ECT Modern Science and Trent

[Spitfire]

OK, you've now completely ripped what I said from its context by introducing things we haven't spoken of. We were talking about sensing and perceiving in the context of actual, real bread and the idea that it becomes the actual, real body of Christ.

As others have already pointed out, the claim that there is some kind of conflict here overlooks the fact that Thomas Aquinas and other theologians have always maintained a distinction between the "substance" of the host and its "accidents" under which heading would fall the molecular/atomic/subatomic structure of host.

Thomas Aquinas acknowledges as an objection that "there ought not to be any deception in a sacrament of truth. But we judge of substance by accidents. It seems, then, that human judgment is deceived, if, while the accidents remain, the substance of the bread does not," and replies that "the accidents which are discerned by the senses are truly present. But the intellect, whose proper object is substance as is said in De Anima iii, is preserved by faith from deception. And this serves as answer to the third argument; because faith is not contrary to the senses, but concerns things to which sense does not reach."

This is a very old debate that did not begin with Trent. Trent merely clarified what the orthodox Christian position on the matter had been all along.

 

[themuzicman]

As others have already pointed out, the claim that there is some kind of conflict here overlooks the fact that Thomas Aquinas and other theologians have always maintained a distinction between the "substance" of the host and its "accidents" under which heading would fall the molecular/atomic/subatomic structure of host.

Thomas Aquinas acknowledges as an objection that "there ought not to be any deception in a sacrament of truth. But we judge of substance by accidents. It seems, then, that human judgment is deceived, if, while the accidents remain, the substance of the bread does not," and replies that "the accidents which are discerned by the senses are truly present. But the intellect, whose proper object is substance as is said in De Anima iii, is preserved by faith from deception. And this serves as answer to the third argument; because faith is not contrary to the senses, but concerns things to which sense does not reach."

This is a very old debate that did not begin with Trent. Trent merely clarified what the orthodox Christian position on the matter had been all along.

And modern science has shown that this philosophy is false, that there is no substance behind the "accidents", that the "accidents" are the substance, that the literal reality is found in the physical, not the metaphysical.