That’s certainly not true. Besides appearances (sensory knowledge), we know many things… like the fact that appearances are not all that we know. For example, we also know that we know, we know that we exist, we know that God exists, we know that substances exist and that they ground the being of appearances (accidents), etc.
Christ is not present in the Eucharist in the same way as He is physically present in Heaven. We are referring to different realities here.
Actually he is present as he is in heaven in the Sacrament. Christ cannot be present in the Sacrament without being bodily present. The below is taken from Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Dr. Ludwig Ott.
Actually he is not present in the same way. That claim doesn’t make sense. If it were true, if we could look with our eyes at Jesus in heaven, we would see an enormous pile of wafers and wine, but those are certainly not the proper accidents of Jesus’ glorified body. That is the way in which Jesus is present on Earth, not in Heaven.
Perhaps I should have phrased that better. But my next sentence attempted to clarify. All knowledge of the outside world begins with sense perception. And sense perceptions are by definition, appearances. Aquinas, if I recall correctly said something like, “all knowledge begins in the senses.”
I’d be interested to know where he said it, but in any case, that thought is very different from your original one.
IIRC: It is true, according to Thomas, that we rely on phantasms derived from the senses in order to know the external world. But our knowledge is not limited to knowledge of the external world, and our knowledge of our selves as knowers precedes and grounds any intellective cognition - the proper operation of the human person - which is that operation by which the soul properly grasps both judgments in their truth-directedness, as well as the nature of the intellective soul itself as an entity that is naturally ordered towards apprehending the truth. This very fundamental kind of knowledge does not rely on any phantasm and does not begin in the senses.
Well the intellect, as a faculty of the spiritual soul, abstracts from the sensory (name removed by moderator)ut to the immaterial idea. Even if one is reading Aquinas or Aristotle or a math or physics book full of abstract ideas, those ideas get from the printed page to the intellect via the senses first. Even such an intellectual exercise as pure self-reflexion on one’s own thoughts would seemingly have no beginning point without (name removed by moderator)ut from the senses. There are those who like the idea of pre-imprinted ideas, but I am not one of them, although I do think that the intellect must of its nature be conformed to reality by the Creator in order to perform its function.
Is that true? I think not. Those ideas came from the intellects of Aquinas or Aristotle, before being expressed on the printed page so as to be available to your sensory and intellectual faculties, didn’t they?
I think you’re disagreeing with Thomas here. This is not about imprinted ideas. It is about the reditio completa (complete return) of the intellective soul to itself, through which it knows its own essence, which essence is not grasped in dependence upon any corporal organ. If you can, take a look at De veritate, q. 1, art. 9.
No you have to look beyond the accidents. He is present… I cannot see why the De Fide doctrine is being questioned. Help me out on this one. I am going to look up the sources that you have recommended me, and perhaps later today we can continue this discussion. It is rather interesting.
Of course. My point was simply that, lacking mental telepathy, I receive those ideas only by means of the senses.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read Aquinas, so I won’t argue the point. Certainly I agree that the human intellect, unlike, say animal consciousness, is capable not only of consciousness, but of being conscious of one’s consciousness, that is, of self reflection.
I think you are clearing adding something to the *de fide *doctrine which it doesn’t contain. The living Christ is present whole and entire, yes, but that does not imply that he is just as present to us as he is to those in heaven. This is not only because we cannot see Jesus’ proper accidents, but also because our intellects, while we remain on this Earth, are neither naturally nor supernaturally able to see or grasp our Lord’s presence under the species (appearances) of bread and wine. We believe it, we know it by faith, but we can’t understand it - that is, we can’t make it present to our understanding - as the blessed in heaven can.
But if that were necessarily true, then it would have to be true that they also would have to have received their ideas by means of the senses. But since an infinite regress is impossible, there must be a native faculty by which we grasp certain ideas, and the intervention of the written word is merely accidental to the intrinsic capacity of the intellect.
I think that’s a false dichotomy.
Dear LittleOne,
Yes, that sums up the difference very nicely I think.
No, I don’t think so. The possibility of circumscriptive multilocation would apply to things like the ‘bilocation’ reported of some Saints (like Padre Pio), where the individual is (allegedly) physically present - in exactly the same mode with his own proper accidents/appearance - in more than one location at one time. I don’t know the texts you’re referring to, but I don’t think Scotus or anybody else would have been suggesting this kind of thing could apply to the Eucharist.
You open up some very fundamental metaphysical issues with this kind of question. But no; God’s omnipresence does not mean that he is identical to everything that he is present to, although all of creation does reflect/express, in millions of different ways, the infinite nature of the creator. But the being of Jesus, who is God and man, means that the infinite nature has been joined to a finite nature, and with that finite nature comes a proper location and proper accidental appearances which are also finite, that is, not omnipresent - and these finite attributes that are taken on through the incarnation do not pertain to the divine nature as such, although they have been hypostatically joined to it in the person of Christ.