C. Whether the Eucharist can be Confected by the Action of a Creature as Instrumental Agent

1. First Principal Objection, or the Opinion of Thomas against this Third Article

a. Exposition of the Objection

129. As to the third article [n.17] it seems that this conversion could belong to some creature as to an agent acting instrumentally.

130. First, because an accident can be an agent instrumentally for the generation of substance; therefore by likeness also in the issue at hand.

131. The proof of the antecedent is first as follows: when things are essentially ordered, the third is more distant from the first than the second; but increatures essence, being, and power are essentially ordered; therefore power is more distant from essence than being. But being really differs from essence; therefore so does power; and consequently no substantial form can be the immediate principle of acting.

132. The same antecedent is proved in another way thus: whenever there are two acts neither of which includes the other, then they are not reduced to the same principle, as is plain in On the Soul 2.4.415a16-20 where the Philosopher holds that powers are distinguished by acts as acts are by objects; but ‘perfecting matter’ and ‘abstracting from matter’ are two acts in the soul that do not include each other. The proof is that each can be without the other: the first without the second (as in a child and someone asleep), and the second without the first (in the separated soul); but the prior act, namely ‘giving being to matter’, belongs to the essence as to proximate formal principle; therefore the other act [‘abstracting from matter’] does not belong to the essence; and then, by likeness, not to other substantial forms with respect to actions that seem to belong to them.

133. If it be objected against this that, first, anything absolute can be separated from anything absolute (for there seems to be no contradiction here), then, if the intellect is something absolute different from the soul, it can be separated from the soul and can, as so separate, understand and be beatified (which seems unacceptable); second that because substance or the quiddity of substance is the object that moves the intellect, therefore it is the immediate principle of operating on the intellect - to the first of these they reply by denying the first proposition, setting down an example about subject and property; to the second they say that the action is intentional, not real.

b. Objections or Rejection of the Opinion

α. Against the Responses to the Objections

134. Response against the first [n.133]: because then the intended conclusion is obtained, that if the subject cannot be separated from the property, this is because of some necessity in the subject with respect to the property; but this necessity will be reduced to some causality - and not to the causality of material cause, because matter is capable of contradictory predicates; therefore to that of efficient cause, and then substance will be the efficient cause of some property (unless one goes on infinitely putting property before property).

135. The intended conclusion is got in a second way [n.133], because the objection posed against the major confirms it, for God can supply every causality of an extrinsic cause; the causality of subject with respect to property (which is the reason there is necessity there) is the causality of an extrinsic cause; therefore etc.

136. The confirmation they give for this response, that the subject falls into the definition of the property [n.133], is of no validity, because then no accident could be separated from its subject, for according to the Philosopher the idea of the substance must fall into the idea of any accident.

137. This objection about subject and accident can also be rejected in another way, for it would follow that the substance of bread could not be without quantity and vice versa; for whatever is per se and first present in a superior is per se, though not first, present in the inferior (an example about triangle and isosceles triangle and having angles equal to two right angles); but being continuous is per se and first present in corporeal substance; therefore it is per se, though not first, present in bread, and consequently the bread cannot remain without the same continuity nor the same continuity without the bread, for an accident does not pass over from subject to subject. And then neither the quantity nor the Eucharist could remain without the substance of bead - which they and the general school deny.

β. Against the Objection’s and the Opinion’s Conclusion

138. Against the conclusion of this opinion, namely that a substantial form, according to them, cannot be the immediate principle of acting, argument was given above in d.12 nn.188-193, and let it suffice briefly to repeat it now:

139. Because the principle of acting is that wherein the producer assimilates the produced to itself; but the form of the producer does not assimilate the produced to itself in a more perfect form; rather it assimilates the produced to itself in the substantial form; therefore etc.

140. Secondly as follows: an instrument, according to them, only acts as a moved mover; therefore in order for it to move, it is moved immediately by the principal agent; and so, in order for it to move as instrument of a substance, it will be moved immediately by the substance. But this is not valid according to what seems to me to be true about the order of causes; for I do not believe that the second cause, which is sometimes called the instrument, receives a special motion from the first cause but only has some subordination of its active form to the active form of the other, by some subordination: for when the prior cause actually is in existence and in its order of causing, the second cause is of a nature to proceed to act in its order of causing; and thus is the second cause called a ‘moved mover’, not because it receives a motion from the first by which it may move, but because it depends in its moving on the other first naturally moving.

