This is the final draft of a paper published in Faith and Philosophy, 2017, 34(3): 247–271. Please cite the published version of the paper. The published version is available at http://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil20178384. THE EUCHARISTIC CONQUEST OF TIME Pavel Butakov Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians claim that the unique event of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary is present in Eucharistic liturgies. A popular explanatory strategy for this miraculous presence suggests that due to its supernatural character the Eucharist "conquers time," transcends its boundaries, and allows for temporal coincidence of two chronologically distant events. I discuss the four main approaches within this strategy that can be discovered in contemporary theological writings. The first approach implies a time travel of the Calvary event. The second suggests the time travel of Eucharistic participants. The third eliminates the chronological distance by relocating one of the events into a timeless reality. The fourth assumes multilocation of the event across time. I argue that each of these approaches is untenable on philosophical or theological grounds. 1. Introduction: The Liturgical Present Tense In his recent paper "The Liturgical Present Tense" Nicholas Wolterstorff makes a flattening observation: "Analytic philosophers of religion have paid almost no attention to communal worship and liturgy." 1 It is indeed long overdue for analytic philosophy to direct its attention to a territory that remains virtually uncharted, and to reflect philosophically on aspects of religious worship. Wolterstorff himself meets the challenge by reflecting on a perplexing feature of Christian liturgies: the use of the present tense to sing and speak about events in the past. Wolterstorff calls this usage "the liturgical present tense." He wonders: It is characteristic of hymns in the liturgical present tense to insert such indexicals as "now," "today," "this night," "this day"... What is the point? How are we to understand the use of the liturgical present tense? 2 Indeed, what do Christians have in mind when they proclaim, "Christ the Lord is risen today," or "O Sacred Head, now wounded"? Wolterstorff suggests that when we as participants of a Christian liturgy use the present tense to speak of the events of the past as if they are happening now, we are employing a certain rhetorical trope, which Wolterstorff calls "the as-if trope". We know full well that the event we are speaking about occurred in the past, and we by no means 1 Wolterstorff, "The Liturgical Present Tense," 171. 2 Wolterstorff, "The Liturgical Present Tense," 173. 2 believe that it is occurring now, yet we deliberately prefer to contradict the reality for a reason. We choose the present tense as a language that has the resonance of immediacy in order to make the distant events immediately relevant to us. Instead of thinking of the past events becoming objectively present, Wolterstorff suggests interpreting the liturgical present tense on the personal, subjective level: "One might say that thereby we make them present to us. We do not make them present again; that is impossible. We make them present to us." 3 The usage of the as-if trope allows us to feel a personal connection with the history of salvation, to find consolation, strength, and joy for today in that which happened long ago. I suppose that Wolterstorff's interpretation is applicable to some liturgical cases, but I would like to concentrate on an important occasion where the usage of the liturgical present tense cannot be interpreted via the as-if trope. 2. The Present Tense of the Eucharistic Sacrifice The center of Christian liturgical life is the celebration of the Eucharist. It is common for traditional Eucharistic liturgies to use the present tense to proclaim Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. 4 In spite of the clear historical and creedal belief that Jesus Christ offered himself as a sacrifice "under Pontius Pilate," and in spite of the clear biblical teaching that Christ's sacrifice was single, sufficient, and "once for all" (Heb. 10:10–14), the liturgical texts are also clear: the sacrifice of Christ is happening in the present Eucharist. Now, we ought to ask ourselves Wolterstorff's question: How are we to understand the use of the liturgical present tense? What do the worshipers have in mind when they proclaim that the event that happened long ago is happening now? Do they really mean it, or do they just imagine it and use figurative language and rhetorical tropes to strengthen their imagination? In order to be able to interpret this case of the liturgical present tense as the employment of the as-if trope, we have to make sure that the worshipers do not in fact believe that the sacrifice takes place in their time, that they would be ready to admit that they are just imagining the event of the past to be present here and now. For the majority of the world's Christians, however, this is not so. In fact, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and perhaps even some high-church Protestants confess that the one unrepeatable sacrifice of Christ is present whenever there is a Eucharistic liturgy. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice." 5 Prominent Eastern Orthodox theologians make the same claim: 3 Wolterstorff, "The Liturgical Present Tense," 190. 4 To give just one example, during the fracturing of the bread, Roman Catholics proclaim, "Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world." Similarly, an Orthodox priest, while preparing the holy gifts, cuts the bread saying, "Sacrificed is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." 5 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2.2.1.3.V §1367. 3 This sacrifice is none other than the death on the cross of Christ... The Eucharist is indisputably the very sacrifice of the Lord upon the cross. 6 The Eucharist is not a bare commemoration nor an imaginary representation of Christ's sacrifice, but the true sacrifice itself; yet on the other hand it is not a new sacrifice, nor a repetition of the sacrifice on Calvary, since the Lamb was sacrificed "once only, for all time." 7 It is clear that Catholics and Orthodox do not qualify for the "as-if trope" interpretation of the present tense in the Eucharistic sacrifice, since they lack the necessary condition of disbelief in the real presence of the past event. They plainly confess that they do believe that the event of the past is present today. For them the Eucharist is not only a sacrifice of Christ and not only a real presence of the sacrificed Christ, but rather the real presence of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. Whether or not Wolterstorff's theory works for other liturgical cases, it is not applicable to the Eucharistic liturgical present tense used by the majority of the world's Christians. 8 Therefore, the question remains: How are we to understand this particular use of the present tense in the Eucharist? 3. A Variety of Options Orthodox and Catholic theologians and doctrinal documents clearly teach that the unrepeatable sacrifice, which happened once for all two millennia ago on Calvary, literally occurs in each Eucharistic liturgy. However, in spite of the rigid and clear dogmatic claims about the unity of the Calvary sacrifice and the Eucharistic sacrifice, there is no philosophical unity and scarce clarity among theologians in support of the claim. The majority of contemporary Catholic and Orthodox theologians avoid any metaphysical explanation of their puzzling doctrine, and even if there is an attempt to provide at least some kind of a clarification, it is usually limited to the bare usage of vague terms like "reconstitution," "representation," or "reactualization." Nevertheless, quite a few theologians dare to expand on the succinct dogmatic formula with their more or less philosophical theories. One of the most popular explanatory strategies involves the possibility of transcending the boundaries of time. I find evidence of four different approaches within this strategy, and the main part of this paper will be devoted to the discussion 6 Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World, 51. 7 Ware, The Orthodox Church, 286. 8 Wolterstorff maintains that the use of the present tense verbs in the Eucharist does not qualify as the liturgical present tense, since they describe Christ's not only past but present and continuous status of being sacrificed. The genuine liturgical present tense should allow insertion of such indexicals as "today" or "this morning," while the celebrant, Wolterstorff argues, is not saying that Christ is sacrificed today ("The Liturgical Present Tense," 192). While this is true for some Protestant liturgies, the Orthodox and Catholic rites proclaim that Christ's sacrifice occurs during the liturgy, i.e., "today." Therefore, we are dealing with a genuine case of the liturgical present tense, yet it is not the case of the as-if trope. 