Thread: Purgatory: Please explain resurrection Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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I am confused by the afterlife thread and the comments on resurrection.
What is this resurrection?
Is it of the body or mind or spirit or soul or the whole person?
When?
Are folks given a new body just or does their body re-connect with itself, one day at the end of the universe as we know it?
When (if) Jesus was resurrected at least his body was there to make something of.
But countless people have been eaten by wild animals/cremated and scattered etc. There's no chance of their actual bits being re-united - someone else could well have them by now anyway, do we argue over the atoms?
Or is it a comforting myth? I'm veering towards this last one. That it's a genuinely comforting thing for us all to believe and buy into.
[ 16. May 2016, 08:14: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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I have absolutely no idea about the mechanisms in play by which we continue to be, eternally. You're quite right to point out that the substances which compose our bodies at the time of death get taken up in different ways by the earth and the atmosphere to which they return. But in terms of substance, I'm not sure how much of my 73 year old body contains cells which were there at earlier stages of my life. I'm the same "axe" with about 50 billion new "heads" and 50 billion new "handles". Maybe I'm being presumptive to call myself "I". But it does seems that way things are; I have this sense of continuity and these memories of "I". There may be natural explanations for that but this temporal continuity also seems to have some elements of mystery and the unknown.
I'm not sure that pointing to the re-use of atoms does much to explain, or explain away, belief or disbelief in resurrections. Some form of continuity is as good as it gets for me.
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on
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Lots of potential ways to start trying to answer this, but I'll try to stick to the orthodox view, following the thought of recent expositors such as Wright and Bauckham.
Resurrection is the source and hope of christian belief. It's not an add-on or a luxury, but something that makes a crucial difference.
It's slightly better to err on the apophatic side of things, so it is sometimes easier to say what it isn't rather than what it is, but that's not to say that we don't/can't know anything about it at all.
Firstly, it's not reanimation or reincarnation. But it is bodily. The most extensive text on this is 1 Corinthians 15, where the term used for the resurrection body is soma pneumatikon, which is often translated as 'spiritual body'. It is sometimes thought (incorrectly, in my view) that this relegates that idea of the soma, the physicality of it, and emphasises the spirituality of it, thinking it as something incorporeal. But this view ignores that soma is never used to denote a metaphor. Rather the pneumatikon part denotes what it is that is the driving force behind the body. It is the Holy Spirit. So one could render soma pneumatikon as the 'Holy Spirit fuelled body'.
What so wrong-footed people with Jesus' resurrection was he was the only one. The idea of resurrection developed quite late in Judaism, but was still quite contentious (recall the Sadducees, who denied it, mocked Jesus by a question about marriage at the resurrection). Yet the view was that all would be resurrected at once. But Jesus was, as Paul puts it, "the firstborn from among the dead". He was first, the rest will follow.
So we only have the one case of resurrection proper. Lazarus was reanimated, as was Jairus' daughter, but these were not resurrections in the proper sense of the term. It was more of a foreshadowing of what was to come.
How the renewed physicality works, I don't think anyone really knows. There are only hints (like the fact that Jesus' resurrection body still bore scars) but I'm not convinced we can rely on these sufficiently to make overly-affirmative statements. I look forward to finding out.
I'm sure others here will have a quite different take to me on this one.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
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Boogie
Very interesting OP.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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Some years ago Mousethief once started a great thread on this called "what happened to all the fish" or some such, which has sadly, um, gone the way of all flesh.
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
But Jesus was, as Paul puts it, "the firstborn from among the dead". He was first, the rest will follow.
So we only have the one case of resurrection proper.
But even Jesus is in a class of his own, because what we appear to have a) is his this-worldly body transformed into his resurrection body (this obviously cannot apply to everyone) b) said body appearing (several times apparently unrecognisably!) on this earth, before ascending into, um, heaven and/or returning in the new creation. Which is not how things appear to pan out for everyone else.
The closer you look, the more confusing it gets.
[ 21. December 2015, 09:45: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Some form of continuity is as good as it gets for me.
Yes - I can't imagine no continuity, but is that just because it's a rather bleak prospect?
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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There's a tremendous medieval wall-painting in the basilica on the island of Torcello in the Venetian lagoon which shows the general resurrection ...
Beasts of prey are depicted vomiting up the people they've consumed - who are remarkably intact. So you've got lions, wolves, bears, leopards and so on with people coming out of their mouths as the Resurrection takes place ...
For some reason, there's even an elephant that's eaten somebody.
I always thought elephants were vegetarian. So now we know differently ...
There may be an image of it somewhere if you Google it - like so many of these medieval frescoes and mosaics, it's an awful lot of fun ...
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
There may be an image of it somewhere if you Google it - like so many of these medieval frescoes and mosaics, it's an awful lot of fun ...
There's one at the bottom of this regugitatory page.
[ 21. December 2015, 10:45: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Some form of continuity is as good as it gets for me.
Yes - I can't imagine no continuity, but is that just because it's a rather bleak prospect?
Protracted, painful, consciousness- and awareness-stripping dying strikes me as much bleaker. And many of us have that to "look forward to" whether or not we believe in continuity or oblivion. On another thread, I've just quoted this rather good quote from a dying Christopher Hitchens which makes the end-point rather well.
quote:
There'll be plenty of time for unconsciousness once this is all over.
And of course, if he's right, that's a pretty smart observation. But I don't believe he is.
Imagine the scenario of an eternal encounter between an unimaginably resurrected Hitchens and Mother Teresa ...
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on
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The Venetians were doing the best they could with the knowledge of the time. Clearly the tiger is not going to vomit up his prey; that human was long ago converted into tiger fur, baby tigers, and tiger metabolism.
