Franco Burgersdijk on the Impossibility of Accidents Without a Subject:

A Reformed Scholastic Critique of Transubstantiation

J. Neil Daniels

I. Introduction

The clash over transubstantiation was never merely a quarrel about bread and wine. It was, at its heart, a debate about ontology—about what it means for something to be, and to be what it is. By the early seventeenth century, the Council of Trent’s decrees (1551) had already hardened Catholic dogma: in the Eucharist, the substance of bread and wine is transformed into Christ’s body and blood, while the accidents—taste, color, smell, extension—remain, miraculously sustained without their subject. For Protestant theologians, this was not only a theological corruption but also a metaphysical monstrosity.

Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635), professor of philosophy at Leiden, became one of the sharpest scholastic critics of this doctrine. Educated during the university’s golden age—when Dutch intellectual life rivaled the great Catholic centers of Paris and Salamanca—Burgersdijk absorbed the tools of Aristotelian metaphysics and logic but deployed them in service of Reformed orthodoxy. His writings, especially the Institutionum Metaphysicarum (1640), turned scholastic weapons back against Rome, dismantling the conceptual framework that undergirded the Tridentine sacrament.

This essay traces Burgersdijk’s critique of transubstantiation, with particular attention to his rejection of “accidents without a subject.” Along the way, it situates him alongside contemporaries—Bartholomäus Keckermann (1571–1609), Johannes Alsted (1588–1638), Clemens Timpler (1563–1624), and Gilbertus Jacchaeus (1578–1628)—who shared his commitments, even if they differed in style. Together, these thinkers forged a distinctly Reformed scholasticism: rigorous, Aristotelian in method, yet unflinching in its defense of sola scriptura and confessional theology.

II. Burgersdijk in Context

Born in De Lier, a village in South Holland, Burgersdijk came of age during the Dutch Republic’s struggle for independence from Spain. The year of his birth, 1590, still witnessed open warfare; the Twelve Years’ Truce would not come until 1609. One can imagine the atmosphere at Leiden, a city that had withstood the brutal Spanish siege of 1574 and thereafter been rewarded with a university by William of Orange himself. This was not merely an academic setting—it was a bastion of Protestant identity.

Burgersdijk’s early works in logic and physics quickly established him as a formidable systematizer. His Institutionum Logicarum (1626) became a standard textbook; his Collegium Physicum (1637) guided generations of students in natural philosophy. Yet it was the Institutionum Metaphysicarum (1640), published posthumously, that cemented his place in the story of Protestant scholasticism. Unlike Calvin—who was cautious, even hostile, toward the speculative tendencies of scholastic metaphysics—Burgersdijk embraced Aristotelian categories unapologetically. But he did so with a clear polemical aim: to show that Catholic sacramental metaphysics was not only unbiblical but incoherent.

And here he had allies. Keckermann in Heidelberg, Alsted in Herborn, Timpler in Steinfurt, and Jacchaeus in Geneva all belonged to the same intellectual movement. They were Reformed, trained in the methods of late humanism and scholasticism, and deeply committed to using philosophy as the handmaid of theology. Their works circulated widely—sometimes in rather dry Latin, admittedly, but also with an occasional flash of rhetorical sharpness. (One smiles reading Alsted’s remark that Catholic metaphysics makes “phantoms” out of accidents—phantasmata accidentium—a phrase that captures both his wit and his frustration.)

III. The Core Principle: Accidents Require a Subject

The maxim at the center of Burgersdijk’s critique is deceptively simple: the being of an accident is to inhere in something (“esse accidentis est inesse”).¹ This is not a casual observation but a bedrock axiom of Aristotelian ontology. An accident—say, redness, sweetness, or roundness—does not exist in itself but only in a subject, a substance that underlies it. To posit an accident without a subject is to strip it of its very essence.