4 of the four approaches. But before venturing into the metaphysics of time I should briefly mention other philosophical attempts to solve the puzzle of the presence of Christ's sacrifice in the Eucharist. It must be noted that I am not interested here in those theories that explain the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; that is a different problem. My concern is about an explanation of the presence of the unrepeatable past event of Christ's sacrifice in a Eucharistic liturgy. One popular way to interpret the presence of Christ's sacrifice in the Eucharist, which prevailed in the Liturgical Movement of the twentieth century, is rooted in the "mystery theology" of Odo Casel. According to it, the Eucharistic liturgy is a special memorial rite that renders the historical event operative now, 9 "reactualizes" or makes it actual again and again. The philosophical explanations provided by the adherents of this theology are mystifying and symbolic, and lack sufficient clarity. 10 Sometimes one cannot say for sure whether they still believe in the real presence of Christ's sacrifice in the Eucharist, and whether or not they allow for its multiple repetitions. When Nicholas Wolterstorff takes the statements of those liturgical theologians at face value, he concludes that what they teach is "ontologically impossible." 11 I agree with Jesse Couenhoven, who says, "I suspect, however, that Wolterstorff may be trying to make the views of these theologians clearer and more precise than they actually are." 12 Thus far, the "mystery" tradition of the Liturgical Movement does not provide a tenable explanation. There also have been a few attempts by analytic philosophers to explain the effectiveness of past events in the present Christian liturgy. Apart from Wolterstorff's as-if trope, there have been suggested the anamnetic theory, the dramatic representation theory, and the immersion model. 13 Yet none of them goes as far as to draw upon the doctrine of the real presence of the event of Christ's sacrifice in the Eucharist. Jesse Couenhoven in his response to Wolterstorff suggests three different ways to understand the Eucharistic present tense. 14 One way is to see the presence of Christ's sacrifice as being efficacious in the life of a Christian. A second way is to see it in the constitutive sense. Unfortunately, he does not sufficiently elaborate on the first two ways, and admits that they sound similar to the "reactualization" theories of the liturgical theologians. Finally, Couenhoven mentions a third way, which "draws on a theology of time." Here he employs the patristic idea of 9 Cf. Mazza, The Celebration of the Eucharist, 6. 10 It is quite common for the followers of this approach to formulate their ideas in an existentialist framework, such as: "The original proto-history becomes thereby origin-giving meta-history, that is to say, always contemporary" (Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 209). 11 "The Liturgical Present Tense," 189. 12 Couenhoven, "Wolterstorff's 'The Liturgical Present Tense': a Response," 1. 13 See Cuneo, "Liturgical Immersion." 14 Couenhoven, "Wolterstorff's 'The Liturgical Present Tense': a Response," 3–5. 5 the church's eternal presence in the "eighth day" of creation. He concludes that "Christ's sacrifice could be present to the church in a manner analogous to the way it is present in God's own eternity." I will say more about this explanation in section 5.3. Alexander Pruss provides a whole list of philosophical questions, the answering of which may help solve the puzzle of how the Eucharistic sacrifice and sacrifice on Calvary can be one and the same sacrifice: What, then, are the identity and individuation conditions for sacrifices? Is there on a deep level a single act of self-giving that Christ undertook, and if so, how is it related to the events of the altar and those of Calvary? Are they perhaps manifestations of that act? Are they parts of it? Catholic devotion talks of being present at Mass as a way of being present at Calvary. Can this be literally true, space-time being bridged in a supernatural way? Or does the Eucharistic liturgy simply represent Calvary, and if so, what philosophical account can be given of the nature of this representing-is it conventional or in some way natural, for instance? 15 In this paper I will address only one question from the Pruss's list: "Can this be literally true, space-time being bridged in a supernatural way?" My primary goal here is not to solve the puzzle, but to expose philosophical and theological problems of tampering with time. The following discussion will be based upon various statements of those Catholic and Orthodox theologians who explain the presence of Christ's sacrifice in the Eucharist by appealing to a supernatural trespassing of the temporal boundaries. My general conclusion will be that this strategy (hereafter referred to as the "conquest of time") is too problematic and that theologians ought to address other explanatory approaches (e.g., from the Pruss's list). 4. The Conquest of Time In his Introduction to Liturgical Theology a prominent Eastern Orthodox supporter of the Liturgical Movement, Alexander Schmemann, makes a bold claim: All theological theories of the Sacrament agree that its meaning lies in the fact that while it is performed as a repetition in time, it manifests an unrepeatable and supra-temporal reality. 16 Despite the use of hyperbole, Schmemann is right: many theological writings about the Eucharist and Calvary imply going beyond the familiar temporal sequence into a supra-temporal reality. Consider, for example, a statement of an influential Catholic theologian Karl Adam: "The Sacrifice of Calvary, as a great supra-temporal reality, enters into the immediate present. Space and time are abolished." 17 I am not aware of any philosophically consistent systematic treatment 15 Pruss, "The Eucharist: Real Presence and Real Absence," 513. 16 Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 43. 17 Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, 214. 6 of the supra-temporal nature of the Eucharist; however, sifting through theological works, I came across a significant number of scattered passages that try to explain the Eucharist as an alteration of the fabric of time. All of those varying statements rest upon a common foundation: we as created beings are bound by the temporal sequence of events, but God, who is not bound by it, allows us by means of the sacrament to transcend those chronological boundaries. Schmemann calls this transcendence "the conquest of time": The essence of the Sacrament consists first of all in the possibility of the conquest of time, i.e. the manifestation and realization (within the Sacrament) of a past event in all its supratemporal, eternal reality and effectiveness. 18 What exactly happens as we transcend the boundaries of time? How do we end up in a situation where the event of the past becomes present to us? Unfortunately, there is hardly any consensus among theological statements on this matter. I was able to detect among them four different ways of answering the question. The four basic approaches can be roughly described as follows: The event, which took place and ended in the past at t1, is present to us in the Eucharist, which happens at t2, because 1) The event moves from t1 to t2. 2) We move from t2 to t1. 3) One of the two events is timeless, thus, there is no temporal separation between them. 4) The event has multiple locations across time, being both at t1 and at t2. In order to demonstrate the four approaches as they are presented by theologians, I will now provide a list of the corresponding quotations. It should be noted, however, that we are not dealing with philosophically consistent theories, and that it is not unusual to detect more than one approach in the works of the same author. Moreover, I do not claim that these approaches are what the theologians themselves had in mind, but this is my attempt to interpret and systematize what they have written. The first approach is quite popular among the followers of the "reactualization" theory. The basic idea is that the past event becomes "actual" in the Eucharist, that it receives a new occurrence at another moment in time. In this sense, the past event is considered to be brought into the time when the Eucharistic liturgy is being conducted. Every time when we do the remembrance of the Sacrifice of the Cross, we do not multiply sacrifices, but we associate the one Sacrifice with the present. The Sacrifice remains one, but it is brought into the present, so that the people become partakers of it. 19 18 Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 43. 