Background in Aristotle
“But there are different senses of 'coming to be'. In some cases we do not use the expression 'come to be', but 'come to be so-and-so'. Only substances are said to 'come to be' in the unqualified sense. Now in all cases other than substance it is plain that there must be some subject, namely, that which becomes. For we know that when a thing comes to be of such a quantity or quality or in such a relation, time, or place, a subject is always presupposed, since substance alone is not predicated of another subject, but everything else of substance.” (Aristotle, Physics, book I, ch. 7)
“The term "being" has several senses, which we have classified in our discussion of the number of senses in which terms are used. It denotes first the " what " of a thing, i.e. the individuality; and then the quality or quantity or any other such category. Now of all these senses which "being" has, the primary sense is clearly the "what," which denotes the substance (because when we describe the quality of a particular thing we say that it is "good or bad," and not "five feet high" or "a man"; but when we describe what it is, we say not that it is "white" or "hot" or "five feet high," but that it is "a man" or "a god"), and all other things are said to "be" because they are either quantities or qualities or affections or some other such thing. Hence one might raise the question whether the terms "to walk" and "to be well" and "to sit" signify each of these things as "being," or not; and similarly in the case of any other such terms; for not one of them by nature has an independent existence or can be separated from its substance. Rather, if anything it is the thing which walks or sits or is well that is existent.The reason why these things are more truly existent is because their subject is something definite; i.e. the substance and the individual, which is clearly implied in a designation of this kind, since apart from it we cannot speak of "the good" or "sitting." Clearly then it is by reason of the substance that each of the things referred to exists.Hence that which is primarily, not in a qualified sense but absolutely, will be substance. Now "primary" has several meanings; but nevertheless substance is primary in all senses, both in definition and in knowledge and in time. For none of the other categories can exist separately, but substance alone.” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, book 7, ch. 1)
An accident does not have its own proper quiddity without reference to substance. If it did, many absurd consequences would follow, such as (1) making accidents in effect altogether the same as substances, (2) making being predicated to the same degree of both substance and accident, something rejected both by Thomists and Scotists.
This definition of accidents was virtually standard and uniform prior to the medieval period. Though the early fathers were not as involved in the study of Aristotelianism, Augustine nonetheless recognized this truth when he said "R. But do you not concede that if the subject do not abide, that which is in the subject cannot inseparably abide? A. This also I see necessary: for, the subject remaining, that which is in the subject may possibly not remain, as any one with a little thought can perceive. Since the color of this body of mine may, by reason of health or age, suffer change, though the body has not yet perished. And this is not equally true of all things, but of those whose coexistence with the subject is not necessary to the existence of the subject. For it is not necessary that this wall, in order to be a wall, should be of this color, which we see in it; for even if, by some chance, it should become black or white, or should undergo some other change of color, it would nevertheless remain a wall and be so called. But if fire were without heat, it will not even be fire; nor can we talk of snow except as being white. But as to your question, who would grant, or to whom could it appear possible, that that which is in the subject should remain, while the subject perished? For it is monstrous and most utterly foreign to the truth that what would not be unless it were in the subject, could be even when the subject itself was no more." (Augustine, Soliloquies, book II, chs. 22-23)
Thomas Aquinas’ Solutions
When summarizing the medieval approach which attempted to salvage transubstantiation from this Aristotelian knot, Dr. Cross wrote “The overall narrative is one of increasing hypostatization: accidents become progressively more real, and in effect more like substances. It seems to me that this is an inevitable effect of pressure from this particular theological doctrine: it is hard to see how the doctrine might be coherent—at least if spelled out in terms of substances and accidents—without some such hypostatization.” (Richard Cross, “Inherence and the Eucharist in Medieval Theology,” in The Metaphysics and Theology of the Eucharist: A Historical-Analytical Survey of the Problems of the Sacrament, ed. Gyula Kilma [Springer, 2023], pg. 266)
With regard to the notion of esse with respect to accidents, Aquinas’ position is that esse is only ascribed to accidents insofar as they subsist in another, as the thing by which (quo) something is, e.g. the whiteness by which Socrates is white. Therefore, esse most properly belongs to a substance first and foremost (Quodlibet IX, q. 2, art. 2). This sets the stage for the difficulty of transubstantiation: if an accident F only possesses esse insofar as it is the thing by which a substance X is F, then what does this mean for the possibility of accidents which are separated from their substances?
