A brief comment on the skepticism issue that keeps coming up. I'm not sure we need anything as fancy as transubstantiation to raise it. Consider causes and effects. If it's possible for God to interfere with (ie. stop from happening) causes' effects, then we have no way of knowing whether any given cause will bring about its effect. This includes effects like feeling when we touch objects, hearing because of sound, and seeing when light strikes our eyes. By the same reasoning, it would also entail radical skepticism about our sensory perception of the world around us. In contrast, if it's not possible for God to interfere with causes' effects, then we essentially lock Him out of the created order.  

Even on concurrentism, surely God can stop effects from happening by not concurring with them happening.  

My own view is that Christians have good ethics-based (and probably theological) reasons to hold that God wouldn't just bugger around with us. But if the above dilemma holds, it's no longer just a problem for members of the old churches.

Last edited by John West (7/19/2015 11:53 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

Does that sort of worry not snuggle in the idea that God is somehow temporal and not necessary? Would it be wrong to say in a sense that God has always already done all of "interfering" he's going to do?

Nah. I mean, we could (for example) write that God's plan isn't to bugger around with us, but all that does is needlessly complicate the language.

Incidentally, terms like always (and maybe even already) aren't even relevant when it comes to God. 

Jason, I find your comments extremely enlightening and actually personally useful. I've just realized that the reason I tend to shy away from the concept of the Real Presence toward something more symbolic is not because I have a real problem with it, but because I have a problem with the overly-specific metaphysical claim made by transubstantiation, which, as you've pointed out, need not be coupled.

A brief comment on the skepticism issue that keeps coming up. I'm not sure we need anything as fancy as transubstantiation to raise it. Consider causes and effects. If it's possible for God to interfere with (ie. stop from happening) causes' effects, then we have no way of knowing whether any given cause will bring about its effect. This includes effects like feeling when we touch objects, hearing because of sound, and seeing when light strikes our eyes. By the same reasoning, it would also entail radical skepticism about our sensory perception of the world around us. In contrast, if it's not possible for God to interfere with causes' effects, then we essentially lock Him out of the created order.  

I think that's somewhat different. The issue isn't the mere possibily of mistake (not just that it could happen), but rather its' that, if a substance can change without the acidents changing in any way, it seems we don't actually know what a substance is. This, as Jason pointed out "appears to disconnect what things really or essentially are from their properties," which I think is just to say we'd have no idea what objects.

I'm a little surprised, although my tone might have over-emphasized my astonishment. I’m surprised not so much because I necessarily find it hard for someone to reach your conclusions, but because I've never actually seen a case like you in the wild; I've considered it as a hypothetical position that someone might hold, but I never really expected to ever see anyone hold it.

My point about the theologians is that these guys can be taken as representative of their respective theological schools, which aggregately easily accounts for somewhere around 90-95% of all Christians. The upshot of this is that if tradition means anything to you at all, then you need to really take this seriously; you would have a much harder time grounding, say, the Canon of Scriptures in tradition than MPV.

Is it not also good evidence to make oneself take a moral self-evaluation? Would God have allowed this many brilliant and committed Christians to be deceived on such a basic point as this? Perhaps this is evidence enough for one to hold faith, and patiently await the proper raison d'etre for later?

Is consesus really that final of an authority? It;s sensible to me that the Holy Spirit leads his Church in essentials, but less sensible that the Spirit is concerned with assuring that every propositional belief adhered to by the Church is perfectly accurate. If no one believing something in church history is grounds for rejecting that belief, then (for example) no one would be permitted to believe in any part of an evolutionary interpretations of Genesis. I'd see what you're saying if this really were "basic" as you make it out to be, but I don't see the relevance or importance of MPV, and I do see how it can harm our view of what marriage is. 
 

Last edited by Mark (7/19/2015 11:33 pm)

John West wrote:

I thought the skepticism issue was about how we know whether any thing has the substance we think it has or ought to have

That is the issue isn't it? I'm not sure we disagree.