19 Testa, Sacraments of the Church, 190. 7 In the Eucharist we remember this event that happened on Good Friday and bring it into the present through the ritual of the Mass... Christ's sacrifice was offered only once but is validated, brought into our own moment, when we participate in the Eucharist. 20 The second approach has to do with the opposite idea: it is not the past event that is brought into the present, but it is we who overcome our temporal boundaries and thus can be present at the moment of the past. This approach appears to be the least popular among theologians. We as a group of Christians at worship... living in our own present time and place, scattered into countless celebrations of the Eucharist all over the earth, "we" are now all brought together to the single time, place, and perspective. 21 During the Liturgy, through its divine power, we are projected to the point where eternity cuts across time, and at this point we become true contemporaries with the events which we commemorate. 22 The third approach is based on the idea that the true Sacrifice happens in timeless heaven 23 , and all the earthly Eucharistic sacrifices are representations of the heavenly Sacrifice. Since one of the two events is outside of time, there can be no temporal separation between them. The sacrifice of Christ, taking place at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 2:9) as he makes his eternal intercession for us (Heb. 7:23–8), appears in the form of the "Lamb slain," standing before the throne (Rev. 5:6). 24 It is this priestly action which, abstracted from time and place, constitutes the heart of the heavenly liturgy and which is rendered present sacramentally by the Eucharist. 25 Finally, the fourth approach treats Christ's sacrifice as an event that occurred at a certain moment in the past, but which is also ubiquitous in time, disseminated throughout history. The sacrifice is both one and many: it is multiple in temporal history, yet it is one in everlasting eternity. [The Eucharistic celebration's] exterior, sacramental aspect-the level of the sacramentum tantum-is multiform, happening in many places at different times... The temporal and the everlasting converge and meet... Such is the truth perceived by all those who insist that there is only one Eucharist, although the appearances are many. 26 20 O'Dea, Eucharist: The Basic Spirituality with 30 Stories of Personal Witness, ch. 14. 21 Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence, 14. 22 Evdokimov, L'Orthodoxie, 241. The quote is taken from Ware, The Orthodox Church, 287. 23 It is not necessary to interpret the biblical term "heaven" as a place outside of time and space, but in this paper I will use it only in that sense. 24 Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World, 18. 25 Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy, 134–135. 26 O'Connor, The Hidden Manna, 360. 8 Offered once on Golgotha, this sacrifice is eternally "actualized" in the eucharist on our altars. 27 We should not, however, confuse this approach with the previous one. In the third approach, the eternity is considered to be timeless, whereas here the eternity is temporal and everlasting. Thus, in the third approach the prototype event of the sacrifice exists timelessly in heaven, and here the prototype is earthly and historical. The "truth of what is now accomplished in the synaxis" is to be found not in a Platonic type of ideal reality... The crucial element which overturns the Platonic relationship between archetype and image is the category of time. To get from the image to the prototype we do not have to go outside time. 28 The implications of the fourth approach may sound quite similar to the implications of the first one, which also boils down to the same event occurring at multiple times. Nevertheless, the theological language of the two approaches is quite different: in the first approach the one unrepeatable sacrifice is being brought into individual moments of time, whereas here the sacrifice is the event that has multiple robust occurrences of its own. The Church considers that every Mass is a new and a complete sacrifice... The Eucharistic sacrifice is not one continuous act performed by Christ in heaven; it is so many different sacrifices, with a human mode of differentiation... We are not assisting at one continuous sacrifice, immutably offered up by the Christ in heaven, of which our individual Mass would be merely the transient and local manifestation, but, on the contrary, Mass is offered entirely according to human division of time. 29 After presenting theological articulations of the four approaches to the Eucharistic conquest of time, I will now proceed to a reconstruction of their metaphysical foundations and evaluation of their overall tenability. 5. Metaphysics of the Eucharistic Conquest of Time First, I need to outline some basic terms and concepts for the following discussion. The quoted theological statements mention three different events that are supernaturally united through time. Those three events are, as Jean Daniélou puts it, three modes of subsistence of Christ's sacrifice: The sacrifice of Christ subsists under three different modes. It is the same priestly action which took place in a precise moment of history; which is eternally present in heaven; and which subsists under the sacramental appearances. 30 27 Schmemann, The Eucharist-Sacrament of the Kingdom, 195. 28 Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World, 44. 29 Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, 233–236. 30 Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy, 137. 9 In order to distinguish between the three modes I will talk about three different sacrifices, which, according to the theological conviction, are one and the same sacrifice. The "Calvary sacrifice" is the particular event that occurred on Calvary on the 14 th of Nisan in 33 AD. The "Heavenly sacrifice" is the timeless event-type that takes place in eternity. The "Eucharistic sacrifice" is the church's ritual commemoration of Christ's death, which occurs in a Eucharistic liturgy. For the sake of generality, I do not want to side with any specific philosophical theory about the nature of events. 31 What is important for us is whether events are particular or universal. Following the most popular opinion, I will consider events as particulars, which do not recur or re-occur. The universal "events," which can recur, will be treated as event-types. Events are individual and are concretely located in space and time. The Calvary sacrifice and the Eucharistic sacrifice are events. The Heavenly sacrifice is not located in space and time; thus, it is not an event but, apparently, an event-type. Alexander Pruss asks what the identity and individuation conditions for those events are. I will assume an intuitive identity condition for particular events: it is necessary (yet, perhaps, not sufficient) for identical events to coincide in time and space. Thus, in order to retain its identity an event has to retain its spatiotemporal location. An event that did not occur on Calvary on 14 th of Nisan 33 AD could be a copy of the Calvary sacrifice, or a different token of the same eventtype, but it cannot be the event of Calvary sacrifice. Particular events do not re-occur, which agrees with the theological insistence that the Calvary sacrifice is "one, single, unrepeatable event" that happened "once only." As for the other identity and individuation conditions, I do not have to provide an exhaustive answer to that question. The conquest-of-time strategy is not about identity of the events. The quoted statements do not explain how Calvary and Eucharist can be one and the same sacrifice, but rather what happens to time so that the participants of the Eucharist can be really present at the Calvary sacrifice. Individuation conditions for the two events have to be determined according to that supernatural presence. Thus, the "Calvary event" is that event at which the participants of a Eucharistic liturgy are present, and which occurred on Calvary on 14 th of Nisan 33 AD. The "Eucharistic event" is that event during which the participants of the Eucharistic liturgy become present at the Calvary event. Does the timeframe of the Calvary sacrifice or the Calvary event extend beyond Calvary, that is, the six hours of the crucifixion? Does it include, for example, the Last Supper or the Burial? I am inclined towards the negative answer for several reasons. First, the quoted statements indicate that Christ's sacrifice is "the Sacrifice of the Cross," that it "happened on Good Friday," and that it was "offered once on Golgotha." Therefore, this event has to be 31 Events have been interpreted as primitive ontological categories, or as properties or contents of spatiotemporal regions, or as changes, tropes, exemplifications of properties or states of affairs at spatiotemporal regions. For an excellent overview of theories of events, see: Simons, "Events," 358–385. 