In Question 77 of Tertia Pars, Aquinas appeals to the essence-existence distinction in order to resolve the difficulty about the definition of accidents (the objection he is replying to is similar to what our Reformed divines have raised, namely that God cannot separate a thing from its essential definition):
“Since being is not a genus, it follows that whatever esse is it cannot the be essence either of a substance or of an accident. So, the definition of ‘substance’ is not ‘a per se being without a subject’; neither is the definition of ‘accident’, ‘a being in a subject’. Rather, it belongs to the quiddity or essence of substance to have esse not in a subject, and it belongs to the quiddity or essence of an accident to have esse in a subject. And in this sacrament, it is not given to accidents that they are without a subject by the power of their own essence, but [they are so] by the sustaining divine power. And for this reason, they do not cease to be accidents, because the definition of ‘accident’ is not separated from them; neither does the definition of ‘substance’ pertain to them.” (Aquinas, Summa Theologica III, q. 77, art. 1 ad 2)
A good case has been made in the present scholarship that Aquinas is drawing on Avicenna here (David Twetten and Nathaniel Taylor, “Do Accidents Contain Inhering in a Substance in Their Definition? Aquinas vs. the Arts Masters and the Background in Avicenna,” in The Metaphysics and Theology of the Eucharist: A Historical-Analytical Survey of the Problems of the Sacrament, ed. Gyula Kilma [Springer, 2023], pgs. 153-192). However, Aquinas’ response completely misunderstands the Reformed objection, albeit unintentionally since Protestant scholastics may fairly formulate an objection to which Thomas responds in different terminology than what he himself lays down before his replies.
As the eminent Reformed logician Arnoldus Senguerdius (1610-1667) points out, the question is not about an accident existing in potentiality or in abstraction, but as the accident actually exists in reality. All sides grant that the essence of an accident can be prescinded from its actual existence. Rather, what we are asking is whether it is possible for an actually existing accident not to inhere? This is precisely what we deny. Similarly, is there a substance that can be given that does not exist in itself, insofar as by “perseity” here we mean that manner of existing with substances which is directly opposed to the inherence of accidents?
Aquinas replies to the problem of the individuation of Eucharistic accidents as follows: “These accidents acquired individual esse in the substance of the bread and wine. When these are converted into the body and blood of Christ, these accidents remain (by divine power) in the individuated esse which they had previously. So, they are singular and perceptible.”
Cross’ Reply: “Here we get closer to the nub of the problem. The esse ‘which they had previously’ was that in virtue of which an accident was itself that in virtue of which a substance was such-and-such. But when separated, accidents are no longer that in virtue of which a substance is such-and-such. Indeed, they seem to be themselves independent existents. And, irrespective of the continuity of esse, this seems to be some kind of category mistake, shifting from being an id quo [that by which] to being an id quod [that which]. And this takes us to the heart of the difficulty.”
Aquinas does indeed state that the Eucharistic accidents move from being a “that by which” to being a “that which” in his reply to objection 4:
These accidents had no being of their own nor other accidents, so long as the substance of the bread and wine remained; but their subjects had "such" being through them, just as snow is "white" through whiteness. But after the consecration the accidents which remain have being; hence they are compounded of existence and essence, as was said of the angels, in I:50:2 ad 3; and besides they have composition of quantitative parts.
The same thing is repeated in the later Thomistic tradition, specifically in reference to the function of the dimensive quantity:
In my opinion, this makes Aquinas even more vulnerable to the Reformed objection that transubstantiation would involve God making an accident to be a substance, i.e. an accident is at the same time both an accident and a non-accident. Obviously, this is a contradiction and therefore false.
Recall that for Aquinas, there is one type of esse possessed by both substances and accidents, albeit through different ways/modes.
