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Scholastic anthropology does not say “physicality” is relevant to this question.

The word “substance” as used by Scholastic Realists has little if anything to do with “physicality.”

It's a lot to ask, I know, but please read my other posts on this thread. I have, here and before now, repeatedly repudiated “phsyical” as a term useful in understanding our teaching.

In the Corinthian correspondence, in the discourse on the resurrection, Paul uses an interesting word about the body before (death and) resurrection: psychikon. This suggests “animated”, while the raised body is “pneumatikon.”

(I'm “listening” to a lecture and can't research right now.)

But that's a very provocative usage.

But PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, believe me: transubstantiation is NOT about a PHYSICAL change. Most, if not all, of what modern discourse calls “physical” I would call “accidental,” while the dogma is about the what-it-is-ness of the body, the human body, the reasoning body, the praying body.

Again, the difference between what a thing IS and what it is MADE of is HUGE in our thought and in the dogma. “Physicality” pertains more to that the body is made of ... before its resurrection.

And the other glaring blasphemy in that paragraph? Why are you avoiding it? When the catholic priest brings Christ down from heaven to be upon the catholic altar? seriously, you see no blasphemy inherent in this assertion, an assertion which is approved by Rome as not deviating from their teaching on faith and morals? ...

The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command ...

Dawg, that sends chills down my spine. The absolute arrogant foolery to assert that a man, a man in need of justification from sin, has assumed such power that he can command the obedience of The Almighty God of the Universe, well that is blasphemy ... UNLESS, the god of Catholicism is not The Almighty God of the Universe, the One Who manifests as three personages! And that is but one of many reason some call Catholicism 'another religion' having 'another Jesus' than the Jesus Christ of the Word of God.

The word “substance” as used by Scholastic Realists has little if anything to do with “physicality.”

Canon 1.If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ, but says that He is in it only as in a sign, or figure or force, let him be anathema.

Synonyms

Synonyms for substantially
adv to a large extent

considerably essentially extensively

heavily largely materially

really in essence in fact

in reality in substance in the main

mainly much

This is nothing but word games ..... MD...

238. Q. What is the Holy Eucharist?

A. The Holy Eucharist is the Sacrament which contains the body and blood, soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine.

>>But PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, believe me: transubstantiation is NOT about a PHYSICAL change.<<

There is physical and there is spiritual. There is nothing else.

I’ve enjoyed reading your posts this afternoon. They are helpful in my understanding of transubstantiation.

I did as you asked. I read all your posts in this thread. I saw nothing there that constituted a rigorous refutation of the idea that "physical" is important to understanding transubstantiation. And if I have misstated your point, be assured it is not intentional. My belief is that you have a vested interest in distancing Aquinan metaphysics from modern notions of physicality, and there is some technical justification for that, as words are slippery things, and over time pick up and lose bits of meaning, and so clarifications are often quite helpful.

But when virtually everybody in the room is bumbling about with the supposedly wrong idea about something, perhaps the fault is in an idea that is impossible to properly conceive, or possibly many of them are just guilty of noticing the emperor's lack of attire.

For just one example (there are others), the folks at the Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association, you would think, would have this right. But:

It was Pope Paul VI who declared Mary the Mother of the Church at the close of the Second Vatican Council, who visited her shrine at Fatima in 1967 and continuously exhorted Catholics to pray her Rosary. He also published the great Encyclical on the Holy Eucharist, "Mysterium Fidei". On the last page of that Encyclical he wrote this beautiful tribute to our Blessed Mother showing the unbroken link that has to exist between her and Christ who is physically present in the Eucharist: He wrote: "May the Most Blessed Virgin Mary from whom Christ Our Lord took the flesh which under the species of bread and wine 'in contained, offered and consumed,' may all the saints of God, especially those who burned with a more ardent devotion to the Divine Eucharist, intercede before the Father of mercies so that from this same faith in and devotion toward the Eucharist may result and flourish a perfect unity of communion among all Christians."

