Kenny on transubstantiation

Steve sent this essay on transubstantiation by Anthony Kenny. The source is the first chapter of Reason and Religion: Essays in Philosophical Theology.

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The doctrine of Transubstantiation is stated by the Council of Trent thus. In the sacrament of the Eucharist, when the bread and wine are consecrated the whole substance of the bread is thereby turned into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and the whole substance of the wine is thereby turned into the substance of His blood. This turning of one substance into another, the Council affirmed, was aptly named by the holy Catholic Church: 'transubstantiation' (Session XIII, cap. 4).

This doctrine is expounded as follows in the twenty-fifth section of the second part of the Catechism of the Council of Trent. 'Now there are three wonderful and stupendous things which in this Sacrament, Holy Church without all doubt believes and confesses to be wrought by the words of consecration. The First is, That the true Body of Christ, that very same which was born of the Virgin, and now sits in Heaven at the Right-hand of the Father is contain'd in this Sacrament. The Second is that no substance of the Elements remains in it: Altho nothing seems more strange and distant to the senses. The Third, which is easily gathered from both the former, tho the words of Consecration fully express it, is that what is beheld by the Eyes, or perceiv'd by the other Senses is in a wonderful and unspeakable manner, without any subject matter. And one may see indeed all the Accidents of Bread and Wine, which yet are inherent in no substance, but they consist of themselves; because the Substance of the Bread and Wine is so chang'd into the Body and Blood of the Lord, that the substance of the Bread and Wine altogether ceases.' (English edition of 1687, p. 208.)

In discussing this doctrine I wish altogether to abstract from the question, whether there is any good reason to believe it to be true. In particular, I wish to abstract from the question whether the exposition contained in the Tridentine Catechism is the only possible orthodox interpretation of the teaching of the Council. I wish to consider the purely philosophical question, whether the doctrine stated in that Catechism is or is not self-contradictory. If it is, then of course there can be no good reason to believe it true, no matter how august the authority which affirms it. On the other hand, if it does not appear self-contradictory, the question of its truth remains open for the philosopher. We cannot rule out from the start a philosophical position which accepted the coherence of the notion of transubstantiation, but rejected the possibility that it might be a doctrine revealed by God, on the grounds that a contradiction was to be found not in the notion of transubstantiation but in that of a divine revelation.

It might be thought that a philosopher could have no possible interest in investigating the concept of transubstantiation unless he already believed it to be revealed by God. For the occurrence Of transubstantiation, even if not logically impossible, is surely extremely improbable. But it is wrong to suppose that a philosopher should be interested in analysing descriptions only of states of affairs which are likely to obtain. Contemporary philosophers, like philosophers in all ages, frequently use the consideration of very improbable suppositions in order to throw light on concepts of great generality. Thus Strawson, in his book Individuals (London, 1959), devotes a whole chapter to the discussion of purely auditory experience such as would be enjoyed by beings who lacked all senses but that of hearing. Logicians talk of empty universes, and of the possibility of changing the past. In Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations we read of lions which talk, of dolls in pain, of disappearing chairs and languages of fantastic structure. The ability to imagine outlandish states of affairs is indeed a necessary skill for a philosopher. There is therefore no reason why the possibility of transubstantiation should not be investigated as a philosophical question in its own right, for the sake of the light such an inquiry might throw on concepts such as that of material object.

At the outset, it is obvious that if the true account of material objects is a phenomenalism such as that of Professor Ayer, then the notion of transubstantiation is self-contradictory. In his book The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (London, 1940) Ayer wrote as follows in the chapter entitled 'The constitution of material things'. 'As for the belief in the "unity" and "substantiality" of material things, I shall show that it may be correctly represented as involving no more than the attribution to visual and tactual sense-data of certain relations which do, in fact, obtain in our experience.' On this view, to assert that a certain substance, e.g. bread, is or is not present in a certain place is to make a statement about what relations may be expected to obtain between sets of visual and tactual sense-data in our experience. But it is clear that a believer in transubstantiation who denies that the substance of bread is present on the altar after the consecration is not denying that all the relations between sense-data will obtain which would obtain if the substance, bread, really were present on the altar. As the Tridentine Catechism puts it: 'If the Faithful perswade themselves, that those things only arc contained in this Sacrament, which are perceived by the senses; they must needs be led into the greatest impiety, when with their Eyes, their Feeling, their Smell, their Taste, perceiving nothing at all, but the Species of Bread and Wine, they will judge that there is only Bread and Wine in the Sacrament.' If Ayer is right, therefore, the believer in transubstanstiation is easily convicted of contradicting himself.

