Transubstantiation And How It Isn'T Informative.

[3DOP]

I have decided to delete a post made at Louis Midgley's thread about Evangelicals and make a new topic. My title isn't intended to say that in all respects Transubstantiation, the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist is unimportant. To disbelieve is to disqualify one from receiving Holy Communion. Of course it is important. My argument is against a misunderstanding about why St. Thomas Aquinas used the formula, and how subsequently it has been erroneously mixed in some people's minds with the ordinary way the Catholic Church teaches regarding the unity of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity and the unity of the Son of God with man.

3DOP

OK I found the discussion with David Waltz

http://www.mormondia...od/page__st__40

It starts with post 54

Hi bukowski

I finally got around to reviewing the thread. My, we do repeat ourselves don't we? However, I did see one point upon which you and Dave found agreement that I think I must highlight:

But that is quite different from Aquinas understanding of "substance" as being something independent of "appearances" so that one could be of the same "substance" and yet look totally like something else.

Again, like 3DOP's idea of "whatness" it defines something as an independent "Property" existing independently in the world.

Of course this is the central idea indispensible for of "Trans-substan-tiation" which is Aquinas' argument for how bread can become flesh. While it's appearance stays the same, its "whatness" or "substance" is changed or transformed into the flesh of Christ.

---mfbukowski, post #64 on linked thread

In response to this Dave replies:

This is one major area where I disagree with Aquinas, for the kind of "appearances" which he (and offical Catholic dogma) argues for concerning the doctrine of transubstantion does not retain the unique attributes of the original "substance; in other words, the transubstantiated elments fail a simple DNA test.

---D. Waltz, post #76 on linked thread

For Dave and bukowski, (I am hoping Dave is lurking.)

In my opinion, both of you are misunderstanding why St. Thomas used the expression "transusbstantiation" to describe the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is not an argument for how this can happen. There has not nor ever has been any occasion in nature where a thing becomes transubstantiated. It is a unique phenomenon, a miracle which can only be believed by faith. If the accidents (appearances) remain then it MUST fail any scientific testing. St. Thomas was aware of this. A couple of lines from a hymn of St. Thomas called Adoro Te will illustrate that he would agree that this is a completely unique and miraculous phenomenon with no parallel anywhere anytime. The teaching of transusbstantiation is not intended to make the doctrine more believable. In fact, it is intended to make it impossible to believe, except by faith! Make no mistake, St. Thomas never argued for transubstantiation as a credible and easy-to-believe vehicle for HOW the action occurs. Rather, it was to make plain to both believers and unbelievers in the most exhaustive manner, how completely and thoroughly, contrary to every sensible indication, Catholics believe anyway in a literal understanding of the Holy Eucharist. Even while Jesus sat bodily before the disciples at the Last Supper, His words, "THIS IS MY BODY", effected an undetectible transformation of the bread and it became His Body. The power of His Word is the only argument for why we should have faith in the fact that it happens. How transubstantiation happens is no easier to figure out than how it worked in the beginning when God said, "Let there be light, and there was light."

The Tradition of the Church which St. Thomas received meant that according to the Aristotelian formulae, however difficult it is to believe, the substance of bread was changed while the appearances remained. Note the following to see how he would have immediately agreed that any kind of testing would inevitably fail to reveal Christ as the True Substance:

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur

Sed audito tuto creditur,

Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius,

Nil hoc verbo veritatis verius.

Taste and touch and vision to discern Thee fail,

But the hearing only well may here prevail,

I believe whatever the Son of God hath told,

What the Truth hath spoken, that for truth I hold.

In Cruce latebat sola Deitas,

At hic latet simul et humanitas,

Ambo tamen credens atque confitens,

Peto quod petivit latro paenitens.

On the cross lay hidden but Thy Deity,

Here is hidden also Thy Humanity:

But in both believing and confessing Lord,

Ask I what the dying thief of Thee implored.

Transubstantiation as proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas is never some easier-to-believe philosophical explanation as to how to believe the impossible. It is proposed to show that if you will understand the doctrine correctly, it will only be because you have faith that with God, all things He proposes to believe are possible.

I do not hope to convince anyone of the truth of the doctrine. But I do hope it can clear St. Thomas once and for all of having attempted so foolhardy an exercise as to attempt to argue a credible explanation for how bread becomes the Body of Christ. It would also seem to me that since there is, according to the Catholic faith, only one humanly incredible instance where a substance undergoes such a phenomenon, and it is limited to the moment that a priest repeats the words of Christ with the same intention as Christ had at the Last Supper, that we should dispense from being sidetracked about "transubstantiation". The words have only a different prefix, but to be consubstantial occurs everywhere in nature, to be transubstantial is an exception solely limited to the priestly action of the power of words of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

3DOP

Edited January 16, 2013 by 3DOP

[mfbukowski]

I have no desire to put down anyone's beliefs, especially in transubstantiation, but if you think that Thomas thought he was not coming up with a philosophical explanation, he spent VERY much time explaining something which he could have just said "It's a mystery and we believe it on faith".