Although I am sure it is equally flawed, I propose a 21st century image: the new OS. When you die, all that is you (your memories, personality, soul, etc.) get run through the Heavenly debugging software. They used to call this Purgatory, but essentially it peels out all the malware, bad viruses, and unwanted cookies -- the sins. While they're at it, they fix all the mis-spellings and the times when you used the apostrophe incorrectly. You are free from sin!
Once you are nice and clean, all your data is loaded onto a data stick (or some Heavenly equivalent) and God keeps it in a desk drawer, or a shoebox, or a file cabinet -- the same place you squirreled the Word document of the novel you wrote in 1989. Time does not pass for you there, and you are not aware of being stored.
Meanwhile, back out in the data center, the geek angels are installing the new mainframes with the vastly-expanded capabilities. When the new Heaven and the new Earth are ready, God hands over the data. We are all uploaded into a new and much more powerful system, where we can do and access things that we could not imagine, back when we were on our computers that were built (born) decades ago.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Of course, Brenda ... and I'm not sure medieval people were always quite as 'literal' as we assume they were ...
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
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I don't think that our mortal remains have anything to do with our resurrection. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. What is of the earth returns to the earth.
I believe that the Creator God will provide new bodies of one form or another, we won't know until the time comes, in the same way as God will form a new heaven and a new earth.
As we are so restrained by our thinking due to our concept of time, within which we are bound due to our current circumstances, and by our concept of reality which is bound by the matter we perceive with our human senses, it is very difficult for us to see other than in a mirror dimly.
We are promised everlasting life in God's eternal Kingdom of love. That has to be enough to hold onto.
Posted by Tortuf (# 3784) on
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I have no earthly idea. What will happen is what will happen. Personally, I wouldn't mind looking like Kevin Klein.
On a less flippant note. I think I have already been resurrected/saved so what happens after I die is not a compelling issue.
Posted by Macrina (# 8807) on
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I'm a bit wary of this shiny new sin-free body and soul idea.
If we're supposed to be dedicated to the worship of God for all eternity then surely fairly innocuous aspects of our personality which make us who we are individually and are important to us now, the clothes we like, the friends we have, the food we eat, the things we like to do for fun etc are all distractions from the heavenly bliss and will be swept away.
And what about people with genetic differences? What about people who are deaf and proudly identify with the deaf community? What about people who are BORN with no legs or extra fingers or anything like that and make a full life for themselves which has been shaped and directed by their genetic difference in a way that makes it hard to separate who they'd be without it?
Do we have in mind some sort of super shiny perfect meta human that actually isn't really human at all by virtue of being perfect and shiny? If this is the case then are 'we' resurrected at all?
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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That's an interesting point, (Macrina). I would say that it's the food we eat, the shit we shit, the clothes we wear, the inconsequential moments in the day - that contain the real bliss. Why would we go beyond this, when this is the beyond? The alternative sounds like a mind-fuck to me.
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
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I was given a glimpse of heaven in a vision once, in which there were more flower varieties than I could ever imagine with a range of scents that were far beyond any I had experienced, along with music which extended into greater ranges of tone I had heard, hard to describe. I was fully myself, with my own tastes, as I took in what I was given.
If this was heaven, (and I accept that some reading this will not believe the truth of my experience,) then all of the senses we have will remain, but they will not be limited to what we are currently familiar with.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
I'm a bit wary of this shiny new sin-free body and soul idea.
If we're supposed to be dedicated to the worship of God for all eternity then surely fairly innocuous aspects of our personality which make us who we are individually and are important to us now, the clothes we like, the friends we have, the food we eat, the things we like to do for fun etc are all distractions from the heavenly bliss and will be swept away.
And what about people with genetic differences? What about people who are deaf and proudly identify with the deaf community? What about people who are BORN with no legs or extra fingers or anything like that and make a full life for themselves which has been shaped and directed by their genetic difference in a way that makes it hard to separate who they'd be without it?
Do we have in mind some sort of super shiny perfect meta human that actually isn't really human at all by virtue of being perfect and shiny? If this is the case then are 'we' resurrected at all?
Wouldn't such an individual be some sort of idealisation, i.e. not a real person at all? The resurrection narratives seem to imply that there is continuity with what went before but not identicalness. That the resurrection body is not limited by constraints of time or space. The new heaven and the new earth are a unity, caused by the fusion of the old heaven and the old earth, which therefore cease to be in the form they are at present, but which nevertheless have their antecedents in the old. So it's not about sweeping away the old for some shiny replacement model in that respect.
I suppose the word I'm heading towards is "transcendence". It is not that the good things we have achieved are of no consequence - rather that our own shortcomings are transcended.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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It's all stuff we make up. Apart from the risen Christ. And He said nothing about it. Absolutely nothing. He made up stuff about it when was a bloke of course. Because He couldn't know a thing about it. It'll be cool. That's all we need to know, all we can know.
What's to explain?
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on
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Jesus' words to the Sadducees on their hypothetical case of the woman with seven husbands offer one insight to me.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A23-32&version=NRSVACE
I interpret Jesus' answer to the question of the resurrection to mean that all of our earthly institutions/practices/customs all will not make sense once we cross the other side of the eschaton. What occurs after death is a mystery for us, because frankly we are not there yet.
The hope and faith we have is that God is beyond death, and that in his eyes, we are alive.
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on
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I don't know if any of it's true. But, for me, I think the most important things are that everyone is there, safe, and well, and home.
I think I can cope with whatever details there may be.
In Christian circles, butterflies are often used as an explanation of resurrection: the caterpillar thinks it's dying--and it is, in a sense--but it becomes something new. This Scientific American article describes the process. Some of the process is a bit TMI; and if you're squeamish, you might want to avoid the pic at the very end of the article.
Bored Panda has "19 Before And After Photos Of Butterfly And Moth Transformations".
And there's always the hand-written and hand-drawn book "Hope For The Butterflies", by Trina Paulus.