Giles of Rome
Another response given by some of the Papists is that God can supply the role of producing any effect that a secondary cause can without the mediation of that secondary cause. Thus, God by His power “sustains” these Eucharistic accidents after the consecration. We find a similar approach in Giles of Rome:
“Since therefore, if nothing prevents it, causing and conserving things in esse is reduced to the genus of efficient cause (according to which category God is the cause of things)—since an accident cannot be without a subject unless the subject is the cause of the accident insofar as the accident originates from the principles of the subject, and is kept in existence by the subject—[it follows that] God will be able to conserve [the accident] without a subject, since in this category of cause whatever God can do with the mediation of a secondary cause he can do without its mediation.” (Giles of Rome, Th. de Corp. Christi, th. 37)
In order for this approach to achieve its desired result, there must be some sort of relation of efficient causality between a substance and its accident(s). Giles believes that the esse of an accident is one and the same as that of the substance in which it inheres. “In one thing, one existence and one esse suffices for the existence of all that is in a thing, and that exist through [the one existence]. The substance of a creature exists because it is perfected by esse; the accidents exist because they are received in the existent. (Qu. de esse et essentia, q. 10). As Dr. Cross rightly notes, this actually makes the issue more difficult, since it would follow from this that a separated accident must have its own esse. This is explicitly conceded by Giles: “Just as, therefore, if whiteness should be separated from the subject, it could not exist unless another esse were communicated to it (unless perhaps it were separated along with the esse that it had in the subject, prior to separation), since a created essence cannot exist without any esse, so when it existed in a subject it existed by the [esse] that was in the existent, and existed through the esse of the subject.” (Quodlibet II, q. 3). Scotus explicitly rejects Giles’ solution here, arguing that no mechanism can be posited by which the accident could gain a new esse:
“If an accident, when separated, has new esse, it is necessary to posit in it some transmutation from the lack of such esse to this esse. But this is impossible. Proof, because it cannot be posited what this mutation is: for it is not generation (since an accident is not the subject of generation); neither is it increase or alteration (since neither quantity nor quality is acquired through that mutation, since then either quality would be the subject of increase or alteration, and of the thing whose esse is acquired, or it would be quantity (or quality); and thus we could argue ad infinitum about.” (Ordinatio IV, dist. 12, q. 1)
It does not seem to make sense how an efficiently caused esse could survive in the accidents after the cessation of the substance, given that this caused esse belongs to the substance. Furthermore, in order for God to “conserve” the accidents, one must remember that the bread and wine are material causes, and not efficient causes of their accidents. All would agree that God is not the subject of accidents, and therefore it is difficult to see how God performs this role.
Duns Scotus
Scotus denies that an accident could share in the esse of its substance, and therefore thinks that they have a distinct individuation (remember that for Scotus, haecceity is what individuates, not matter designated by quantity): “Just as anything which is outside both its cause and the intellect has proper entity, so it has proper esse. If therefore an accident has proper essential entity outside its subject and the intellect, it also has proper esse. Thus, it does not formally exist by the esse of the subject.” (Scotus, Ordinatio, IV, d. 12, q. 1, n. 17)
Anyone who is familiar with Scotus’ corpus knows that dependence relations constitute a large part of how he understands the substance-accident relationship (incidentally, Scotus also uses this as an analogy for the hypostatic dependence of the human nature of Christ in the Incarnation). “That which is denominated by the per se significate of an accident, and is something absolute, can actually be and not be in a subject; but it is necessarily aptitudinally in [the subject]’ (ibid.) The meaning here is that the per se significate of an accident is the accident itself, while the per accidens significate would be the substance possessing the accident.
This also leads us into how Scotus utilizes the notion of aptitudinal inherence (although he would typically prefer to use the term “dependence” instead). For him, an accident can be called absolute in the sense that they do not require a terminus for their existence:
“An absolute, as absolute, requires neither an end term nor something terminating it, because then it would not be absolute. Therefore, if it requires a subject, it is necessary that, on account of this, there is some other dependence essential to [the absolute]. But no dependence to something that is not of its essence is simply necessary for some absolute, other than to the unqualifiedly first extrinsic cause, namely, to God.” (Ordinatio IV, dist. 12, q. 1)
In other words, the ultimate dependence relation for any created accident is simply its final grounding God Himself, who is the First Cause of creatures. For Scotus, this is the only dependence relation that is absolutely necessary for created beings. Therefore, it is not absolutely necessary for an accident to depend on a subject. This is similar to what we have already seen in the Thomistic tradition, but it encounters the same problems, which I have touched on briefly and will describe further down below.