Since The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge was written, however, the doctrine which it contains has been severely criticized by people with no brief for transubstantiation, such as the late Professor J. L. Austin, whose posthumously published Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford, 1962) is almost entirely devoted to a refutation of Ayer's phenomenalism. Not all Austin's arguments are conclusive, but probably today most philosophers would agree with him in rejecting Ayer's claim that 'to say anything about a material thing is to say something, but not the same thing, about classes of sense-data' (cf. Sense and Sensibilia, p. 119).

If we reject phenomenalism, it might seem that we must say that behind the perceptible phenomena of any material object, there is an imperceptible part of it which is its substance. And indeed the Council Of Trent, when it speaks of the substance of bread and wine, has frequently been taken - by believers and unbelievers alike - to have been speaking about a part of the bread and wine. The teaching of Trent is often expounded with the aid of a doctrine of substance which goes as follows. There are some parts of a loaf of bread, such as its shape and colour and taste, which can be perceived by the senses; but the substance which is beneath these outward parts is not perceptible to the senses. The perceptible parts or accidents of the bread may be pictured as concealing the inner reality which is the substance of the bread rather as a layer of paint may conceal the wood of a table. Whatever may be perceived of a material thing is only accidental to it: for each of the perceptible qualities of a thing may change and yet the thing remain the same. The substance of a thing is that in which these accidents inhere, the subject of which they are predicated. It is itself both imperceptible and indescribable: imperceptible, because all perceptible qualities are accidents; indescribable, because to describe a thing is to record its attributes, and attributes are what a substance has, not what it is.

I think it will be agreed that the doctrine of transubstantiation is often explained in this manner. Many who, like myself, find this account unacceptable, therefore reject transubstantiation. In fact it is very unlikely that the Council of Trent meant anything like the thesis we have just stated. It was not Trent, but Locke, who defined substance as some thing, we know not what, which supports the sensible qualities we find united in things. The account of substance accepted by the scholastics who worked out the theology of transubstantiation was not Locke's theory but the quite different one of Aristotle. The views of these scholastics are surely more relevant than those of Locke in determining what is likely to have e mind of the Fathers of Trent.

Commonly, in their Eucharistic theology, when these scholastics spoke of 'substance', they had in mind what Aristotle in his Categories called 'first substance'. The doctrine of the Categories has been stated in modern terms by Miss Anscombe in Three Philosophers (Oxford, 1961). 'First substance,' she writes, 'is explained in the first place as what neither is asserted of nor exists in a subject: the examples offered are "such-and-such a man", "such-and-such a horse". A "first substance" then is what is designated by a proper name such as the name of a man or of a horse, or again, if one cared to give it a proper name, of a cabbage. A proper name is never, qua proper name, a predicate. Thus what a proper name stands for is not asserted of a subject.' A surface, such as the surface of a particular wedding-ring, is not asserted of a subject, but in Aristotle's sense it is in a subject. First substance, therefore, is described by contrast with what is asserted of and what exists in a subject (Three Philosophers, pp. 7-8).

In the Categories, Aristotle lists ten different types of predication. A predicate may tell you what kind of thing something is, or how big it is, or what it is like, or where it is, or what it is doing, and so on. We may say, for instance, of Christ that he was a man, that he was six feet tall, that he was a good man, that he was younger than John the Baptist, that he lived in Galilee, that he lived under Pontius Pilate, that he sat upon Jacob's well, that he wore a beard, that he healed the sick, and that he was crucified. The predicates which we use in saying these things belong to different categories: they belong, respectively, to the categories of substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, habitus, actio and passio.

'Substance' is here clearly being used in a sense different from that in which it occurs in the phrase 'first substance'. Geach, following Aquinas, has recently drawn a distinction between substantival and adjectival terms. 'Aquinas calls our attention,' he writes, 'to a feature of Latin grammar - that substantives are singular or plural on their own account, whereas adjectives "agree in number" with substantives (Summa Theologiae Ia, 39, 3c and ad l; 5 ad 5). This suggests to him a logical distinction between two sorts of terms: substantival terms, to which the question "how many?" applies directly, and adjectival terms, to which this question applies only in so far as they are used to add a qualification to substantival terms. One may ask how many cats there are in a room; but not, how many black things there are in the room; only, how many black cats (say) there are in the room. The basis of this distinction is that the sense of "cat" determines a sense for "one and the same cat", whereas the sense of "black thing" does not in the least determine what shall count as one and the same black thing.' (Three Philosophers, p. 86; Reference and Generality, pp. 39-40.)