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It's all stuff we make up. Apart from the risen Christ. And He said nothing about it. Absolutely nothing. He made up stuff about it when was a bloke of course. Because He couldn't know a thing about it. It'll be cool. That's all we need to know, all we can know.
What's to explain?
Dorothy Sayers, novelist, author of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, and a Christian, wrote a play called "The Man Born To Be King", about Jesus. When Lazarus comes toddling out of his tomb, Jesus says "Now, don't give away any state secrets!"
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posted by Macrina (# 8807) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Wouldn't such an individual be some sort of idealisation, i.e. not a real person at all? The resurrection narratives seem to imply that there is continuity with what went before but not identicalness. That the resurrection body is not limited by constraints of time or space. The new heaven and the new earth are a unity, caused by the fusion of the old heaven and the old earth, which therefore cease to be in the form they are at present, but which nevertheless have their antecedents in the old. So it's not about sweeping away the old for some shiny replacement model in that respect.
I suppose the word I'm heading towards is "transcendence". It is not that the good things we have achieved are of no consequence - rather that our own shortcomings are transcended.
Yes it would be an idealisation, that was what I was trying to say and the source of my discomfort with the idea. It all sounds very nice in principle but I'm really not sure how you can have something human without the 'flaws' that make us so. I am not sure how you'd tell the difference for example between an angel and a transcended human. It just seems like a comforting myth designed to help us make sense of this rather cold, unfeeling and cruel world*.
*which is also just as full of wonder, love and tenderness but we must be realistic in our assessment of nature and the natural world.
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Imagine the scenario of an eternal encounter between an unimaginably resurrected Hitchens and Mother Teresa ...
Actually, at the time, I wrote sort of a little skit here. (Can't find it in the archives, not even with Google. I think I have it on an external hard drive.)
Basically, CH arrived in Heaven, to his surprise. God stepped out from behind a pillar and said "Boo". CH said he'd have to pay off some bets now! Asked God if there was a good poker game anywhere. God answered something like "Yes. You'll find Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and assorted others...and the dealer is Mother Teresa." (Ended there.)
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on
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{Tangent}
Ok, I found it on the "RIP Hitchens" thread at Archive.org.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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Gaudy Night is among my most memorable reads.
But Lazarus woulda known NOWT. Like Jesus. Nearly ...
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
But Lazarus woulda known NOWT. Like Jesus. Nearly ...
Which means in translation what? "wouldna know NOWT" isn't normal English. Does it mean he knew nothing? I am not internet searching on expensive rural data for translation.
Posted by Macrina (# 8807) on
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
But Lazarus woulda known NOWT. Like Jesus. Nearly ...
Which means in translation what? "wouldna know NOWT" isn't normal English. Does it mean he knew nothing? I am not internet searching on expensive rural data for translation.
Would have known nothing.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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It's not the truth, Raptor Eye, it's the interpretation.
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It's not the truth, Raptor Eye, it's the interpretation.
The truth comes through, Martin, if the interpretation helps us to meet with God.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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All truth is interpretation.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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Sorry Raptor Eye, I wasn't saying that what you said is not the truth as you see it, that you were not being truthful. That you were not being completely accurate in reporting what you experienced. Neither were you being untruthful in your interpretation. But your interpretation that you had a vision, your metanarrative, can only be received as that. There is no rational, faithful need to believe otherwise.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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And as for meeting with God, well we invoke an icon, an avatar - a role, a script, a story - of Him in our minds. That maps with Him in so far as it is gracious, kind, merciful, forgiving, healing, correcting, patient, trusting, encouraging. We can call that meeting Him if we like.
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
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It's language to describe experience rather than interpretation, Martin. It is what it is.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
And as for meeting with God, well we invoke an icon, an avatar - a role, a script, a story - of Him in our minds. That maps with Him in so far as it is gracious, kind, merciful, forgiving, healing, correcting, patient, trusting, encouraging. We can call that meeting Him if we like.
At some point, we face up to and clear down the images we have created in our minds, as they are not God. That is greatly challenging.
At some point, we encounter the love of God and recognise God's nature of forgiveness, grace, etc.
In the meantime, we may do as you have said, hold on to the truth where we recognise it in others, and hold on to our own familiar images. If we follow Christ, we will remain on track.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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Where does He lead?
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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"And he leads his people on
To the place where he is gone."
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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How?
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
"And he leads his people on
To the place where he is gone."
I have sung this a thousand times.
But my OP question remains the same - what does it mean?
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
The hope and faith we have is that God is beyond death, and that in his eyes, we are alive.
I like this, I think.
But deep down I also find myself feeling "Yes, but what about my loved ones - are they alive in their own eyes too?" If we are simply to be 'one in/with God' why did he bother with the whole universe thing in the first place?
Posted by Alisdair (# 15837) on
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Perhaps it's not so different to a baby being born into a 'reality' that previously it had almost no concept of, except the barest glimmer, and yet there is no doubt the world of the unborn child is very much a part of the greater reality outside the womb.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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Out individual, unique personhood isn't annihilated in the Borg.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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Our ... this is happening more frequently. 'smee age.
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Where does He lead?
He leads us into encounter with God.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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Starting from where? How? By what means?
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Boogie
If we are simply to be 'one in/with God' why did he bother with the whole universe thing in the first place?
