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Real Presence in the Eucharist and time-travel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2014

MARTIN PICKUP
MARTIN PICKUP*
Affiliation:
New College, Oxford, OX1 3BN, UK e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This 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.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 51 , Special Issue 3: Religious Studies at 50 , September 2015 , pp. 379 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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