Geach's distinction take us only part of the way to understanding Aristotle's distinction between predicates in the category of substance and predicates in the other nine, accidental, categories. A substantival term is not the same as a substantial term. 'Gold' is a predicate in the category of substance; yet we cannot ask 'how many golds are there in the room?'. On the other hand, the noun 'city' determines a sense for 'one and the same city', yet 'city' does not stand for a kind Of substance.

The notion of a substantial predicate, as Miss Anscombe has insisted, is closely connected with a particular sense of the question 'What is that?' which might be asked while pointing to something. 'We can pick out that sense of "What is it?" that is answered by the name of a kind of thing or of" a kind of stuff: "That is sulphur", ' 'That is an oak-tree", "That is a hyena".' '"Substance",' writes Miss Anscombe, 'is a classification, but whether of things or of concepts (or words) seems difficult to determine. If we ask what falls into the category of substances the answer is "e.g. men, horses, cabbages, gold, sugar, soap". This answer mentions things, not concepts or words, so substance might seem to be a classification of things.' On the other hand, we cannot ask: in virtue of what characteristics are these things all substances. For a description of their characteristics would already be a description in the form: description of the properties of substances. It is not just a well-established hypothesis that gold or a cat is a substance: that e.g. the question 'What is it made of?' has an application to a cat or a lump of gold. (Three Philosophers, p. 13.)

Aristotle devoted much thought to the relationship between first substance and predicates in the category of substance. Consider a sentence which contains a predication in the category of substance, such as 'Socrates is a man'. The name 'Socrates' stands for the individual, or first substance, Socrates. Now what does the predicate '... [is] a man' stand for? A Platonist might say that it stands for humanity as such. But this answer is not open to an Aristotelian: he rejects the idea that there is such a thing as humanity as such. The answer which Aristotle gives to this question is that the predicate stands for exactly the same thing as the subject does; that is to say, it stands for, or refers to, Socrates himself.

On the other hand, in a sentence containing a predication in one of the other categories, such as 'Socrates is white', the subject and the predicate do not stand for the same thing. The subject, 'Socrates' stands for the man Socrates; but the predicate '... [is] white' does not stand for Socrates. Does it stand for whiteness? Only a Platonist could say this. The answer given in the Aristotelian tradition was that it stood for the 'individualized form', the whiteness of Socrates.¹

Such was the interpretation given by scholastics of the doctrines of Aristotle in Metaphysics A and Z. If we seek a definition of 'substance' and 'accidents' in this tradition, we must say that the substance of a thing is what a predicate in the category of substance, which is true of that thing, stands for; and the accidents of a thing are what true predicates of it in the other nine categories stand for. Thus, if it is true that Peter is a man, then the substance of Peter is what the predicate '... [is] a man' stands for, to wit, Peter himself; and if it is true that Peter is clever, then among the accidents of Peter will be whatever the predicate '... is clever' stands for in the sentence 'Peter is clever'.

Now most modern philosophers would object to saying that predicates of any kind, whether substantial or accidental, stand for anything at all. Names stand for, or refer to, what they name; but there is nothing which '... is a man' or '... is clever' stands for in the way in which 'Peter' stands for Peter. To be sure, '... is a man' and '...is clever' have meaning. But so do 'if' and 'but' have meaning; they are not empty noises. But no one supposes that they stand for some ifhood and butness existing in the world. So many philosophers would argue: a typical example is Quine in his essay 'On what there is' (From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Mass., 1953).²

I am inclined to accept their argument, for the following reason. It seems clear that all the words in a sentence must stand for the same thing whether the sentence is true or false. If a question admits of the answer 'Yes' or 'No', the reference of all the words in the question must be the same no matter what the answer may be. But if the sentence 'Peter is clever' is false, there is no such thing as the cleverness of Peter for the sentence to be about. Therefore, the sentence 'Peter is clever', whether true or false, cannot contain any phrase or word which refers to the cleverness of Peter.³

For this reason I find it difficult to accept that accidents are the references of accidental predicates. But although many of the scholastics accepted such a theory, it does not seem necessary to do so in order to make sense of the teaching of Trent. All that it is necessary to believe is that the wisdom of Socrates, say, exists if and only if Socrates is wise. It is not necessary to believe, as these scholastics did, that this wisdom is actually referred to in the sentence 'Socrates is wise'. It is not difficult to find modern philosophers who are prepared to subscribe to the much more modest thesis that if Socrates is wise then there is such a thing as the wisdom of Socrates, and if Socrates is not wise then there is no such thing as the wisdom of Socrates.

