. But substance and accident theory, as far as I know, would concede that the Eucharist is absolutely unique in this regard—i.e., that following consecration, the accidents do not manifest the underlying substance but rather masks it.

Other than transubstantiation, we take it for granted that we can know reality through accidents, because accidents are the ONLY thing we can perceive. Everything we can perceive is an accident related to the underlying reality, or substance. When you get to the sub-Planck level, it’s hard to match any kind of perception to anything. The perceptions impinging on our senses are not outside reality, they are just our way of knowing what’s out there by getting certain perceptions into our brain and mind.

Transubstantiation posits that the underlying reality changes—from bread and wine to Christ—but the accidents—that which we perceive—remain unchanged, and further that those accidents do not inhere in Christ (or in the bread and wine which are gone). Now one may argue that one doesn’t accept that is possible, but there is no way to prove or disprove it in a way of physical testing, since that could only involve testing the accidents, and Catholics agree that the accidents remain.

Re: “sub-Planck” level — no such thing AFAIK. Physicists treat Planck units as properly basic, i.e. atomic in the philosophical sense, no further subdivision meaningfully conceivable. Just a technical point.

We could say the Eucharist is “absolutely unique” with regard to its manifestation as accidents veiling, rather than manifesting, the Substance; but I wish to point out that the very Incarnation of the Word made Flesh is similar. Jesus in His human Nature did not appear to be God, yet He was and is. Any scientist examining Him would see only His human Nature, not His Divinity. It is not precisely the same thing, since Our Lord’s Sacred Humanity was and is real, i.e. substantial; but His Divinity, we accept on Faith, not sight.

 

[Love4All]

. . . the substance theorist think that there is a substance of communion water (sic) that exists that is the real communion water (sic), and what we experience is just some of its attributes. That simply doesn’t fit with what we know about matter.

“What we know about matter” is entirely knowledge of accidents, not substance. It is not “substance theorists” who understand and know that there is an underlying Reality in the Eucharist that is not the appearance of bread and wine. That would be Catholics who understand and know that. The communion wafer has all the properties of bread, and really has the appearance of bread. When we refer to the wafer per se, we are referring to the accidents, the phenomenon, the appearance, not the substance, the noumenon, the reality. The “real wafer” is exactly this — the appearance, which veils, rather than manifests, the underlying reality, which is not a wafer at all but the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

 

[Love4All]

Muze, you’re wasting your time. Catholics hold to transubstantiation very dogmatically, and absolutely nothing than can be discovered or said about the nature of reality can change their minds. Jesus himself could not even do so, because if he contradicted Catholic teaching, they would assume he was a fraud.

You do not understand the relationship between the realities of Truth, Jesus, and the Catholic Church. You see them as somehow three different and possibly contradictory entities, because you judge the world by appearances rather than as reality. Thus it would seem that to you, the Eucharist can never be more than a symbol of the Body of Christ, since that is how it appears. You are thus much closer to Protestantism than you are to Truth. But no one should expect those who love Truth to abandon it for Protestantism. Muze is only wasting time if he fails to learn from those he is attempting to teach. The same also applies to you. Those who love Truth also tend more toward patience, so we do not see it so much as you and he wasting our time, as we do you and he blinded by your own opinions, but groping after Truth — otherwise, you wouldn’t have come here.

 

[Love4All]

He claimed to be and proved it.

How do you know?

 

[Muze]

Let me get this straight, you think that substance theory is a relic invalidated by science, and you think we should be mereological nihilists instead?

Not necessarily. You could simply say “real presence” and leave it at that.

 

[Muze]

If you reject Substance theory, then you must reject the Council of Nicea and the Divinity of Christ.

Read your own quote.

…not mere accidental determinations… transcending the divisions of the Aristotelean categories

It’s distancing itself from substance theory, not embracing it.

 

[Muze]

He also claimed to change bread into his body and wine into his blood. If you do not believe the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Christ, you have to reconcile that against Jesus’ very explicit words and actions.

Sorry, I don’t see where Jesus claimed to change bread into his body. He stated, “This is my body.” That can be taken any number of ways from literal (Jesus pulled off a piece of his flesh and turned it into bread) to symbolic (eating of the bread symbolizes embracing Him as the Messiah as His body is literally broken during the passion.)

But He never claimed to change bread into His actual body. That’s your imposition on the text.

 

[Muze]

How do you know?

Written eyewitness testimony and ongoing organizational witness from Eastern and Western Churches.

 

[Muze]

“What we know about matter” is entirely knowledge of accidents, not substance. It is not “substance theorists” who understand and know that there is an underlying Reality in the Eucharist that is not the appearance of bread and wine. That would be Catholics who understand and know that. The communion wafer has all the properties of bread, and really has the appearance of bread. When we refer to the wafer per se, we are referring to the accidents, the phenomenon, the appearance, not the substance, the noumenon, the reality. The “real wafer” is exactly this — the appearance, which veils, rather than manifests, the underlying reality, which is not a wafer at all but the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

And that’s a lovely statement of Aristotle’s substance theory. Problem is that it’s dead. No one embraces this anymore. Modern science has shown that the substance of a thing is the chemical makeup of that thing. There is no actual unseen substance. All that is there is our language’s categories, which exist only in our minds.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Read your own quote.

It’s distancing itself from substance theory, not embracing it.

No, it is whole-heartedly embracing it. You have intentionally omitted the key parts that defeat your incorrect thoughts:
NewAdvent:

He is the Supreme Substance, transcending the divisions of the Aristotelean categories. Hence, at one and the same time He is both substance and relation.