141. The response to the second objection [n.133], namely about quiddity moving the intellect, is that it is not valid; for although substance has intentional being there, yet understanding itself is a real form; therefore one must with respect to it give some real active principle and give it as real. Nor is it valid to have recourse to phantasms, because according to them [Ord. 2 d.3 nn.263-65] the essence of an angel moves the intellect of the angel to an angel’s proper understanding, and one cannot imagine any phantasm there.

γ. To the Arguments for the Objection

142. To the arguments for the objection (or opinion [n.131]), which is about the instrumental causality of an accident with respect to substance: To the first, about the order of essence, being, and power, I say that it is simply false that being is other than essence. And this is proved by their own statements [n.141], for it is impossible for the generated as generated to have being per se, but the generated as generated or as first term of generation is per se one. Let it also be the case that there is the sort of order of being and power that they imagine - I say that power would precede being, for in whatever instant of nature or duration the essence is perfect, in that same instant the principle for performing the operations proper to the power is perfect, and so the power is perfect - and then, if being is other than essence, power precedes being.

143. To the second [n.132] I say that the major proposition is universally false of first and second act, because thus one would prove that nothing is an active principle in creatures; for form must give act to the thing it forms, and if the thing is active it must have reference to that in which it causes second act; but these are distinct, because one of them can be separated from the other without contradiction.

144. I reply therefore that the major is not true of ordered first and second acts but is universally false, for a form that gives second act gives also first act and vice versa, and in this way does it apply to ‘making alive’ and ‘understanding’; and therefore the major is of no validity for the intended conclusion.

145. But if the major is true of disparate second acts and of a finite active principle, in the way the place adduced from the Philosopher should be understood On the Soul 2.4.415a16-20 [n.132] - this is nothing to the purpose, because ‘to make alive’ and ‘to understand’ are not two such acts.

2. Second Principal Objection of Thomas to the Third Article and its Rejection

146. Another principal objection to this third article is as follows: it is possible for a created cause to cause, in virtue of God, some proper knowledge of God; therefore it is much more possible for an accident, in virtue of substance, to cause a substance. The proof of the antecedent is that it is possible to have some proper knowledge of God and to have it only through creatures, for nothing else moves the intellect of the wayfarer.

147. The response is twofold:

First, because knowledge of God is an accident and consequently does not go beyond the total genus of accidents that move the intellect (the same holds if we speak of knowledge of created substance and of accident); it is therefore possible for an accident to cause knowledge of created or uncreated substance without its causing simply anything more noble than its proper perfection. But such would not be the case if it were to cause a substance, for any substance is simply more perfect than any accident.

148. The other response returns to the same point, for an object in cognition has diminished being and so substance as known - or God as known - has diminished being in the knower; but substance as it is in itself has a being simply perfect. Therefore, although an accident can be the principle of producing substance in diminished being, that is, in known being, or although a creature can be the principle of producing God in such diminished being, then, by like argument, it does not follow that an accident can in any way be a principle (whether as instrument or as principal agent) of producing substance in being simply.

3. Scotus’ own Opinion

149. As concerns this article, then, ‘instrument’ can be understood in several ways (as was said above [d.12 n.192]), but, relative to the issue at hand, a disposing agent can be called an instrument. And in this way is a minister an instrument of God in the case of this conversion [sc. of the Eucharist] - a minister, that is, who has a proper human action preceding the divine action as necessary disposition for it (not simply so, but by the ordaining of God, who makes a pact with the Church that he will do such and such an act proper to himself when the minister does such and such an act).

150. And this response is universal to all the sacraments in which a minister is required, because the minister is a sort of disposing agent; but his action is an instrumental action with respect to the principal agent somewhat in the way that cutting is to the form of a bench, because the form of the bench, by the ordaining of the principal agent, follows upon the cutting. So it is in the matter at hand: the pronouncing of the words can be called an instrumental action with respect to the conversion or confecting of the body of Christ, for this conversion or confecting follows regularly on the pronouncing.

151. And thus the body of Christ is confected by the action of a creature as instrumental agent - not indeed as an instrumental agent that attains to the end in the way certain instruments do that have an instrumental action attaining to the end (as was said above [d.12 n.194]), but in the way a preceding agent is said to act instrumentally for the principal form, which however it does not attain to; and its action is said to be instrumental because disposing and preceding it [d.12 n.195].