Non-local real presence of Christ

Aquinas’s account of location for material substance is as follows. Ordinary material substances have a special accident—one more fundamental than all other matter-related accidents—he calls “dimensive quantity”, but which I will just call “dimensions”. This accident makes the object have a specific shape and size. The substance is then in a place provided that its dimensions are “commensurate with” that place—namely, provided that the dimensions are fitted into the place.

We can now say that a substance x is present in a place z in virtue of the following two presentness facts:

1. x is present in its dimensions D

2. the dimensions D are present in place z.

Furthermore, in the ordinary case, we can have an account of what “present” means in (a) and (b). A substance’s being present in dimensions D is just the substance’s having the dimensions D as an accident. And the dimensions being present in a place z is just their being commensurate with z. (This last one would bear more analysis, but that’s not my interest here.) When we have (a) and (b) with “present” grounded in this way—by having and commensuration respectively—we have what St Thomas call “local presence” or what we might call “ordinary physical location”.

Now, in the Eucharist the following happens according to Thomas. The substance of the bread turns into the body of Christ. The accidents of the bread miraculously remain in existence, but are no longer the accidents of any existing substance (whether bread or Christ). In particular, the dimensions D of the bread remain (and are a subject for the other accidents). And Christ’s body is present on the altar (say) because of the following two presentness facts:

3. Christ’s body is present in the dimensions D which are formerly of the bread

4. the dimensions D are present on the altar.

The ground of (d) just like that of an ordinary case of (b): the dimensions are commensurate with the place. But since Aquinas insists that Christ does not take on the accidents of the bread, the ground of (c) must be different from the ground of the ordinary case of (a): Christ does not have D. (In particular, Christ is not round and thin when transsubstantiation happens in a western Catholic Church.) Instead, Thomas says about (c) that Christ is “substantially” in the “foreign” dimensions D, but is not a subject of these dimensions, i.e., does not have them. As a result, we have the same structure of presence as in the ordinary case—it is mediated by dimensions—but because the grounds of the substance’s presence in the dimensions are different, this is not ordinary physical location any more.

In my 2008 paper, I gave up on figuring out what is meant by “substantial presence”, and indeed suggested that the problem is insoluble, and we should go for a different solution, one on which Christ has ordinary physical location on the altar. That solution may well be right, but I want to try out a more Thomistic solution—though the full story does not fit with everything Thomas says.

Consider the relationship between Seabiscuit and his accident of swiftness. This relationship has two features which make for interdependence:

1. Seabiscuit’s swiftness ontologically depends on Seabiscuit, i.e., Seabiscuit ontologicallt sustains his swiftness

2. Seabiscuit is qualified by his swiftness.

In all ordinary cases, the relations of ontologically sustaining and being qualified by between a substance and an accident are coextensive. Seabiscuit sustains all his accidents and they all qualify him, and similarly for all substances. To have an accident is then for the accident to ontologically depend on one and for one to be qualified by it.

Expanded out this way, we have a richer story as to what grounds an ordinary substance being present in its dimensions: the substance ontologically sustains the dimensions and is qualified by them.

Now, Thomas’s denial that Christ is “subject to” the dimensions of the bread means one aspect of the ordinary relationship between a substance and its accident is absent here—Christ is not qualified by the dimensions. However, that still leaves the possibility that the other aspect of the relationship is present. In other words, we can suppose that miraculously Christ’s body ontologically sustains “foreign” accidents that this body is not qualified by. This ontological sustenance relationship makes Christ’s body be substantially in the accidents, including in the dimensions.

Thus, the expanded account is:

1. Christ’s body is present in the dimensions D formerly of the bread by ontologically sustaining these dimensions in the way that a substance sustains its accidents but without D qualifying Christ’s body and hence without D becoming its accident.

2. The dimensions D are commensurate with a place, just as in ordinary physical location.

The presence in (1) is a special case of a type of presence that Thomas recognizes in his account of divine omnipresence. Thomas says that God is present to all things “by his essence”, namely by directly being their cause. This causation is, of course, divine sustenance. Thus, Christ’s body’s being “substantially” in the dimensions by sustaining them ontologically is like God’s being “by essence” present to all things by sustaining them. This is a recognized and metaphysically serious mode of presence, and hence it plausibly counts as a real presence.

At this point, it may seem that I have solved the problem of what Aquinas means by the substantial presence of Christ’s body in the dimensions of (the former) bread. But there is one hitch. I think Aquinas disagrees with my account. When Aquinas discusses how the accidents of bread and wine can remain without their substances, his answer is not that the body of Christ sustains them, but that God sustains them, because anything that can be done by creaturely causes can be done by God. St Thomas’s phrasing very much sounds like he thinks the sustenance of the accidents is done directly by the power of God.

The account I am offering requires that God miraculously bestow on Christ’s body the power to sustain accidents foreign to it (without being qualified by them). I don’t see any good reason to think this can’t happen. We thus have an extension of Thomas’s account, but it is one that I think is compatible with other aspects of his metaphysics and theology.

I am still not completely convinced that I should abandon my account on which Christ’s body is present in the Eucharist by ordinary physical location. My account clearly makes Christ’s body by really present. The modified Thomistic account may do that, but it may not.

I want to end with a consideration in favor of the Thomistic view that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is not ordinary physical location. Many Protestants think that Christ’s body is “spiritually present”, and historically the Reformed wing of the Protestant tradition has taken spiritual presence quite seriously—not just as symbol—while denying ordinary physical presence (I am grateful to one of my graduate students for pointing this out). An account of Christ’s real presence that makes Christ not be ordinary physically present thus has an advantage: it fits with the intuitions not only of many Catholic thinkers but also of many non-Catholic ones. Perhaps the modified Thomistic account just is what spiritual presence is, and hence we have a way of moving Catholics and some Protestants closer together through St Thomas.