John West wrote:

To be honest, I'm still not sure what the issue concerning substances is. Are you referring to whether identical properties can be instantiated on multiple (different kinds of) particulars in different places, Wycliffe's criticism concerning changing the grounds of properties and the properties not going out of existence, or something else? It might also help for you to clarify what it is you take a substance to be

I take a substance to be form and matter coupled together. If forms can change without a change in matter, then what on earth are forms? And if we don't know what forms are, we don't know what things are.

Alexander wrote:

Firstly: It's not "no one believed something in Church history", it's "practically everyone believed something completely opposed to that something, and held it to be a genuine teaching of the apostles". That's quite a different situation.

Fine, I'll reword that: practically everyone believed something something completely opposed to, for example, an evolutionary interpretation of Genesis.

As to the relevance of Mary's perpetual virginity, that's not too difficult. It's just the claim that Mary (and, I suppose, Joseph) was dedicated entirely to Jesus.

Which is interesting, but not the sort of "basic" believe the Church ought to be making dogma out of. (And also something I'm not sure the Holy Spirit takes an interest in making sure we have correct beliefs about.) On a different note though, it makes little sense that Mary would remain a virgin for the sake of Jesus: The sexual union is designed (along with procreation), to bring a couple closer together, which is why the apostle Paul says that celibacy in marriage should never be practiced except for a short time. How could it be good for Jesus for his parents to be physically estranged?

Admittedly, the kind of marriage this entails is an unusual one. But the Holy Family should hardly be taken as an average family in the first place, so I don't think it entails any change in our normative view of what marriage is. Everyone agrees that good things - even very good things, such as sexual union in a marriage - can be sacrificed for the sake of something greater. And we can all agree that sex is the proper consummation of the marital union. But surely a marriage could, at least in principle, be consummated in another way - say, by jointly raising and caring for the Word Incarnate - if that form of consummation fulfilled God's plan more perfectly.

No, it cannot be consummated any other way: That's exactly the point Catholic philosophers and ethicists have been making against the very idea of a same-sex marriage. It isn't just that a marriage without sex would be "odd," it would be void! The church allows for it to be ended without a divorce because of the necessity of the sexual union. What else could a marriage even be? Both Genesis and the gospels affirm that marriage is when a couple become "one flesh"; how to you propose a couple could become one flesh occur apart from the sexual union? 

Again, no one claims that this changes what marriage usually is and should be - it just means that we can admit of exceptions in truly extraordinary cases.

That sure sounds ad hoc. And also is damaging to Mary's ability to act as a role model  

I'm still busy with a house guest and a routine medical exam, so I won't have time to reply much (if at all) for the next two or three days. But I would like to add a brief comment here; sorry it has to be sort of hit-and-run. 

Mark wrote:

I've just realized that the reason I tend to shy away from the concept of the Real Presence toward something more symbolic is not because I have a real problem with it, but because I have a problem with the overly-specific metaphysical claim made by transubstantiation, which, as you've pointed out, need not be coupled.

I'm still failing to see what's supposed to be "overly specific" about the doctrine of transubstantiation.

If you have no trouble with the Real Presence itself (the consecrated Host* has become, and really is, the body and blood of Christ even though it looks, smells, tastes, etc. like bread), then I don't know what new problem arises when the exact same claim is expressed in the language of substance and attribute. The claim that the substance of the Host is Christ's body/blood even though its attributes are those of bread adds nothing new whatsoever as far as I can see; it just is the doctrine of the Real Presence, stated in language that unambiguously rules out metaphorical/symbolic interpretations but has no other function or purpose, certainly no "explanatory" one.

Do you think the substance/attribute language adds something to the doctrine beyond just ruling out nonliteral understandings of it? If so, then what? If not, then in what world does a "metaphysical claim" not need to be "coupled" with itself?

Do you dislike substance/attribute analyses generally? If so, what do you propose to substitute in which the same problems don't simply reappear under other names?

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* And the wine, but we needn't revisit that point.

Last edited by Scott (7/20/2015 3:42 pm)