The Admissions of Papists
There is a good reason that Voetius admonished us that when Francisco Suarez is right, there is no one better! Suarez explicitly concedes that the idea of separate accidents cannot be demonstrated on purely metaphysical grounds, which serves to confirm my overall thesis that the distinction between aptitudinal and actual inherence, as well as the other arguments used to support it, come from theologians and defenders of Rome properly, and most certainly not from logicians and philosophers.
The Problem of Generation and Corruption
Long before Aquinas, some medieval doctors began to discuss the question of separated accidents. One problem that arose was what to think concerning cases in which the post-consecration bread was eaten by mice or damaged in some other way. A most interesting answer is given by Lothar of Segni, who would later be Pope Innocent III:
What about the fact that the form of bread seems to remain, given that the elements can still give physical nutrition to the recipients? Innocent’s view is that the form of bread is still there, and he also confesses that the natural properties seem to remain: “Not only accidental, but even natural properties seem to remain — the bread-quality that by nourishing drives away hunger, and the wine-quality that by quenching extinguishes thirst. Let us say, therefore, that the form of the bread is broken and crushed, but it is Christ who is received and eaten.” (De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, book IV, ch. 9; in PL 217:862C). This notion is later rejected by Papists in favor of dimensive quantity being the explanatory factor for generation and corruption.
The Critique of Dietrich of Freiberg
Dietrich lays down two modes of per se predication that can be applied to the notion of an accident:
The predicate is a constituent of the subject’s essence; e.g., lines being predicated of a triangle. These predicates are inseparable from the thing that they define. Understood by way of this mode, an accident is defined as the disposition of a substance, with the latter concept being presupposed and included in the former.
The predicate is identifying the subject in some way, but the subject is in turn an essential property or attribute of something else. The predicate serves to pick out the kind of thing of which it is a property. Under this second mode of per se predication, actual inherence is understood as a necessary property of an accident, just as being odd or even is a necessary property of numbers.
Dietrich also criticizes Aquinas as misinterpreting the passage from the Liber de Causis which speaks of how the Primary Cause (God) can perform an effect immediately without the secondary cause. To be a bit more specific, Dietrich’s criticism is that the context of the Liber de Causis involves a discussion of causes within the same genus, namely formal causality. This doesn’t apply to the case of transubstantiation, where the material causality by the bread and wine of the accidents cannot be replaced by God within that same order of being, since God cannot be the subject of accidents. A similar point against Aquinas is also found in John of Paris (1255-1306), which Vijgen describes in his monograph on the subject.
Reformed Scholastic Responses to the Separation of Accidents
Objection
Response: This argument from Mr. Wagner is somewhat unique amongst the Thomist authors I have encountered. The exact opposite thing is found in earlier and more authoritative sources, namely that aptitudinal inherence should not be called a relation:
“The opinion of Thomists is that aptitudinal inherence is of the essence of accidents and that it is not a relation
The example Wagner gives of a relation continuing to exist despite the cessation of the terminus (a son and his deceased father) conflates the two categories which Cajetan explicitly makes separate, namely being “referential” (something applicable all nine genera of accidents) and being a “relation” in the proper sense involving a terminus. Sure, Cajetan speaks of relation as “referential”, but the point is that the analogy provided fails to serve the Roman cause. If we concede that the relation of filiation still exists after a father dies, it does not follow from this that accidents qua accidents can exist without a subject, which is not for them a terminus-to-which.
