Every Catholic is (or at least should be!) aware of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which states that with the priest’s utterance of the words of consecration (“this is my body” . . . “this is my blood”), the substance of bread and wine changes into the substance of Christ’s body and blood. That’s the “textbook” definition—but what does it really mean? What is a substance, anyway?
Substance has been used in the history of philosophy and theology in different ways. Here it’s used to refer to the essence of bread and wine and the essence of Jesus’ body and blood. An essence is a more formal word for “whatness”—those core attributes that make a thing what it is.
Many Catholics are prepared to defend the theological truth of transubstantiation, appealing to Jesus’ teaching in John 6 about eating his flesh and drinking his blood and his words at the Last Supper. But perhaps Catholics aren’t as prepared to meet a challenge that might call into question the philosophical truth of the reality of essences—a truth that Martin Luther denied.
You might respond, “Your average Joe doesn’t think that deeply. When is someone actually ever going to make that kind of challenge?” Well, a recent experience on Catholic Answers Live proves that someone did, and we need to be prepared.
On that episode of the show, a caller objected that he doesn’t believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation because he doesn’t believe that essences are real. This is at least one version of a philosophical worldview called nominalism. On this view, dog and tree, for example, do not signify anything real that our mind penetrates when we see or otherwise experience dogs and trees. Rather, such terms are mere names (Latin, nomen) that we ascribe. The same would be true for bread, body, and blood.
The implications for believers in the Real Presence are dire. If there’s no reality to the “whatness” of bread and wine and the “whatness” of body and blood, then we’d have to reject the dogma of transubstantiation (not to mention the belief that Jesus had a real human nature). There can be no real change of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood if the bread, wine, body, and blood involved are not real. If these things are merely our ascription of names, then the “change” also would be simply our ascription of a name.
The Catholic Mass, on this view, would be nothing but a con job performed by the priest, telling people that something miraculous is happening, when really, the change from bread to body, or wine to blood, is commonplace, and anyone can bring it about just by thinking the right thoughts. (No need for a priest, for sure!) In short, according to this nominalist view, nothing actually happens during a Catholic Mass except our ascribing a name to what we experience with our senses.
Lest you think nominalism is just the weird worldview of one fringe radio caller, it is actually a widespread defect in modern man’s thinking. Consider that within modern gender ideology, there is no “whatness” or essence to what a man or a woman is. Sure, there’s gender identity—the inner sense or feeling of being a man or a woman, which is how many define a man or a woman. But the judgment that a particular feeling is the feeling of the kind “being a man or a woman” is subject entirely to what a person deems. There’s no reality there—only the individual’s ascription of a name.
So fighting nominalism is not just for scholars.
In case you’re not interested in a book-length treatment of this issue, there’s one quick argument that I think is worth highlighting here. (A good book-length treatment, by the way, can be found in David Oderberg’s Real Essentialism.) It’s what philosophers call a retorsion argument—when you convert the argument against your belief to refute the objector’s position.
Let’s start with the nominalist’s claim: there are no real essences or natures, only our designation of names. What this view amounts to is a form of conventionalism concerning essences or natures. The various “kinds” that we speak of—dog, tree, bread, body, blood—are entirely subject to human convention, a “sort of artefact of human classificatory practice.” Philosopher Edward Feser explains such conventionalism this way: “The conventionalist holds that a thing’s essence, that whereby it is what it is, is a product of our ways of thinking, our linguistic habits, and so forth. It is, in short, mind-dependent.”
Enter the retorsion: if conventionalism concerning essences were true, then it would apply to us as well. In other words, our essence (human nature) would be just as much a product of human convention as any other essence.
But there are a couple of problems here. Do we really want to say human nature is a byproduct of human convention? What if the convention as to what humans are changes? Wouldn’t that change how we treat human beings? It would! And the change might not be for the better—to profanation and desecration, for instance, rather than to more reverence and respect. This is a path that people of goodwill shouldn’t be willing to tread.
The above is primarily an appeal to the heart. Now let’s appeal to the mind. Conventionalism concerning essences is also problematic because it ends in incoherence.
Consider that this form of conventionalism necessarily entails that we are the source of the conventions—in this case, of the names that we use to classify things. And if we’re the source of the conventions concerning essences, then we are logically prior to the conventions.
But, as we noted above, this version of conventionalism also necessarily entails that we—human beings—are the byproduct of human convention, in which case the conventions would be logically prior to us.
What we have here is a contradiction: we are logically prior to human conventions (insofar as we are the source of conventions concerning essences) and not logically prior to human conventions (insofar as we are a byproduct of human conventions) at the same time and in the same respect.
But we can’t accept a contradiction. Therefore, at least when it comes to our human nature, we can’t accept the notion that essences are mere conventions of human making. And if our own human essence is not a mere convention of the human making, then it’s real, and in-dependent of the human mind.
Someone might counter that the above reasoning doesn’t get us all the way to the conclusion that everything has an essence, like the bread and wine involved in transubstantiation. Rather, it shows only that human essence in us is real and mind-independent.
No qualms here! However, we have shown that a universal form of conventionalism concerning essences entails a denial of human nature. And given that we shouldn’t embrace a conventionalist view of human nature because it entails a contradiction, it follows that we shouldn’t embrace the all-encompassing conventionalism concerning essences.
This being the case, the idea of bread and wine, along with body and blood, having real essences becomes a real possibility. So at least our friend who called the show can be on his way, and that much closer to affirming the reality of transubstantiation.