10 circumscribed by the Cross, Calvary, and Good Friday. Second, there is a strong theological reason to consider the Calvary event as completed on Calvary, since Christ's sacrifice on Calvary is complete, "it is finished" (John 19:30), it is sufficient and does not lack anything to be added to it later. Third, even if we could conceive of some larger event as a mereological sum of the Calvary event with other events, it will not affect the description of the Calvary event itself, and we would still have to explain how the conquest of time unites the two parts of the larger event. Are the Calvary and the Eucharistic events instantaneous or temporally extended? Apparently, they are extended, however short their duration might be. The Calvary event is extended because a sacrifice includes more sub-events or stages than just the instant of the victim's death. The extent of the Eucharistic event has to account for the duration of the participants' recognition and reverence of the present sacrifice. While the events are spatiotemporal entities, the following discussion will largely cover only the temporal dimension. There are two reasons for this. First, the quoted theological statements describe only the conquest of time, and not of space. Since my goal is to provide a metaphysical interpretation for those statements, I should remain as faithful to them as I can. The second reason is that of simplicity: in most cases, bringing space into account would be superfluous, and the suggested treatment of the temporal issues can be easily expanded to include the spatial component. In the following discussion I will typically speak of the location of events at temporal regions, where TC would be the exact location of the Calvary event, TE the exact location of a Eucharistic event, and TE1, TE2...TEn the exact locations of different Eucharistic events. I will treat the exact location at a region as a basic and intuitively clear relation between an event and time (spacetime). I will ignore any vagueness of events and assume that the events have crisp boundaries, which coincide with the boundaries of the regions at which they are located. Dealing with temporal regions, location at temporal regions, multilocation across time, eternity, and time travel, I will presuppose substantivalism, non-relativistic spacetime, eternalism, and the B-theory of time, which is the most welcoming metaphysical framework for this discussion. 32 I will not discuss whether the suggested approaches could work with other theories of time and space, since I assume that if the conquest of time is untenable even in the most comfortable framework, it will not become any more attractive when loaded with additional metaphysical problems. 32 Definitions of substantivalism, spacetime, eternalism, the B-theory of time, as well as of other common terms used in this paper, such as exact location, multilocation, coincidence, being disjointed, and being scattered, can be found, for example, in Cody Gilmore's excellent article "Location and Mereology." 11 5.1. Time Traveling Event and Scrunched Spacetime The first approach talks about the Calvary sacrifice being brought into our time by means of the Eucharistic liturgical commemoration. This is the basic idea behind those "reactualization" theories that imply alteration of temporal reality. As Wolterstorff correctly notes when describing the essence of those theories, "It is not we who travel about within time; it is events that travel about within time, from past to present." 33 Thus, whenever Christians decide to perform a Eucharistic liturgy, the Calvary event travels forward in time and becomes present in the Eucharistic event at TE. How can this time travel work? Let us assume that if it were possible to relocate all of the constituents of an event to a distant region of time, then it would be reasonable to think of the event as continuing its occurrence at that region of time. For example, consider the following story: after I ate my Christmas dinner in 2016, I entered a time machine and instantaneously time traveled to the year 3000, then I spent ten minutes in 3000 and time traveled back to Christmas 2016, and then I exited the time machine. In this story, the event of "digesting my 2016 Christmas dinner" started in 2016, continued its occurrence in 3000, and was completed in 2016. Let us now consider a similar scenario: the Calvary event starts at the beginning of TC and lasts until its middle. Then all its constituents leap through time to the beginning of TE, thus causing the event to continue its occurrence at the beginning of TE. Then the event lasts until the end of TE. Then the constituents leap back to the middle of TC, returning exactly to where they left from, and the event continues its occurrence from the middle of TC. It lasts until the end of TC, after which it is finished. According to this scenario, we can say that our time traveling event (hereafter TTE) occurred on Calvary, it was completed on Calvary, and it also occurred at TE. The TTE-scenario raises many objections. First, there are a number of objections about the physics of the events. Why don't the participants at the Eucharist see the constituents of TTE? Perhaps, the miracle of the conquest of time makes it invisible to them. Why, then, don't they bump into the invisible obstacles? Well, the miracle can also make things physically penetrable, as when the resurrected Christ could walk through closed doors (John 20:19). It may sound preposterous for physics; nevertheless, it is metaphysically possible. After all, we are already dealing with time travel, which is quite preposterous itself. Thus, we can dismiss the physical objections here. The second objection addresses the identity of the events. TTE did occur on Calvary, and it was completed on Calvary. Is it, then, identical with the Calvary event? Earlier we identified the Calvary event as being exactly located at TC. The exact location of TTE, however, is at TC and at TE. TTE is a scattered event, a mereological sum of the Calvary event with another event, similar to the earlier mentioned event of "digesting my dinner," part of which occurs in 2016, and part in 33 Wolterstorff, "The Liturgical Present Tense," 181. 12 3000. The relation between the Calvary event and TTE is not of identity, but of part-to-whole. Thus, TTE is not the Calvary event. 34 The part of TTE that occurred at TC is not identical with the part of TTE that occurred at TE. Whatever event occurs at the Eucharist, it cannot be the Calvary event. The third objection is theological, and it concerns the enormous duration of the sacrifice in TTE. In our schematic scenario, TTE covered only one Eucharistic event at TE, and the total duration of TTE was equal to the sum of durations of TC and TE. The full scenario, however, should include all Eucharistic events in history, since the Calvary sacrifice has to be present in every Eucharist. In the full scenario, TTE starts at TC, then its constituents leap to the beginning of TE1 and TTE continues its occurrence until the end of TE1, then they leap to the beginning of TE2, and TTE continues at TE2, and so on. The total duration of TTE is comprised of durations of billions of Eucharistic events. Even if we take the duration of a Eucharistic event to be just one second, the total duration of TTE would amount to hundreds or even thousands of years. Would the theologians grant that Christ's suffering lasted so long? Moreover, how would one explain the apparent lack of aging of the body and of the other material constituents? Any involvement of a miraculous divine intervention to prolong life or increase endurance would be inappropriate here, since Calvary was the point of Christ's ultimate abandonment by the Father (Mt. 27:46), and he had to endure the suffering without any supernatural help (Mt. 26:53–54). Considering the given objections, I judge that the described TTE-scenario does not explain how the Calvary event can be located at TE. Can we discard the literal time-travel strategy and devise another metaphysical explanation for the first approach? One potential strategy, which could explain the location of the Calvary event at TC and at TE, involves the controversial idea of multilocation. The multilocation approach is the fourth on our list, and I will discuss it in section 5.4. Another potential solution is possible if, instead of relocating just the Calvary event from TC to TE, we could relocate the whole region TC into TE. This strategy is similar to the topological solution to the problem of multiple disjoint spatial locations of Christ's body in multiple simultaneous Eucharists, which was suggested by Alexander Pruss under the title "Curved Space." 