The twentieth-century thinker Josef Pieper, noting that what’s most essential in a thinker’s work can go unnoticed by interpreters as a result of it “goes with out saying” for the creator, goes on to say of Thomas Aquinas, “The notion of creation determines and characterizes the inside construction of practically all the fundamental ideas in Thomas’s philosophy of Being. And this reality is not evident; it’s scarcely ever put ahead explicitly; it belongs to the unexpressed in St. Thomas’s doctrine of Being.” Whereas demurring from Pieper’s seeming restriction of this declare to the realm of Thomas’s “philosophy of Being,” I’d need to affirm the significance of the thought of creation in all of Thomas’s thought, in addition to Pieper’s remark that this may typically go unnoticed. We’d say that the doctrine of creation shows with specific readability the creator-creature relationship that constitutes the “grammar” of Thomas’s theology, a grammar that’s at work, though typically unnoticed, all through that theology. In what follows, I need to present the significance of the grammar of creation for Thomas by the use of a single instance. After first briefly sketching how Thomas understands creation, I’ll flip to Thomas’s theology of Christ’s Eucharistic presence and an essential trendy critique of that theology to indicate how the grammar of creation is at play in his thought, in addition to how inquiry into an space like sacramental theology would possibly assist us achieve perception into the grammar of creation.
Creation: relatio quaedam advert Deum cum novitate essendi
What does Thomas imply when he speaks of “creation”? He doesn’t imply most essentially the six days of creation, although he affords within the Summa theologiae an account of the times of creation that’s extremely attention-grabbing and, alas, too typically missed. However as a result of he at all times seeks to maneuver past the straightforward repetition of sacred truths to a grasp of the basic rules concerned—from realizing not merely what is the case to a deeper grasp of why it’s the case—Thomas needs to know what it means for one thing to be “created.” To place it in a method that may not be alien to Thomas’s medieval Scholastic idiom, he’s not happy with a “materials” account of creation that explores the biblical creation narrative however affords as nicely a “formal” account of creation that seeks to outline what creation is. To place it in yet one more method, Thomas seeks not merely to repeat statements about God’s work of creation however to know the grammar of these statements. As David Burrell places it, for Thomas, “the very construction of a well-formed sentence displays the formal or constitutive options of the article spoken about.” The definition of createdness that Thomas works his method towards is, as he phrases it in his disputed questions De potentia, “a relation of one thing to God along with newness of existence [relatio quaedam ad Deum cum novitiate essendi],” and this definition can function an entry level for inspecting Aquinas’s “formal” or grammatical account of creation.
So, first, Thomas thinks of creation by way of a relation between creator and creature, particularly “the very dependence of created being [esse creati] on the final word supply [principium] from which it comes.” To be a creature is just to have an existence that is determined by one other; conversely, the final word supply of creatures will need to have a nondependent existence. In different phrases, to be a creature is to be contingent with regard to existence and to be the creator is to have a needed existence, the place “necessity” means not merely {that a} factor doesn’t move into or out of existence however quite {that a} factor has existence by means of itself and never by means of one other. Drawing upon the insights of Avicenna, Thomas conceives of the contingency of creation by way of the excellence between essence (essentia)—what a factor is—and existence (esse)—the truth that a factor is. Thomas’s argument for this distinction is, in short, that one can’t absolutely perceive what a factor is with out realizing all the important components of its definition (e.g., I can’t perceive what human beings are if I solely know that they’re animals with out realizing that also they are rational). However I can know what one thing is aside from realizing whether or not or not it exists (e.g., I can grasp the definition of a unicorn whether or not or not unicorns exist). Due to this fact, the actual fact of one thing’s existence is distinct from its essence, except, he notes, there exists one thing the essence of which is existence itself. What this implies is that existence isn’t an important property of issues. Their existence relies upon upon one thing else—finally upon one thing by which essence and existence are an identical. The last word dependence of issues upon one thing outdoors themselves for his or her existence, their “existence by means of one other,” is the relation that Thomas calls “creation.”
Second, and following from this, creation has to do with the existence or “being [esse]” of issues. Thomas notes, “God’s first impact in issues is existence itself.” What God creates usually are not summary essences however substances, concretely current issues. Thomas thinks of the excellence of essence and existence by way of the excellence between probably being one thing and really being one thing. That’s, simply because the bronze that’s probably a statue can change into an precise statue, so too an essence, which may probably exist, can come to really exist. So for Thomas, what it means for God to create is to bestow existence upon essences which might be in themselves solely probably current. But this existence isn’t an adventitious add-on to essences that someway pre-exist; the essences are constituted as precise within the bestowal of existence. On this sense, creation is ex nihilo—not within the sense that there’s a “nothing” that pre-exists creation however quite that creatures are, aside from the actualization of their existence by God, nothing.