The Protestant answer to this is similarly phrased by Johann Gerhard, the renowned Lutheran divine: “One thing is the relative relation, another the absolute. The absolute is that which is directed to the subject and to dependence, that is, from the accident to the subject; the relative relation is directed to the opposite term. Indeed, there is no dependence, but opposition of correlatives. The relation refers to the term, not to the subject; the relation generates the contrariety of correlatives. However, inherence is a relation of the subject and the accident that indicates rather dependence and conjunction than dissension and separation.” (Loci Theologici, vol. 5, ch. 12)
The Reformed argument is that transubstantiation entails a contradiction by speaking of accidents which exist by themselves, since this is contrary to the nature of an accident; Ergo, the papists’ view would entail that God can make quantity to be both an accident(s) and a non-accident(s) at the same time. For the first part, Rome has indeed been willing to go so far as to say that the accidents exist by themselves: “After the consecration however, the accident is without a subject, for it exists per se, because the substance passes away, while the accidents remain.” (Pope Innocent III, De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, book IV, ch. 9; in PL 217:862). This also appears within Aquinas’ response to the “mice problem”, which raises the issue of how a thing lacking matter (i.e., the post-consecrated elements) could be corrupted or damaged? Thomas responds that God bestows on the dimensive quantity a mode of existence akin to a substance:
“However, since it does not seem reasonable to say that anything takes place miraculously in this sacrament, except in virtue of the consecration itself, which does not imply either creation or return of matter, it seems better to say that in the actual consecration it is miraculously bestowed on the dimensive quantity of the bread and wine to be the subject of subsequent forms. Now this is proper to matter; and therefore as a consequence everything which goes with matter is bestowed on dimensive quantity; and therefore everything which could be generated from the matter of bread or wine, if it were present, can be generated from the aforesaid dimensive quantity of the bread or wine, not, indeed, by a new miracle, but by virtue of the miracle which has already taken place…The dimensive quantity of the bread and wine retains its own nature, and receives miraculously the power and property of substance; and therefore it can pass to both, that is, into substance and dimension.” (Summa Theologica III, Q. 77, art. 5, sed contra & ad. 3)
“Therefore, it would seem better to say that just as the substance of the bread is miraculously changed into Christ’s body in the consecration, so by a miracle the accidents are made to subsist, which is proper to a substance. Consequently, they produce all the effects and undergo all the changes, which the substance would produce or undergo, if it were present. Therefore, without any further miracle they can inebriate, nourish, be reduced to ashes or dust, in the same way and order as though the substance of bread and wine were present.” (Summa Contra Gentiles, IV.66)
“This is the opinion followed by the holy Thomas [Aquinas] in this question, saying that to the dimensions there has been given the property of substance, its act, power, and efficacy.” (Cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Commentaria in Summam Theologicam: Tertia Pars, Q. 77, art. 1; as found in Opera omnia, iussu impensaque Leonis XIII. P.M. edita [Rome, 1906], 12:194)
“In such a mathematical consideration, dimensive quantity takes on the mode of substance (‘accipit modum substantiae’). Therefore, in the case of actually existing dimensions without a substance, the senses observe both quantity and something quantified, i.e. dimensions in the mode of substance.” (Jörgen Vijgen, The Status of Eucharistic Accidents “sine subiecto”: An Historical Survey up to Thomas Aquinas and Selected Reactions [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013], pg. 187)
From this one can see how Aquinas has made himself more vulnerable to the objection of the Reformed: namely, that transubstantiation irrationally entails God making accidents into substances while still being accidents. If dimensive quantity has the power and property of a substance (and can therefore generate a substance, as Thomas says here), and it is the subject of subsequent forms, can undergo generation and corruption, then what category of being is this beginning to sound more and more like? What necessary condition for being a substance has it not fulfilled? Thomism itself regards quantity as the “primary” accident, and the one which is the least like the other categories of accidents and most similar to the matter-form composite, i.e. substance, the thing which is able to subjectivize different properties and forms (Aristotle, Categories, ch. 5, 4a10).