35 According to Pruss, God curves our space in such a way that two wafer-shaped regions, occupied by Eucharistic wafers that are about to be simultaneously consecrated, line up and become glued into one. In this case, Christ's body, which after the consecration takes the 34 This argument would not apply to extended simple entities, which "entend" spatiotemporal regions (x entends a region R just in case x is entirely located at every sub-region of R [cf. Hudson, "Omnipresence," 206]). A temporally extended event can count as simple only if it is homogeneous. A sacrifice, however, is not a homogeneous event: it is a succession of sub-events with the ultimate culmination. Therefore, entension is out of the question here. 35 Pruss, "The Eucharist: Real Presence and Real Absence," 523–526. 13 place of the wafers, occupies both regions without being multilocated. 36 Pruss also suggests that the same strategy could be applied to spacetime without any serious obstacles. Let us follow his suggestion. This strategy requires addressing not just time, but also space; thus we need to introduce spatiotemporal regions: region RC will be the exact location of the Calvary event, and regions RE1...REn the exact locations of Eucharistic events. Imagine a pristine smooth four-dimensional blueprint of spacetime before the creation. Now, God decides that the two disjoint regions RC and RE1 should coincide. He bends the blueprint (in some fifth dimension) in such a way that the two regions overlap. Since their shapes do not precisely match, it takes some warping to make them fully coincide. Now, there is another region, RE2, which also has to coincide with RC. More bending and warping, and now the three regions coincide. Then he does the same trick with RE3, and so on. By the time all Eucharistic spatiotemporal locations are taken care of, the blueprint is completely scrunched up. As a result, upon creation the universe ended up being one big scrunched block of spacetime. In this scrunched spacetime, RC, RE1...REn are really one and the same region. The Calvary event, which occurs in RC, really occurs in every RE. It looks as though the problem is solved. The described spacetime is metaphysically possible, yet the question remains whether this spacetime could be our spacetime. Harriet Baber provides compelling arguments against Pruss's Curved Space model, 37 and I will chime in with similar concerns about Scrunched Spacetime. Those concerns are not about metaphysics, but about the physics of the joint region and its theological consequences. Earlier we dismissed the physical objections to the TTE-scenario because there was an easy way to get around them by appealing to miracles. In this case, it is not so easy; in fact, things get so complicated that an appeal to miracles and divine omnipotence does not seem to be a viable option anymore. In Scrunched Spacetime, regions RC, RE1...REn coincide and are effectively identical, thus forming one joint region, R, while the neighborhoods of RC, RE1...REn are not identical and do not overlap. Thus, R can be seen as a hub, which connects all of the neighborhoods. Consider a material object that persists through spacetime in the neighborhood of RE1, then reaches the edge of RE1 and enters the hub, that is, continues its persistence in R. Now, the question is, in what neighborhood will it continue its persistence upon reaching the opposite edge of R? Every exit from the hub is equally available; therefore, the object's natural destination will be determined by probability, and it will end up in a random neighborhood. According to this theory, a Eucharist should be a total mess. External observers of a Eucharistic event would see, hear, and smell things from Calvary and from every other Eucharistic liturgy, including the past and the 36 Pruss also suggests a pinched-balloon illustration of the Curved Space: Pruss, "Of Balloons and Transubstantiation." 37 Baber, "Eucharist: Metaphysical Miracle or Institutional Fact?," 334–336. 14 future ones. Moreover, after the liturgy is over, objects from other times and places would end up stuck in our time and place, and our own things would end up somewhere else. To prevent the chaotic consequences of this theoretical strategy, Pruss insists that in his Curved Space "matter continues to behave as expected." It means that every object that exits R should end up in the same neighborhood from whence it came. The only way to achieve that is through a miraculous intervention. God has to direct every photon, every particle that goes through R and make sure that none of them goes into a wrong neighborhood. As Baber wittily concludes, God has to perform "a very powerful metaphysical miracle to cover his tracks." Another powerful miracle is required to cover for a bigger physical problem. There are too many material objects that enter R from all times and places. What happens to them while they are in R? Should not they all affect one another according to laws of nature? Yet they seem to interact only with those objects that came into R from the same neighborhood, but remain effectively non-existent to the objects from every other neighborhood. Indeed, a very powerful miracle is required to shield every particle from an "alien" influence but to leave it open to the "domestic" influence. Finally, with so much matter gathered at one place, there should be a gravitational anomaly, which should affect both the inside and the outside of R. Yet there is none. Obviously, Scrunched Spacetime is metaphysically possible, and the omnipotent God is capable of hiding its physical consequences. I do not believe, however, that this model is theologically acceptable. The presence of Calvary in the Eucharist pales in comparison with such a grand divine intervention into the laws of physics. I doubt that those theologians who suggest that the Calvary event travels into our time would be ready to accept the described consequences of their approach. 5.2. Time Travel and Bilocation According to the second approach the participants of the Eucharistic event travel back in time to the Calvary event, and this is how Christ's sacrifice becomes present to them. The idea of time travel is widespread in science fiction, philosophy and physics, and there is a variety of recognized scenarios of time travel. 38 When physicists discuss time travel, they usually think of "natural" scenarios, which involve something like flying in an ordinary spaceship into a wormhole in a general relativistic spacetime, or simply flying fast enough to achieve the special relativistic effect. Eucharistic participants do not fly in spaceships; therefore we have to dismiss the natural scenarios and turn to supernatural ones, which we know from science fiction. 38 For an overview of philosophical discussions of time travel see: Smith, "Time Travel." 15 Consider the Eucharistic liturgy as a time machine, which takes us back in time to the Calvary event and then takes us back to our own time. We should also specify that while we are at Calvary we are incapable of doing anything that could change the past (perhaps, because of a divine intervention), since no theology would allow that the Eucharistic participants could change the course of the Calvary event; this saves our time-travel scenario from paradoxes that involve the possibility of changing the past. So, imagine that we are at a Eucharistic liturgy in 2017. The liturgy goes on, but TE has not started yet, thus we are still in 2017. Then, as soon as TE starts we are instantaneously 39 relocated to TC, and we stay there for the exact duration of TE. After that, we are instantaneously relocated to the very end of TE. We are back at the liturgy in 2017, and our journey across time is over. This scenario agrees with our earlier definitions: during the Eucharistic event we were present at the Calvary event. Our scenario should be juxtaposed with some important empirical observations. First, after the liturgy our experience of passed personal time and indications of our wristwatches match with external time, leaving us without proof of the time travel. 