Third, as implied by this view on what it means for creation to be ex nihilo, Thomas thinks that the notion of creation itself doesn’t essentially suggest a temporal starting to the world. The problem of what’s typically referred to as “the eternity of the world” was hotly contested within the Center Ages, not least as a result of the infinite temporal length of the world was the practically unanimous view of the Greek philosophical heritage, whether or not understood by way of everlasting matter to which God provides type (Plato) or eternally current substances in movement (Aristotle). Some, together with the Arabic philosophers Avicenna and Averroes, in addition to their thirteenth-century followers who’re known as “Latin Averroists,” adopted Aristotle in seeing the universe and its movement as being of infinite length. Others, together with Al Ghazali within the Arabic-speaking world and Bonaventure among the many thirteenth-century Scholastics, held that the eternity of the world and of movement not solely contradicted divine revelation however was philosophically incoherent (implying issues like an precise infinity of immortal souls), and likewise appeared to offer creation a form of necessity that rivaled God’s. Thomas, together with Moses Maimonides, holds the place that, whereas we all know from Scripture that the world isn’t infinite in temporal length however quite is created “to start with,” there’s nothing in itself incoherent within the notion of a creation that exists eternally with out a starting or finish in time, and subsequently neither the eternity nor non-eternity of the world might be both proved or disproved. We’d say that the grammar of creation doesn’t essentially embody tense, being solely involved with dependence upon God, which may conceivably be an everlasting dependence. On this method, the start of the world’s length in time belongs to the “materials” account of creation quite than to the “formal” account.
Fourth, if “creation” doesn’t essentially suggest temporal starting, what then does Thomas imply when he contains cum novitate essendi (“with newness of existence”) in his definition of existence? What is essential for Thomas, and can change into essential in our dialogue of his Eucharistic theology, is that creation isn’t merely a metamorphosis of one thing that already exists—comparable to a calf rising right into a cow or a cow being made right into a hamburger—however quite the novel origin of issues. The inclusion of “newness of existence” speaks to not temporal origin however to the truth that existence is imparted by God aside from any preexisting situation or potential. Once we communicate of creation because the actualization of potential to exist, we’re talking of “potential” within the sense of the non-impossibility that, for instance, a triangle needs to be three-sided (versus two- or four-sided), and never of the potential of a calf to develop right into a cow or a cow to change into a hamburger. These latter issues usually are not situations of creation however quite of “change [mutatio],” which is the time period Thomas makes use of to talk of giving new type to one thing that already exists. “Creation from nothing” doesn’t imply that nothingness begins to be one thing, however that creation doesn’t contain “Making X from Y” however merely “Making X to be.” In creation, one thing exists solely from its relatedness to God its supply.
Fifth, the relation of radical dependence that constitutes creatures is uniquely a relationship to God. Whereas creatures could trigger varied modifications in different creatures, even to the purpose of constructing a brand new factor (as when a hamburger is newly created from a cow), solely God makes issues to be aside from any preexisting potential. On the similar time, whereas creatures can’t trigger issues to be from nothing, they do possess a real causal efficacy. The vitamins within the grass actually do trigger the calf to change into a cow and the company of the butcher actually does trigger the cow to change into hamburger. For Thomas, this causal efficacy of creatures by no means detracts from God’s energy as the reason for existence; certainly, he thinks it’s a testimony to God’s energy that he bestows the dignity of “secondary causality” on creatures. As it’s typically put, for Thomas, the connection of God and creatures is “noncompetitive.” There isn’t any zero-sum relationship between God’s inventive exercise and the creaturely exercise of inflicting as a result of they lie on totally different planes: God’s exercise of creatio—making issues exist—and the creature exercise of mutatio—bringing about modifications in issues that exist. These planes do typically intersect, as within the case of miracles, however these don’t determine into Aquinas’s formal account of creation. Nonetheless, there’s an intimate connection between the 2 planes in all instances, because the creaturely capability for mutatio is a participation in divine creatio.
These remarks, temporary although they’re, should function an account of Thomas’s “formal” or grammatical account of creation, as we now flip to take a look at how the grammar of creation constructions his account of Christ’s presence within the Eucharist.