One can also see how accidents are made into “quasi-substances” when the medievals attempt to explain how the consecrated elements are still able to possess nutritional value. “To the other it must be said that here there are different responses, and I prejudice none: for some say that in the passing-over of those species into another, the first substance of those species returns. But others say that just as the species are there without a subject, as though in the act of a substance, so also in nourishing they have the act of a substance. And either of the two may be said quite fittingly.” (Albert the Great, Commentary on the Sentences, d. XII, a. 16, ad. 5). This is supplemented by Aquinas’ statement that the Eucharistic accidents have the same type of esse subsistens which they had prior to the consecration, the difference being that the latter is sustained by God. “… just as in the qualities which remain in the sacrament there remains an action corresponding to the action of the substance previously existing, so also the subsistent being which is fitting to the dimensions that remain is corresponding to that being which previously the substance of the bread had.” (Commentary on the Sentences IV, dist. 12, q. 1, art. 1, qc. 3; see also Vijgen’s summary in The Status of Eucharistic accidents “sine subiecto”, pg. 190)
An important side note on the primary of quantity for Thomas is that it would seemingly result in absurd predications being true, such as saying that a quantity is white, hot, cold, etc. Obviously, no one of sound mind would ever concede the truth of such propositions. This functions as a reductio ad absurdum argument against Aquinas’ idea of dimensive quantity serving as a quasi-subject for the accidents of bread and wine. If the things ascribed by Thomism to dimensive quantity are indeed true, and it functions with the power of substance, how would it not entail such statements describing how quantity exists in relation to the accidents it supposedly sustains?
Since a real generation requires an underlying matter, how does Aquinas answer this? He proposes two solutions, the first of which we saw earlier from Pope Innocent III, namely that the body and blood of Christ are substantially reversed again into that of bread and wine in their proper substances. Given that Thomas rejects this solution, he proposes something different. “...and then, either consequently, matter itself will also be introduced on account of the natural concomitance of form with matter—just as, on account of the natural concomitance of the soul of Christ with the body, the soul was under the sacrament; and this, in a certain way, comes back to the first statement, namely, that matter is made anew. Or else, by divine power, to the dimension itself will be given the nature of matter, on account of its nearness to it, so that what is generated may be composed of matter and form.” (Commentary on the Sentences IV, dist. 12, q. 1, art. 2, qc. 4). This is precisely the same problematic language we have already encountered. What here prevents matter from actually being present as the thing from which generation and corruption take place?
In summary, the way I wish to frame the Reformed objection is a bit unique: what are the necessary conditions for a being to be a substance? If quantity exists per se and is the subject of other accidents, what makes it not a substance? If one wishes to bite the bullet and concede an affirmative answer to the second question, transubstantiation is defeated, since we now have dimensive quantity which is both an accident and a substance, which is contradictory. Therefore, Romanists will desire to deny that the dimensive quantity is a substance. The question is whether they can do so consistently. With regard to these “necessary conditions” for substance, we can enumerate three: (1) not existing in another, (2) existing per se, and (3) being the supporting subject of accidents, the last of these being the formal constituent of substance. (Henri Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy [St. Dunstan’s University, 1950], pgs. 366-67). Based on a plethora of texts from the Thomist tradition, the dimensive quantity of the Eucharist after consecration meets each three of these criteria.
