pruss+@pitt.edu (Alexander R Pruss) wrote: :tokeefe@yellow.cc.utexas.edu wrote: :>How can something literally be flesh and blood without having :>any of the attributes of flesh and blood? To say that it has :>the "substance" of flesh and blood without having ANY of the :>accidents (including chemical composition and functional role :>within the organism) is, I believe, simply incoherent. :Not really. Since the accidents are by definition not definitory :for the substance, the substance could remain even if the accidents :are changed. As to "chemical composition", I would be a little :cautious, and say "apparent (or phenomenal) chemical composition" :---the blessed Sacrament at any level of empirical analysis has :the same appearance as bread and wine. But the subject is changed. We see the champions of the theology of the Mass slacken when it comes to this part. Formerly they have been very vociferously in- sisting on the literal interpretation of the Word of God regard- ing "This is my flesh" and "If you don't eat my flesh". Now, when any verification is proposed, they go over to mysteries, ineffable miracles and hidden transsubstantiations. This method is conspicuously incoherent, and devoid of biblical foundation. It is apparent that those who apply it have their dogmas first settled, and in order to support them they grasp for straws. :Normally, things are composed of a subject (substance) which :bears certain accidents. I'd say "hypothetically". Can you show me a "substance" of any thing? I suppose not. Can you prove its existence? If not then it's just a hypothesis. :In the Eucharist, the subject is changed into another :subject (the body of our Lord), but the accidents remain. Can it be said that the "subject" of the body of the Lord has its celestial glory only as an "accident"? For as far as I can see, the "consecrated" "host" doesn't become glorious and celestial. Thus it is made possible that He, upon multiplying His human body (which, despite all the desperate attempts to obscure the fact, is a human body even in Heaven), could safely sneak through space and turn up in the bread and wine, of course, still invisible. :Substance is not defined by accidents but enjoys a certain :independence from them. When we human beings act on various :objects, normally we change the accidents or the form, but :the same matter remains. You will at last convince me that such a "substance" is completely an unobservable thing which begs for men of excellent imagination. I wonder not that such men, namely the Scholastics, were the founders of this doctrine. So it must be an article of faith to believe firmly. Still I wonder how, over the centuries while Thomas Aquinas hadn't baptized Aristotle yet, could this "substance" thing be an article of faith, nowhere in the Bible having a single mention, and the councils dealing with utterly different topics. :God is not bound by such things, since He can act not only :on the form but also directly on the underlying substance. Again, those literalist masters who try to defend the doctrine of the transsubstantiation from the Bible, here indulge in such suppositions and conjectures of no weight. How else, if the Word of God has abandoned them, and their building of man-made doctrines remained without support? Thus with the very change of their tools they give away that they so far have considered the Bible a compilation of prooftexts which doesn't confine their licence in any way - and that they believe that every one of sound disposition shall grant them this giant leap. No, I insist: remain at the Bible! Stick to its limits, and don't go beyond what is written! (1Cor 4:6) As for the last allegation, it is made ridiculous by the very shouts of the transsubstantiationists, who demand obedience with the passage "this is my flesh which is broken for you". Now, what was broken: the "substance" of His human body or the "accidents"? If the substance, then your above sentence "we change the accidents" will be attacked. Or if the "accidents" were changed by the Roman soldiers (who were not the priests of the Roman Catholic Church, thus weren't authorized officially to stretch their sordid hands to the sacred "substance" of the body of the Lord), then "being broken" inevitably refers to outward apperance. But I see it not in the Mass, unless when the bread is broken by the priests. Then, however, the priests, beginning with the apostles (of whom I say this title sarcas- tically, they not having been appointed sacerdotal priests at all, as Christ is the only priest who could offer an expiatory sacrifice), don't act "in persona Christi", but in the person of the Christ-murdering Roman soldiers who in fact broke the "accidents" of His body. How comforting that the Lord had prayed for His murderers, saying "Father, forgive them - they don't know what they are doing". Thus we know that He made His inter- cession for the "priests" too, and we have to regard them as counterparts and accomplices of those who murdered Christ. Also, knowing that they don't know what they are