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Corpus Christi
Jun. 7th, 2010 11:06 amThis is the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi (last Thirsday): we had the observance of the Solemnity on Sunday (procession outside with the Blessed Sacrament, followed by Benediction).
I've been pinged by a handlful of posts that seem to be confused about exactly what is involved in Transubstantiation, so this seemed like a good time to make it clear exactly what it is.
Let's start with Aristotle. In Aristotelian philosophy, there is a distinction made beween the substance of something and the accidents by which we percieve it. Accidents include sensibilia (texture, colour, sound, weight, etc.) but also any characteristics of something which may be measured. In classical Aristotelian philosophy one perceives the substance of something through its accidents.
This view of perception was adopted by Thomas (among others) in the Scholastic period. (Subsequently, there's been a strong trend away from this -- more recent brands of philosophy have tended to hold that all that we can know are the accidents -- that instead of perceiving the thing through its accidents we perceive, directly, only the accidents.)
Dealing with the question of what could be said about the Real Presence in the Sacrament led to the formulation of the view that in the consecration, the Sacrament's substance is converted to that of the body and blood of Christ, but that the accidents remain unchanged. In other words, any measurements you may take of the matter will still reflect the accidents of the bread and wine: you can still, for example, be intoxicated by the pretiossimum, or have a celiac reaction to the Host. (In other words yet again, snarky comments by people like P.Z. Myers that science can't tell the difference between a consecrated Host and and unconsecrated one would have a Thomist nodding and saying "I just said that. And your point is?")
Theologians have generally moved away from the term because not many people are still Thomists, and the term makes sense only within a Thomist (or at least Scholastic) context. Most recent discussions concern a real sacrificial presence in the host and consecrated wine.
As an aside on the epistemological status of this sort of discussion: experimental science begand (and has continued) explicitly as an approach towards measuring and quantifying the accidents of the things in the universe. (More narrowly, it deals with measuring repeatable things, but that's a different issue.) It is mildly ironic that the trend in philosophy over the same period has been to downgrade what can be measured from reliable indicators of the substance of something to appearances which may not be tightly correlated to its substance.
I've been pinged by a handlful of posts that seem to be confused about exactly what is involved in Transubstantiation, so this seemed like a good time to make it clear exactly what it is.
Let's start with Aristotle. In Aristotelian philosophy, there is a distinction made beween the substance of something and the accidents by which we percieve it. Accidents include sensibilia (texture, colour, sound, weight, etc.) but also any characteristics of something which may be measured. In classical Aristotelian philosophy one perceives the substance of something through its accidents.
This view of perception was adopted by Thomas (among others) in the Scholastic period. (Subsequently, there's been a strong trend away from this -- more recent brands of philosophy have tended to hold that all that we can know are the accidents -- that instead of perceiving the thing through its accidents we perceive, directly, only the accidents.)
Dealing with the question of what could be said about the Real Presence in the Sacrament led to the formulation of the view that in the consecration, the Sacrament's substance is converted to that of the body and blood of Christ, but that the accidents remain unchanged. In other words, any measurements you may take of the matter will still reflect the accidents of the bread and wine: you can still, for example, be intoxicated by the pretiossimum, or have a celiac reaction to the Host. (In other words yet again, snarky comments by people like P.Z. Myers that science can't tell the difference between a consecrated Host and and unconsecrated one would have a Thomist nodding and saying "I just said that. And your point is?")
Theologians have generally moved away from the term because not many people are still Thomists, and the term makes sense only within a Thomist (or at least Scholastic) context. Most recent discussions concern a real sacrificial presence in the host and consecrated wine.
As an aside on the epistemological status of this sort of discussion: experimental science begand (and has continued) explicitly as an approach towards measuring and quantifying the accidents of the things in the universe. (More narrowly, it deals with measuring repeatable things, but that's a different issue.) It is mildly ironic that the trend in philosophy over the same period has been to downgrade what can be measured from reliable indicators of the substance of something to appearances which may not be tightly correlated to its substance.
