c. A Doubt and its Solution

162. But there is a special doubt here because of the pre-existing term ‘to which’; for it does not seem that anything could be converted into something pre-existing and that remains in its pristine ‘to be’.

163. It can be said here that partial transubstantiation into something pre-existent is impossible, because partial transubstantiation is a change whereby something potential receives an act it lacked before, and consequently what is composed of the potential and the act is new, for it succeeds privation of the act. But the opposite is the case in total transubstantiation; for there is no change there (as was said before [n.45]), and so there is no need for the term of the transubstantiation to follow a privation or a negation opposite to the term’s ‘to be’.

164. But this answer does not suffice, because although the term of this transubstantiation need not be new because of the idea of change (as is well deduced [n.47]), yet it does seem it should be new because it is the term of a new action. Now nothing is the term of an action properly speaking, namely of an action in the genus of action, without its receiving being through that action, and this at least according to what is the formal term of the action. Hence the Son of God too, who is the term of the active generation of the Father, receives ‘being’ and ‘being a person’ and ‘being God’ through that active generation; otherwise, if he does not receive true ‘being’, it does not seem intelligible how there is anything there as term of a generation that is an action in the genus of action. I say this to this extent, to exclude operations that are called actions equivocally; their term, indeed, does not need to receive ‘being’ because they are not actions in the genus of action but terms, as was said in Ord. I d.3 n.601.

165. If you say that this is true of the term of a positive action but transubstantiation is only an action destructive of the term ‘from which’, and in this respect it is more a non-action - this does not seem probable, because transubstantiation is between two positive terms, so that it is not creation alone or destruction alone.

166. It can be said that transubstantiation, on the basis it is between positive terms that are substances, can be posited to have two ways of being understood. In one way that its term ‘to which’ is a substance as receiving ‘being’ through it; in another way that the term is a substance as receiving ‘being here’ through it. The first action can be called productive of its term ‘to which’; the second as adductive of its term, because the term is adduced through it so as to be ‘here’. Or in other words, transubstantiation can be to the entity of its term, or to the presence of it somewhere.

167. In the first way transubstantiation can well be to a substance that was before, but it does not seem that it can be posited as being to a substance remaining in its old or previous being. But in the second way transubstantiation can well be to preexistent being, because that being can come to be present newly here where the term ‘from which’ was.

168. And if you object that the second is not transubstantiation because its term is not substance as substance but is this presence, which is an accident of substance, for the presence alone is acquired by this action;

169. And besides, the term ‘to which’ will not, by any transubstantiation, be where it was not before (the opposite of which was proved in d.10 q.1 nn.30-41).

170. And further, there would be as many presences here, and consequently as many conversions, as there were things present here; but there are many things in Christ each of which is present here; therefore there are here many conversions.

171. In reply to the first [n.168] one can say that substance is the term of this transubstantiation in the second way of speaking, because substance succeeds to substance; however it does not have new substantial being but only new presence.

172. To the second [n.169] I say that transubstantiation in the first way of speaking does not make the term ‘to which’ to be where it was not before (and thus must the conclusion be understood that was proved in d.10 n.30). But transubstantiation in the second way of speaking includes in itself a certain change to simple presence concerning the term ‘to which’, and by reason of this the term ‘to which’ can very well through it be where it was not before.

173. To the third [n.170] one can say that there is there only a single thing that is first present, namely that which is the first thing signified by this sign; but the other presences are either parts of it or concomitants of it.