William of Ockham on the Lord's Supper
The elements become Christ's body and blood
THE POSITION
Transubstantiation, held on the Church's definition. Like Scotus he grants that the scriptural words do not by themselves exclude the alternative, and unlike Aquinas he does not think the doctrine is established by reasoning from the text.
WHY THERE IS NO QUOTATIONNo quotations. He died in 1347 and the Latin is public domain, but the usable English translations are modern and in copyright, so these positions are paraphrased from standard scholarly accounts rather than reproduced. Fewer loci are filled for him than for Scotus, and the reason is recorded per cell rather than hidden: the literature on Ockham is dominated by his logic, metaphysics and politics, and his positions on several loci are not reported cell-by-cell in the standard accounts consulted.
26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is My body.”
2 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Franciscan, the Venerable Inceptor. Nominalist in metaphysics and voluntarist about God's freedom and the human will; spent his last two decades writing against Pope John XXII from the emperor's court in Munich.
Cite this page
"William of Ockham on the Lord's Supper", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/ockham/lords-supper (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/ockham/lords-supper).