A reader writes:
Mr. Akin,
What’s the authority you had in mind when you said that the real presence ceases when the precious blood would "no longer would appear to be wine in the common estimation of men"? I’ve heard that before but can’t place it.
This is the standard test for whether Christ is really present or not. It’s common knowledge among theologians, though it is reflected in various authorities. To illustrate, though, I need to broaden the frame of reference a bit.
Christ willed that he would become present under the appearances of (wheat) bread and (grape) wine. Therefore you need wheat bread and grape wine in order to celebate the Eucharist and have valid matter for it.
Neither bread or wine, however, are natural categories (unlike, say, lamb flesh, grapes, or water, which all occur naturally). Bread and wine are prepared by human agency and thus are what one might say are "anthropological" categories rather than natural ones.
This makes us do a little more work in determining validity since anthropological kinds have (or can have) fuzzier boundaries than natural kinds, yet they are what Christ chose to employ in establishing this sacrament.
Since Christ spoke to men and instructed them to perform this sacrament, it follows that he expects men to be able to discern what falls into these categories–at least commonly. Some men might have bizarre expectations about what counts as bread and wine but one can’t rely on any bizarre opinions as a guide to what Christ intended. Therefore, a "common estimation of men" test has evolved. If something would be regarded as bread or wine in the common estimation of men then it will be valid. Otherwise, it won’t be. (Doubtful cases are doubtful matter.)
Because cultures vary, however, we have to throw in one extra qualifier: The common estimation of men has to be tied to the common estimation men in Jesus’ own day. The need for this qualifier is obvious when one considers the fact that to us–in 21st century America–"bread" tends to mean leavened bread while unleavened bread we refer to with a different term (e.g., "crackers"). That was not the case in first century Palestine, though, and to the apostles that Jesus was speaking to, "bread" (lekhem) could be either leavened or unleavened. We know that the latter was valid matter because it was the kind of bread that Jewish people were required to use during the Passover ceremony, which is when Jesus instituted the Eucharist.
So we have to adjust (make broader) what we in our culture would count as bread a little bit in order to take account of this fact.
Once we have the "Is it bread or wine in the common estimation of men?" test, two consequences fall out from that.
The first, which we have already mentioned, is that it isn’t (wheat) bread or (grape) wine then it can’t be used to confect the Eucharist. This is reflected, for example, in Redemptionis Sacramentum:
The bread used in the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharistic Sacrifice must be unleavened, purely of wheat, and recently made so that there is no danger of decomposition. It follows therefore that bread made from another substance, even if it is grain, or if it is mixed with another substance different from wheat to such an extent that it would not commonly be considered wheat bread, does not constitute valid matter for confecting the Sacrifice and the Eucharistic Sacrament [RS 48].
The second consequence gets to your question, which is what happens when the accidents no longer appear to be bread and wine. When that happens, standard Catholic theology holds, the Real Presence ceases because what Christ willed to be present under (the appearances of bread and wine) is no longer present.
Thus St. Thomas Aquinas notes:
[I]f the change [in the consecrated elements] be so great that the substance of the bread or wine would
have been corrupted, then Christ’s body and blood do not remain under
this sacrament; and this either on the part of the qualities, as when
the color, savor, and other qualities of the bread and wine are so
altered as to be incompatible with the nature of bread or of wine; or
else on the part of the quantity, as, for instance, if the bread be
reduced to fine particles, or the wine divided into such tiny drops
that the species of bread or wine no longer remain [ST III:77:4].
The reader continues:
Is the real presence contingent on our subjective sensation, or on the reality of the sacred species themselves? For example, if you have bread or wine imperceptible to our senses, but chemically the same as a larger portion, does the real presence still remain?
Depending on what you mean, the answer may be neither. The Real Presence does not depend on anybody subjectively sensing the bread and wine. The consecrated elements could be reserved in the Tabernacle, with nobody sensing them. On the other hand, bread and wine are such that they can be sensed, and so the quantities do have to be sufficiently large that if someone were looking at them, they would say "That’s bread" or "That’s wine." It is not enough that a tiny particle be put under a microscope and have it be discovered to be chemically identical to bread or wine. We’re dealing with anthropological categories, and the elements have to be "anthropologically" bread and wine, not just chemically bread and wine.
