Aquinas and Transubstantiation: Not Local, Not Annihilation

Some have held that after the consecration the substance of the bread and wine remains in this sacrament. But this position cannot be sustained. First of all, it would destroy the reality of this sacrament which demands that the very body of Christ exist in it. Now, his body is not there before the consecration. But a thing cannot be where it was not before except by being brought in locally or by something already there being changed into it. For example, a fire is started in a household because either it is brought into it from outside or is newly kindled there. Now it is clear that the body of Christ does not begin to exist in this sacrament by being brought in locally. First, because it would thereby cease to be in heaven, since anything that is locally moved begins to be somewhere only by leaving where it was. Second, every bodily thing that is moved from place to place must pass through all the intermediate places, and there is no question of that in the present case. Third, it is impossible that the one movement of a bodily thing that is being locally moved should end up at the same time in different places; now the body of Christ in this sacrament begins simultaneously to be in different places. For these reasons it remains that there is no other way in which the body of Christ can begin to be in this sacrament except through the substance of the bread being changed into it. Now, what is changed into something else is no longer there after the change. The reality of Christ's body in this sacrament demands, then, that the substance of the bread be no longer there after the consecration. ST 3a. 73-78

NOTE from translator: One wonders how convincing this a priori proof really is. Anyway, it has the value of a suggestion and it can support the second argument which is stronger. The principle a thing cannot be where it was not before, except by being brought in locally or by something being changed into it is universally valid where natural presence is concerned. But the Eucharistic presence is not a natural one, though it is a real one. Moreover, the second mode of beginning to be, viz. by something being generated but of a prior matter, as fire out of paper and sticks, does not really apply to the body of Christ which is not produced out of the bread. It existed before the bread did, and the bread is changed into what existed before it by a unique and miraculous change. That this change should result in the body of Christ being 'where' the substance of the bread was is a further and gratuitous disposition of divine wisdom and power. But the principle helps our analogous thinking and it is intellectually satisfying to think that it must have happened in this way. Actually, the Scotist school of theology, although it will use the word 'conversio', will conceive of this conversio not is genuinely such at all, but as involving an annihilation of the bread and a bringing in of the body of Christ. The first limb of St Thomas's alternative will appeal more to them.