From this it follows that, when a body is said to be in a place circumscriptively, we ought to interpret the phrase, not in the sense that the body is circumscribed by its place, as Aristotle and his followers believed, but in this sense, that the body circumscribes its place by its own limits. And for the same reason, those beings which do not exist circumscriptively in place (and which are said to be in place only definitively, as is the case with created spirits) are substances which do not circumscribe any place, because they have no material terms by which to mark dimensions in space.
The fourth and last question is a very difficult one. A great number of eminent authors maintain with S. Thomas that real bilocation is intrinsically impossible; others, on the contrary, hold, with Suarez and Bellarmine, that it is possible. Without pretending to decide the question, we will simply offer to our reader a few remarks on the arguments adduced against the possibility of real bilocation.
The strongest of those arguments is, in our opinion, the following. The real bilocation of a body requires the real bilocation of all its parts, and therefore is impossible unless each primitive element of the body can have two distinct, real ubications at the same time the one natural and the other supernatural. But it is impossible for a simple and primitive element to have two distinct, real ubications at the same time, for two distinct, real ubications presuppose two distinct, real terminations of the virtuality of God’s immensity, and two distinct, real terminations are intrinsically impossible without two distinct, real terms. It is therefore evident that one point of matter cannot mark out two points in space, and that real bilocation is impossible.
To evade this argument, it might be said that it is not evident, after all, that the same real term cannot correspond to two terminations. For to duplicate the ubication of an element of matter means to cause the same element, which is here present to God, to be there also present to God. Now this requires only the correspondence of the material point to two distinct virtualities of divine immensity. Is this a contradiction? The correspondence to one virtuality is certainly not the negation of the correspondence to another; hence it is not necessary to concede that there is a contradiction between the two. It may be added that the supernatural possibility of bilocation seems to be established by many facts we read in ecclesiastical history and the lives of saints, as also by the dogma of the Real Presence of Our Lord’s Body in so many different places in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Lastly, although real bilocation is open to many objections on account of its supernatural character, yet these objections can be sufficiently answered, as may be seen in Suarez, in part. 3, disp. 48, sec. 4.
These reasons may have a certain degree of probability; nevertheless, before admitting that a point of matter can mark two points in space at the same time, it is necessary to ascertain whether a single real term can terminate two virtualities of God’s immensity. This is a thing which can scarcely be conceived; for two distinct ubications result from two distinct terminations; and it is quite evident, as we have already intimated, that there cannot be two distinct terminations if there be not two distinct terms. For the virtualities of divine immensity are not distinct from one another in their entity, but only by extrinsic denomination, inasmuch as they are distinctly terminated by distinct extrinsic terms. Therefore, a single extrinsic term cannot correspond to two distinct virtualities of divine immensity; whence it follows that a single material point cannot have two distinct ubications.
As to the facts of ecclesiastical history above alluded to, it might be answered that their nature is not sufficiently known to base an argument upon them. Did any saints ever really exist in two places? For aught we know, they may have existed really in one place, and only phenomenically in another. Angels occupy no place, and have no bodies; and yet they appeared in place, and showed themselves in bodily forms, which need not have been more than phenomenal. Disembodied souls have sometimes appeared with phenomenal bodies. Why should we be bound to admit that when saints showed themselves in two places, their body was not phenomenal in one and real only in the other?
The fact of the Real Presence of Christ’s body in the Blessed Sacrament, though much insisted upon by some authors, seems to have no bearing on the present question. For, our Lord’s body in the Eucharist has no immediate connection with place, but is simply denominated by the place of the sacramental species, as S. Thomas proves; for it is there ad modum substantiæ, as the holy doctor incessantly repeats, and not ad modum corporis locati.[181] Hence, S. Thomas himself, notwithstanding the real presence of Christ’s body on our altars, denies without fear the possibility of real bilocation properly so called.
Though not all the arguments brought against real bilocation are equally conclusive, some of them are very strong, and seem unanswerable. Suarez, who tried to answer them, did not directly solve them, but only showed that they would prove too much if they were applied to the mystery of the Real Presence. The inference is true; but S. Thomas and his followers would answer that their arguments do not apply to the Eucharistic mystery.
One of those arguments is the following: If a man were simultaneously in two places, say, in Rome and in London, his quantity would be separated from itself; for it would be really distant from itself, and relatively opposed to itself. But this is impossible. For how can there be real opposition without two real terms?
Some might answer, that a man bilocated is one term substantially, but equivalent to two locally, and that it is not his substance nor his quantity that is distant from itself, but only one of his locations as compared with the other. But we do not think that this answer is satisfactory. For, although distance requires only two local terms, we do not see how there can be local terms without two distinct beings. One and the same being cannot be actually in two places without having two contrary modes: and this is impossible; for two contraries cannot coexist in the same subject, as S. Thomas observes.[182]