{"id":2222,"date":"2010-05-30T06:47:16","date_gmt":"2010-05-30T11:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=2222"},"modified":"2010-12-18T22:01:09","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T04:01:09","slug":"transubstantiation-and-aristotle-warning-heavy-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/05\/30\/transubstantiation-and-aristotle-warning-heavy-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Transubstantiation and Aristotle. Warning: Heavy Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The comments on &#8220;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/05\/25\/2106\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Liturgical translation backflip unlikely to hold<\/em><\/a><em>&#8221; took an interesting turn &#8211; into eucharistic theology and Real Presence. One commenter stated that &#8220;transubstantiation&#8221; &#8211; which I take to be\u00a0a philosophical explanation of the doctrine of the Real Presence &#8211; is not intrinsically tied to Aristotle&#8217;s philosophy.\u00a0 It would be most helpful if that were true &#8211; for surely our Christian faith cannot require us to accept a specific philosophical school of thought, Aristotelian or other. But I was curious whether the separation of transubstantiation and Aristotle held, so I asked\u00a0confrere Br. Dennis Beach from\u00a0our philosophy department what he thought. He wrote the following.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 awr<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I think it is technically right but quite misleading to say that transubstantiation is independent of Aristotelian <em>Metaphysics<\/em>. Yes, the use of the term \u201ctransubstantiation\u201d antedates Aquinas by a good century or more. Aquinas is mid-13th century, and\u00a0 the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 already used the verb \u201ctransubstantiated\u201d in a way that shows it was generally accepted well before William of Moerbeke began making literal translations of Aristotle available to Aquinas. However, I would argue that the Neoplatonic embrace of substance metaphysics means that Aristotle is tacitly present in any account of \u201csubstance\u201d after the 4th century BCE. And Neoplatonic thought or at least conceptual terms are clearly interwoven with Christian theology long before the 13th century. One cannot disentangle Aristotle from Christian theological categories simply by identifying Aristotle with Aquinas.<\/p>\n<p>It also seems disingenuous to claim that \u201cAll that is required, philosophically, to affirm transubstantiation is to accept that there is a distinction to be made between the <em>identity<\/em> of something and its <em>appearance<\/em>.\u201d The doctrine of transubstantiation completely reverses the usual distinction between <em>being<\/em> and <em>appearance<\/em>, where\u00a0 <em>being<\/em> is held to be unchanging and <em>appearance<\/em> is constantly changing. Transubstantiation maintains instead that <em>being<\/em> or <em>substance<\/em> changes while <em>appearance<\/em> remains unchanged. Such reversals in the order of things are affronts to reason and require much, not little, to affirm philosophically. Moreover, transubstantiation seem to go far beyond the simple distinction between <em>appearance<\/em> and <em>reality<\/em>. It would be one thing if the body and blood of Christ simply <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">appeared<\/span> to be bread and wine. But I don\u2019t think that is what is claimed with \u201ctransubstantiation.\u201d<em><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The claim that \u201csubstance\u201d in the doctrine of transubstantiation is a common-sense concept, somehow independent of Aristotle\u2019s purportedly esoteric and arcane philosophizing, is also a red herring. Aristotle picked up just such common-sense concepts as \u201cwhat-it-is-to-be-X\u201d and tried to explain rather complex philosophical problems with them. Thus, to take a \u201ccommon-sense\u201d concept like <em>substance<\/em>\u2013even if one could maintain that it were somehow purified of Aristotelian provenance\u2014and have it do paradoxical conceptual gymnastics in order to explain <em>transubstantiation<\/em> seems not to be not so anti-Aristotelian in spirit after all.<\/p>\n<p>But really, what\u2019s at stake in having arguments about transubstantiation be either Aristotelian or independent of Aristotle? Are people really worried only about Aristotle? My guess is that \u201cAristotle\u201d \u00a0here stands for \u201cGreek philosophy.\u201d So while one can make a limited argument about Aristotle per se, this not only ignores Aristotle\u2019s hidden presence in much Neoplatonic thought, it also denies that <em>substance<\/em> itself is a human concept with a Greek philosophical heritage. That the bread and wine are somehow <em>really<\/em> the body and blood of Christ is an ancient Christian belief\u2014but using the concept of \u201csubstance\u201d to talk about this necessarily involves Greek philosophy. (Even <em>really<\/em> is a problematic term here, stemming as it does from the philosophical term <em>res.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>The Christian belief that the Eucharist is not simply bread and wine but the actual and effective presence of Jesus is, I believe, something that can be affirmed independently of Greek philosophy. But to claim that <em>transubstantiation<\/em> itself is conceptually independent of Greek philosophy seems both false and misguided, as if somehow the term <em>transubstantiation<\/em> were what is sacred and not Christ\u2019s presence in the Eucharist.<\/p>\n<p><em>Br. Dennis Beach, OSB, is a monk of St. John&#8217;s Abbey since 1981. His doctorate in philosophy is from Penn State. His research and teaching interests are Continental Philosophy &amp; Phenomenology, especially Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger &amp; Levinas; Ancient Greek philosophy; and Liberation Theology. He is currently studying for the priesthood.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To claim that transubstantiation itself is conceptually independent of Greek philosophy seems both false and misguided, as if somehow the term transubstantiation were what is sacred and not Christ\u2019s presence in the Eucharist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,31],"tags":[780,778,779,242],"class_list":["post-2222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mass","category-sacramental-theology","tag-aristotle","tag-dennis-beach","tag-philosophy","tag-transubstantiation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Transubstantiation and Aristotle. 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