Question Three. Whether the Body of Christ could be Located at the Same Time in Heaven and in the Eucharist

181. Proceeding thus to the third question [n.7], it seems that the body of Christ cannot be simultaneously in heaven and in the Eucharist.

First from the remark of Augustine [On John’s Gospel tr.30 n.1] and it is in Gratian Decretum p.3 d.2 ch.44: “Christ’s body is above and it must be in one place.”

182. Second as follows: because the formal reason for being in a place is quantity, according to the Philosopher Physics 4.7.213b30-34; but nothing can be multiplied unless its formal idea is multiplied; therefore, since the quantity of Christ’s body is one, it can only be in one place.

183. Further, third, as follows: “Things that are the same as one and the same thing are the same as each other” [Physics 3.3.202b14-15];     therefore things that are together with one and the same thing are together with each other. Therefore if the body of Christ were here and also there, then what would be with it here and what would be with it elsewhere would be together. But the consequent is false, for one of them could be at Rome and the other at Paris; therefore etc     .

184. Fourth as follows: what is distant from something is other than it, because nothing can be properly distant from itself. But Christ’s body, if it were in the Eucharist, would be distant from itself in heaven; therefore it would be different things. The proof of the major is that distance includes discontinuity, but the unity of continuous quantity is continuity. Therefore distance is repugnant to that unity, and so it posits plurality.

185. Fifth thus, because the same thing would be able to move and be at rest, for the body of Christ would be at rest in heaven and in the Eucharist move with the motion of the Eucharist, according to the Philosopher Topics 2.7.113a29-30, “When we move, everything in us moves.”

186. On the contrary, because the body of Christ is in heaven, according to Augustine [On John’s Gospel tr.30 n.1], and it is in Gratian Decretum p.3 d.2 ch.44, “Until the end of the age, the Lord is above;” and the body of Christ is also truly in the Eucharist, as was touched on in the first question of this distinction [n.9].

I. To the Question

187. The conclusion is certain for any of the faithful, as was shown above in question one [n.15].

A. Opinion of Henry of Ghent

1. Exposition of the Opinion

188. But one way of putting the point is as follows [Henry of Ghent and his followers], namely that the same body can be elsewhere than in its natural place by conversion of something else into it, because where the thing converted was there that into which it is converted is - not by location but sacramentally. And in this way, namely sacramentally, the same body can be in another place, and in several places. Now it is not there by location nor in its dimensions, because being there by location would involve a contradiction (following their reasons set down in the preceding question, nn.81-84); but its being there sacramentally does not involve a contradiction, because it is not there according to the laws of place, but only that under which it sacramentally exists is there according to those laws.

2. Refutation of the Opinion

189. But against this are some of the arguments in the preceding question [nn.30-41], that conversion is not the formal reason for a body’s existing here, whether as present (the point is plain, because when the conversion is over the body remains here) or as past, because then God could not make his body not to be here, just as he cannot make a past conversion not to be past. Nor is that which is called the sacrament, namely the species, the formal reason for the body’s being here, because the species are not formally in the body of Christ, therefore neither can anything through them be formally in the body of Christ.

190. From this the argument is as follows: God can make something in a creature without making what is not the reason for that something’s being, or what does not in any way belong to its essence; conversion, as was shown [n.189], is not the formal reason for Christ’s body being here and neither are the species or the sacrament, and these do not in any way belong to its essence; therefore, God can make the body of Christ to be here without either of them.

191. Again, there is no greater repugnance in Christ’s body being together with the substance of the bread than being together with its quantity, because, as far as such being together is concerned, substance is not more repugnant to substance than quantity is to substance. But while the body of Christ is existent in heaven, God can, in everyone’s view, make the same body to be together with the quantity of the bread. Therefore he can make the same body to be together with the substance quantum of the bread, and do so without any conversion.

This as to the first of the arguments that have been touched on [n.189].

192. Also, if the substance quantum of the bread be set down as the sacrament [n.189], the point is still against them [Henry and his followers]. Because, as was shown [n.113], it is easier to make a body to be somewhere with its natural mode than without it; but God can make his body to be with the substance quantum of the bread in a sacramental, that is, non-natural way; therefore he can also make it present in a natural way. Therefore it would be possible for God to make that body to exist in its natural mode along with the substance quantum in other places besides heaven.

