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Thursday, September 04, 2008

Butterflies Are Free

DMITRY CHERNIKOV SAID:

Just as with so many things in Catholicism we are led from the corporeal to the spiritual, from the sensible to the intelligible, from the particular to the universal. But in reaching these higher matters, the means to them, that is, the corporeal, the sensible, etc. are not illusions but are perfectly real.

The accidental properties of the communion elements are illusory rather than real since they don’t correspond to an underlying substance of bread and wine.

Now Christ as a whole is present in the bread and wine, namely, body, blood, soul, and divinity.

How is the body of Christ physically present in a wafer the size of a quarter? The body of Christ has physical dimensions. So does a wafer. How do you squeeze one into the other? Is the body of Christ like a life-size inflatable blow up doll?

The body and blood are means to delivering the divinity. The Eucharist is a tool left by Jesus to assist the faithful in the fight against the devil. When the priest raises the host, it's as if rays of white light stream from it. Each host (both bread and wine) after consecration contains a small piece of light of Jesus's divinity.

That’s very pretty metaphor. Unless you can (i) translate your picturesque metaphor into a literal proposition and then (ii) provide a supporting argument, it’s just a nonsensical assertion.

When the host is eaten, the bread and wine, being body and blood and soul which contain the divinity open up like petals in a flower and release the divinity that settles in the will.

Wow! That’s worthy of Goldie Hawn! All you need to complete the picture is a Day-Glo bikini and a garland of daisies.

(Having been made suitable for it by Jesus's own union of human soul of divinity), strengthening it and filling it with love for God, scaring away the devil.

Really? It doesn’t seem to have that effect on pedophile priests or the Kennedy clan.

Or so, at least, I was made to understand in a kind of revelation.

1 John 4:1.

10 comments:

  1. "How is the body of Christ physically present in a wafer the size of a quarter?"

    Jesus might have been a stuff ontologist. Maybe he accepted spatially coincident material objects?

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  2. One more thing...

    "The accidental properties of the communion elements are illusory rather than real since they don’t correspond to an underlying substance of bread and wine."

    To be fair, this is a weak objection because you'd be forced to argue that properties must be grounded in something occurent (which is no easy task). Many have argued that truths about dispositional properties, subjunctive conditionals, times, etc., for example, can be ungrounded.

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  3. CHARLES W. SAID:

    "To be fair, this is a weak objection because you'd be forced to argue that properties must be grounded in something occurent (which is no easy task). Many have argued that truths about dispositional properties, subjunctive conditionals, times, etc., for example, can be ungrounded."

    I'm not talking about *truths* of properties, but the properties themselves.

    Oh, and I think the grounding objection does hold against Molinism.

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  4. charles w. said...

    "Jesus might have been a stuff ontologist. Maybe he accepted spatially coincident material objects?"

    The frame of reference is supplied by the Tridentine definition:

    "[I]n this Sacrament are contained not only the true body of. Christ and all the constituents of a true body, such as bones and sinews, but also Christ whole and entire."

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  5. Steve says:

    "I'm not talking about *truths* of properties, but the properties themselves."

    I noticed. Whether you choose to phrase the problem in terms of truths, propositions, features, or the properties themselves, is incidental. The point is that you'd need to offer argumentation for why there must exist something occurent for them.

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  6. "Jesus might have been a stuff ontologist. Maybe he accepted spatially coincident material objects?"

    The frame of reference is supplied by the Tridentine definition:

    "[I]n this Sacrament are contained not only the true body of. Christ and all the constituents of a true body, such as bones and sinews, but also Christ whole and entire."


    That's consistent with a metaphysic involving coincident objects.

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  7. CHARLES W. SAID:

    "That's consistent with a metaphysic involving coincident objects."

    *Where* is the body of Christ coincident with the wafer?

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  8. Steve asks:

    "*Where* is the body of Christ coincident with the wafer?"

    In the same exact region of space (or, if you prefer, spacetime) that the wafer occupies.

    By the way, I'm not a Catholic.

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  9. CHARLES W. SAID:

    "In the same exact region of space (or, if you prefer, spacetime) that the wafer occupies."

    But on your theory (even if you're posing this for the sake of argument), does it occupy the same *volume* of space? Is it coextensive with the wafer?

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  10. Steve,

    The theory is not mine. See Rea's Material Constitution for a helpful intro. Yes, it would occupy the same volume.

    I don't understand your second question. Many relations can be 'coextensive'.

    ReplyDelete