In Book II of the Institutionum Metaphysicarum, Burgersdijk develops this with ruthless precision. If an accident could exist apart from a substance, he argues, then by definition it would no longer be an accident but a substance, since “what subsists in itself is a substance” (quod per se subsistit, substantia est).²

Catholic theologians attempted to evade this contradiction by appealing to divine omnipotence: surely God can miraculously sustain the accidents without their natural subject? Burgersdijk responds with a crisp distinction: God is omnipotent, yes, but His power does not extend to contradictions. “Things that involve a contradiction cannot be done by God” (ea quae contradictionem involvunt, a Deo fieri nequeunt).³ To imagine otherwise is not piety but confusion.

This line was not Burgersdijk’s invention. Keckermann had said much the same a generation earlier: “For the being of an accident is to inhere; therefore, if it does not inhere, it is not an accident” (esse accidentis est inesse).⁴ But Burgersdijk sharpened the point with scholastic rigor, making it impossible for Catholic apologists to retreat into the vague refuge of “mystery.”

IV. Extraordinary Divine Concurrence?

A favorite Catholic reply was the doctrine of extraordinary divine concurrence. According to this theory, God supplies directly the causal support normally provided by a substance. The bread is gone, yes, but God Himself now sustains the color, taste, and extension of bread in existence.

Burgersdijk, however, finds this both impious and incoherent. If God assumes the causal role of the subject, then God becomes, absurdly, the “substrate of accidents” (Deum subiectum accidentium fieri).⁵ This is metaphysically grotesque, reducing divine majesty to the role of a physical bearer of qualities.

Alternatively, if God conserves accidents through creative causality, He blurs the categories of creation and conservation. Clemens Timpler had already ridiculed this move: “God cannot supply the causality of the subject, because this would make God the subject of accidents, which is unworthy and impossible” (Deus non potest supplere causalitatem subiecti, quia hoc faceret Deum subiectum accidentium, quod est indignum et impossibile).⁶

Here we glimpse the Protestant scholastic concern not merely with logical neatness but with divine honor. To ascribe the support of accidents to God was not only metaphysically confused; it was theologically degrading.

V. Migration and Mutual Inherence

Another subtle question lurked at the edges of the debate: could accidents migrate from one subject to another? Might, for example, the whiteness of bread “leap” from the vanished bread-substance to some divine substrate? Burgersdijk’s answer is unequivocal: no. “An accident... cannot be moved unless in and with the subject” (accidens... non potest moveri nisi in et cum subiecto).⁷

What appears to migrate—the scent of flowers carried on the breeze, for instance—is in fact the movement of the substrate itself, imperceptible though it may be. Johannes Alsted put it crisply: “Accidents do not migrate... what seems to migrate is moving with its subject” (accidentia non migrant... quod videtur migrare, cum subiecto suo movetur).⁸

Equally untenable was the idea that one accident could serve as the substrate of another. Heat cannot underlie moisture, nor moisture underlie heat; both inhere in the water that underlies them. To suggest otherwise is to say that a subject exists in a subject—“which is absurd” (subiectum in subiecto existeret, quod absurdum est).⁹

Gilbertus Jacchaeus made the same point in his Institutiones Physicae: “Heat and moisture in water are not subjects for each other, but the water underlies both” (calor et humiditas in aqua non sunt sibi invicem subiecta, sed aqua utrique subest).¹⁰ Once again, the Reformed consensus was clear: Catholic Eucharistic metaphysics relied on impossible notions.

VI. Can Accidents Act?

Perhaps most striking in Burgersdijk’s analysis is his rejection of the idea that accidents can act. Thomists had insisted that the Eucharistic accidents not only exist but operate: they can be seen, touched, tasted. Burgersdijk will have none of it. “Accidents do not act; rather, substances clothed with accidents act” (accidentia non agunt, sed substantiae accidentibus vestitae agunt).¹¹

This is not hair-splitting. If accidents cannot act, then they cannot produce perceptions. The “taste” of the Eucharistic bread cannot be tasted apart from bread itself; the “color” cannot be seen apart from a substance bearing it. Without substance, accidents are inert. Thus, the Catholic claim that the communicant sees, touches, and consumes “mere accidents” collapses.

VII. Real Distinction and Substance

Another of Burgersdijk’s arguments draws upon the principle of real distinction. “Everything that can be separated is distinguished by its nature” (omne quod separari potest, ex natura sua distinguitur).¹² Accidents, however, cannot be separated in reality from their substances while retaining existence. Therefore, “separated accidents” are a contradiction in terms.