Transubstantiation on Trial
Despite the fact that the time period “transubstantiation” predates Thomas Aquinas by a minimum of a century and is utilized by him solely often in his mature theology, the doctrine of transubstantiation has typically, rightly or wrongly (and I’m inclined to assume the latter), been taken to be his sign contribution of Catholic Eucharistic theology, using Aristotle’s philosophy to clarify Christ’s Eucharistic presence. Not everybody, in fact, sees this contribution as a constructive factor. Martin Luther opined that the church that had decreed the doctrine of transubstantiation was “the Thomistic—that’s, the Aristotelian church.” He noticed it as an evidence that misused Aristotle, who himself was a doubtful authority on issues of religion, such that Thomas was to be pitied for “constructing an unlucky superstructure upon an unlucky basis.” Luther’s objection provides voice to those that really feel that Christ’s Eucharistic presence ought to be left mysterious and never subjected to the torturous rigors of Scholastic logic and the pure philosophy of Aristotle. Others have had an reverse, but no much less detrimental response, seeing transubstantiation as involving magical and irrational claims, as witnessed to by the time period “hocus pocus,” which the seventeenth-century Anglican divine Bishop Tillotson instructed was “a corruption of Hoc est corpus, by the use of ridiculous imitation of the monks of the Church of Rome of their trick of Transubstantiation, a doctrine he thought riddled with “monstrous absurdities.” Engendering seemingly contradictory fees of hyper-rationalism or magical irrationality, transubstantiation, and by extension Thomas, has been a principal piece of proof within the case for the failings of medieval Catholic theology.
After all, criticism of Medieval Scholastic approaches to the sacraments isn’t solely the purview of Protestant theologians. The Catholic theologian and priest Louis-Marie Chauvet has developed a very sweeping and influential critique of Scholastic accounts of sacramental causality, a critique that doesn’t spare Thomas Aquinas. Whereas appreciative of what Thomas was trying to realize and judging him superior to many different Scholastics, Chauvet nonetheless sees his sacramental theology, together with his theology of the Eucharist, as a part of a practice that’s finally a useless finish. His criticism of Aquinas is two-fold. In broad phrases, he contains Thomas in his rejection of all the Scholastic custom of talking of sacraments as “causes,” which he sees as “metaphysical” and “onto-theological.” Second, he criticizes Aquinas’s Eucharistic theology extra particularly for the rupture it creates between the sacramental and ecclesial our bodies of Christ. Each of those criticisms are indebted to Heidegger, whom Chauvet takes because the bellwether of our present postmodern state of affairs.
Chauvet begins his masterwork, Image and Sacrament, by asking why it’s that the Scholastics would make “trigger” (together with “signal”) a privileged class for understanding the sacraments. Why communicate of sacraments as “causes of grace” when the time period “trigger” implies the manufacturing or augmentation of an object, and style is “the paradigmatic case of one thing that may be a non-object, a non-value”? His reply is, in short, that “the Scholastics have been unable to assume in any other case; they have been prevented from doing so by the onto-theological presuppositions which structured their total tradition.” Chauvet takes Aquinas to be probably the most subtle consultant of this custom—one who avoids most of the most egregious excesses of onto-theology, whereas ultimately being unable to flee its clutches.
Chauvet appreciates the primacy that Aquinas provides within the Summa theologiae to the class of “signal” over trigger: sacraments are indicators which have causal efficacy. This represents a shift from the theology of his Sentences commentary, by which sacraments are causes that signify. But this “banishment” of causality is simply non permanent, for just a few questions later (Summa theologiae 3.62), when Thomas inquires into the principal impact of the sacraments, which is grace, “causality returns in drive” as Thomas develops his mature view that sacraments are neither mere “events” of grace, nor merely “disposing causes” making human beings apt to obtain grace, however quite are true instrumental environment friendly causes of grace. And with this, Thomas falls into the pit of what Chauvet calls “the productionist scheme of illustration” by which being takes precedence over changing into and style is thereby reified as a “factor” that’s produced quite than a present that’s given. Ultimately, regardless of his valiant try to assume sacraments as indicators, Thomas can’t escape the onto-theological heritage by which being is “represented as the final and common ‘one thing’ or ‘stuff’ that conceals itself beneath entities, which ‘lies on the base’ of every of them (hypokeimenon). A everlasting ‘subsistent being,’ substratum, sub-jectum, and at last, as Descartes describes it, sub-stantia.”
Chauvet affords additional criticisms of Aquinas’s Eucharistic theology particularly. Once more, he affords an appreciation of the subtlety and class of Thomas’s theological achievement and avoids simpleminded caricatures of transubstantiation. He acknowledges that, by recourse to the language of “substance,” which is “neither a ‘this’ or a ‘that’ nor something which might be attained by wise cognition,” Thomas “exorcises each spatial illustration of the Eucharistic presence.” Thus it’s also “outdoors any physicalism and any roughly gross illustration.” He additional acknowledges that transubstantiation isn’t reducible to Aristotelian metaphysics however, notably within the declare that the accidents of bread and wine persist with out inhering in a substance, requires the “sacrificium intellectus” of religion.