This is a question we have only been able to ask for a few hundred years, and really realise the implications for maybe 150. We are on the outskirts of a galaxy with 200 million stars in a local cluster of some 25 galaxies, in a universe where, in every direction there are more galaxies back to the beginning of time and the universe. Yet we exist and try to understand. We want to be important as a collective humanity and individuals. Are we as special as we wish to be? Do we know the least thing yet, with our religion, science, philosophy, music and arts? Probably we know just the smallest things only. We can't even stop ourselves from hoarding the essentials of life away from others of our kind, and we enjoy killing and putting our fellow humans down. We enjoy destroying the basic environment of our planet. It all makes me think that we have a long way to go before we can even ask the right questions. The answer might as well be 42, pi, to sing and dance, to count beetles, smell flowers, or type on smart phones with one finger. I had thought at one point that Christianity had the answers to the basic questions, but I think my questions were wrong. A better point is that we have been show how to live, and to not seperate that living with how to die. Life and death are both states of beingness. We can't know much more except by hopeful believing, no one can tell you the secret. You are alive, so then live. When not alive anymore and in the other state of beingness, you will get the answers or they won't matter because you haven't any further awareness. But it isn't worth fretting too much about it. As Darwin wrote, a dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.
For myself, the hoarfrost and stars of the morning beside this lake, with the memory of northern lights from yesterday afternoon with the only sound being skis against the snow, and then waking up to a bugger of a squirrel scratching away again under the cabin again are nearly enough. And it doesn't matter if it isn't enough. That's all I get just now.
Posted by Philip Charles (# 618) on
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Taking Brenda's idea further.
quote:
Meanwhile, back out in the data center, the geek angels are installing the new mainframes with the vastly-expanded capabilities. When the new Heaven and the new Earth are ready, God hands over the data. We are all uploaded into a new and much more powerful system, where we can do and access things that we could not imagine, back when we were on our computers that were built (born) decades ago.
In the geek world data can be stored in many ways. Magnetic patterns on a hard drive, On/off switches in RAM, Patterns of pits on a DVD. Printed out on paper. Data can also be transmitted over distance by internet etc.
At the moment Philip Charles is contained in a biochemical device called a body. Using the geekish analogy I assume that the are other devices that could contain Philip Charles. The resurrection occurs when someone is transferred from from the biochemical device to another device (St.Paul's spiritual body) via some divine fibre network.
Always push an analogy beyond its limit.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Philip Charles:
Taking Brenda's idea further.
quote:
Meanwhile, back out in the data center, the geek angels are installing the new mainframes with the vastly-expanded capabilities. When the new Heaven and the new Earth are ready, God hands over the data. We are all uploaded into a new and much more powerful system, where we can do and access things that we could not imagine, back when we were on our computers that were built (born) decades ago.
In the geek world data can be stored in many ways. Magnetic patterns on a hard drive, On/off switches in RAM, Patterns of pits on a DVD. Printed out on paper. Data can also be transmitted over distance by internet etc.
At the moment Philip Charles is contained in a biochemical device called a body. Using the geekish analogy I assume that the are other devices that could contain Philip Charles. The resurrection occurs when someone is transferred from from the biochemical device to another device (St.Paul's spiritual body) via some divine fibre network.
Always push an analogy beyond its limit.
I don't know about "beyond its limit." That all works pretty well for me.
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on
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Entirely reasonable to me. And consider how, in our lifetimes, all of this has become not only imaginable, but possible. Do you remember when, if you wanted to hear a song, you used a vinyl disc that had to be spun at either 33 or 78 rpm? This disc held one song. In our lifetimes we have moved to where my Ipod Nano, measuring 1.5 inches square, holds 5000 songs. No, I have no difficulty at all in believing that the Heavenly geek squad has tech that we cannot conceive of.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Philip Charles:
In the geek world data can be stored in many ways. Magnetic patterns on a hard drive, On/off switches in RAM, Patterns of pits on a DVD. Printed out on paper. Data can also be transmitted over distance by internet etc.
At the moment Philip Charles is contained in a biochemical device called a body. Using the geekish analogy I assume that the are other devices that could contain Philip Charles. The resurrection occurs when someone is transferred from from the biochemical device to another device (St.Paul's spiritual body) via some divine fibre network.
Always push an analogy beyond its limit.
Yes, it's nice and I rather like it - but Philip Charles residing in his biochemical device has glands, hormones, neurochemicals, electrical impluses - you name it. All give him his thoughts/feelings/soul/spirit. I can't see how the 'real' Philip Charles can be separate from all this in order to be uploaded.
For example, when our brain stops working (dementia) there are glimmers of our 'real' selves left - but is it enough to upload anywhere? I suspect not.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Wouldn't such an individual be some sort of idealisation, i.e. not a real person at all? The resurrection narratives seem to imply that there is continuity with what went before but not identicalness. That the resurrection body is not limited by constraints of time or space. The new heaven and the new earth are a unity, caused by the fusion of the old heaven and the old earth, which therefore cease to be in the form they are at present, but which nevertheless have their antecedents in the old. So it's not about sweeping away the old for some shiny replacement model in that respect.
I suppose the word I'm heading towards is "transcendence". It is not that the good things we have achieved are of no consequence - rather that our own shortcomings are transcended.
Yes it would be an idealisation, that was what I was trying to say and the source of my discomfort with the idea. It all sounds very nice in principle but I'm really not sure how you can have something human without the 'flaws' that make us so. I am not sure how you'd tell the difference for example between an angel and a transcended human. It just seems like a comforting myth designed to help us make sense of this rather cold, unfeeling and cruel world*.
*which is also just as full of wonder, love and tenderness but we must be realistic in our assessment of nature and the natural world.
This all shrieks of the old idea that anything material or physical is icky and not worthy of the presence of god. That might be true of Greek philosophy and life-denying monasticism, but it's not a Biblical concept and certainly not, IMHO, either healthy or God-inspired.
Where do we get this rather odd idea that all heaven is about is that it's a place where we will just be 'worship-fodder' for God and stand around all day singing praises with white robes and crowns on? If all God wanted was a host of shiny worshippers for eternity then surely he would content himself with the ranks of angels!
I don't believe it in the slightest! I think Heaven will be a place of life and activity, industry, experience and physical satisfaction. I see nothing in Scripture that suggests disembodied spirits flitting around being 'transcendent' and doing nothing more interesting than singing Gregorian chant around a metaphorical throne!