Or is anything that no longer appears to us to be bread or wine necessarily chemically changed?
I couldn’t tell you for a fact with bread since I don’t know if the cell structure of the wheat typically remains in bread. However wine is not chemically changed by the mere fact of being reduced to such a small quantity that it no longer appears to be wine to the senses. I suspect that the same is true of bread as well, I just don’t know for a fact. The key, though, is not chemical composition but what they count as in the common estimation of men (with the needed cultural qualifier).
Or the crumbs on the paten, for instance. I wouldn’t call a crumb of crust "bread," but I still view that as having as much of the real presence as a larger host. Is that correct?
It depends on the size of the crumb. If it’s a particularly large crumb–something you would look at and think "That’s a piece of bread" then the Real Presence would remain. If it’s a particularly tiny crumb, something you would look at and think "That’s a speck of wheat dust" then the Real Presence does not remain. If it’s an ambiguously sized crumb then it is doubtful whether or not Christ is really present.
For safety’s sake, the Church tends to err ont the side of caution both before and after the consecration of the elements. Before the consecration if it is doubtful that the matter is valid then it cannot be used. After the consecration if it is doubtful whether the Real Presence remains then we are to assume that it does.
In obvious cases, though, (e.g., this is clearly cornbread or this clearly looks like a speck of wheat dust) then the Real Presence is not presumed and we are NOT TO SCRUPLE ABOUT THIS.
Hope this helps!
This is very helpful for someone washing linens from mass. You find some people are rather scrupulous about rinsing the bloodstains out, while others worry less about it because Our Lord did not hold up his napkin and consecrate it.
The ambiguity would drive some people crazy; I find it one of the more charming aspects of being Catholic.
Mr. Akin,
If bread and wine are an anthropological categories, then what does it mean for an anthropological catagory to become the body and blood of Christ? A mental construct becomes Christ? Unless we’re talking about an actual objective chemical/material substance or mixture, isn’t that a chimera? Such a concept seems to lend itself more to consubstantiation, I’d think. What’s really changing if a big piece of bread is Christ, but than a microscopic piece of bread is not Christ, but bread? How does mere size determine the underlying substance of bread and wine?
Bread and wine are mixtures, combinations of more primary materials. Thus if we divide them enough, we’ll eventually just have the building-blocks but no structure. That’s what I think St. Thomas is referring to by a division of quantity.
The species refers to the accidents. If the accidents are all still there, but we just have something really small, then the species of bread and wine have not been corrupted. Then wouldn’t the real presence remain?
Otherwise I don’t see how we’re not subjectivizing the real presence, based on the keenness of a man’s sense of perception.
For if I looked in a microscope, and saw something that looked like a drop of wine, they’d say that was a drop of wine in the common estimation of man.
So it seems to me that if we want to arrest scruples, there’s has to be an argument that once things get small enough the substance, in effect is corrupted. Because given what we know about science today, there is no real distinction between quantity and quality, is there? Everything is reduced to the arrangement of atoms and particles.
The whole is the sum of its parts. A large piece of bread is a composition of very many small pieces of bread. By bread we refer to a type of substance, not the size of that substance.
If a very small piece of bread is not Christ, and a larger piece of bread is simply a combination of very small pieces, then the large piece of bread is not Christ.
Or if the whole is Christ, but all the small parts are still there inas chemically bread, then what we have is something which is BOTH Christ and bread.
Unless we admit that the small pieces of bread are also the body of Christ, it seems we must embrace consubstation, or transfiguration, or something other than transubstantion.
Because if transubstantion means a change in substance, one might rightly ask what substance is being changed, if all the parts of the host remain bread, while the Host itself is God.
You seem to be misreading me.