But, as Chauvet sees it, an issue nonetheless stays in Aquinas’s view that within the Eucharist, “its first impact (res et sacramentum) is in ipsa materia (‘within the matter itself’).” Chauvet acknowledges that Thomas sees the “last objective [res tantum]” of the Eucharist because the unity of the totus Christus—the Mystical Physique, head and members—however believes that as long as the sacrament is seen as “perfected” within the consecration of the bread and wine, and never within the Eucharistic communion of the trustworthy, “the Church stays solely the extrinsic finish.” Thus, the perpetrator in all this, not surprisingly, is “the mannequin of a metaphysical substance.” As Chauvet places it,
Within the perspective of the Aristotelian “substance” because the expression of the final actuality of entities, one may specific the integrality and radicalness of the actual presence of Christ within the sacrament solely by placing between parentheses, a minimum of throughout the evaluation of the “how” of Eucharistic conversion, its relation to the Church. That is precisely what occurs with Thomas: if he strongly emphasizes the connection of the Eucharist to the Church each earlier than and after his evaluation of transubstantiation, he places it between parentheses throughout this evaluation.
The language of “transubstantiation” implies that what the sacrament is actually about is the manufacturing of the static “substance” of Christ’s Physique and Blood, which is perhaps eaten or adored by the Christian trustworthy however that in its self-enclosed sufficiency can bear solely an extrinsic relationship to the ecclesial Physique of Christ. Chauvet’s personal view is that “the nice sacramentum of Christ’s presence isn’t the bread as such in its unbroken state. Or quite, it’s certainly the bread, however in its very essence, bread-as-food, bread-as-meal, bread-for-sharing.” The presence of Christ is healthier described not as a substance that has been produced however as a present that has been given.
Chauvet’s critique is each refined and sympathetic (the identical can’t actually be stated of Frater Luther’s or Bishop Tillotson’s), but to my thoughts, it’s also fairly incorrect. To understand its wrongness, we have to attend to how the grammar of creation constructions what Thomas says about Eucharistic presence. Fortuitously, Thomas does this for us explicitly in his Summa theologiae, and I’ll proceed by wanting in some element at his dialogue.
Making Christ’s Physique
Thomas concludes query seventy-five of the Third A part of the Summa with an article that begins, videtur quod haec sit falsa: “Ex pane match corpus Christi [It seems that this is false: “The body of Christ is made from bread”]. The assertion below scrutiny, of which Thomas will affirm the reality, would appear to be a main instance of what Chauvet calls the “productionist mentality” with regard to the sacraments. Earlier than occurring to look at whether or not or not that is the case, we should always first recognize the type of the query. It’s in some methods paying homage to the method taken in query sixteen of the Third Half of the Summa, by which Thomas inquires into such statements as “God is a human being” and “God was made a human being” and “Christ is a creature.” In different phrases, Thomas proposes a selected piece of human speech and asks whether or not it may be affirmed as true. The query, then, is whether or not “The physique of Christ is created from bread” is a well-formed sentence for talking concerning the Eucharist and, whether it is, what does it inform us concerning the formal or constitutive options of Christ’s Eucharistic presence.
The 4 objections Thomas provides to the assertion “The physique of Christ is created from bread” lay out the fundamental challenge at stake on this article: How is the Eucharistic conversion of bread into the Physique of Christ positioned conceptually in relation to different methods by which specific substances come to be the place they weren’t earlier than—i.e., pure change and the divine act of creation? Put in a different way, in what methods do well-formed sentences about pure change present a paradigm for well-formed sentences regarding Christ’s Eucharistic presence, and in what methods do well-formed sentences about creation present such a paradigm?
Objections 1, 2, and 4 see “The physique of Christ is created from bread” as implying that Christ’s Eucharistic presence includes some form of change alongside the strains of the modifications that we encounter in nature, such that Eucharistic conversion is equal to a topic present process a change, whether or not this be a substance taking over an accident or a cloth substratum receiving a brand new substantial type. Every of those objections factors to the absurdity of such an account of Eucharistic presence by displaying the unacceptable additional statements it might appear to authorize. Objection 1 reads “The physique of Christ is created from bread” as treating “bread” like a topic that receives a brand new substantial or unintended type, authorizing us to say “Bread is made the physique of Christ” in the identical method that we would say “The calf turns into a cow” or “The cow turns into hamburger.” Objection 2 sees it as treating the bread because the “stuff” from which Christ’s Physique is made, authorizing us to say, “The bread is the physique of Christ” in the identical method that we would say, “The cow flesh is hamburger.” Objection 4 sees it as implying that there’s a passive potential in bread to be Christ’s Physique, authorizing us to say, “Bread might be the physique of Christ,” in the identical method as we would say, “A cow might be hamburger.”