40 Second, while we are in TC, we have no sensory experience of the Calvary event. Finally, while we are in TC, we have full sensory experience of 2017 events, including hearing cars buzzing outside and seeing the sun shining bright, while at Calvary the sun went dark (Lk. 23:45). These observations raise two doubts: have we really been in TC, and have we really left TE? The first doubt is about the reality of our presence at Calvary. What happened to our perception there? Moreover, according to this scenario, not only we, but also all participants at every Eucharist in history were there too. Where did all those billions of people fit? 41 Furthermore, there were as many copies of myself at the Calvary site, as many times I have been present at a Eucharist during my life. Yet none of my copies swapped places with another upon their return. While this is all metaphysically possible, this scenario requires a very powerful miracle, similar to the one from the Scrunched Spacetime approach. God has to individually guide every particle to its proper destination in spacetime, selectively cancel physical interaction between the particles, which would allow selective invisibility and interpenetration of the bodies, and negate gravity. The second doubt is about our absence from 2017 during TE. Why do we perceive things from 2017 while we are in 33 AD? Can it be the case that God sustains individual illusions for 39 I assume for the sake of simplicity that the travel is instantaneous, so that we need not worry about our temporal location during our travel from TE to TC and back. 40 The distinction between the personal time and the external time, and the definition of time travel, which involves a discrepancy between them, was introduced by David Lewis in his groundbreaking article "The Paradoxes of Time Travel," 145–146. The external time, according to Lewis, is the time itself, and the personal time of a time traveler is, roughly, that which is measured by his wristwatch. 41 I owe this argument to Timothy Pawl. 16 each of us? Or maybe the perceivable accidents of things from 2017 somehow accompany us in our time travel? Indeed, if Catholics can accept transubstantiation, why cannot they accept that here too we do not perceive things that are present, but instead perceive the accidents of things that are no longer present? There is, however, a crucial difference between transubstantiation and Eucharistic time travel. The former is a binding church doctrine, and the latter is an unconventional theological opinion. Catholics cannot deny transubstantiation even if it may seem implausible, while an implausible time-travel scenario can and, I believe, should be rejected. Can we modify this scenario to avoid at least some of its problems? In order to account for our uninterrupted perception of the 2017 events, one may suggest that while we are present in TC we could somehow remain present in TE. But how is it possible that I could be simultaneously here and somewhere else, without having any experiences, memories or evidence of being elsewhere? Alexander Pruss uses the concept of bilocation to explain the reported simultaneous presence of Catholic saints in two different places. 42 He assumes that the personal time sequence of the saint bifurcates in such a way that the saint can be present in two places at the same personal time. When the bilocation ends, the two time sequences are miraculously brought back together, and the memories of the two timelines are combined. Pruss maintains that while the whole story is counterintuitive and complicated, nothing is difficult for God. Pruss's strategy, however, does not make things any easier for us. It could explain our perception of events in the 2017 timeline, yet this advantage would be outweighed by new complications. Even the idea of simultaneous multilocation is already implausible, and it does not become any more credible for multilocation across time (I will elaborate on that in section 5.4). There is also a theological concern about being bilocated at TE and at TC. While we were bilocated, all our sensory experience came only from our presence in TE. We do not remember experiencing anything in TC, and we do not remember being in a non-perceiving state (like being awake but deaf and blind). That means that either we were present in TC while being unconscious, not even experiencing the passage of time, or God has erased all our memories from TC by the end of our bilocation. I cannot find any theological reason for the presence of our unconscious bodies at Calvary, or why would God erase our memories of the most important event in history. There is another possible modification for our scenario of time travel. Instead of traveling directly from TE to TC we could travel to some location beyond the boundaries of our time. There we would get immediate access to different regions of time, and thus we could be simultaneously present in TE and in TC. This solution belongs to our next approach, and I will discuss it in the following section. 42 Pruss, "Omnipresence, Multilocation, the Real Presence and Time Travel," 69–70. 17 5.3. Platonic Prototype and a Journey to Heaven The third approach shifts our attention from the Calvary sacrifice to the Heavenly sacrifice. According to this approach, heaven is the ultimate divine realm; it is beyond time and space. And there, in the midst of the throne of God, is the Lamb "as it had been slain" (Rev. 5:6), "slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). The Heavenly sacrifice is atemporal, and it occurs eternally in the timeless heaven. It is also an event-type, which is instantiated in particular Eucharistic events. Yet it is not just an event-type. Usually, event-types are present only in their event-tokens, but the Heavenly sacrifice has its own independent occurrence. It is a real prototypical event in the most extreme realistic sense, and it literally occurs in the heavenly nonspatiotemporal location. What is important for this approach is that there is no chronological distance between the eternal prototype and its historical token. Therefore, we no longer need to worry about a temporal separation, which could prevent the event of Christ's sacrifice from being present in the Eucharistic event. Whatever happens in heaven is always "now" for every moment of earthly history. How can we conceive of a real timeless event-type? This relation between the prototype event and its spatiotemporal instances is, in fact, a version of the classical Platonic realism. Platonic forms exist in their timeless transcendent realm, while their multiple instances populate our world. In the same way, the Platonic form of Christ's sacrifice exists in heaven, and it is exemplified in earthly Eucharistic events. The philosophy behind this approach is as defensible as Platonic metaphysics in general. I will not argue with Platonic realism here. This approach, being philosophically the strongest of the four, is the weakest among them theologically, since it depreciates both the Calvary sacrifice and the Eucharistic sacrifice. This approach has no place of honor for Calvary. Even if the Calvary sacrifice can be seen as a unique event in history, it is nevertheless just a replica, albeit a unique replica, of the prototypical Heavenly sacrifice, and it has no definitive meaning for the Eucharistic events. It does not even have a chronological priority, since the first Eucharistic event-the Last Supper-occurred before it. If our goal is to participate in the Heavenly sacrifice, then it can be achieved through participation in any of its instantiations, and the Calvary instantiation becomes dispensable. Furthermore, we would not really need a proper Eucharistic event either. If our goal is participation in the Heavenly prototype, then it is possible to devise an event of our own choice to represent Christ's sacrifice, for example, a theatrical performance, and it would be no lesser exemplification of the Heavenly sacrifice than the Eucharist. From the standpoint of Orthodox and Catholic theologies, which insist on the definitive role of the Calvary sacrifice and on the special role of the Eucharist as the exclusive representation of Christ's sacrifice, this model is unacceptable. Such a Platonic presence is no different from the real absence, since the prototype event remains transcendent in heaven and is not really present in the Eucharist. 18 Jesse Couenhoven suggests a completely different strategy, which also implies the relation between time and eternity. His strategy does not involve the Heavenly sacrifice, but it does involve timeless heaven; thus, it is fitting to discuss it within the framework of our third approach. According to this strategy, the Eucharistic event takes the participants into the divine eternity. From that eternal perspective, and by the power of being united with God in Christ, the believers can themselves experience events of the past as present. 