When I say that bread and wine are anthropological categories, I don’t mean that they are subjective. I mean that they have their origin in human culture and industry rather than in simply the genetic code of an animal or plant, as in the case of natural kinds.
Neither do I mean that what counts as bread and wine can change over time as people’s ideas change.
I mean that there are some physical objects in the world that have, per Aquinas, the QUALITIES *and* the QUANTITY needed to count as bread in the common estimation of men. These objects have definite chemical structures that objectively exist, though the chemical structure pertains only to the qualities that these objects have, not their quantity.
For people to count an object as bread (or wine) it also has to be present in a sufficient quantity. The mere presence of a the chemical structure is not enough.
The objects that have the necessary qualities and quantity to count as bread and wine in the common estimation of men are valid matter for consecration.
When the consecration happens, the substance of bread and wine disappears but the appearances of bread and wine remain.
Those appearances can be altered (e.g., by breaking the host in two), and as long as the alteration is not so severe that people would still regard them as bread and wine then the Real Presence remains.
When the appearances of bread and wine no longer remain, in terms of quality OR quantity then the Real Presence no longer remains.
You need to be careful of the fallacies of composition and division. It is does not follow that a large piece of bread is made of smaller pieces of bread, nor does it follow that a piece of bread can be infinitely divided while remaining bread.
At a certain point it ceases to be an object that has the necessary quantity to count as bread the way God set up the sacrament, and Catholic theology has traditionally regarded very small particles as falling below that threshold.
It is not necessary for the particles to be microscopic for this to happen. A particle the size of what I have termed “wheat dust” would no longer be considered bread, even if it has a chemical strucure identical to bread.
If you want to dispute that, you aren’t disputing with me but with traditional Catholic theology, including St. Thomas Aquinas.
If you want to rephrse the issue in terms of the corruption of the accidents through the loss of sufficient quantity, that’s fine, but it amounts to the same thing: Qualitative similarity to bread (e.g., chemical structure) is not enough. Quantity is also involved, and the quantity doesn’t have to be microscopic.
I’m trying to understand your thought. So you would hold that a Eucharistic host is the Body and Blood of Christ. And that every part of that Host, before it is fractured, is the selfsame body of Christ, down to the minutist, microscopic part. No bread anywhere. No substance remains but the Body of Christ, everything else is accidents being miraculously preserved without a subject.
But divide that host. Now we have two hosts, both of which are the Body of Christ, and what we said above applies to them.
Divide again, and again. At some point you’re saying, the real presence will become doubtful, and if you continue till the host is a fine powder, the real presence will have ceased. This imples that there was some miraculous transformation of the Body of Christ back into bread, or some means by which the substance of bread, or its parts, formerly gone, is now restored.
This also implies that the minutist particle of bread can be the Body of Christ when it’s united to a single Host, but when separated it is no longer the body of Christ.
This is because Christ’s presence only remains in matter that looks like bread (according to the ancient view of bread) or wine according to the common estimation of men.
Fair enough?
So when we talk about transubstantiation, the whole substance of the bread changing into the whole substance of the Body of Christ, since bread isn’t a unified natural thing, but a mixture and combination, we’re actually talking about the change of many different substances, all the ingredients of the bread in fact which are still there really present, into the Body of Christ.
And when the host is reduced to power, the Body of Christ changes back into all the ingredients mixed up that we call bread: wheat, water, possibly yeast bacteria, etc.
I speak in this fashion of all the parts, because according to modern science, unknown to the scholastic philosophers, everything is in the end reducible to quantity and arrangement of particles. Quality is just shorthand for a certain arrangement of quantity. Bread is not “one thing,” isn’t just a mixture of many things that we call one, or so it seems to me. Or does our faith require us to repudiate a certain aspect of atomism?
As for fallacies, isn’t the composition or unity bread or wine, something which is only apparent? Our senses give us the appearance of that, but science tells us otherwise. That seems to create difficulties, though not insurmountable ones, for talking about transubstantion in its medieval terms, and leaving it at that. In common sense talk it’s easy enough to discuss the mystery, but the more we probe into what we’re talking about, the more paradoxes or difficulties arise.