If you go to the website I linked previously, you will note that “Substance” above is hyperlinked to the subject of Aristotle’s substance theory.

The Council of Nicea even states,
CouncilOfNicea:

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance [ek tes ousias] of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father [homoousion to patri], through whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven and cometh to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. Those who say: There was a time when He was not, and He was not before He was begotten; and that He was made out of nothing (ex ouk onton); or who maintain that He is of another hypostasis or another substance [than the Father], or that the Son of God is created, or mutable, or subject to change, [them] the Catholic Church anathematizes.

The same exact terminology of substances (ousia) appears here in the Council of Nicea, with regards to the Divine, as in the Council of Trent, with regards to Transubstantiation.

Again, to reject substance theory as wrong is to deny Christs Divinity.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

And that’s a lovely statement of Aristotle’s substance theory. Problem is that it’s dead. No one embraces this anymore. Modern science has shown that the substance of a thing is the chemical makeup of that thing. There is no actual unseen substance. All that is there is our language’s categories, which exist only in our minds.

No. Infinity times, no! It is the ACCIDENT of the thing that is made of the chemicals (if you want to be so reductionist). The substance is that which makes the item “that thing.”

You have been confusing, repeatedly, the philosophical term “substance” with the scientific term “substance.” These two are not at all the same, in fact the scientific term “substance” is more aligned with the philosophic term “accident!” You cannot possibly hope to convince people that you are right (not that you are right, you are very wrong on this matter) if you cannot even get your definitions straight!

 

[Muze]

No. Infinity times, no! It is the ACCIDENT of the thing that is made of the chemicals (if you want to be so reductionist). The substance is that which makes the item “that thing.”

And the issue with this is that there isn’t some external substance apart from the concepts in our minds with respect to our language that metaphysically make that thing “that thing.”

You have been confusing, repeatedly, the philosophical term “substance” with the scientific term “substance.” These two are not at all the same, in fact the scientific term “substance” is more aligned with the philosophic term “accident!” You cannot possibly hope to convince people that you are right (not that you are right, you are very wrong on this matter) if you cannot even get your definitions straight!

My definitions are correct. What I’m pointing out is that without the concepts of the mind and language, there is no substance “that thing.” There is no substance to change into the actual body. Aristotelian substance theory is dead because Aristotle is describing language, which only exists in the mind, and not some unseen metaphysical existence that can be changed independent of its “accidents.”

Outside our minds, there is only the physical make up of that thing which Aristotle calls the “accidents.”

 

[Muze]

No, it is whole-heartedly embracing it. You have intentionally omitted the key parts that defeat your incorrect thoughts:

What I’ve done is pointed out what you’ve ignored, and oddly enough requoted:

If you go to the website I linked previously, you will note that “Substance” above is hyperlinked to the subject of Aristotle’s substance theory.

You don’t transcend something and then remain subject to it. This is a refutation of Aristotelian substance theory, because the theory is transcended.

The Council of Nicea even states,

The same exact terminology of substances (ousia) appears here in the Council of Nicea, with regards to the Divine, as in the Council of Trent, with regards to Transubstantiation.

Again, to reject substance theory as wrong is to deny Christs Divinity.

Sorry, but just because it uses “ousia” doesn’t mean it’s Aristotle’s use of it. There were many ontologies that used “ousia” to refer to the substance of a thing. In this case (and if you’d read it, you’d see it) the substance is the attributes or “accidents”.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

And the issue with this is that there isn’t some external substance apart from the concepts in our minds with respect to our language that metaphysically make that thing “that thing.”

My definitions are correct. What I’m pointing out is that without the concepts of the mind and language, there is no substance “that thing.” There is no substance to change into the actual body. Aristotelian substance theory is dead because Aristotle is describing language, which only exists in the mind, and not some unseen metaphysical existence that can be changed independent of its “accidents.”

Outside our minds, there is only the physical make up of that thing which Aristotle calls the “accidents.”

You are even misusing the word substance in the first sentence here! “external substance” is nonsense, like a square circle. Substance is not an external anything, it is an objects being.

Please spend a couple hours reviewing what substance actually means, then come back and accept that you have been wrong this whole thread.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

What I’ve done is pointed out what you’ve ignored, and oddly enough requoted:

You don’t transcend something and then remain subject to it. This is a refutation of Aristotelian substance theory, because the theory is transcended.

Sorry, but just because it uses “ousia” doesn’t mean it’s Aristotle’s use of it. There were many ontologies that used “ousia” to refer to the substance of a thing. In this case (and if you’d read it, you’d see it) the substance is the attributes or “accidents”.

I’m no scientist, but do you think the wine and the host actually ever changed into real blood and flesh?

I think we should understand it as more of an essential change, very mysterious, but never-the-less a profound change. What was once ordinary wine and bread is blessed and infused with the essence of Christ. Sort of like holy water. (I don’t know if this is Church-doctrine, but that’s how I see it).

 

[Muze]

I was just thinking (I know, that’s bad ), but if Nicea DOES use Aristotelian substance theory (which I don’t think it does, but I could be convinced otherwise), and we realize that AST (tired of typing that out ) is rejected as a reflection of reality, that only means that the Churches (East and West) are going to have to reformulate the statement of the trinity using a valid philosophical basis.

Saying that the idea of AST is dead means that the trinity isn’t stated correctly is only an argument from bad consequences, which isn’t a valid argument at all.

If it is, in fact, true, then that just means the Churches have some work to do.