Abstract

This paper argues for a version of transubstantiation in which the accidents of bread and wine are not free-floating after the consecration but inhere in Christ. It gives six arguments for this view: from the understanding and practice of the faithful, from what is necessary for us to eat Christ, from the nature of a sacrament as a sign that effects what it signifies, from God’s accessibility to the cognitively disabled, from the metaphysical absurdity of accidents without a substance, and from the causal powers of the accidents after consecration. It then gives a brief description of how this metaphysics of transubstantiation could work in light of contemporary theories of emergence. It closes by addressing three objections: from the impassibility of the resurrected Christ, from the contradiction between dimensive and non-dimensive presence, and from magisterial Catholic teaching.