Breier, that is why it is called a mystery! We’re can’t comprehend it this side of eternity. 🙂
If, however, you manage to resolve the problem, please email me. I’m eager to understand more about the Eucharist….but I’ve run into the same kind of intellectual wall. I can’t reconcile what modern physics and chemistry tells us about matter and what the philosophers/theologians talk about – substance vs. accidents. It could be that because I’m a new student of both philosophy and theology, I misunderstand the explanation.
A chair is an anthropological category too. Just as you said, it by definition has certain qualities that chemically can be reduced to arrangement of quantities. And still it isn’t a chair anymore if you take enough parts off or if you make the chair small enought.
Phil,
I don’t disagree with you. But what would it mean if we said the whole substance of a chair become the body of Christ, or the whole substance of a car became the body of Christ. Dismantle a chair it’s no longer a chair, dismantle a car it’s no longer a car. But what is the “substance” we’re talking about?
It seems to me that the only unity we have of a chair or a car is an accidental unity, it’s many things brought together that we call one thing. Similarly perhaps with bread. So how can we talk about the one substance of the bread, if what we really have is many things?
Breier,
Thanks for explicating. I can see your point, but I guess the same could be said of natural categories, e.g. water – it’s just a chemical compound of oxygen and hydrogen. Or air, which is just a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen; it’s not even a chemical compound. That being said, everything we generally call “something” also consists of “many things”. The unity of many things can be very apparent to the human eye regardless of culture (e.g. air), or it can depend on cultural concepts (e.g. chair). We can of course assume that there are indivisible particles, though this has not been proven.
Now then, in the context of Aristotelian metaphysics, it is generally assumed that in the universe, there are categories in the objective reality, not just in our subjective senses; that is, the universe consists of real things and objects, not just an endless mess of wave-particle duality. Without this, we would have little use for words like “is” or “this” in philosophy. Nothing could be said to be “something” because “somethingness” is just an illusion.
One does not have to accept Aristotelian metaphysics in order to be a Catholic, but if one rejects it, there is no more thinking of whether transubstantiation is “true” or “false” because it can only make sense inside the framework of Aristotelian thought. With transubstantiation, I mean the metaphysical explanation that at the moment of consecration, the substances of the bread and wine are changed into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. This is not a dogma of the Church; this is something you don’t have to believe in order to be a Catholic. You only have to believe that the bread and wine really become the Body and Blood of Christ; this is the dogma of the Church (sometimes referred to as “transubstantiation”, too, which is why there is often great misunderstanding about what the dogma really is and what is it not; see Lateran IV, for example). No Catholic is bound to any technical explanation of the change, and transubstantiation is not the only one; e.g. annihilation is another.
Well then, let us abandon Aristotelian metaphysics. As Jimmy said, there is a crucial distinction between “subjective” and “anthropological” categories. If a category can be defined (e.g. as “anything what was bread according to the common estimation of 1st century Jews”) it is not subjective, even if it can be defined only by what people think, not by natural science. We call many things one thing, because in their current state, they are the one thing in question; we are thinking of an anthropological category that is defined by what we accept into it, which in turn depends on the order of the parts of the one thing they together make. One does not need to use words like “substance” in order to accept this – one only needs to accept that there are real categories and that words like “this” really can mean something. Christ said: “This is My Body.” I guess that’s sort of a foundation for that proposition.
Thanks for the lucid explanation.
I think we all admit that “this” has an operative usuage. The question is whether or not “this” refers to a mere mental unity or a unity in reality. For example, I can see a pile of dirty laundry and refer to it as “this pile.” I refer in language to one thing, but that thing in reality is many things, i.e. many articles of clothing piled together.
In the world of atomism, isn’t everything, apart from spiritual realities like the soul, waves and particles? Isn’t everything essentially a pile? If I see a sand castle afar off I might think it a continuous substance, but on closer inspection I see everything is composed of minute grains. In the modern view of atomistic science, isn’t reality analagous to that?