Available at: http://therealpresence.org/eucharst/pea/ladyeuch.htm

BTW, please do not think I am confused that this is an authoritative representation of Roman doctrine. In some sense I feel I have completely lost track of what constitutes authoritative Roman teaching, as there are so many qualifiers to keep track of and such diversity of opinion on the matter, and so I am quite sympathetic to the multitudes of the rank and file Catholics, some of whom are family to me, who do not get the fine points of transubstantive ontology, and so persist in such unsophisticated descriptions.

Nevertheless, I believe even the sophisticates are in trouble on this. For example, not even Aquinas could avoid linking both matter and form to substance:

We likewise find an order of goodness among the parts of a substance composed of matter and form. For since matter, considered in itself, is potential being,542 while form is the actualisation of that being, and the substance composed of the two is actually existent through the form, the form will be good in itself; the composed substance will be good as it actually has the form; and the matter will be good inasmuch as it is in potentiality to the form.

Available here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/gentiles.vi.xvii.html

In Aristotle, such a composite necessarily entails materiality. In what sense then is "physicality" distinct from this concept of material, of matter, that joins with form to give substance? While there may be distinctions for us moderns resulting from the current dominance of a general materialism, the two sets overlap significantly, and it cannot be said that there is no or even just a merely insignificant role for materiality in the scholastic concept of substance.

Again, I have seen nothing so far, whether in your posts or anywhere else, that protects the alleged sacramental presence of Christ from being properly seen, under the Aristotelian-Aqinan formulation, as the physical presence of Christ.

One more point. OK two more points. First, I agree that the brevity of both our comments defeats a full exploration of the subject. Full books do not even cover all the bases. So at best we are exchanging brief sketches, not full portraits of the topic. My apologies in advance for any important details overlooked. I'm sure there are such.

Second, with respect to the body of Christ being a spiritual body as Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians, I think it is clear on a number of grounds that he is not being dismissive of ordinary physicality of such bodies. We know Christ in His resurrection body did interact with ordinary physical objects, food, people touching Him, etc. I do not think that is a ticket out of the problem of Aquinan substance implying the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Furthermore, it is possible to understand that distinction in a manner you hinted at, that the resurrected body is animated by a spiritual principle that is different in kind from the fleshly principle that animates our present physical being. This could well be what Paul meant, but if so, it does nothing to discredit that Jesus' body was (and still is) physical in some reasonable sense and therefore still subject to the proper limitations in time and space of a physical body, as well as the law concerning cannibalism.

But on the sharp edge of Ockham's we still find the most elegant solution is to look at what Jesus said in the most ordinary light, that these teachings were wonderful metaphors of the believer's total dependence on and faith in Him as Messiah, as Peter vividly demonstrates at the end of John 6. No extraordinary journey into medieval alchemy is necessary. Christ is real, and He is present with us when we gather in His name, and even when we commune with Him alone during the dark night of the soul. That presence is no less real than His walk with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Peace,

SR

But PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, believe me: transubstantiation is NOT about a PHYSICAL change.

Look, Catholics tell us continually that we have to eat the LITERAL body and blood of Christ and that is what He meant when the crowds left Him because they thought LITERAL flesh and blood.

Some Catholics tell us that the actual, true, real change happens after we swallow it so nobody can deny or disprove their claim that it's the LITERAL actual, real flesh and blood.

You just have to take it by faith that the change happened because it's where nobody can see.

How convenient.

And now y'all tell us that it's not LITERAL literal, but figurative literal, or something.

That we're not really eating the LITERAL flesh and blood, but something that changes into it, or something like that.

Y'all want to get on the same page?

The simplest, easiest explanation is that it's real, literal, actual bread and wine that represents a spiritual reality. It's a picture in the physical that we humans need to understand the spiritual truth that Jesus was teaching. And it is NOT that Jesus is teaching us to violate the perpetual ordinance given before the Law, reiterated in the Law and again reiterated under the New Covenant, that the eating of blood is expressly forbidden by God.

The interpretation of the bread and wine being nothing more than symbolic representation of spiritual truths fits the best with overall interpretation of Scripture and does not contradict the weigh of teaching throughout Scripture to NEVER eat the blood.

Jesus does not inhabit a wheat wafer, a host, or anything other than the believer, who is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christ in me, the Hope of glory.

I don't need to eat Him to have Him living in me. He's in there 24/7. If He's already there, I don't have to do anything to put Him there where He already is.