Mr Strawson, for instance, in his widely acclaimed book Individuals, discusses ways in which particular and universal terms may be tied to each other. We may distinguish, say, particular utterances, and particular catches at cricket. We can then group together some particular utterances as wise utterances, and some particular catches as difficult catches. We are in that case grouping particulars by means of universals which are attached or 'tied' to them. But we may also group particulars by tying them to other particulars: as we may group together Socrates's utterances, and Carr's catches. In cases where we have two particulars tied together in this way, we often find that one particular will be an independent member of the tic, and the other particular a dependent member. For instance, Socrates may be tied to many particular utterances, but any particular utterance of his cannot be tied to any other particular person. Particulars, such as Socrates, which are the independent members of all such ties as they enter into, are called by Strawson: 'independent particulars'. As he explicitly recognizes, Strawson's notion of independent particular is very close to Aristotle's notion of first substance.⁴

To an Aristotelian, the natural meaning of the decree of Trent which states that the substance of bread and wine turns into the substance of Christ's body and blood, is not that some part of the bread and wine turns into some part of the body and blood, but simply that the bread and wine turns into the body and blood. Following Aquinas (in 1 Cor 11:24), the Fathers of Trent used the 'substance of Christ's body' and 'Christ's body' as interchangeable terms. According to scholastic theory, substance is not an imperceptible part of a particular individual. It is not a part of an individual; it is that individual. And it is imperceptible by the senses only in the following sense: I do not see what kind of a thing something is with my eyes as I see what colour it is with my eyes, any more than I see what it tastes like with my eyes. For all that, substances may be perceived. I can see, say, sulphuric acid with my eyes; though it is not just by looking, but by intelligent use of hypothesis and experiment and information, that I know that the stuff I see is sulphuric acid. Similarly, when I see sugar, what I see is sweet, though it is not with my eyes that I discover this. A pari, before the consecration the substance of bread is not imperceptible: what I see is bread; the substance which I see is the substance, bread.

Transubstantiation is a unique conversion, a turning of one thing into another which has no parallel. In all other cases where A turns into B there is some stuff which is first A-ish, and then B-ish. As scholastics would say, the same matter is first informed with the form of A-ishness and then informed with the form of B-ishness. (This sentence is merely a restatement, not an explanation, of the sentence which precedes it.) But in the Eucharistic conversio there is no parcel of stuff which is first bread and then Christ's body; not only does one form give way to another but one bit of matter gives way to another. In an ordinary change, when the form of A-ishness gives way to the form of B-ishness, we have a transformation - substantial transformation, or accidental transformation, according to whether the forms in question are substantial forms or accidental forms, that is to say, according to whether the predicates '... is an A' and '... is a B' are accidental or substantial predicates. In the Eucharist we have not just one form giving way to another, but one substance giving way to another: not just transformation, but transsubstantiation.

It may well be asked at this point: what is now left of the notion of turning into here? To my knowledge, no completely satisfactory answer to this question has yet been given; nor do I think that I can succeed where others have failed. But it may help if we explain how the notion of turning into came to have a place in discussion of the Eucharist at all. There is no mention in Scriptural references to this sacrament of anything turning into anything else: why is there in Trent?

Aquinas introduces the notion of turning into as the only possible the presence of Christ's body under the appearances of bread and wine after the consecration. After the consecration it is true to say that Christ is in such-and-such a place. Now there are only three ways, says Aquinas, in which something can begin to exist in a place in which it did not exist before. Either it moves to that place from another place; or it is created in that place; or something which is already in that place turns, or is turned, into it. But Christ's body does not move into the place where the Eucharistic species are, nor is it created, since it already exists. Therefore something - to wit, the bread and wine - is turned into it.

It is essential to St Thomas's account that the bread and wine should cease to be, not by being annihilated, but by being turned into the body and blood. Transubstantiation is sometimes explained thus: the bread and wine are annihilated, and in their place Christ's body begins to exist. But for St Thomas there could be no sense in saying that Christ's body existed in such-and-such a place if the bread and wine formerly existing in that place had been annihilated. For, he would ask, how is the connection made between the body on the right hand of the Father and this particular altar? The connection, for him, is this, and only this: that the accidents of what has been turned into Christ's body are in such-and-such a place. Take away the transubstantiation, according to St Thomas, and you take away the presence.