43 A major disadvantage of this strategy is that it has to account for the presence of temporal entities-human beings-in a timeless reality, which is apparently an impossible task. Of course, one could resort to a merely spiritual presence in heaven, or embrace some kind of absolute idealism, which regards time and change as illusion, but then the whole conquest-of-time enterprise would be pointless. The very idea of the conquest of time demands acknowledging that we have a temporal nature and that it would require supernatural means to overcome the consequences of our temporality. The conquest of time should not eradicate our nature and should allow us to remain temporal creatures. Is there a tenable scenario for this approach, which describes our journey to heaven without us ceasing to be human beings? There are a few possibilities, although none of them turns out to be acceptable. First, we can simply avoid the problem by conceiving of heaven as a mere means to get from TE to TC, without going into any details about our existence during the journey. In this case, heaven functions as a time machine, and this scenario would be no different from time travel, which was examined and rejected in section 5.2. Second, we could furnish heaven with a spatiotemporal guestroom for human visitors. For example, let us consider a gerrymandered heaven, which is a mereological sum of a timeless non-spatial universe u1 and of a spatiotemporal universe u2, which is different from our universe, u3. 44 In this case, we can say, referring to u1, that heaven is timeless, and we can say, referring to u2, that heaven can be populated by temporal entities. The scenario would look like this: while we are present at the Eucharistic event in u3, we become simultaneously present in heaven in u2, which, in turn, enables us to become simultaneously present at the Calvary event in u3. Obviously, this results in our bilocation at TE and at TC (or, rather, tri-location, including u2). There is no point in any further discussion of this scenario, since I have already argued against our bilocation in section 5.2. Finally, we could allow that while we are in the timeless heaven we do, in fact, somehow become timeless. Does our Eucharistic union with God in Christ result in our own divinization to 43 Couenhoven, "Wolterstorff's 'The Liturgical Present Tense': a Response," 5. 44 An example of a world which is composed of a timeless non-spatial universe and a spatiotemporal universe was suggested by Nikk Effingham, "Multiple Location and Christian Philosophical Theology," 36. 19 such an extent that our human nature obtains divine attributes? Can we literally become omnipresent in time and space? If it were so, it would have some bizarre theological consequences. First, it would contradict the traditional understanding that only God can be eternal. 45 Second, it would mean that at the Eucharist we literally become present at every time and place: not only at Calvary, but also, say, at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. Moreover, the very idea of us temporarily becoming eternal is a contradiction in terms, because eternity is that which has neither beginning nor end. There is no change in the timeless reality, therefore it cannot gain new inhabitants, and timeless entities cannot cease being timeless. Thus far, we have covered three of our four approaches, each of them having exhibited major philosophical or theological flaws. Let us now proceed to the last remaining approach. 5.4. Multilocation across Time The fourth approach is the most metaphysically challenging of the four. According to this view, Christ's sacrifice is a genuinely historical, concrete, and completed event. Besides having occurred at a certain time, TC, it also occurs at many more times, TE1...TEn. The Eucharistic sacrifices are not copies or repetitions of Christ's sacrifice, which remains numerically one. Moreover, one of the multiple occurrences of Christ's sacrifice has a special status among all others: the Calvary sacrifice is definitive and prototypical for all Eucharistic sacrifices. Yet unlike the Platonic realism, here the prototype event does not exist in a transcendent timeless reality, but has concrete location in time. What metaphysical theory can account for multiple exact locations of a singular event? It is tempting to interpret this approach in such a way that the one sacrifice of Christ would be treated as a scattered event, parts of which are located at multiple disjoint temporal regions. As I have argued earlier, we should resist that temptation because it does not support the conquest-of-time claim that the event, which is exactly located at TC, is present for the participants at TE, and it does not support the theological conviction that Christ's sacrifice on Calvary was complete. Another possible strategy to explain the multiple locations of a singular event would be to see all its exact locations as one. This strategy corresponds with the Scrunched Spacetime model, which I discussed in section 5.1 and have argued against its tenability. Thus, the fourth approach boils down to the counterintuitive idea of multilocation: we just have to concede that there is a particular singular entity-the event of Christ's sacrifice-that has more than one exact location in time. The issue here is not whether it is physically possible to be multilocated-after all, we are dealing with the miracle of the conquest of time. The issue is whether it is logically consistent to allow multilocation of the particular event. On the one hand, 45 Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.46.1. 20 we can side with those who oppose multilocation in general: the very idea seems preposterous, and there are sound arguments against its possibility. 46 The denial of any sort of multilocation would decisively end any further discussion of the fourth approach. On the other hand, we can team up with the friends of multilocation and see whether it can help us to maintain this approach. In order to maintain the multilocation of Christ's sacrifice, I suggest we find a tenable example of a similarly multilocated entity and make an argument from analogy. Cody Gilmore provides a list of putative multilocated entities, and some of them are worth examining here: immanent universals, enduring material objects, enduring tropes, backward time travelers, fission products, and works of music. 47 In addition, Alexander Pruss suggests multilocation of the body of Christ 48 and of the Catholic saints. Apparently, those entities are not multilocated in the same way. Nikk Effingham correctly observes that there are different brands of multilocation, and we should not confuse them: one multilocation is atemporal and another is temporally relativized. 49 Temporally relativized multilocation applies to entities that are exactly located at multiple regions of space at the same time. Atemporal multilocation applies to entities that are exactly located at multiple regions of time. 50 Since we are dealing with multilocation across time, we have to exclude the examples of temporally relativized multilocation. Next, I suggest we further subdivide the atemporal multilocation brand into two kinds: atemporal multilocation of temporally unextended entities and atemporal multilocation of temporally extended entities. The key difference here is that the temporally extended multilocated entities begin, continue, and end their persistence in each of their exact locations, while the temporally unextended entities begin their persistence in their "first" exact location, continue in the "intermediate," and end in the "last." The event of Christ's sacrifice is temporally extended; it began, continued, and ended at Calvary. Therefore, we have to reject the examples of multilocated temporally unextended entities. Thus, the only fitting candidates are the immanent universals and the works of music. The other examples are inapplicable here: backward time travelers, fission products, the body of Christ, and the Catholic saints are multilocated in space, but not across time; enduring material objects and enduring tropes are not temporally extended entities. 46 See Gilmore, "Location and Mereology," 6.4–6.6, and its Supplement "Additional Arguments," 3.2. 47 Gilmore, "Location and Mereology," 6.3. Gilmore also mentions other multilocated entities-perduring objects multilocated in overlapping 4D regions, transworld individuals and an omnipresent God. I cannot even begin to think of them as helpful analogies for the multilocation of Christ's sacrifice. 48 Pruss, "The Eucharist: Real Presence and Real Absence," 526–533. 49 Effingham, "Multiple Location and Christian Philosophical Theology," 26. 50 It would be more accurate to talk about multilocation at regions of spacetime; yet, for the abovementioned reasons, I do not discuss the spatial dimensions whenever possible. 21 Our first example is works of music. According to Chris Tillman, musical works can be treated either as abstract objects, or, in line with "musical materialism," as concrete manifestations. 