The third objection takes a barely totally different tack: within the expression “The physique of Christ is created from bread,” the preposition “from [ex]” implies a conversion of 1 factor into one other, and never merely the form of conversion concerned in pure change, however the radical conversion of 1 entire substance into one other entire substance. It’s analogous to a person cow changing into, not hamburger, however a distinct particular person cow (Flossie changing into Bossie), by which the shape “cow” is instantiated in several matter. This would appear to suggest, the third objection goes on to state, that the Eucharistic conversion is “extra miraculous” than God’s act of creation, which we don’t conceive of as a conversion of 1 total factor into one other total factor however quite as a manufacturing presupposing nothing. What’s unspoken within the objection, however made clear in Thomas’s reply (advert 3), is that such a conversion of 1 total substance into one other is extra miraculous than creation as a result of, as unimaginable as creation is perhaps, it nonetheless conforms to the notion of causal manufacturing.
Thus, the objections pose the difficulties with the proposition “The physique of Christ is made out of bread.” Objections 1, 2, and 4 see it as assimilating Eucharistic conversion to pure change; objection 3 argues that whether it is not interpreted as implying pure change, then it implies a form of divine exercise exceeding the miracle of creation from nothing, which presumably can’t be exceeded since it’s presupposed by all different miraculous exercise. The sed contra, posing the problem with the place taken within the objections, notes that no much less an authority than Ambrose had written, Ubi accedit consecratio, de pane match corpus Christi (“When the consecration takes place, the physique of Christ is fabricated from bread”). The query is, has Ambrose merely uttered an ill-formed sentence? If not, if we choose his sentence to be well-formed, what does this inform us about Eucharistic conversion?
As so typically when confronted with a standard formulation that appears in battle with a longtime doctrinal place, Thomas seeks to make key distinctions as a way to save the normal formulation. He acknowledges that what we would name the “main speech” of the Church—on this case, the mystagogical preaching of Ambrose, but additionally the language of Scripture and liturgy—doesn’t at all times neatly conform to doctrinal guidelines, and that a part of the duty of sacra doctrina is to indicate how these main utterances of religion can intelligibly match collectively throughout the doctrinal grammar of the Church. Thus, he begins by saying that the “conversion of bread into the physique of Christ in some respect matches [convenit] each with creation and with pure change, and in some respects differs from each.” This raises the query of the methods by which language akin to the language that we use to talk of pure change is a becoming method of signifying what takes place when bread and wine change into Christ’s Physique and Blood, and in what methods such language is unfitting. Likewise, how is language akin to the language that we use in talking of God’s manufacturing of creatures from nothing a becoming method of signifying what takes place when bread and wine change into Christ’s Physique and Blood, and the way is such language unfitting? We’d say that Aquinas is inquiring as to which grammar—the grammar of pure change or the grammar of creation—we must look to search out our paradigm of a well-formed sentence concerning Eucharistic conversion.
Aquinas first notes that, in all three instances, our well-formed sentences have an “order of phrases.” Thomas means by this that our statements about creation, pure change, and transubstantiation all current two phrases in such a method that one follows the opposite, and they don’t current the 2 phrases as current concurrently. Thus, we’ve got nonexistence adopted by creation, cow adopted by hamburger, and bread adopted by Christ’s Physique. On this method, whether or not we take pure change or creation as our paradigm for a well-formed sentence in regards to the Eucharist, the assertion “The physique of Christ is created from bread” would appear to be a well-formed sentence. However whereas the linguistic ordering of the phrases is perhaps the identical in each creation and in pure change, what it means for one factor to comply with the opposite is sort of totally different within the two instances. Which is to be most well-liked in talking of the Eucharist?
Thomas notes that well-formed sentences about creation provide a uniquely becoming paradigm for talking concerning the Eucharist inasmuch as in neither case ought we to talk as if there have been a topic underlying the phrases of the assertion. Within the case of creation, it’s clearly nonsensical to talk of there being a topic possessing the type of nonexistence that then undergoes a change such that it acquires the type of existence. Likewise, we ought not perceive any assertion concerning Eucharistic conversion (comparable to “The physique of Christ is created from bread”) as implying that there’s a topic possessing the type of bread that undergoes a change such that it acquires the type of the Physique of Christ. On this method, Eucharistic conversion conforms to the paradigm of creation: it’s not mutatio, the form of coming to be that we’re aware of from nature, by which a possible is realized in some topic; it’s, quite, the start to be of a whole substance, matter and type, potential and actuality. It’s, as we’ve got seen, the divine present of esse. If on this regard our statements concerning the Eucharist conform to the paradigm of pure change quite than to the paradigm of creation, they are going to be ill-formed, “unfitting” sentences.