The very essence of religious belief is that we take things on faith- faith is all about HOPE for things unseen, the "evidence" of which we accept based on spiritual experience. At least that is the way I see it.

I appreciate you starting the thread and all, but I think there is no need to re-hash this. All it can do is lead to an argument of philosophical principles which ultimately won't prove anything anyway about truths which are believed spiritually.

You have given a wonderful description of your belief in the Real Presence, and indeed I think I could say I also believe that Christ is "really" present in our sacrament in the sense that we partake in unity in remembering his sacrifice for us and we do so as the body of Christ- his people.

Matt 18 says:

19Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. 20For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

I will certainly not deny that Christ is "really present" when he explicitly says in this scripture that he would be.

On the other hand, I think that the philosophy of "substance" is clearly part of what we as LDS need to make sure that we jettison as part of the restored gospel, and I think that elements of Neoplatonism are still manifested in the way we speak and think, and in our effort to remain "Christian" we oftentimes tend to use thought patterns and terminology which needs to be discarded.

But I an certainly not going to in any way attack the beliefs of others regarding the Eucharist or their sacraments, because I know exactly how that feels, and we are just as vulnerable to similar attacks as is any other faith system.

I was raised Catholic, my ancestral family is Catholic, and I love Catholics and that was the original source of my understanding of what an intimate relationship with God can be.

The fact that I disagree with some of the points of a brilliant, brilliant, monk who lived 800 years ago who did not have the benefit of reading 800 years of writers criticizing what he wrote and answering and altering his philosophy as needed, has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about Catholics or how they reverence the Eucharist.

If anything, though, I think it is a lesson in what happens when any philosophical point of view becomes institutionalized in a church which does not allow for an open canon and continuing revelation. Once a church is locked into a "theology" it is stuck with it forever, and so far I think it is sheer inspiration which has allowed Mormonism to in fact avoid such a theological cage.

[3DOP]

I have no desire to put down anyone's beliefs, especially in transubstantiation, but if you think that Thomas thought he was not coming up with a philosophical explanation, he spent VERY much time explaining something which he could have just said "It's a mystery and we believe it on faith".

The very essence of religious belief is that we take things on faith- faith is all about HOPE for things unseen, the "evidence" of which we accept based on spiritual experience. At least that is the way I see it.

I appreciate you starting the thread and all, but I think there is no need to re-hash this. All it can do is lead to an argument of philosophical principles which ultimately won't prove anything anyway about truths which are believed spiritually.

You have given a wonderful description of your belief in the Real Presence, and indeed I think I could say I also believe that Christ is "really" present in our sacrament in the sense that we partake in unity in remembering his sacrifice for us and we do so as the body of Christ- his people.

Matt 18 says:

I will certainly not deny that Christ is "really present" when he explicitly says in this scripture that he would be.

On the other hand, I think that the philosophy of "substance" is clearly part of what we as LDS need to make sure that we jettison as part of the restored gospel, and I think that elements of Neoplatonism are still manifested in the way we speak and think, and in our effort to remain "Christian" we oftentimes tend to use thought patterns and terminology which needs to be discarded.

But I an certainly not going to in any way attack the beliefs of others regarding the Eucharist or their sacraments, because I know exactly how that feels, and we are just as vulnerable to similar attacks as is any other faith system.

I was raised Catholic, my ancestral family is Catholic, and I love Catholics and that was the original source of my understanding of what an intimate relationship with God can be.

The fact that I disagree with some of the points of a brilliant, brilliant, monk who lived 800 years ago who did not have the benefit of reading 800 years of writers criticizing what he wrote and answering and altering his philosophy as needed, has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about Catholics or how they reverence the Eucharist.

If anything, though, I think it is a lesson in what happens when any philosophical point of view becomes institutionalized in a church which does not allow for an open canon and continuing revelation. Once a church is locked into a "theology" it is stuck with it forever, and so far I think it is sheer inspiration which has allowed Mormonism to in fact avoid such a theological cage.

Thanks bukowski...

I KNOW that you respect me and my faith. Your remarks about St. Thomas, not having the advantage of the last 800 years, is well taken. The Church believed that bread could become Christ's Body long before St. Thomas became familiar with Aristotle. The East continues to believe and have wariness about the Aristotelian formula, although some have accepted it.

