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Transubstantiation [900] is the change of the whole substance of
bread into the body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into
the blood of Christ. This truth is indispensable in explaining the
Real Presence. If the glorious and impassible body of Christ does
not cease to be in heaven, it cannot become present under the species
of the bread and the wine by an adductive action which would make that
body descend from heaven to each host consecrated. Hence, if the body
of Christ Himself is not subject of the change, He cannot become
really present except by the change into Him of the substances of bread
and wine. Briefly, if a body becomes present there where before it
was not, then, by the principle of identity, this body must undergo a
change of place, or then another body must be changed into it. To
illustrate. A pillar, remaining immovable, which was at my right,
cannot be at my left unless I have changed in my relation to it.
Again: If in a house where there was no fire we now find a fire,
that fire either must have been brought there or produced there.
[901] .
By this change, then, of the substance of the bread into the body of
Christ, this body, itself remaining unchanged, becomes really
present under the accidents of the bread, because these accidents lose
the real and containing relation they had to the substance of the bread
and they acquire a new, real, and containing relation to the body of
Christ. This new real relation presupposes a real foundation, which
is transubstantiation.
This position granted, St. Thomas draws therefrom all other
Eucharistic truths, particularly in regard to the Real Presence,
and the Eucharistic accidents. He is faithful to the principle of
economy which tells us to explain facts without useless multiplication
of causes.
This doctrine of St. Thomas is not admitted by Scotus, who
explains the Real Presence by annihilation of the substance of the
bread and adduction of the substance of Christ's body. [902]
Many other theologians, [903] following him in part, speak of
an "adductive transubstantiation." Speaking thus, they no longer
preserve the proper meaning of the words "conversion" and
"transubstantiation," words used in conciliar decrees. To speak of
transubstantiation as adductive is to deny the conversion of one
substance into another, and to affirm the substitution of one for the
other.
Further, what is the meaning of "adduction," if Christ's
impassible body remains in heaven? Christ's body, Thomists repeat
St. Thomas, does not become present by any change in itself,
local, quantitative, qualitative, or substantial. Hence the real
presence of that body has no other explanation than the substantial
change of the bread into that body.
But can we, with Suarez, say that transubstantiation is
quasi-reproductive of Christ's body? No, because that body is in
heaven as it was before, neither multiplied nor changed. It is
numerically the same glorified body which is in heaven and in the
Eucharist. Gonet and Billuart, who indulge somewhat in the
terminology of Suarez, nevertheless teach, like other Thomists,
that transubstantiation is a substantial change in the proper sense of
the word. "Thus it comes," says the Catechism of the Council of
Trent, [904] "that the entire substance of the bread is by
divine power changed into the entire substance of Christ's body
without any mutation in our Lord."
Which view is verified in the sacramental formula: This is My body?
This formula most certainly expresses neither annihilation nor
adduction, whereas, by being causatively true, it does express
conversion of the entire substance of the bread into the substance of
Christ's body. Besides, annihilation does not include adduction,
nor the inverse. And the Council of Trent [905] speaks not of
two divine interventions, distinct and independent, but of one
intervention only, by which the entire substance of the bread is
changed into Christ's body, and the entire substance of the wine is
changed into Christ's blood. And this change, the Council adds,
is rightly called transubstantiation.
In what precisely does transubstantiation terminate? Cajetan,
[906] followed by Thomists generally, gives answer by this
formula: That which was bread is now Christ's body, not Christ's
body taken absolutely, as it existed before transubstantiation, but
Christ's body as terminus of this transubstantiated bread.
[907] More explicitly, transubstantiation terminates in this,
that what was the substance of bread is now the body of Christ.
Is transubstantiation an instantaneous process? Yes, one and the
same indivisible instant terminates the existence of the bread
[908] and initiates Christ's existence under the species of
bread. [909] .
How is transubstantiation possible? St. Thomas [910] has
recourse to the Creator's immediate power over created being as
being. If God can produce the whole creation from nothing, He can
also change the entity of one thing into that of another. Whereas in a
substantial mutation there is a subject (prime matter) which remains
under the two successive forms, here in transubstantiation there is no
permanent subject, but the whole substance of bread, matter and form,
is changed into that of Christ's body. [911] These formulas
reappear in the Council of Trent. [912] .
Let us note some consequences of this doctrine. Christ's body is in
the Eucharist, not as in a place but in the manner of substance.
[913] The quantity of Christ's body is also really present in
the Eucharist, but again, in the manner of substance, that is, by
its relation, not to place, but to its own substance, since it is
present, not by local adduction, but only by a change exclusively
substantial. Thus we see too that it is numerically the same body
which, without division or distance, is simultaneously in heaven and
in the Eucharist, because it is present in the Eucharist illocally,
in the manner of substance, in an order superior to the order of
space.
By this same line of reasoning St. Thomas [914] explains the
Eucharistic accidents, as existing without any subject of inhesion.
All other Eucharistic theses are simply corollaries from his teaching
on transubstantiation. The principle of economy could not be better
exemplified. We cannot say the same of the theories which have been
substituted for that of St. Thomas. They are complicated,
factitious, useless. They proceed by a quasi-mechanical
juxtaposition of arguments, instead of having an organic unity, which
presupposes as source one mother-idea. Here again we see the
wonderful power of the Thomistic synthesis.
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