I'd like a real life please - and that will necessarily involve my whole spirit, soul and (glorified) body, so that I can run around and enjoy myself. Otherwise, what's the point?!
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
For example, when our brain stops working (dementia) there are glimmers of our 'real' selves left - but is it enough to upload anywhere? I suspect not.
I suspect otherwise from watching my grandmother. Most of the time she didn't seem to be there, but then you'd get one blessed rare moment when everything came back into focus and she knew you, she knew where and when she was, she made normal conversation and recalled old jokes--a lovely foretaste of the resurrection!--and then the curtain came down again, and she was all but nonverbal.
So it seems to me that the original "her" is still there, but stymied by its container so very little gets expressed. Rather like a computer with a bad, bad monitor connection that occasionally goes right for a brief moment. Fix the monitor and you're back in business.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I'd like a real life please - and that will necessarily involve my whole spirit, soul and (glorified) body, so that I can run around and enjoy myself. Otherwise, what's the point?!
But, Like Macrina asked, how you can have something human without the 'flaws' that make us so?
Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on
:
I think the characteristic of sin is that it makes us less human rather than more human. When we talk about "flaws that make us human" I would suggest that these are not really "flaws" at all but rather idiosyncrasies, character - the things that make us who we are - and will still be present - maybe even more so - in the resurrection.
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on
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And how sadly this ties into threads like the one about homosexuality. Which has been categorized as a sin, but now seems to be allocated into the 'foible or character trait' column. I expect that when we get to Heaven we'll get the final word as to which traits are what.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
I think the characteristic of sin is that it makes us less human rather than more human. When we talk about "flaws that make us human" I would suggest that these are not really "flaws" at all but rather idiosyncrasies, character - the things that make us who we are - and will still be present - maybe even more so - in the resurrection.
I am disabled in that I do not have full use of my right arm. Not a big deal compared with where others are, but take it from me, it's a flaw, not an idiosyncracy.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
I would also like to know why flaws make us more human? They certainly don't make us less human because each of us have flaws and it's how we deal with them that reveal humanity. If my flaw was a short temper, would you watch me shout and lash out violently towards a loved one, and then would you chuckle and say, "Ah bless him, he's just displaying what it means to be human, more power to him."?
Rather, you would suggest that grace and holiness would help me to yield my soul and spirit to Christ so that my behaviour displayed patience, long-suffering and gentleness...
If having flaws - sins, etc - reveals our humanity then what does that say about the sinless Jesus? Is the work of sanctification in this life not the work of making us more like him and therefore more human?
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
About 20 years ago I was asked to be one of the speakers at an evening where different views of the resurrection were put forward. I think I was the only one to exhibit orthodox views, sadly; one vicar who had been given the task of exegeting 1 Corinthians 15 decided instead to give a review of Mahler's resurrection symphony. (We discovered late that he was a member of the Sea of Faith, so 'quelle surprise' there!)
Anyway, one of the points I made was about the nature of Christ's own resurrection where, in the words ascribed to him, he spoke to the disciples before his death and they remembered him saying, "After three days I will rise again."
Assuming accurate remembering and recording, we realise that Jesus said I will rise..." In other words, the person you see die will rise; it will me be for it will be I who will rise again.
This, for me, surely clinches the argument that whoever we are in essence, that is the person who at the last day will rise. All that makes me the best that I am - either in actuality now, or in potential for the future - that is the me who will rise. That is the definition of resurrection. As I entitled my ta;l that night: 'I want to be me'.
From a pastoral point of view, people want to know that in heaven they will still be themselves, that they will recognise loved ones, that they will have life and not just some vague shadow-existence.
The me that exists today is imperfect and I only love it out of self-preservation and self-protection. It's all I have so i love what I have grown to accept and look forward to the day when all that I am and hope to me will be redeemed.
I know, as Job said, the though my skin be destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God - which reminds me of what a totally sightless man said to me that night I gave my talk: He had two false eyes - just to make his features look a little less 'remarkable' shall we say. He thanked me for my talk and said, "I won't have plastic eyes when I go to Heaven.'
That's resurrection.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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I entirely agree with you, Mudfrog. I only say this in case you are arguing with a position I do not hold. If it's someone else you are addressing then carry on...
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
Honest Ron Bacardi, it was the following statement from Boogie, in reply to mine, that set me off writing...
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I'd like a real life please - and that will necessarily involve my whole spirit, soul and (glorified) body, so that I can run around and enjoy myself. Otherwise, what's the point?!
But, Like Macrina asked, how you can have something human without the 'flaws' that make us so?
It was the idea that flaws make us human I disagree with.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
Would perfect people all be identical? Aren't flaws and individuality the same thing?
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Would perfect people all be identical? Aren't flaws and individuality the same thing?
Can we not be perfect in different ways? Why does our identity depend on flaws and aberrations?
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on
:
But then the problem is when things are flaws or disability according to an ableist society but aren't by those who have them. Eg many autistic and Deaf people say it is how God made them, their autism and Deafness is good and will be part of them post-resurrection. I agree, in line with the social model of disability. For some people their disability is as much a good and God-given part of them as skin colour or gender.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
And that's why I spoke about self-preservation and self-protection: these things define us now, they are part of our identity only because we have no choice in the matter. We 'value' them because to reject them would be the opposite of living at peace.
However, a disability is not the essential person, it is the starting point for potential - and that is what I believe resurrection is: the realisation of God-given potential.
The reason we try to say that a disability is part of us now is because we don't want to offend or discourage or devalue the disabled person, or ourself, in this world where there is no choice. But I see no reason to suggest that a disability must be carried into eternity on that basis.
Think again of the blind man who spoke to me. He seemed perfectly at ease with his blindness and his 'plastic eyes' - but he was looking forward to seeing with his own eyes in Heaven.
