Spiritual Presence

Abstract

Whether, and in what sense, spiritual beings like God or the human soul could be ascribed any spatial presence. More consistently insisted that they should be: but (as other commentators have failed to appreciate) his views on the nature of that presence changed dramatically over the course of his career, from a traditional Scholastic or Neoplatonist theory of their being ‘whole in the whole, and whole in each part’ of a certain place, to a much more radical and innovative theory of their being genuinely (though immaterially) extended through it. I also have occasion to explore the analogous question of spirits’ relation to time, as well as to examine More’s views on the real presence (or lack thereof) of the body of Christ in the Eucharist.