However then Thomas goes on to say that there are two methods by which well-formed sentences about pure change do provide a becoming paradigm for talking concerning the Eucharist. First, well-formed sentences in each instances will clarify that one time period of the sentence “passes into” [transit] the opposite: simply as we’ve got a cow that turns into hamburger, so too we’ve got bread that turns into the physique of Christ. As Stephen Brock has identified, one factor “passing into” one other is a passage “from what’s distinctive about one time period to what’s distinctive about one other.” In creation, there’s nothing “distinctive” about nonbeing, and thus there might be no passage from nonbeing to what’s “distinctive” about being. Pure change and transubstantiation, then again, are simply such passages. Regardless of the novel distinction within the two instances of what it means for one time period to “move into” the opposite—within the case of pure change involving the reception of successive kinds by a topic (the flesh ceasing to be a cow and changing into hamburger) and within the case of Eucharistic conversion involving one total substance starting to be one other (as if Flossie have been to change into Bossie)—each contain one distinct factor adopted by one other distinct factor, one thing clearly not the case in creation. Second, Thomas notes that in each pure change and transubstantiation there’s “one thing that is still the identical”: within the case of pure change, that is the matter or topic that undergoes the change; in transubstantiation, that is the empirical actuality (i.e., “accidents”) of the bread and wine. This second similarity between pure change and Eucharistic conversion will, as we will see, account for the opportunity of misunderstanding sure statements contained throughout the main speech of the Church.
Thomas then attracts linguistic conclusions from this mapping of Eucharistic conversion in relation to pure change and creation. In all three instances, well-formed sentences can’t make use of the current tense copula est to narrate their phrases—one can’t say that nonbeing is being, or {that a} cow is a hamburger, or that bread is the Physique of Christ—however, due to the order of phrases, one can make use of the preposition ex to narrate their phrases—creation is correctly spoken of as ex nihilo, hamburger comes ex vacca, and the physique of Christ is ex pane. As Thomas explains within the reply to objection 1, the preposition “from [ex]” is utilized in sentences regarding creation and Eucharistic conversion in the identical method that one says, “Out of morning comes day.” There isn’t any factor that’s first morning after which turns into day. Thus, it might appear that “from” is used analogously in statements about pure change, on the one hand, and creation and Eucharistic conversion, on the opposite.
Within the instances of pure change and transubstantiation, however not within the case of creation, one can make use of the verb conversionis, since this suggests the transitus of 1 topic “passing into” one other, of 1 distinctiveness ending and one other distinctiveness starting from it. But the essential distinction between each pure change and the Eucharistic conversion is that in pure change, distinctiveness is a query of 1 type passing into one other type, whereas in Eucharistic conversion, we’ve got one total substance passing into one other total substance, and this distinction marks Eucharistic conversion with its personal correct title: “transubstantiation.”
The absence in transubstantiation of any perduring topic that undergoes the change results in additional linguistic penalties. We can’t communicate of the bread having the potential to be the Physique of Christ as a result of one thing’s potential to be one thing else relies upon upon the capability of the perduring topic or matter to tackle new kinds. Whereas we would say that “a cow might be hamburger” or “the flesh of the hamburger is fabricated from the flesh of the cow,” since there’s a frequent substrate of flesh in each the cow and the hamburger, we ought to not say that “bread might be [possit esse] the Physique of Christ” nor that “the Physique of Christ is fabricated from [de] bread,” simply as, within the case of creation, we ought to not say that “nonbeing might be being” or “being is fabricated from non-being.” Within the instances of each creation and transubstantiation, the primary time period of the assertion doesn’t possess any potentiality to change into the second time period. Likewise, whereas we would say that “a cow might be a hamburger” or “a cow turns into a hamburger,” we ought to not say that “bread might be [erit] the Physique of Christ” or that “bread turns into [fiat] the Physique of Christ,” any greater than we might say that “nonbeing might be being” or “nonbeing turns into being.” Whereas Eucharistic conversion is, like pure change, a transitus, it’s so in a extremely certified sense—a way that’s certified by its conformity to the grammar of creation as the approaching to be of the entire substance.
