Real Presence in the Eucharist and time-travel

Abstract

AbstractThis article aims to bring some work in contemporary analytic metaphysics to discussions of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I will show that some unusual claims of the Real Presence doctrine exactly parallel what would be happening in the world if objects were to time-travel in certain ways. Such time-travel would make ordinary objects multiply located, and in the relevantly analogous respects. If it is conceptually coherent that objects behave in this way, we have a model for the behaviour of the Eucharist which shows the doctrine to be coherent, at least with respect to the issues discussed.