Of course I do not mind that you are wary of transubstantiation as the best way to express our belief. But it is a mistake to think of it is an argument or to see any association between the transubstantiation of St. Thomas which is completely singular and unique in comparison to the virtually universal consubstantiation of Council documents 800 years before St. Thomas. How can we think it is an explanation for how a thing happens, when there is not one single other instance of a thing becoming transubstantiated? It isn't like anybody could have envisioned transubstantiation and think of how they are familiar with it. All it means is that we acknowledge that the bread gives every appearance of remaining the same, but by faith we have to see that though our senses fail us, it is Christ, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity.

I don't even care about revisiting all the consubstantiality talk of the 4th and 5th Centuries. I only want to show that it is unclear thinking which would object because it has something to do with the transubstantiation formulae of the 13th Century. Transusbstantiation is a total mystery of faith. Good night! I just remembered:

HIC EST ENIM CALIX SANGUINE MEI,

NOVI ET AETERNI TESTAMENTI:

MYSTERIUM FIDEI

The Mystery of Faith. Of course you will probably recognize the words of Christ said over the chalice of wine which cause the "transubstantiation" which is what? Mysterium Fidei. The Mystery of Faith. St. Thomas would have recited these words every day of his life. He well knew that transubstantiation only explained what must be believed without saying how. Catholics have to recognize two truths about the consecrated Bread and Wine.

1) They are truly become the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.

2) The senses give absolutely no indication of any change. It is to all appearance bread and wine.

Nowhere in our experience do the appearances (accidents) conflict with the reality (substance). But the Mystery of Faith demands we so believe, with or without the lingo common to the Scholastic era.

Optimist that I am, I have to hope that you or some lurker can agree with what I have said. It compromises absolutely nothing about the beliefs of Latter-day Saints. It is nothing more than an attempt to make a necessary distinction between two terms that sound similar but have drastically different meanings and are applied in totally different contexts.

And again, I appreciate your respectful wish not to put anyone's faith down. You haven't. When you say that St. Thomas was presenting an argument, I agree that if he was, it was absurd. It would make no sense whatever. You said he was a smart monk. You are right. He wouldn't have made such a blunder.

3DOP

Edited January 17, 2013 by 3DOP

[mfbukowski]

Nowhere in our experience do the appearances (accidents) conflict with the reality (substance). But the Mystery of Faith demands we so believe, with or without the lingo common to the Scholastic era.

That's really the crux of the entire issue, philosophically as well as spiritually. As a fan of Richard Rorty, philosophically, I affirm that there is no appearance/reality distinction. But I also affirm the "reality" of experience and spiritual experience as "real" as anything, but in a different way, and so would Rorty.

In fact Rorty finally affirmed a kind of religion, to put it so succinctly as to perhaps distort it, as a kind of "friendship" among humanity, though he would never admit to a personal God. But such a belief for him, functioned as a kind of humanistic religion with a central belief that cruelty was the worst thing that humans did to each other. The cause of humanism is what gave is life meaning and functioned as a kind of religion.

I think Rorty's philosophy might have become drastically different had it ever occurred to him that God was human, as the LDS believe and that indeed God has revealed repeatedly in the D&C that he wants to be our "friend". (I can pull up references if anyone actually cares- just search the D&C for the word "friend" and you will see I am right) But all that is for another discussion, with folks who really know Rorty and they are few and far between, especially here.

And I think that just being born in the 20th century as you and I both were, that lack of distinction between reality and appearance is deeply ingrained in us culturally regardless of how badly we want it to be otherwise. As you yourself said

Nowhere in our experience do the appearances (accidents) conflict with the reality (substance).

But oddly that is what also saves your position in faith, I think. Science deals only with "accidents" (you might argue rationally I think) whereas faith is just as valid in giving your life meaning and direction- and if you want to call meaning and direction "substance" as in "what is important" I think that would be a perfectly rational position. What you feel inside of you becomes a kind of "appearance" because it is how you experience the world, and therefore as "real" as any experience of reality of a subjective nature. And those subjective experiences are indeed of importance or "substance".

So if one wants to save the theology I think one might postulate that there are "appearances" or experiences and the import we give those experiences, and the import is the "substance".

We all share appearances, but your personal experience of seeing, say, a raised monstrance with the visible Eucharist during Benediction, will be different than my (present) experience of the same event.

For me, that used to be a very sacred experience, and now it is not. But my point is that anyone there in the building would have the same experience and therefore "appearance" while the import they assign to it (the "substance") would be different. Some might see it anthropologically as an interesting ceremony, others might see people dressed oddly doing odd things, while the faithful would see it all with entirely different eyes.

So perhaps if "substance" is seen as "matters of substance" or importance I think one could save the terminology with kind of a wink and a nod to Aquinas, understanding the distinction very differently than he did, but yet using the same words with totally different meaning to 21st century ears.

Optimist that I am, I have to hope that you or some lurker can agree with what I have said. It compromises absolutely nothing about the beliefs of Latter-day Saints. It is nothing more than an attempt to make a necessary distinction between two terms that sound similar but have drastically different meanings and are applied in totally different contexts.