Up so far, Thomas appears to have supplied us a reasonably clear set of linguistic guidelines, a good grammar of Eucharistic speech. In statements by which the primary time period is “bread” and the second time period is “the Physique of Christ,” we ought to not join them by the use of a phrase that means their concurrent identification (comparable to “is [est]”), nor a phrase that posits a perduring topic with the potential each to be bread and to be the Physique of Christ (comparable to “might be [potest]” or “is fabricated from [de]” or “turns into [fit]” or “might be [erit]”). Phrases that we will use to affix the 2 phrases are these, comparable to ex, that signify solely the order of phrases, in addition to these, comparable to conversionis, that signify one substance “passing into” one other.
Up to now, so good. However then all of it appears to crumble, or a minimum of the ligaments of the grammar loosen because it collides with the colloquialism of the first speech of the Church. Thomas is compelled to acknowledge that this main speech typically doesn’t conform to his standards for well-formed sentences expressing the Eucharistic conversion. The instance from Ambrose supplied within the sed contra is a living proof: Ubi accedit consecratio, de pane match corpus Christi. Right here, we discover each the preposition de and the verb match, which Aquinas had earlier stated implied a perduring topic.
Thomas’s method of accommodating these situations of main Christian speech is to say that they might be allowed if understood in a sure sense (secundum quandam similitudinem); that’s, they’re allowable if the primary time period of the sentence, “bread,” is taken to suggest not the substance bread, however quite “that which is contained below the looks of bread [hoc quod sub speciebus panis continetur].” In different phrases, in some statements, our use of the time period “bread” is a form of “pointing” that signifies the bread’s dimensive amount and the accidents inhering in it, which usually mediate the presence of the substance of bread however after the consecration mediate the presence of the substance of Christ’s Physique. On this method, Ambrose must be understood as saying that when the consecration occurs, that which seems below the looks of bread ceases to be bread and begins to be the Physique of Christ. We’d say that the colloquial, main speech of the Church fairly naturally makes use of “bread” and “wine” as indeterminate “pointers” that may draw our consideration first to the pure substances of bread and wine, after which to the Physique and Blood of Christ. Glossed on this method, not solely the sentence posed within the authentic query, ex pane match corpus Christi, but additionally Ambrose’s sentence, de pane match corpus Christi, might be understood as well-formed sentences.
Transubstantiation within the Area Between Creation and Change
What would possibly we draw from this considerably torturously shut evaluation of an article from the Summa theologiae? In displaying this cautious dissection of a single piece of Eucharistic language and suggesting that ultimately even an announcement like Ambrose’s might be made to suit the parameters of doctrinal grammar, have I maybe merely confirmed suspicions that transubstantiation hovers someplace between a hyper-rational dissection of a thriller and sheer nonsensical magical assertion, that it’s a conjuring trick with language that conveys a way of logical rigor however can actually accommodate virtually something? Furthermore, does Thomas’s justification of the language of “making” Christ’s Physique justify Chauvet’s suspicion that he, too, falls prey to a “productionist” account of sacramental causality? I hope to indicate that neither of these items is the case.
Maybe what’s most clear from the evaluation that he affords in Summa theologiae 3.75.8 is that Thomas seeks to find Eucharistic conversion within the logical area between pure change and creation by using a form of hybrid grammar, a creole. Generally statements about pure change present a paradigm for well-formed sentences regarding Christ’s Eucharistic presence, and typically statements about creation present the suitable paradigm. We’d say that the correct conceptual location for Eucharistic conversion is an interstitial one, and this location is appropriately marked by the phrase “transubstantiation.” Why is that this an acceptable location, and why is “transubstantiation” an acceptable marker for this location?
As to conceptual location: first, Eucharistic conversion is fittingly spoken of in the best way that we communicate of creation as a result of each contain the manufacturing of a whole substance and never merely the educing of a brand new type in matter. After all, in talking of substance, we’re additionally talking of being [esse], which is the correct act of a substance. Thus Thomas writes in his commentary on First Corinthians, “The consecration doesn’t happen by the consecrated matter merely receiving some religious energy, however by the truth that it’s transubstantiated in response to its esse into the physique of Christ.” What’s finally at stake in talking of the conversion of substance is exactly this declare that what we encounter within the Eucharist is the esse substantiale or, higher, the esse personale of Christ. As Colman O’Neill emphasised, what’s at stake in recognizing the substantial presence of Christ within the Eucharist isn’t the popularity of a form of factor however of a singular particular person. He writes that if we “depart apart all however probably the most primitive of ideas and . . . think about the utter purity of existential judgement which expresses our first, uncomplicated recognition of the opposite as different—maybe after we say: ‘Why, it’s you’—then the genuine that means of ‘substance’ is given as a result of it has been instinctively acknowledged merely in recognition of the opposite.” As a result of what turns into current to us within the Eucharist is the act of current that’s the private being of Jesus Christ, the Eucharistic conversion is spoken of in ways in which conform to the manufacturing of drugs ex nihilo, the start to be of actus essendi that we name “creation.” Certainly, whereas Aquinas locates transubstantiation between creation and pure change, the stability tilts quite decidedly towards creation and, subsequently, the present of esse.
