Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

which God exists (in Heaven?) and the way in which Christ is present

in the Eucharist (in some other sense, which might be called symbolic

or sacramental). In stark contrast, the teaching of the Council of Trent

implied a presence of Christ in the Eucharist that was ‘substantial’ or ‘real’.

Most reformed theologians thought that the Catholic view was not only

mysterious but incomprehensible, because it implied that the same reality

could be present, simultaneously, in thousands of different places.

Descartes recognized the sensitivity of the questions raised. He prefaced

his comments by disclaiming: ‘it is not up to me to explain how one can

conceive that the body of Jesus Christ is present in the Holy Sacrament’

(iv.). However, he also quoted, in Latin, from the Council of Trent

the passage that conceded that ‘we can hardly express in words’ the kind

of existence that is involved here.Since the Council did not teach that

wecould not express the reality in words, but merely that we could hardly

do so, Descartes ventured, foolishly, to make such an attempt. However,

mindful of what might happen if others heard about their discussion,

he asked Mesland not to communicate his views to anyone unless his

correspondent thought they were orthodox and, if he were to share them

with anyone else, that he not attribute those views to Descartes.

Descartes’ confidential commentary on the theology of the Eucharist

was motivated by a desire to show that belief in transubstantiation was not

irrational.‘I shall risk telling you in confidence a way of...avoiding the

slander of heretics [Calvinists] who object to us [Catholics] that we believe,

in this matter, something that is completely incomprehensible and implies

acontradiction’ (iv.). The proposed solution was to focus attention on

the identity of familiar bodies, despite the changes they undergo over time.

The matter that composes the human body may change completely, over a

number of years, as each particle is replaced by other particles by nutrition.

However, a person is still said to have ‘the same body’ because, despite its

piecemeal substitution, it continues to be united to the same soul. There

is thus a sense in which the matter we ingest when we eat and drink

is ‘transubstantiated’ into the body of a human being. Descartes thinks

that a similarly elegant and easily comprehensible account is available for

the teaching of Trent about the Eucharist. The bread and wine used in

the liturgy is joined, by divine power, with the spiritual reality of God.

Despite maintaining all the usual properties of bread and wine, such as

the familiar size, shape, and texture of the bread or the colour and taste

of the wine, they are transformed into the body and blood of Christ by