193. And if you say to the first reason [n.190] that the thing cannot be done without the proper term of the sort of relation in question, nor without the foundation; but the proper term of this presence is the sacrament, that is, something perceptible which fills the place and with which and under which the body of Christ non-locally exists; - on the contrary: it is not more impossible, as it seems, for the body of Christ to be with the former than with the latter; therefore it is not more impossible for it to be with the substance of the bread than with its quantity (as was said [n.191]), and so on as to anything at all other than itself. And then further: if it can come to be in a non-natural mode elsewhere than where it is, then also can it do so in a mode natural to it.

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

194. I say therefore that if one posits conversion in the matter at hand (which will be spoken about in d.11 nn.14-29) and if one posits that there is here some perceptible sign truly containing the body of Christ here present, which sensible sign may be called the sacrament - I say indeed that this is true, namely that the body of Christ is in fact here under the sacrament after the consecration or conversion. But that it could not be here without conversion or without being under the sacrament (meaning some determinate sensible sign or other), I do not see, as was argued in the preceding question [nn.113-114].

195. And perhaps those, who deny that God can make Christ’s body to be outside heaven otherwise than by conversion and under the sacrament, would not concede that God could do so save because they were constrained by the faith.

196. As to this way of existing without quantity and without dimensions or non-locally, I do not see how this same thing could be done in several places without it also being possible for it to be done in a natural way, since in the first way there are two miracles and in the second only one, namely the two of causing the presence here of the body of Christ and of separating it from its natural mode. Consequently, therefore, the body can be here in a natural mode just as also in the sacrament.

II. To the Initial Arguments

197. To the first argument for the opposite [n.181] I say that Augustine so understands ‘must’ that it means ‘is appropriate’ (that is, fitting) for the body to live in the kingdom prepared for the glorious; but it is not required, that is, it is not simply necessary. For the body of Christ can sometimes move from its place even locally, and much more so can it, by divine action absolutely, be elsewhere both sacramentally and locally, putting itself in another ‘where’ without loss of its ‘where’ in heaven, just as we now hold that that body is present non-locally in the Eucharist.

198. To the second [n.182] I say that ‘formal reason’ can be understood in two ways: first properly, for the proximate formal reason, and second for the remote formal reason (taking ‘formal reason’ broadly for remote foundational reason, in the way that heat is said to be the formal reason for something being similar, namely to the extent that heat is the ‘principle by which’ of action and whiteness the principle by which of similarity). When speaking of reason in the first way, one can concede that what the formal reason is the formal reason of is not multiplied without the multiplication of the formal reason. But, when speaking of formal reason in the second way, the claim is false, because the same thing could be the proximate cause of acting as regard many actions, and the same thing could be the proximate foundation as regard many relations. Now quantity is the formal reason of being in place not in the first way but in the second, because it is the proximate foundation of this relation; and from this the proposed conclusion follows, namely that several relations can be founded on the same foundation, especially relations that come to a thing from outside.

199. To the third [n.183] I say that the first proposition is false, unless the unity of the third thing in itself and the unity of the things that are proved to be one from the unity of that third thing are understood in a uniform way, because if there is a lesser unity in itself of the third thing, one cannot infer a greater unity of the others with each other, but a unity through their unity in that third thing. The same holds of ‘together’, that unless the third thing, with which the others are together, is limited to the unity according to which they are together with the third, their togetherness with each other does not follow. Yet neither is what is in Paris together with the same thing in Rome if the third thing, because immense, is unlimited. Hence the following inference does not hold, ‘I am together with eternity and with the soul of Antichrist, therefore that soul and eternity are together with each other’, for eternity is immense as to its actual presence. - To the matter in hand I say that that which is together in two places is unlimited, though not by its own power but by the power of God as agent, I mean unlimited as to ‘where’. And therefore things that are present with it as it is thus unlimited do not have to be together with each other.

200. To the fourth [n.184] I say that, when taking ‘distance’ for distance in place, the major is false. As for the proof about discontinuity, I say that a thing is the same as itself not because it is continuous with itself but because it has a truer unity, for continuity is unity of part in relation to part in the whole, but the unity of the whole with itself is true identity. I say therefore that if a whole as distant is not continuous with itself as distant, yet in each term of the distance it is truly the same, possessing the same continuity of parts in the whole.a

a.a [Interpolation] Hence the soul exists in the head and the foot, and a man has the same being now and at the end of his life, and that being is distant from itself in duration but it is not a different being; hence diversity in what is posterior does not argue diversity in what is prior.

     And when it is said that the unity of a continuous whole is its continuity, this is true of its unity as composed of parts; but its identity with itself is not continuity of the same whole with itself in the way a part is continuous with a part.

201. As to the fifth [n.185], the answer will be plain in the second part of this distinction, question three [nn.307-312].