[ 06. January 2016, 22:45: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on
:
That man was not all disabled people though.
I think there is reason to say that neurodiversity - not all of it, but some of it - could be present post-resurrection as it is innate and can give benefits as well as disadvantages.
I also think that this is why churches need to consider theologies of disability...I think churches generally are pretty poor at discussing it as an issue.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Would perfect people all be identical? Aren't flaws and individuality the same thing?
No, certainly not. If you have a long row of babies to take care of, even same sex same race babies, they will all become individuals to you in very short order. One will be rowdy, one quiet; one straightforward, one mischievous; one easily pleased, one a little judge; one fascinated by music, another by colors or moving things or people. These are not flaws, but differences--just as vanilla, chocolate, and blackberry are all valid, awesome flavors of ice-cream.
Posted by Philip Charles (# 618) on
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Boogle said,
quote:
Yes, it's nice and I rather like it - but Philip Charles residing in his biochemical device has glands, hormones, neurochemicals, electrical impluses - you name it. All give him his thoughts/feelings/soul/spirit. I can't see how the 'real' Philip Charles can be separate from all this in order to be uploaded.
For example, when our brain stops working (dementia) there are glimmers of our 'real' selves left - but is it enough to upload anywhere? I suspect not.
Computer data storage and transfer is an analogy and we must not be trapped by it. I agree that Philip Charles is not just a brain or a trapped soul. Body, mind and spirit and whatever else is necessary, need to interact and are inseparable. This device is me. If Philip Charles is to be uploaded then it must be to a device that has comparable components which interact in a suitable way.
So there can be no resurrection (or uploading) without a resurrection body (or a different device). No disembodied spirits, no souls drifting in the breeze.
This computer data analogy has limitations and dementia cannot be included within it. But I liked the description of a faulty monitor.
I wonder how I can bring /dev/null into the discussion?
![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
And that's why I spoke about self-preservation and self-protection: these things define us now, they are part of our identity only because we have no choice in the matter. We 'value' them because to reject them would be the opposite of living at peace.
However, a disability is not the essential person, it is the starting point for potential - and that is what I believe resurrection is: the realisation of God-given potential.
The reason we try to say that a disability is part of us now is because we don't want to offend or discourage or devalue the disabled person, or ourself, in this world where there is no choice. But I see no reason to suggest that a disability must be carried into eternity on that basis.
Think again of the blind man who spoke to me. He seemed perfectly at ease with his blindness and his 'plastic eyes' - but he was looking forward to seeing with his own eyes in Heaven.
The point of resurrection is not about getting a perfect body, or a perfect physical condition. Our Lord still carries the wounds of the Cross in his Resurrection.
To use your analogy:
I think in the Resurrection, the "sight" that we receive is such that is more powerful, more illuminating than any physical sight that we have here on earth. So, on this side of life, the physically seeing are no more "better" or "perfect" than the visually impaired.
In the story about the healing of the blind man in the Gospel of John (John 9), the point is not simply that Jesus heals the blind man, but that the religious leadership even though they had physical sight, were spiritually blind because they did not accept the witness of Jesus.
Posted by Divine Outlaw (# 2252) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
What is this resurrection?
I don't think we know in any detail. I think it's clear enough from scripture and Christian tradition that our hope is for resurrection, and I'd hope we could answer any objections that the idea is incoherent, but the nature of the resurrected life is hidden from us at the moment. I suppose one way of summing up the idea is that we will be what Christ is now.
Is it of the body or mind or spirit or soul or the whole person?
I don't think human beings divide into bits like that. We just are bodies of a certain sort (living, rational, bodies). To speak of us having a soul is just to speak of a body having a certain kind of life, not of a 'part' of us in the same sense that our hands or intestines are parts of us. Crucially, our soul is not the 'inner me' or anything like that (Aquinas says, "my soul is not me"). If I am to live at all, that life must be bodily. Because that is the kind of thing that I am, a human being, not an angel.
When?
At 'the End'. It's difficult to make sense of temporal language here though.
Are folks given a new body just or does their body re-connect with itself, one day at the end of the universe as we know it?
When (if) Jesus was resurrected at least his body was there to make something of.
But countless people have been eaten by wild animals/cremated and scattered etc. There's no chance of their actual bits being re-united - someone else could well have them by now anyway, do we argue over the atoms?
Or is it a comforting myth? I'm veering towards this last one. That it's a genuinely comforting thing for us all to believe and buy into.
I certainly don't think it's (just) a comforting myth. As Paul puts it, if Christ is not raised then our hope is in vain. It's too close to the heart of the Christian gospel to be jettisoned without loss.
I also think it is important that our resurrection body is the same body as our present body, albeit transformed ('sown perishable, raised imperishable'). This is because if it wasn't, it wouldn't be me. Does this mean that the body needs to be composed of the same matter - which is where your questions become pertinent? No. (In actual fact, few, if any of the atoms which composed by body as a baby are still part of my body). Sameness of body arises from sameness of life, sameness of soul. It is because my body now shares in the same life as my body as a baby that it is the same body. Similarly, we hope that God will bring it about that our lives, already hid with Christ in God, will be lived out in our resurrected bodies.
[ 07. January 2016, 10:50: Message edited by: Divine Outlaw ]
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
That man was not all disabled people though.
And neither are those disabled people who claim that their disability is sacrosanct and not to be changed...
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
And that's why I spoke about self-preservation and self-protection: these things define us now, they are part of our identity only because we have no choice in the matter. We 'value' them because to reject them would be the opposite of living at peace.
However, a disability is not the essential person, it is the starting point for potential - and that is what I believe resurrection is: the realisation of God-given potential.
The reason we try to say that a disability is part of us now is because we don't want to offend or discourage or devalue the disabled person, or ourself, in this world where there is no choice. But I see no reason to suggest that a disability must be carried into eternity on that basis.
