The real presence

The doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ’s body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult metaquestion: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas’s defence of transubstantiation, perhaps the paradigmatic account, invokes Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. My aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis but rather to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice. The doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ’s body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult metaquestion: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas’s () defence of transubstantiation in Summa Theologica, Part III, Questions – is a philosophical analysis of the real presence doctrine, invoking Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. Taking his discussion as a paradigmatic exposition of the real presence doctrine, my aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis but rather to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice. Religious motivation for the real presence doctrine Leaving aside Aquinas’s philosophical analysis, we can extract the following religious claims to which he, and others who hold that Christ is really present in the Eucharist, are committed. Religious Studies, Page 1 of 15 © Cambridge University Press 2012 doi:10.1017/S0034412512000121