Re: Modern Physics and Transubstantiation

Joseph,

I was listening to Catholic Radio this morning, and there was an interview of Fr. Michael Kirkland, an  Orthodox Archpriest and author of the website one-catholic-church.com. He talked about how the Western and Eastern churches differ in their approaches to the mystery of the True Presence. The primary point he was trying to make about this was that in the Eastern churches, they actually do not frequently refer to the consecration of the Eucharist with the term "Transubstantiation," in part because they want to emphasize the fact that it is a mystery. As I understood, he was suggesting that by using a term such as "transubstantiation," there is a danger that one might reduce the mystery to something other than a mystery - namely, something that is entirely comprehensible if one analyzes it in the proper fashion. The interviewer and the Fr. Kirkland agreed that the East and the West could benefit from a deeper consideration of each other's approaches to the matter.

To bring my focus back to your original questions, I revisited your original post. My current thoughts - which by no means do I communicate with the intent of having any sort of finality - on these questions are:

"Thus, would the way in which we explain the mystery of the Eucharist itself need rework?"

My opinion is that the explanation of the mystery doesn't need to be reworked, strictly speaking, but I suspect this is obvious. I do, however, think that it may be intellectually and spiritually rewarding for people to continue to give the question consideration.

"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?"

This is a possibility, but I would guess that the current ideas used closely resemble the ancient ones. I would think that if they changed the ideas employed, that they would also change the language.

"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?"

I am not aware of anyone who has done so. As with the response to your first question above, I don't think such a new explanation needs to be offered. However, it could be an endeavor that is rewarding (possibly even very rewarding) in ways that we can't accurately foresee. (Of course, it may instead be an endeavor that is a complete waste of one's time. :)

"If nobody that we know of has, are there any ways in which we could start?"

I think that doing so would first call for an in-depth study and thorough understanding of both the line of reasoning underlying the logic of Transubstantiation (preferably from a primary or secondary source), the theories of physics employed (which may differ in subtle but important ways from pure Aristotelian physics, I don't know), and how these theories differ from recent theories in physics.

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I revisited the passage you referenced in your original post from the book The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages. Something about it caught my attention. It says:

"In fact, they [the accidents of the host] inhere to nothing, which was a nonsensical statement in Aristotle's physics."

I had to look up the word "inhere," which dictionary.com defines as "to exist permanently and inseparably in, as a quality, attribute, or element; belong intrinsically; be inherent." Given this definition, the statement above is odd to me. Accidents as I understand them are, by definition, transitory aspects of an entity. Using the terms above, they "inhere to nothing." But I am sure that Aristotle knew this was true in some cases, no? Do his physics really claim that accidents inhere to something? Perhaps I am misunderstanding the above statement.

"As I was writing this I had a thought. Perhaps if we view modern science as having receded in scope from the study of substances to the precise, mathematical study of the accidents, we can render the concept of transubstantiation more intelligible. It would be simple to say that substance is a truth that lies outside of the scope of physics then, would it not?"

Here I believe you are touching on a question of fundamental importance in philosophical inquiry regarding the nature of mathematics. Is math itself something invented - that is, something that humans create - or is it something discovered? What is its relation to the physical world? In a way, I believe math blurs the line between forms and physical entities, since it seems to be the language by which physical entities can be accurately explained. I remember that one of my coworkers in the past who seemed to have an aversion to religious belief sometimes expressed his sentiment that mathematics are entirely made up by humans. He ran into a bit of trouble when I asked him the question, "Well then why is pi irrational?" Stephen Barr, whom I mentioned in a previous post in this discussion, addresses topics relevant to such questions in a chapter of his book Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (I believe it was in the chapter "Can Matter 'Understand'?"). For a more in depth consideration of these questions from the perspective of a scientist addressing atheism, I recommend having a look at that chapter.

Patrick