Catholic vampires

This is a sequel to my previous post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/11/eating-god.html

Recently, Catholic polymath Alexander Pruss defended transubstantiation. I did my initial post when only the slides were available. However, an audio recording is now available:

https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/eating-god-can-the-eucharist-really-be-jesus-alexander-pruss/s-IZ6vJ

Having heard it, I'll make some supplementary observations:

1. In reference to Jn 6, he says the symbolic interpretation means Jesus gives us symbolic eternal life. But that's confused. On the symbolic interpretation, Jesus gives us real eternal life, which is symbolized by the manna/bread/flesh/blood imagery. 

2. He says that in biblical symbolism, reality symbolizes reality, a miracle symbolizes a miracle. If communion is just a symbolic consumption of Christ's body, then it's circular–symbolizing itself. He says the merely symbolic interpretation suffers from a false dichotomy. But, once again, that's confused:

i) There's the complicated question of what makes something symbolic. Symbolism involves a kind of correspondence between two (or more) things, but that can operate at different levels. Two things can be similar at the level of resemblance. Or function. Or the same kind of thing. 

ii) Suppose the eucharist is a miracle (i.e. transubstantiation). Yet it symbolizes the crucifixion. But the crucifixion is not a miracle. So his comparison breaks down even if we grant the Catholic interpretation regarding the first element of the comparison.  

iii) Is Jesus both a literal lamb and a symbolic lamb? A literal lion and a symbolic lion? A real vine and a symbolic vine? A real star (Venus) and a symbolic star? Is the church both a physical body and a symbolic body? Is the bride/bridegroom relation between Jesus and the church both literal and figurative? When scripture compares judgment to a winepress, is that both literal and figurative? There are so many counterexamples to Pruss's claim. 

3. He interprets Mt 28:20 ("I'm with you always") eucharistically, yet there's nothing in the text or context that clues the reader into a eucharistic allusion. 

4. He compares it to divine omnipresence. But even if we grant his interpretation of divine omnipresence (I don't), God isn't multiply present in the same way the physical body of Christ is said to be multiply-present. 

5. He says there's no philosophical consensus on what it means to be present, so it can't be said that transubstantiation is contradictory. But that's a self-defeating way to defend transubstantiation:

i) If we don't know what it means for something to be present, then Catholics have no clear idea of what they're affirming when they profess transubstantiation. Words without a definable concept behind the words. In that event, they don't profess anything. They say something, but there's nothing in the mind which the words represent. 

ii) The Bible can rely on a coarse-grained, common sense notion of presence. A pretheoretical concept drawn from paradigm examples in human experience. That will suffice to provide a concept that backs up the verbal claim. But unfortunately for the Catholic, the real presence is nonsensical on a common sense definition. So the dilemma remains. 

6. Pruss has some interesting comparisons between Christian theology, which accentuates the importance of the body (e.g. Incarnation, resurrection, sexual mores) and modern gnostics who think sexual morality is reducible to feelings and psychology. Who hope to achieve immortality by uploading consciousness into a computer and leaving the body behind. Digital immortality. He thinks the real presence reflects a contrary outlook.

Yet the real presence is a counterproductive way to showcase the importance of the body. By his own reckoning, the real presence is imperceptible and indetectable. An empirical  illusion. It drives a wedge between appearance and reality. Our eyes, hands, and tongue tell us one thing while the underlying reality is deceptively different. 

7. He uses a time-travel thought-experiment, where, if I could to back in time, I could shake hands with my younger self. Perhaps, but that depends on particular theories of time and personal identity. Do I still exist in the past? Am I chronologically separable into multiple selves that can exist apart from each other and come into contact with each other? Can temporal stages of me, separated by intervening phases, skip over the intervening phases and circle back? Even if I exist all along the continuum, does that mean I can also exist discontinuously, so that one stage of me can coexist with another stage of me, from different parts of the continuum? Surely that's not something Pruss is entitled to posit, without a detailed argument.