Abstract
The body of Christ is the focus of a range of questions posed to St. Thomas Aquinas by the audiences at the quodlibetal disputations over which he presided at the University of Paris. These questions arise from reflection on the Catholic faith, which holds that the body of Christ is given to us as spiritual food in the sacrament of the altar, the Eucharist. In response to questions about the Eucharist, Aquinas tries to explain how Christ’s body could come to be present in the sacrament by the bread becoming Christ’s body, arguing that by God’s power the substance of Christ’s body can come to be present under the attributes of bread, which can continue to exist without being the attributes of anything. Yet why must this be the answer? Why can’t Christ’s body come to be present with the bread, for instance? Aquinas insists that the bread and Christ’s body never exist together, but he allows that Christ’s glorified body can be with another body in the same place. So, why not in the Eucharist? Or why can’t Christ assume the bread, as he assumed a human nature, thereby making it his body? It might seem unfitting for Christ to have such a non-rational nature, yet that is exactly what Aquinas thinks happened while Christ’s body lay in the tomb. So, why not in the Eucharist? This paper attempts to explain why not. Examining the full range of questions posed to Aquinas about the body of Christ reveals a number of principles that together seem to imply that nothing less than the full transubstantiation of bread into Christ’s body is possible if Christ’s body is to become really present in the Eucharist.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For a brief account of Aquinas’s view of Eucharistic transubstantiation, see Davies, 1992, 361–376. Vijgen, 2013 traces the historical background to Aquinas’s view; Adams, 2012 contrasts it with the views of some later thinkers. Hütter, 2019 treats Aquinas’s view in the context of modern theology; Tück, 2018 extends the treatment to Aquinas’s Eucharistic hymns.
- 3.
On Aquinas’s life and the dating of his works, see Torrell, 2023.
- 4.
- 5.
QQ V, q. 6, a. 1.
- 6.
See, for example, Summa Contra Gentiles IV, c. 62, n. 4 and Summa Theologiae III, q. 75, a. 2.
- 7.
QQ III, q. 1, a. 1.
- 8.
QQ III, q. 1, a. 2.
- 9.
Aquinas affirms this view of divine omnipotence throughout the quodlibets. See, for example, QQ IV, q. 3, a. 2; QQ V, q. 2, a. 1; QQ XII, q. 2, a. 2.
- 10.
QQ VII, q. 4, a. 1.
- 11.
QQ VII, q. 4, a. 2.
- 12.
QQ IX, q. 3, a. 1.
- 13.
Ibid., ad 2. I say “definition or description” because, strictly speaking, substance and accident cannot be defined. For more on Aquinas’s definition or quasi-definition of substance and accident, see Wippel, 2000, 228–237.
- 14.
On the necessity of natures and its role in Aquinas’s view of Eucharistic transubstantiation, see Klima’s chapter in this volume. I discuss the necessity of natures at greater length, though in the context of a different debate, in Nevitt, 2020.
- 15.
- 16.
This would be a form of consubstantiation, a view commonly associated with Martin Luther (1483–1546) and condemned at the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The view is usually traced back to Berengar of Tours (ca. 1000–1088), and was already excluded by the teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). For a very brief account of the view and its attendant controversy, see Scannell, 1908. For a fuller history of views of the Eucharist up to and including the Reformation, see Macy, 2005.
- 17.
For a full account of Aquinas’s view of the properties of glorified bodies, see Brown, 2021, 282–327.
- 18.
QQ I, q. 10, a. 1.
- 19.
QQ I, q. 10, a. 2.
- 20.
QQ I, q. 10, a. 2, ad 1.
- 21.
QQ I, q. 3, a. 2.
- 22.
QQ VI, q. 2, a. 2. The empyrean heaven is part of Aquinas’s medieval cosmology, which is detailed extensively in Grant, 1994.
- 23.
On Aquinas’s view of the agility of glorified bodies, see Brown, 2021, 317–322.
- 24.
This would be a form of impanation, a view usually traced back to Berengar of Tours (ca. 1000–1088) and excluded by the teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). For a very brief account of the view and its attendant controversy, see Pohle, 1910. For a fuller history of early scholastic views of the Eucharist, see Macy, 1984.
- 25.
I discuss Aquinas’s view of Christ’s dead body in the tomb at greater length, though in the context of a different debate, in Nevitt, 2016.
- 26.
QQ II, q. 1, a. 1.
- 27.
QQ III, q. 2, a. 2.
- 28.
The change in Aquinas’s thinking about the identity of Christ’s living and dead body from QQ II, q. 1, a. 1 and QQ III, q. 2, a. 2 to QQ IV, q. 5, a. 1 was first brought to my attention by Jörgen Vijgen. See Vijgen, 2019.
- 29.
QQ IV, q. 5, a. 1.
- 30.
Again, Aquinas seems to have changed his mind about this. In his early Commentary on the Sentences, he says that if one divine person assumed two distinct human natures, there would be one person, but two men, given the two human natures, in spite of the one subject (In Sent. III, d. 1, q. 2, a. 5, ad 2). But in his late Summa Theologiae, Aquinas argues that if one divine person assumed two distinct human natures, there would still only be one man, given the one subject, albeit with two human natures (ST III, q. 3, a. 7, ad 2).
- 31.
On Aquinas’s view of the incorruptibility and impassibility of glorified bodies, see Brown, 2021, 260–288.
- 32.
QQ III, q. 2, a. 3.
- 33.
QQ V, q. 6, a. 1, ad 1.
- 34.
For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I would like to thank Richard Cross, Brandon Dahm, Brian Davies, Urban Hannon, Gyula Klima, Gaston LeNotre, and the philosophy faculty and graduate students at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
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Nevitt, T.C. (2023). The Body of Christ in Aquinas’s Quodlibetal Questions. In: Klima, G. (eds) The Metaphysics and Theology of the Eucharist. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40250-0_9
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