Omnipresence, Multilocation, The Real Presence and Time Travel

“Omnipresence, multilocation, the real presence and time travel”, Journal of Analytic Theology, forthcoming

https://bearspace.baylor.edu/Alexander_Pruss/www/cv.html

This will clearly be a very ingenious argument for transubstantiation. However, I think I’ll wait until George Lucas makes the movie version. Science fiction is more entertaining to see, with popcorn and a girlfriend, than reading about it in a dry academic journal.

Of course, Lucas will have to come up with a catchier title. A movie called Omnipresence, Multilocation, The Real Presence and Time Travel is box office poison.

Although I don’t have access to the full script, my informant at Lucasfilm was able to leak me some of the details of the plot.

In the future a mad scientist (played by Brent Spiner) travels back in time to kidnap Thomas Aquinas (played by John  Goodman). The mad scientist is attempting to reproduce the miracle of transubstantiation in the laboratory, but he needs Aquinas to advise him on the theological niceties.

The true body and blood of Christ coexists in a plurality of eigenstates (superposition). The wave function collapses whenever the priest pronounces the words of consecration. At least, that’s the theory.

But the Angelic Doctor obstinately refuses to assist the mad scientist on the grounds that it would be impious to artificially transubstantiate the communion elements.

The mad scientist then kidnaps Pope Benedict XVII (played by Maximilian Schell). If the pope commands Aquinas to advise him, the mad scientist will stage the experiment in St. Peter’s Basilica, which will be a PR bonanza for the papacy–which never quite recovered after a papal butler posthumously revealed the scandalous fact that his namesake and predecessor, Benedict XVI, was a closet Buddhist monk who took orders from the Dalai Lama.

But before the mad scientists is able to demonstrate his theory, a militant atheist (played by Tom Hanks), in cahoots with the Prelate of Opus Dei (played by Mads Mikkelsen), kidnaps the mad scientist and sends him back to the Cretaceous period, where he has an unfortunate encounter with a Spinosaurus.