Think again of the blind man who spoke to me. He seemed perfectly at ease with his blindness and his 'plastic eyes' - but he was looking forward to seeing with his own eyes in Heaven.
The point of resurrection is not about getting a perfect body, or a perfect physical condition. Our Lord still carries the wounds of the Cross in his Resurrection.
To use your analogy:
I think in the Resurrection, the "sight" that we receive is such that is more powerful, more illuminating than any physical sight that we have here on earth. So, on this side of life, the physically seeing are no more "better" or "perfect" than the visually impaired.
In the story about the healing of the blind man in the Gospel of John (John 9), the point is not simply that Jesus heals the blind man, but that the religious leadership even though they had physical sight, were spiritually blind because they did not accept the witness of Jesus.
I agree. I think that resurrection will not necessarily mean that my body in eternity will be the best I would wish it to be, but, in the words of the children's carol will be a body 'fit' to live with him there.
Our body here is usually appropriate for our environment - we interact in 5 senses and space and time. Our body there will be 'fit for purpose' in that environment. What I think is an able body here will be no more appropriate there than a disabled body. In heaven, both my body and my disabled friend's body will be similarly appropriate and yet authentically 'us'.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Divine Outlaw:
I don't think human beings divide into bits like that. We just are bodies of a certain sort (living, rational, bodies). To speak of us having a soul is just to speak of a body having a certain kind of life, not of a 'part' of us in the same sense that our hands or intestines are parts of us. Crucially, our soul is not the 'inner me' or anything like that (Aquinas says, "my soul is not me"). If I am to live at all, that life must be bodily. Because that is the kind of thing that I am, a human being, not an angel.
I was stopped once on Oxford St by a proseletising Buddhist (I think) and in our friendly conversation I happened to suggest that I have a body, a soul and a spirit. He asked me 'You may HAVE them, but what ARE you?' I had to modify what I said and replied, 'I AM a body, soul and spirit.'
Resurrection, IMHO, is a resurrection of all that I am - not component parts that make up a human 'recipe' - but just 'me'.
That's all I need to know.
I feel we're all a bunch of caterpillars discussing what's on the 'other side' of a crysalis. (like any of them really knows!)
Posted by Divine Outlaw (# 2252) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Resurrection, IMHO, is a resurrection of all that I am - not component parts that make up a human 'recipe' - but just 'me'.
That's all I need to know.
I feel we're all a bunch of caterpillars discussing what's on the 'other side' of a crysalis. (like any of them really knows!)
I think there's a lot to be said for this, and I broadly agree with it. But if the use of the word 'me' here is in any way continuous with the way I use the word 'me' now (and it had better be, I'm interested in *my* resurrection!) then it can't quite be 'anything goes'. In particular, I think bodily life is essential to being human, because of what human beings are, namely animals of a particular sort.
[ 07. January 2016, 11:51: Message edited by: Divine Outlaw ]
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Divine Outlaw:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Resurrection, IMHO, is a resurrection of all that I am - not component parts that make up a human 'recipe' - but just 'me'.
That's all I need to know.
I feel we're all a bunch of caterpillars discussing what's on the 'other side' of a crysalis. (like any of them really knows!)
I think there's a lot to be said for this, and I broadly agree with it. But if the use of the word 'me' here is in any way continuous with the way I use the word 'me' now (and it had better be, I'm interested in *my* resurrection!) then it can't quite be 'anything goes'. In particular, I think bodily life is essential to being human, because of what human beings are, namely animals of a particular sort.
Exactly. For the resurrection to be a 'resurrection' and not mere 'soul-survival' or a shuffling-off of the mortal coil, then 'me' must have all the component parts that were me. I AM body, soul and spirit, I WILL BE those 'me-things'.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
For the resurrection to be a 'resurrection' and not mere 'soul-survival' or a shuffling-off of the mortal coil, then 'me' must have all the component parts that were me. I AM body, soul and spirit, I WILL BE those 'me-things'.
I hope so ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Although no one can say 'I will be' but we can all say 'I hope I will be'.
If human animals, then why not other animals too? There is no clear dividing line between us and our animal ancestors after all.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Divine Outlaw:
In particular, I think bodily life is essential to being human, because of what human beings are, namely animals of a particular sort.
Exactly. For the resurrection to be a 'resurrection' and not mere 'soul-survival' or a shuffling-off of the mortal coil, then 'me' must have all the component parts that were me. I AM body, soul and spirit, I WILL BE those 'me-things'.
Does this necessarily mean that you WILL BE those things in the physical world? Would a spiritual body in a spiritual world suffice?
My issue is that if it has to be in this physical world then in order for resurrection to take place this physical world would have to come to an end and start over. I think.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
My issue is that if it has to be in this physical world then in order for resurrection to take place this physical world would have to come to an end and start over. I think.
Not just the Earth - the whole universe/multiverse.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
My issue is that if it has to be in this physical world then in order for resurrection to take place this physical world would have to come to an end and start over. I think.
Well, that is what Revelation describes.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
For the resurrection to be a 'resurrection' and not mere 'soul-survival' or a shuffling-off of the mortal coil, then 'me' must have all the component parts that were me. I AM body, soul and spirit, I WILL BE those 'me-things'.
I hope so
Although no one can say 'I will be' but we can all say 'I hope I will be'.
If human animals, then why not other animals too? There is no clear dividing line between us and our animal ancestors after all.
Apart from the image of God, of course.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
My issue is that if it has to be in this physical world then in order for resurrection to take place this physical world would have to come to an end and start over. I think.
Well, that is what Revelation describes.
and?
Revelation describes all sorts of weirdness. I wouldn't take it as literal truth in any way.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Divine Outlaw:
In particular, I think bodily life is essential to being human, because of what human beings are, namely animals of a particular sort.