If I have grasped what you're driving at, I have no problem whatsoever seeing it the way I summarized it. But just know that that is not Catholic theology at present.

I am very interested in "process theology" and there are many many Catholic theologians who see themselves as a "process theologian" as indeed does our own Mormon Blake Ostler and others. But I think the Catholic church takes a dim view of process theology.

And again, I appreciate your respectful wish not to put anyone's faith down. You haven't. When you say that St. Thomas was presenting an argument, I agree that if he was, it was absurd. It would make no sense whatever. You said he was a smart monk. You are right. He wouldn't have made such a blunder.

Well the only reason it sounds absurd to you now is because you live in a different century and our present post-modern culture is in your very bones as it were. I looked up Thomas on wikipedia because I figured that if wikiepedia got anything right about Thomas, his dates would probably been right, and that is what I was looking for.

But I stumbled along an interesting quote from Bertrand Russell about Thomas there on wikipedia while I was looking up Thomas' dates:

Bertrand Russell criticized Aquinas' philosophy on the ground that

He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times.

[117]

This critique is illustrated on the following examples: According to Russell, Aquinas advocates the indissolubility of marriage "on the ground that the father is useful in the education of the children, (a) because he is more rational than the mother, (b) because, being stronger, he is better able to inflict physical punishment."^[118] Even though modern approaches to education do not support these views, "no follower of Saint Thomas would, on that account, cease to believe in lifelong monogamy, because the real grounds of belief are not those which are alleged."^[118] It may be countered that the treatment of matrimony in the Summa Theologica is in the Supplements volume, which was not written by Aquinas.^[119] Moreover, as noted above,^[120] Aquinas's introduction of arguments and concepts from the pagan Aristotle and Muslim Averroes was not uncontroversial within the Catholic church.

Aquinas' views of God as first cause, cf. quinque viae, "depend upon the supposed impossibility of a series having no first term. Every mathematician knows that there is no such impossibility; the series of negative integers ending with minus one is an instance to the contrary."^[118] Moreover, according to Russell, statements regarding God's essence and existence that are reached within the Aristotelian logic are based on "some kind of syntactical confusion, without which much of the argumentation about God would lose its plausibility."^[118]

According to Russell, the methodology of scholasticism used by Thomas is employed for proving what is already believed to be true. Therefore, according to Russell his work should be viewed perhaps as an artful, concise argument, but not a decisive proof. To the contrary, concerning Russell's criticism of Aquinas Anthony Kenny (Aquinas on Mind, 1993, 11) makes the following observation: "It is extraordinary that that accusation should be made by Russell, who in the book Principia Mathematica takes hundreds of pages to prove that two and two make four, which is something he had believed all his life."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas

Now the reality is that I cannot stand Bertrand Russell- for me he represents much of what went wrong in early 20th century philosophy. But I think few 20th century students of philosophy would disagree with Russell on these points. Note the last couple of lines- and Kenny indeed was perfectly right!

Russell's comment is pure presentism - pure and simple. He is not looking at the importance or significance of what Thomas says but simply his argument as seen from a 20th century perspective! But Aquinas was not a 20th century man! No one would think to criticize Aristotle's understanding of medicine or various "bodily humours" but yet they take Aquinas to task for not being a post-modern thinker!

The reality is that we are all prisoners of our age and the way we see things will always be conditioned to some degree by the age in which we live. Aquinas was one of the most brilliant men who ever lived, but he, like us, had the same problem.

My solution is that personal revelation and an open canon is the only remedy for this in an institutional church. But your experience may vary.

[Storm Rider]

I am not one that has ever been able to grasp a belief in the Eucharist as presented by the Catholic Church; however, I have been able to find a deep respect for the Eucharist and for Eucharistic adoration. It is easy for me to appreciate how holy this teaching can be for those who believe in it. It has motivated me to make my Sacrament preparation all the more meaningful as I strive to understand the full concept of Christ's teachings. Catholic teaching can lead us to a deeper understanding of our own Sacrament teaching.

[mfbukowski]

I am not one that has ever been able to grasp a belief in the Eucharist as presented by the Catholic Church; however, I have been able to find a deep respect for the Eucharist and for Eucharistic adoration. It is easy for me to appreciate how holy this teaching can be for those who believe in it. It has motivated me to make my Sacrament preparation all the more meaningful as I strive to understand the full concept of Christ's teachings. Catholic teaching can lead us to a deeper understanding of our own Sacrament teaching.

I am saying this as a non-Catholic now, but I remember what it was like to adore the Eucharist when I believed it was Jesus himself.

No words for it. Imagine being in that situation of being in Jesus' presence. If you can put yourself "in that place" mentally, it is as "real" as anything you have ever experienced.