The accidents which remain, says the Tridentine Catechism, following the Council of Constance, remain without a subject. Believers in transubstantiation are sometimes wrongly thought to hold that the accidents after consecration inhere in the substance of Christ's body.⁵ If this were so then, for example, the whiteness which the bread once had would become the whiteness of Christ. And thus all the accidental predicates which are true of the sacramental host would become true of Christ: it would be true that Christ was white and round and two inches across and smaller than an orange.

When we consider the concept of accidents inherent in no substance, examples come to mind which are either incredible or too straightforward. The idea of the Cheshire cat's grin without the cat seems the very quintessence of absurdity. On the other hand there is nothing miraculous or mysterious in there being a smell of onions after the onions have ceased to exist. The smell of onions is just the sort of thing which St Thomas meant by an accident in this context. When he discusses the question how accidents without substance can nourish and inebriate he considers the suggestion that it is the smell of wine which inebriates, as the smell of wine in a full cellar may make you feel dizzy before you broach a cask. He rejects this suggestion, not on the grounds that an accident is a different sort of thing altogether, but on the grounds that you can get far more drunk on consecrated wine than you can by going into a cellar and sniffing. But perhaps a better example of an accident without a substance than any known to St Thomas is the colour of the sky. When the sky is blue, its blueness is not the blue of any substance. 'The sky' is the name not of a substance, but of a phenomenal object (like 'the host') and there is no substance in the sky which is blue.

The principle that the accidents of the host do not inhere in the substance of Christ's body is one which is often violated in popular preaching of the Eucharist. '... is moved', '... is dropped', 'spat upon' are accidental predicates. Consequently, if the host is moved, Christ is not moved; if the host is dropped, Christ is not dropped; if the host is spat upon, Christ is not spat upon. In the words of Cardinal Newman: 'Our Lord neither descends from heaven upon our altars nor moves when carried in procession. The visible species change their position but he does not move (Via Media, 1877, ii. 220).' The principle to which Newman alludes is violated in popular devotions to 'The Prisoner of the Tabernacle'; it was violated also by Cardinal Pole when he forced an unfortunate heretic to repeat the words of the recanting Berengar: 'The real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ...are held and broken by the hands of the priests and are crushed by the teeth of the faithful.'⁶

The principle that the accidents inhere in no substance, however, leaves one problem with which I shall conclude. Among the accidental categories of Aristotle is the category of place. '... is on the altar', for instance, is an accidental predicate. But if the accidents which once belonged to the bread do not inhere after consecration in the substance of Christ's body, then it appears that it by no means follows from the presence of the host upon the altar that Christ is present on the altar. Thus the doctrine of transubstantiation appears in the end to fail to secure that for which alone it was originally introduced, namely the real presence of Christ's body under the sacramental species. I do not know of any satisfactory answer to this problem. If I did, I would give it. Since I do not, I must leave it, as the writers of textbooks say, as an exercise for the reader.

[Footnotes]

¹ A modern philosopher would speak naturally of the predicate of 'Socrates is a man' as being '... is a man'. Aquinas, though in his commentary on the De Interpretatione he recognizes the use now common, usually spoke of a predicate as a single term like 'man'. In a sentence such as 'Socrates is a man', if 'Socrates' and 'man' both stand for Socrates, what, if anything, does 'is' stand for? Aquinas's answer was that 'is' stood for esse - an esse which differed systematically accordingly as the predicate following the 'is' differed in category. (In V. Met, Cathala 890.)

² On the other hand, there are modern philosophers who are prepared to accept the idea that predicates have references. Strawson, (Individuals, p. 144), considers whether in 'Raleigh smokes' the expression 'smokes' can be said to stand for smoking, or the habit of smoking. He says: 'I know of no rule or custom which makes it always senseless or incorrect to say this, any more than I know of any rule or custom which would make it always senseless or incorrect to say that an assertion made in the words "Raleigh smokes" was an assertion about smoking.'

³ The form of this argument goes back to Buridan (Geach, Reference and Generality, p. xi).

⁴ Individuals, pp. 167-70.

⁵ Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, I, viii (Everyman edition, p. 40).

⁶ I am indebted for these last two references to the Rev. H. Green, C.R.