Transubstantiation is Metaphysically Impossible - 🧵🧵

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The classic critique of the papist doctrine of transubstantiation as found in classical Reformed divines is that it is absurd for accidents to exist without an underlying substance or subject. In the case of transub, the substances of bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, and the accidents remain in existence without a subject. As I'll argue in this thread, this is impossible and contrary to the nature of an accident, which is to have actual inherence in a subject.

There were some in the medieval period, such as Peter Abelard, who speculated that the Eucharistic accidents are sustained in the air by God, but this was ultimately rejected.

Also rejected by Rome is the idea that the accidents inhere in the body and blood of Christ as such, since this would lead to absurd predications being true, like saying that "the body of Christ is three inches wide" (or whatever the dimensions of the host may be). Rather, the body of Christ sustains its own natural accidents. See Joseph Pohle, The Sacraments: A Dogmatic Treatise, Vol. 2, pg. 147
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First, we have to recognize that it was the unanimous understanding of logicians and philosophers prior to the Middle Ages that the very existence and definition of an accident is to inhere in a substance. The distinction between actual and aptitudinal inherence came later, as we will see.

“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)

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.

The fact that an accident cannot exist without a subject in which to inhere was also recognized by the early fathers:

"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)

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.” (Thomas Aquinas, 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.