• Conversation started Monday
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  2/24, 10:01pm

  Joseph Baxley
  

  
  

  Hey,
  
  I have been reading "The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages" and this afternoon it gave me an interesting question that I wondered if any of you had thought about. I'm asking y'all because you're the most thoughtful Catholics on my friends list and I figured you might be as intrigued by the question as I am. I may bring it up to some people who are not on Facebook as well.
  
  When discussing how theologians had used Aristotelian Philosophy to explain questions in theology, one of the examples that Dr. Edward Grant gave was the theology surrounding the Eucharist. They used Aristotle to explain the transformation of the Eucharist thusly: When the Eucharist is consecrated, the substance of the bread is removed and replaced with the substance of Christ. In this way he is said to be substantially present. The accidents, that is the feel, taste, and form of the bread remain. The accidents however do not inhere to the substance of Christ. In fact, they inhere to nothing, which was a nonsensical statement in Aristotle's physics. Here, they said, was the miracle of God's work.
  
  That is now pretty much the textbook explanation for how Christ is made present in the Eucharist. The difficulty that I see is that medieval physics and its definitions of substances and accidents has been shown to be a less than adequate model for the workings of the universe. Thus, would the way in which we explain the mystery of the Eucharist itself need rework? Perhaps I am misreading how the Church has interpreted substances and accidents and they are a different concept from the one used in the physics of old? I was wondering if anyone in the last few hundred years had tried to work out a way to make sense of the real, physical presence of Christ that was not totally dependent on concepts from medieval/ancient physics, but equally as powerful as the traditional explanation. In your opinion, does this need to be done? If nobody that we know of has, are there any ways in which we could start?
  I hope this message finds you well.
  
  Sincerely,
  Joseph