And but, Eucharistic conversion can be fittingly spoken of in the best way that we communicate of pure change. It’s because Eucharistic conversion, like pure change, is an occasion that happens in our world in opposition to the background of creation, whereas creation isn’t a change in our world however quite the explanation why we’ve got a world in any respect. By advantage of the Resurrection and Ascension, Christ’s physique shares in God’s personal transcendence and impassibility, and any becoming account of his Eucharistic presence should take account of this. That’s to say, Eucharistic conversion have to be a change that happens in this world, or it’s no change in any respect. Stephen Brock notes, “That is the decisive level for Thomas: the physique of Christ can’t start to exist within the sacrament by any change within the physique itself (ST III, q. 75, a. 2). It should accomplish that by a change undergone by one thing else.” The paradigm of pure change serves to level up the this-worldly character of the change that’s transubstantiation. The tenseless grammar of creation is insufficient for indicating that there’s a true technique of changing into, an actual transitus, concerned: Christ turns into our meals, not by changing into bread and wine, however by the this-worldly actuality of bread and wine changing into Christ.
Thus, the stability tilts towards the language of creation, however not fully. And this is the reason Thomas says that Eucharistic conversion has “its personal title,” which is transubstantiation. Neither creation nor pure change can ultimately furnish us with the paradigm for well-formed sentences about Christ’s Eucharistic presence. The individuality of the time period “transubstantiation” is its mixture of the transitus that we all know from the immanent pure course of of 1 substantial type “passing into” one other with the transcendent starting to be of drugs that we name “creation.”
Is it, then, the case that transubstantiation tends, as Chauvet claims, to a conceiving of the Eucharist as a technique of manufacturing by which Christ’s physique turns into an object that’s obtainable in a trend that’s, because it have been, detached to its reception by the trustworthy? Chauvet assumes that the language of environment friendly causality should suggest the soulless manufacturing of inert objects, however this isn’t the case. Wouldn’t we quite say that in creation ex nihilo God produces the world, but not as an inert object however because the present of existence? Bernhard Blankenhorn has instructed that Aquinas’s language of sacraments as instrumental environment friendly causes derives not from the onto-theological custom however from the scriptural picture of Knowledge as God’s “artisan” (Knowledge 7:32) by means of whom God creates the world out of affection. As he notes, “Exactly when Scripture most explicitly connects the language of the Creator God to the notion of creative manufacturing do we discover the clearest instructing that creation is an act of divine love.” Likewise within the Eucharist. Situated between creation from nothing and artisanal making, the language of transubstantiation appears virtually designed to steer us away from a “productionist” mannequin. Like creation, it’s not a technique of manufacturing as a result of it’s not a pure course of in any respect however merely a supernatural present. But, like pure change, it’s a transformation that happens in our world as a result of it happens for our sake. Christ isn’t current indifferently however personally, for us and for our salvation.
In Thomas, the time period “transubstantiation” is the fruit of the modest, however ferociously tough, endeavor to know the first speech of the Church concerning the Eucharistic thriller. It doesn’t title a principle of Eucharistic conversion; it doesn’t give us a listing of elements (substance, accidents, dimensive amount, and many others.) nor describe the method of transformation by which Christ turns into current. Neither is it merely a fideistic affirmation of the magical presence of Christ behind the shadows of bread and wine. Slightly, it provides us some glimpse of the Eucharistic thriller by finding the occasion of Christ’s presence in an interstitial location, not between rationalism and magic, however between the grammars of creation and pure change. In response to the third objection in Summa theologiae 3.75.8, Aquinas grants the objector’s level: talking of the Eucharistic conversion of 1 total substance into one other total substance does suggest one thing extra miraculous than creation. He merely doesn’t assume that this makes transubstantiation false; quite, it situates it in an area of supreme surprise. Transubstantiation is extra miraculous than creation, not as a result of it requires extra divine productive energy, however as a result of it exhibits forth extra clearly the character of that divine energy through the use of the grammar of creation to talk of God’s drawing close to in redemption. For whereas creation is perhaps ascribed to a deity who acts at a distance, the Eucharist exhibits forth a divine energy that’s transcendent exactly in being current to us as our pilgrim meals.
EDITORIAL STATEMENT: This text is excerpted from Pondering Via Aquinas (Phrase on Fireplace Educational, forthcoming).