doing, let us pray for the "priests" that they repented. (Acts 2:36-38) :So while in the usual order of nature, all we can do is :change accidents and form, God being the ground of all being :can change any aspect of a finite being that He pleases, :including its substance without effect on the accidents. Yes, He can. The question is whether He does. (And, of course, whether "substance" exists or not.) :There is no human analogy to such an action. Of course not, as this action is nothing but a hypothesis without any opportunity of checking up on it empirically, and without any confirmatory teaching in the Bible. :(The closest I can come to it is the following thought experiment. I'd say "let's forget it" if it weren't so characteristic of the transsubstantiationists. :Take two completely identical objects. Suppose you hold one in :your hand and I hold one in my hand. And suppose by some amazing :science fictional matter transport machine we manage to swap the :two instantaneously. Then one could argue that the matter of the :coin I am holding in my hand has changed, even though all the :appearances are the same. I tried to imagine it. However, as it is "science fiction", I am at a loss. Somehow it has to be tested that the machine is working, at all, and the inventor doesn't just cheat the crowds, saying "it happens NOW!" - and no one observes anything. :The analogy is far from getting anywhere close to the truth, Especially because what you try to elucidate by it isn't true. :particularly in light of some QM symmetry considerations, :but maybe it sheds *some* light on it.) It sheds light on the proneness of the transsubstantiationists to set up similar thought experiments in the area of faith which, in the likeness of the above example, lack all the attributes of an experiment, above all the clear distinction between the two possible outcomes. With such an "experiment" as you describe, even an empty box would swap the two objects. Or not? How can it be decided? Likewise, no one on earth can empirically test whether the fictitious miracle of the transsubstantiation has really taken place. Nothing remains but revelation. And it leaves us without any help in this tricky situation. It still calls the bread bread, and the wine wine, after the "consecration". [Explanation of some differences between Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas was too boring for me, so I deleted it.] :What we Catholics are saying in effect is that normally things :exist within the framework of a substance+accidents ontology. It must be a great toy to play with, but the Word of God doesn't suggest us this system. And if we still dare to determine the interpretation of the Bible by strict outward criteria like this system, then our sight will be confined by an obstacle which we ourselves placed there. Evidently this is not a viable option, unlike the other one, Sola Scriptura. :However, miraculously, the substance of bread is changed into :the substance of wine, and the accidents of bread are "left :hanging", i.e. left without a substance and sustained solely :by the power of God. I see: the "power of God" is commanded to sustain the system of "substance+accidents ontology" as a stop-gap agent. Yet I can't see the "power of God" being any more powerful in the "hanging" "accidents" of the "transsubstantiated" "species", for they used to decay just as "ordinary" bread and wine. This process, on the other hand, suggests that no special power of God is appointed to guard the bread and wine, or if it is, then it differs from the ordinary accidents-upholding power of a "profane" piece of bread and cup of wine in no observable aspects. :Thus, the accidents of bread exist as if in an accidents-only :ontology, without a substance that they inhere in, and the :substance of the body of Jesus is really present. Much hinges :here on the power of God, which we take to be absolutely :infinite so that in the substance+accidents ontology He can :affect either substance or accidents as He wills. This is too pious an ending of such a speculative way of reasoning. By "the power of God" we must understand some demiurgos which can be switched in and out by the inventions of philosophers and by gratuitous thought experiments of self-made sacerdotal priests (I repeat now that they don't have even a corner of a letter from the Bible to support their priesthood) who, in addition, take the audacity of changing the "manner" of sacrifice. (By which they probably mean the "accidents".) Namely, when they say that their "sacrifice" in the Mass is "unbloody", while that on the cross was bloody. To this it will suffice to respond that only God has the right of changing the manner of the sacrifice, He Himself having solemnly said: "Without bloodshedding there is no re- mission." And if they still cling to their "sacrifice" then admitting it to be unbloody (see the Catechism, 1367), they agree with me in judging that it's just an empty show, lacking the power of God, which it loudly claims to be able and indis- pensable to communicate to us.