51 In the former case, we would be dealing with a platonistic or a "type-token" relation between an abstract musical work and its concrete instances or tokens; thus, it would not be an example of multilocation. The latter case allows us to consider works of music to be multilocated across time whenever its performances occur, and it treats the works of music as temporally extended entities. Thus, we can assume that a singular musical work, say, the Moonlight Sonata, exists as its performances, that it is exactly located at multiple temporal regions that coincide with its performances, and that it is temporally extended. The second example is immanent universals. According to immanent realism, defended by Aristotle, David Armstrong 52 et al., a universal exists in its particular instantiations, as redness exists in red things. Since the multiple particular instantiations are located at different regions of time, so is the universal. Thus, an immanent universal can be considered as a singular entity multilocated across time. 53 Are immanent universals temporally extended? Apparently, some of them are. Let us, for example, consider event-types as immanent universals. Then an event-type of a complex temporally extended event, say, a birthday party, would also be temporally extended. We can ask a perfectly reasonable question, "How long does a birthday party last?" A perfectly reasonable answer would be, "That depends on the particular party." Birthday party is instantiated in its particular enactment, it coincides with the enactment, and it persists through time with the enactment. The immanent universal "birthday party" is always temporally extended, while its exact duration depends on the particular instantiation. I suppose that there may be other views about temporal extension and persistence of immanent universals, but this one is certainly possible and quite plausible. Thus, we ought to correlate the multilocation of Christ's sacrifice with the multilocation of the works of music in their performances or of temporally extended immanent universals in their particular instantiations. It should be noted that what we compare here is not the multilocated entities themselves. The sacrifice of Christ is nothing like a musical work or a universal; it is neither a performance of an exact sequence nor a unifying property of numerous events. It is a concrete singular event, which has been endowed with additional locations by the miraculous power of the conquest of time. The issue at hand is whether our disparate entities have parallel types of multilocation. 51 Tillman, "Musical Materialism," 13–14. 52 Armstrong, A Theory of Universals. 53 There are at least two other possible views about the location of an immanent universal: it is either exactly located at the fusion of all the exact locations of its instances, or it does not have an exact location at all. Each of those views excludes multilocation (cf. Gilmore, "Location and Mereology," 6.3.1). 22 There is a crucial difference between the two multilocations. The works of music and immanent universals are multilocated in such a way that their locations are equivalent: none of their particular manifestations is more privileged than others; none of them is in any sense definitive for the others. It is not so for the multilocated sacrifice of Christ. While its locations at TE1...TEn-the Eucharistic sacrifices-are equivalent, its location at TC-the Calvary sacrifice- is not equivalent to them. The Calvary sacrifice is definitive and prototypical for the Eucharistic sacrifices, but not vice versa. Let me illustrate that difference by the following thought experiment. Imagine that we can erase events from history as if they have never occurred. 54 First, let us erase any arbitrary performance of the Moonlight Sonata from history. Would it have any effect on the remaining performances? Apparently, it would not. No performance of the Moonlight Sonata would suffer any loss from the annihilation of another performance. Second, let us do the same erasure for any birthday party. It seems that it would also have no effect on any other birthday party. Third, let us now erase a Eucharistic sacrifice. Once again, it does not seem to cause any trouble either for the remaining Eucharistic sacrifices or for the Calvary sacrifice. Finally, let us proceed to the Calvary sacrifice. Would it make any difference for the Eucharistic sacrifices if the Calvary sacrifice has never occurred? Obviously, it would. It would rob the Eucharistic sacrifices of their content, their power, their value. The multilocation of the works of music and of the immanent universals is significantly different from the putative multilocation of Christ's sacrifice, because neither music nor universals are defined by a particular manifestation, whereas Christ's sacrifice is defined by what happened at Calvary. 55 According to our fourth approach, Christ's sacrifice is multilocated in such a way that it has two different kinds of its exact locations. One kind of its exact locations is primary, definitive, and indispensable; another kind is secondary, derivative, and dispensable. Let us finally summarize all the requirements for the multilocation of the event of Christ's sacrifice. First, the event has to have multiple exact locations across time. Second, the event has to begin, continue, and end in each of its exact locations. Third, the event has to have primary and secondary exact locations. Unfortunately, there are no attested metaphysical theories that describe such a disproportionate multilocation of temporally extended entities. Our goal was to make an argument from analogy, yet there is no analogy to build the argument upon. Earlier we conceded to allowing multilocation as the only way of maintaining the fourth approach. This 54 Hud Hudson develops an engaging metaphysical theory of the Morphing Block universe, which can account for the possibility of erasing the past event (cf. Hudson, The Fall and Hypertime, 82–88). 55 One could evoke tropes here, since tropes are universal-like entities that are defined by a reference to a concrete particular. Unfortunately, tropes are not applicable here because they are not multilocated across time. The relation between the tropes of distinct objects is not of identity but of resemblance. If we were to accept the analogy with tropes, we would have to admit that a Eucharistic sacrifice is not the Calvary sacrifice, but that it only resembles it, even if it is an exact resemblance. 23 concession would require introducing an ad hoc type of multilocation, which would expose the whole approach being an ad hoc hypothesis. To be sure, this in no wise entails an impossibility of the multilocation of the Calvary sacrifice or an incoherence of its singular brand of multilocation. 56 The problem with this approach is that it does not really add to our understanding of the conquest of time. In fact, the introduction of the unique metaphysical category of the "disproportionate atemporal multilocation of a temporally extended entity" fails to get beyond the initial theological description of the Eucharistic mystery. This approach does not help solve the puzzle; it only rephrases the puzzle using technical terminology and the counterintuitive concept of multilocation. Thus, I conclude that this metaphysical fabrication is of little value for theology. 6. Conclusion There are many possible ways of interpreting the Catholic and Orthodox doctrine of the presence of Calvary in the Eucharist. In contemporary theology, one of the most popular explanatory strategies appeals to a miraculous conquest of time, which allows transcending beyond the familiar chronological boundaries in order to defy the temporal distance between the two events. Tampering with time results in a variety of fantastic scenarios, but in the end none of them turns out to be tenable on philosophical or theological grounds. While I do not claim that the described scenarios correctly represent the views of the quoted theologians, I believe that those scenarios cover the entire range of basic metaphysical possibilities of interpreting the Eucharistic conquest of time. I conclude that the whole enterprise of the supernatural tampering with Eucharistic time should be discarded, and that philosophers and theologians would be better off pursuing other explanatory strategies. 57 Institute of Philosophy and Law, Novosibirsk, Russia Lutheran Theological Seminary, Novosibirsk, Russia References Adam, Karl. 1969. The Spirit of Catholicism (Sheed & Ward). 56 I owe this observation to Mark Murphy. 57 Research leading up to this paper was conducted as a part of the Ratio project of the University of St. Thomas. I would like to thank Michael Rota for organizing the project, and the John Templeton Foundation for supporting it. I am also grateful to Thomas Flint, Timothy O'Connor, Barbara Partee, Michael Rota, and Timothy Pawl for their insightful comments on the earlier drafts, and especially to Alan Ludwig for his unwavering assistance. 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