My main suspicion that the distinction between aptitudinal and actual inherence was devised for the sake of transubstantiation, and not purely on metaphysical grounds, is confirmed in the fact that outside of talking about the Eucharist, the scholastics define accidents precisely in this more strict Aristotelian manner. For example, when Aquinas discusses the Trinitarian relations:
“we must consider that in each of the nine genera of accidents there are two points for remark. One is the nature belonging to each one of them considered as an accident; which commonly applies to each of them as inherent in a subject, for the essence of an accident is to inhere. The other point of remark is the proper nature of each one of these genera. In the genera, apart from that of "relation," as in quantity and quality, even the true idea of the genus itself is derived from a respect to the subject; for quantity is called the measure of substance, and quality is the disposition of substance. But the true idea of relation is not taken from its respect to that in which it is, but from its respect to something outside.” (Summa Theologica, Part 1, Q. 28, art. 2)
Or when defending Aristotle’s refutation of Parmenides:
“If, however, it is said that being is accident only and not substance, this is altogether impossible, since accident can in no way be without substance. For every accident is said of substance as of its subject, and the very definition of accident involves this.” (Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, book I, ch. 3, n. 21)
This same observation was also noted in some of the scholarship done throughout the past few decades on Aquinas’ metaphysics of the Eucharist:
“It is not surprising that in his philosophical works Aquinas does not make any reference to God’s capacity to cause accidents directly…. After all, God’s causing non-inherent accidents is a miracle, i.e., an infringement of the natural course of events, and miracles concern the theologian but not the philosopher. What is surprising is that in Aquinas’s philosophical works we do not find any mention of the logical possibility for an accident to exist without inhering in a substance. Only when speaking as a theologian does Aquinas introduce his reformulation of the account of what an accident is.” (Giovanni Pino, “Substance, Accident, and Inherence: Scotus and the Paris debate on the metaphysics of the Eucharist”, in O. Boulnois et al. (eds.), Duns Scot à Paris 1302–2002: Actes du colloque de Paris 2–4 septembre 2002 [Brepols], pg. 282)
It seems here that we have a discontinuity between Aquinas as a philosopher and metaphysician who seeks to draw out the true meaning of Aristotle, and Aquinas as a theologian who defends the medieval dogmas of Rome.
When it comes to the concept of God suspending the natural effects of creatures, and which at first sight appear to involve a contradiction (as in the case of substance and accidents), the Thomists typically argue by analogy that it is possible for such a miracle to take place, by appealing to the Incarnation. For example, one can see this argument presented by the Baroque scholastics of Salamanca:
“It is equally proportionate to an accident to be in a subject as it is to a complete substance not to be in another. But by divine power it can be brought about that a complete substance be in another, as is clear in the mystery of the Incarnation, where the humanity, which is a complete nature, exists in the Word. Therefore by divine power it can similarly be brought about that an accident not be in another; and thus it happens in this mystery.” (Collegium Salmanticenses, Cursus theologicus Summam Theologicam angelici doctoris D. Thomae complectens, tract. 23, disp. 8, Q.2 [Paris: J. Albanel, 1870], 18:506; emphasis mine)
In my estimation, this parallel is inadequate for a few reasons: (1) For a strict Thomist, it is very strange to claim that there is an “equal proportion” between the substance-accident relationship and the manner in which substances exist in themselves. Traditionally, it was Scotus who thought of the Incarnation in terms of a “substance-accident” model, both of which involve a relation of dependence (see Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus [Oxford University Press, 2002]). (2) In the hypostatic union, the human nature does not exist utterly without subsistence (as the Eucharistic accidents do in transubstantiation), but it exists ἐνυπόστατος in the divine person of the Logos, who communicates His subsistence to that assumed nature. What exactly constitutes this communication of subsistence was a matter of debate between Thomists and Scotists, as well as between the Lutherans and the Reformed during the Post-Reformation era (see Richard Cross, Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century [Oxford University Press, 2023]). (3). It seems that the doctors of Salamanca conflate subsistence, which renders an individuated nature incommunicable to any other terminus, with the formal nature of substance and its existence per se. We may first see this in how subsistence is to be defined:
“[Subsistence] adds to nature a terminus or substantial formality, which excludes the mode of inherence and the mode of communicable part, and thus renders the nature terminated and incommunicable to any further terminus, just as a point terminates a line by a positive addition and termination." (John of St. Thomas, Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus: Philosophia Naturalis, p. 1, q. 7, a. 1)
"[Subsistence] completes [the nature] and renders it subsistent per se through the perseity of independence from a sustainer....it constitutes the suppositum, as incommunicable to another." (Jean Baptiste Gonet, Clypeus Theologiae Thomisticae, tr. 11, disp. 8, a. 3, §2)
The way in which accidents depend on a substance is not identical or “equally proportionate” to the way subsistence works with a substance. Subsistence renders a nature incommunicable, while accidents do no such thing—but rather give accidental being to a substance which is already complete in its own order of being. The whiteness makes a thing white, and the quantity makes the substance divisible. (4) Subsistence pertains to the definition of human personhood, and to the human nature as such. Whereas being inesse pertains to the very essence and formal ratio of an accident (which is conceded by our opponents, albeit in the sense of an aptitude to inhere). This is why it is not inconsistent for there to be a human nature which lacks its own proper subsistence, and is instead hypostatically united to the subsistence of a divine person. The same thing, however, cannot be said of accidents. (5) The accidents being inesse is one of inherence, which cannot be said for the human nature’s subsistence in the Word, otherwise this would imply passive potency in God. (6) The Salmanticenses elsewhere teach in this same disputation that the Eucharistic accidents do not need any new positive mode to exist per se after the consecration ((Collegium Salmanticenses, Cursus theologicus Summam Theologicam angelici doctoris D. Thomae complectens, 18:521). In contrast, the human nature of Christ does subsist in a subject, namely the divine person of the Word, and depends on it, albeit without informing it.
