This is the second in a series on the doctrine of transubstantiation. Here I want to focus on further theological reasons for preferring Aristotelian hylomorphism to any kind of substance dualism (like Cartesianism).
Here is what the Council of Trent taught about the Eucharist:
“In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.’” The Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1374; Council of Trent (1551), 13th Session, Canon 1.
Here is a problem for the Catholic Cartesian: how can the human soul of Christ be present in the Host? There is no sensory or motor connection between the Host and the soul of Christ. So, even if His body is present there, there seems to be no sense for the Cartesian in which His soul is also present there, any more than the Cartesian soul is present in His hair or fingernails. Insofar as the Cartesian soul is “present” in the body at all, it is present only in certain parts of the central nervous system.
Another problem for the Cartesians: they cannot suppose that Christ’s divine nature is present in the consecrated Host. For the Cartesian, human persons (including Christ) are immaterial souls. They have a special relationship to a body, but the living body is not identical to the person. Consequently, if Christ’s body and blood are present under the species of the Eucharist, this does not make the person of Christ present there. But it is the Person that is united (in the hypostatic union) to the divine nature. Where the Person is, the divine nature is. For the hylomorphist, Christ the Person is identical to His living body, and so both He and the hypostatically unified divine nature are present wherever His body.[1] Not so for the Cartesian. Therefore, on the Cartesian model, Catholics would indeed be guilty of idolatry when they adore the body of Christ in the sacrament.
[1] See Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, paragraphs 28 and 29, in which he distinguishes two senses of ‘body’ (‘corpus’). In the first, body excludes the substantial form, and, in the second, a body is simply a genus of substance. In the first sense, a corporeal substance (including a human being) has a body (as a metaphysical component). In the second sense, a human being is a body. For the Cartesian, human beings neither have nor are bodies (in Thomas’s two senses). Instead, a human being is a soul extrinsically united in some fashion to a body.
It’s clear that hylomorphism is needed to explain why the bread and wine are no longer present, and why the bread-y and wine-y accidents are neither illusory nor inherent in Christ’s body. It is important to recognize that the accidents of the bread and wine that remain include the proper accidents or propria that ordinarily flow with necessity from the substantial form. of the bread and wine. This is why there are only accidents “all the way down,” as Howard Robinson puts it. The only “essential property” of a substance is (in the strict sense) the presence of a substantial form of the appropriate kind. This is not, as Robinson suggests, a “contrived device” but rather part and parcel of standard Aristotelian ontology.
It would be absurd to say, as Michael Dummett and Howard Robinson suppose the Thomist does say, that the Host becomes part of the substance of Christ’s body, while lacking all the proper accidents of that body and retaining those of bread. But that is not in fact Thomas’s account. Thomas supposes that the body of Christ is not located as a corporeal substance where the Host is located (Summa Theologiae III Q76, a5-6). There is in fact no substance located there (in the strict sense) – neither a bready substance nor the body of Christ. How then is the body of Christ present there?
I will make a suggestion here that admittedly goes beyond Thomas’s text. It seems that the whole living body of Christ (matter, substantial form, and accidents) acts as if it were the substantial form of a new substance. And the quantitative accidents of the bread act as if they were the prime matter of the new substance (ST III, Q77 a5). The quantitative accidents are able to individuate the material parts of the Host due to their historical/causal connection with the prime matter of the bread and wine (ST III Q77 a1 ad 3). All the other accidents inhere in the quantitative accidents, as they would inhere in the parts of the prime matter. But the Host is not thereby a real substance, but only a quasi-substance.
The whole body of Christ is present in every part of the Host, just as the substantial form is present in every material part of a corporeal substance (ST III, Q76 a3). The body is present not as a substance in the place of the Host nor as a whole including the Host as a proper part, but as a metaphysical principle of the existence and persistence of the accidents. Obviously, this is not something that can happen naturally, apart from special fiat of the Omnipotent One. The fact that Jesus is the Incarnation of God, in such a way that His body, blood, and human soul are inseparable from the divine nature is also relevant. In a sense, the body and blood of Christ are always (as a result of the hypostatic union) involved in sustaining the existence of created things. In the case of the Host, they do so directly, without the interposition of any substantial form.
According to the Council of Trent, every part of Christ’s body is present in every part of the Host. Howard Robinson has recently attempted to explain the Real Presence within a Cartesian framework by supposing that God imposes an extrinsic teleology on the particles originally composing the portions of bread and wine. After this imposition, the particles are functionally united with the body of Christ. Robinson’s theory of the teleological extension of Christ’s body to include the particles making up the Host does not seem capable of accommodating the fact that the whole Body of Christ is present in each part of the Host. How can each part of the Host share in the teleology of each part of Christ’s body, including digestion, the pumping of blood, the regulation of temperature and pH, etc.?
The Analytic Thomist 
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