The doctrine of the Eucharist has been one of the more fruitful locales of philosophical reflection within Christian theology. The central philosophical question has been, ‘what is the state of affairs such that it is apt to say of a piece of bread, “This is the body of Christ”?’ In this article, I offer a delineation of various families of answers to this question as they have been proffered in the history of the church. These families are distinguished by how (...) they view the presence of the body of Christ as well as the continued presence of the bread and wine after consecration. I then provide a specific examination of some recent attempts to explicate these views. A number of the recent work has focused on the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but I also survey consubstantiation, transignification, and a recent revival of impanation as potential means for describing the metaphysical realities of the Eucharist. (shrink)

Como imperturbables representantes de la teología cristiana, Santo Tomás y Leibniz adhieren prima facie a la tesis según la cual el mundo es una creación divina a partir de la nada (creatio ex nihilo), elevando esta verdad a la categoría de misterio o milagro de la religión. Pese a que el mismo Leibniz invoque la autoridad de Santo Tomás para circunscribir la creación del mundo en el contexto de la Revelación, el estatus epistemológico de las pruebas o argumentos sobre cuya (...) base ambos justifican la tesis de la creatio ex nihilo es diferente: mientras que el aquinate reconoce que, habiendo sido creado de la nada, el mundo podría haber sido eterno -con lo cual Santo Tomás apunta a preservar intacta la omnipotencia de Dios-, el polímata alemán piensa de manera diferente, a saber, que no es racionalmente demostrable que el mundo existente o actual no sea, en efecto, eterno. De hecho, en ciertos pasajes, Leibniz sugiere que el mundo, en vez de ser el resultado de una creación, puede ser concebido como una eterna emanación divina. Sobre la base de diversas piezas textuales de ambos autores, nuestro propósito consiste en esbozar un estudio comparativo que examine inicialmente la manera en que Leibniz, apoyándose en la autoridad de Santo Tomás, concibe la creación divina del mundo al interior de su metafísica teológica (sección 1) con el objeto de analizar retrospectivamente, en una segunda etapa, la doctrina creacionista de Santo Tomás (sección 2), para así determinar si, finalmente, ambos sostienen o no una doctrina filosófica coincidente acerca de la creación en el plano metafísico-teológico (sección 3). (shrink)

Alexander’s "Infinitesimal. How a dangerous mathematical theory shaped the modern world"(London: Oneworld Publications, 2015) is right to argue that the Jesuits had a chilling effect on Italian mathematics, but I question his account of the Jesuit motivations for suppressing indivisibles. Alexander alleges that the Jesuits’ intransigent commitment to Aristotle and Euclid explains their opposition to the method of indivisibles. A different hypothesis, which Alexander doesn’t pursue, is a conflict between the method of indivisibles and the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. (...) This is a pity, for the conflict with the Eucharist has advantages over the Jesuit commitment to Aristotle and Euclid. The method of indivisibles was a method that developed in the course of the seventeenth century, and those who developed ‘beyond the Alps’ relied upon Aristotelian and Euclidean ideals. Alexander’s failure to recognize the importance of Aristotle and Euclid for the development of the method of indivisibles arises from an unwarranted conflation of indivisibles and infinitesimals. Once indivisibles and infinitesimals are distinguished, we observe that the development of the method of indivisibles exhibits an unmistakable sympathy for Aristotle and Euclid. Thus, it makes sense to consider an alternative explanation for the Jesuit abhorrence of indivisibles. And indeed, indivisibles but not infinitesimals conflict with the doctrine of the Eucharist, the central dogma of the Church. (shrink)