So if I refer to “this” or “that” I’m referring to a mental construct of one thing, I’m speaking according to appearances rather than reality. For apart from a soul, what would give the kind of total unity to an object that an Aristelian is seeking?
However if “this” refers to a mental category of one thing, whereas in reality there are many things, what does it mean when we essentially say that “many things” become the Body of Christ?
Setting aside the meaning Christ gave to “this,” in the Last Supper, which was heavily debated in reformation times. If we’re not talking about a body with a soul as its unifying principle, isn’t “this” always referring to an accidental unity? An apparent unity but not a reality unity? At least, not the kind of unity that would allow us to speak of “one substance.”
But if we’re referring to an accidental unity, the apperances; the appearances don’t change before and after the consecration. So if in the modern world Aristotelian “substance” reduces to the particular arrangement of atoms and waves, what is there left to change into the Body of Christ?
If everything is made of essentially the same stuff, namely submolecular particles, waves, and forces, isn’t what we mean by one thing changing into another simply the physicial rearrangement of those things? So what can that mean for transubstantiation?
If we can no longer posit a dichotomy between substance and accidents, or the idea of different substances, everything being reducible to particles, what does it mean to saw the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ?
If Catholic belief doesn’t an acceptance of Aristotelian substantial change, and the rejection of atomism, what explanation is there for what we mean by transubstantiation?
You said that atomism hasn’t been proved. That opinion strikes me as more contrarian as geocentrism. Can you point me to some sources which dispute the atomic theory of the world, particularly under the light of the atom bomb, atomic power, writing things in atoms, etc?
Breier, let me answer to the last question first, then I have to leave for Mass. I didn’t say that the existence of atoms hasn’t been proved, but that atoms aren’t indivisible (though that is the original meaning of “atom”). Atoms consist of protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons consist of quarks. But we do not know whether we could go on and on with the division forever, or whether at some stage particles are indivisible (and with that I mean indivisible at all, not just to our technological capabilities). This would constitute atomism. Perhaps that stage has been reached now (meaning that electrons and quarks are indivisible), perhaps never. Sorry for my unclarity.
Phil,
Understood. My difficulty doesn’t depend on particles being indivisible. It simply focuses on what a change of the substance of the bread into the Body of Christ means when the substance of the bread is not a singular thing, but actually a particular arrangement of compotent atomic particles. Do we have to say something like the illusion of the atoms is still there, but in really they’re not, something like that?
I don’t see what gives subsantial unity to the bread, or wine, apart simply from our use of language.
So when we say “the bread becomes the body of Christ,” does that not imply, if we accept science, that this particular quantifiable arrangement of quarks, neurons, etc., becomes the body of Christ? Because that’s what the “substance” of bread is reducible too.
But if that quantifiable arrangement of particles is what produces the appearance we call bread, and the appearances remain the same after the consecration, than presumably that quantifiable arragement remains the same after the consecration.
So for transubstantiation in an atomic world, what has actually changed?
It seems that with atoms the traditional substance/accident distinction has to be radically revamped. For if everything is particular, the only thing akin to substance is whatever’s underlying the smallest particles, if there is such a thing. So it’s as if there is but one substance, and everything else we call different substances are just different accidents of that one substance, namely different arrangements of particles and waves, etc.
I hope that makes some sense.
I’m in a hurry again, but there is something I need to say first: I think your problem wasn’t unknown to scholastic theologians. Bread isn’t a homogenic substance, and that can often be seen with plain eyes. Still, they had no problem with the particular arrangement of many things being one thing.
Excuse me Jimmy, but if you say (falsely I might add) that our Lord is no longer present in a tiny particle of the Eucharist that has broken off…then why do priests do ablutions to clean off their fingers after communion (they are especially careful about this in the Tridentine Mass), and then place all particles into the chalice for their consumption? Seems to me they know that Jesus is present, body, blood, soul and divinity in even the smallest particle of the consecrated Eucharist. This is what our Church teaches and we ought to be very scrupulous about the Eucharist, ensuring that all particles are consumed and not disposed of.