The Appeal to Divine Conservation
Another response, more common within the Thomistic literature, is to point out that the dependence that an accident has on its substance is lesser than the dependence that the accident, as a created being, has upon God, who is the First Cause of all beings. Any effect which can be accomplished by God through the mediation of a secondary cause can also be accomplished without such a secondary cause, since it depends ultimately on God. This is why God can cause a Virgin to give birth without male semen, for example. Such is the phrasing of this reply in Aquinas:
“This can be done by Divine power: for since an effect depends more upon the first cause than on the second, God Who is the first cause both of substance and accident, can by His unlimited power preserve an accident in existence when the substance is withdrawn whereby it was preserved in existence as by its proper cause, just as without natural causes He can produce other effects of natural causes, even as He formed a human body in the Virgin's womb, ‘without the seed of man.’” (ST III, Q. 77, Art. 1, sed contra)
Where it gets more interesting, however, is when one asks about the nature of this divine conservation of the Eucharistic accidents. Should it be considered a miracle in the proper sense, and therefore distinct from the miracle of transubstantiation itself? Aquinas sees the difficulty in this view and similar views which try to account for the generation and corruption of the species of bread and wine (such as when a mouse comes into contact with the consecrated host, or the wine spills on the ground). He does not want to multiply miracles needlessly, and therefore the Thomist tradition is much more inclined to posit that this conservation of accidents takes place in an extrinsic and denominative sense, and therefore no new miracle is needed.
However, later Thomists tended to go a different route: they would indeed admit that a new and distinct divine action is needed for the Eucharistic accidents on the part of God Himself (Collegium Salmanticenses, Cursus theologicus Summam Theologicam angelici doctoris D. Thomae complectens, 18:510).
Siger of Brabant (1240-1284), a leading Averroist of the medieval periods, was a significant figure besides Deitrich to condemn the idea of accidents existing sine subjecto. When it came to the argument of the primary cause producing the effects of the secondary cause immediately, Siger criticized this approach, noting that two further elements were required in order for such a thing to occur: 1st, the secondary cause receives its principle of operation from the primary cause; 2nd, in the event that a primary cause immediately produces the event (such as God conserving the Eucharistic accidents), the principle of operating must exist in the primary cause in the same mode in which it exists in the secondary cause (Jörgen Vijgen, The Status of Eucharistic Accidents “sine subiecto”: An Historical Survey up to Thomas Aquinas and Selected Reactions [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013], pg. 285)
The appeal to an extrinsic divine virtus which maintains these separated accidents is ad hoc. Why not similarly ask whether God by His power could create a man that is not a rational animal? As Voetius wrote, "It is as if someone said that the quiddity and definition of man consist in being rational, and that, by the absolute power of God, rationality could be lacking in a man who walks here, not because by his own essence he is a man without rationality and intellect, but because he is sustained by divine virtue." Can a relation exist without its proper foundation? Can a modal entity exist without an absolute being to which it adheres? Can a formal effect be preserved by God without a formal cause? Can a union exist outside of the extremes of the union by divine power? The answer to each of these questions is negative, but in order to answer in the affirmative, one must completely redefine the most basic concepts of logic and metaphysics. This is exactly what the Papists fall into!
No comments:
Post a Comment