Here again he guards against sophistry. Catholic theologians might say: ah, but distinction may be conceptual rather than real. True enough, Burgersdijk replies, but one must not confuse what can be thought with what can be. Alexander may cease to be Philip’s son, but he remains Alexander; that is a conceptual distinction. But accidents cannot remain accidents when stripped of their substance. To confuse these categories is to dissolve metaphysics into wordplay.

VIII. Reformed Scholastic Consensus

Burgersdijk’s critique was not a lone voice. Across Reformed Europe, his contemporaries echoed the same themes. Keckermann denied that even God’s absolute power (potentia Dei absoluta) could sustain an accident without a subject. Alsted ridiculed migration theories. Timpler mocked divine concurrence. Jacchaeus patiently explained the impossibility of accidents inhering in each other.

Together, they forged a consensus that accidents sine subiecto were metaphysical impossibilities, not mysteries of faith. This dovetailed with confessional statements: Calvin had insisted that Christ is spiritually present in the Supper, not bodily (Institutes 4.17), while the Belgic Confession (1561) flatly rejected transubstantiation in Article 35.

Richard Muller, in his magisterial Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, emphasizes that these figures did not abandon metaphysics but redeployed it.¹³ They were not irrational biblicists; they were scholastics who understood that reason, rightly used, must expose contradiction and safeguard divine truth.

IX. Conclusion

Franco Burgersdijk’s refutation of transubstantiation is, in many ways, a model of Reformed scholasticism at its best: philosophically rigorous, theologically grounded, polemically sharp, yet never losing sight of the ultimate aim—defending the majesty of God and the coherence of Christian truth.

By insisting that accidents cannot exist without a subject, that divine power does not extend to contradictions, and that Catholic sacramental metaphysics collapses under its own absurdities, Burgersdijk demonstrated that scholastic categories, far from being monopolized by Rome, could be wielded against her. The Reformation was not the end of scholasticism but its renewal. And Burgersdijk, standing in the company of Keckermann, Alsted, Timpler, and Jacchaeus, ensured that the metaphysics of the Reformed tradition would be as precise and formidable as that of its Catholic rival—only more coherent, and, from their perspective, more biblical.

Endnotes

Franco Burgersdijk, Institutionum Metaphysicarum (Leiden: Elzevier, 1640), II.XVII.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Bartholomäus Keckermann, Systema Physicum (Hanover: Antonius, 1610), Lib. I, Cap. 2.
Burgersdijk, Institutionum Metaphysicarum, II.XVIII.
Clemens Timpler, Metaphysicae Systema Methodicum (Steinfurt: Holwein, 1604), Cap. 5.
Burgersdijk, Institutionum Metaphysicarum, II.XIX.
Johannes Alsted, Metaphysica (Herborn: Christophorus Corvinus, 1613), Lib. 1, Cap. 6.
Burgersdijk, Institutionum Metaphysicarum, II.XX.
Gilbertus Jacchaeus, Institutiones Physicae (Geneva: De Tournes, 1624), Lib. 2, Cap. 4.
Burgersdijk, Institutionum Metaphysicarum, II.XXI.
Ibid., II.VI.
Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, Vol. 1: Prolegomena to Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 330–335.

Bibliography (Turabian Style)

Alsted, Johannes (1588–1638). Metaphysica. Herborn: Christophorus Corvinus, 1613.

Burgersdijk, Franco. Institutionum Metaphysicarum Libri Duo. Leiden: Elzevier, 1640.

———. Collegium Physicum. Leiden: Elzevier, 1637.

———. Institutionum Logicarum Libri Duo. Leiden: Elzevier, 1626.

Jacchaeus, Gilbertus (1578–1628). Institutiones Physicae. Geneva: De Tournes, 1624.

Keckermann, Bartholomäus (1571–1609). Systema Physicum. Hanover: Antonius, 1610.

Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725. Vol. 1, Prolegomena to Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003.

Timpler, Clemens (1563–1624). Metaphysicae Systema Methodicum. Steinfurt: Holwein, 1604.