Exactly. For the resurrection to be a 'resurrection' and not mere 'soul-survival' or a shuffling-off of the mortal coil, then 'me' must have all the component parts that were me. I AM body, soul and spirit, I WILL BE those 'me-things'.
Does this necessarily mean that you WILL BE those things in the physical world? Would a spiritual body in a spiritual world suffice?
My issue is that if it has to be in this physical world then in order for resurrection to take place this physical world would have to come to an end and start over. I think.
You're quite right. It won't be in this physical world. The Bible is quite clear that in eternity there will be a new earth and a new heavens. We're not going to live back in England forever - or even in the US!
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
For the resurrection to be a 'resurrection' and not mere 'soul-survival' or a shuffling-off of the mortal coil, then 'me' must have all the component parts that were me. I AM body, soul and spirit, I WILL BE those 'me-things'.
I hope so
Although no one can say 'I will be' but we can all say 'I hope I will be'.
If human animals, then why not other animals too? There is no clear dividing line between us and our animal ancestors after all.
Apart from the image of God, of course.
This thread demonstrates how problematic that is as a blanket statement.
It means almost nothing imo.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
For the resurrection to be a 'resurrection' and not mere 'soul-survival' or a shuffling-off of the mortal coil, then 'me' must have all the component parts that were me. I AM body, soul and spirit, I WILL BE those 'me-things'.
I hope so
Although no one can say 'I will be' but we can all say 'I hope I will be'.
If human animals, then why not other animals too? There is no clear dividing line between us and our animal ancestors after all.
Apart from the image of God, of course.
This thread demonstrates how problematic that is as a blanket statement.
It means almost nothing imo.
When you hear the phrase 'in the image of God' what does it imply to you?
To me, being in the image of God means that we have a capacity that other animals do not have - love and not just loyalty to a provider.
Creativity rather than just activity.
Choice rather than mere instinct.
Reason rather than just reaction.
Worship, rather than immediate perception of surroundings.
Hope?
Guilt?
Redemption...
[ 07. January 2016, 13:06: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
That man was not all disabled people though.
And neither are those disabled people who claim that their disability is sacrosanct and not to be changed...
Well that's not what I was saying. The point is that what is considered 'disability' isn't always actually a disability in the sense of being bad or disabling - in those cases it is society that disables. Eg someone's Deafness might enable them to experience music in a whole different way to hearing people and so create beautiful and powerful music. An autistic person might find that their different brain wiring helps them in their chosen career path. In those cases it is entirely reasonable to imagine that they would keep those things post-Resurrection. Why is that saying something is 'sacrosanct' any more than someone feeling (eg) that their skin colour is just part of who God made them? It's just because people are uncomfortable with disabled people celebrating their disability, because it removes the pity aspect that people enjoy feeling.
I was trying to counter the idea that disability always equals a bad thing, is all. I'm sure you would agree that churches need a more comprehensive theology of disability. I actually broadly speaking do agree you on the topic of Resurrection, although I deeply deeply hope that animals are part of that.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
Theologically and doctrinally speaking, if animals are in the new earth it will be by creation, not by redemption or resurrection.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Does this necessarily mean that you WILL BE those things in the physical world? Would a spiritual body in a spiritual world suffice?
My issue is that if it has to be in this physical world then in order for resurrection to take place this physical world would have to come to an end and start over. I think.
You're quite right. It won't be in this physical world. The Bible is quite clear that in eternity there will be a new earth and a new heavens. We're not going to live back in England forever - or even in the US!
Very nice. I agree.
So does that mean the creation of an alternate physical universe? How is that different from living forever in a spiritual universe that we simply move to at death?
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
and?
Revelation describes all sorts of weirdness. I wouldn't take it as literal truth in any way.
Ha! Fair enough, especially as I don't take it as literal truth either.
That said, I do take it as metaphorical truth, or perhaps as truth packed away in lots of weirdness. So, I think the descriptions in the last chapters of the redemption of creation and of the new heaven and new earth are worth paying attention to, as is the fact that Revelation ends pretty much where Genesis begins—with a tree in the middle of a garden.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Does this necessarily mean that you WILL BE those things in the physical world? Would a spiritual body in a spiritual world suffice?
My issue is that if it has to be in this physical world then in order for resurrection to take place this physical world would have to come to an end and start over. I think.
You're quite right. It won't be in this physical world. The Bible is quite clear that in eternity there will be a new earth and a new heavens. We're not going to live back in England forever - or even in the US!
Very nice. I agree.
So does that mean the creation of an alternate physical universe? How is that different from living forever in a spiritual universe that we simply move to at death?
It's different only if you are implying that 'spiritual' equates to incorporeality. A lot of people believe that 'heaven' is a place where we have left our bodies behind and are now free to flit around as disembodied and liberated spirits. That is not resurrection.
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on
:
I doubt if any speculation we generate will approach what it'll really be like. Any more than you, fifty years ago holding a disc of black vinyl, could understand the Ipod that I put into your hand (through the time-portal).
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I doubt if any speculation we generate will approach what it'll really be like.
True enough. But is it really speculation? We all have beliefs and expectations, based on any number of sources. They may be true or false.
I think that it is worth thinking about though, since after all Jesus did tell us a few things about it. I would think that understanding our eternal home would be useful to all.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
It's different only if you are implying that 'spiritual' equates to incorporeality. A lot of people believe that 'heaven' is a place where we have left our bodies behind and are now free to flit around as disembodied and liberated spirits. That is not resurrection.
Agreed. I don't believe in disembodied and liberated spirits.
What I'm thinking is that whenever a biblical character is enabled to see into heaven, the characters and other things there seem to be described as just as embodied and solid as things on earth.
Admittedly, that isn't very solid evidence. But it is a thought.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
and?
Revelation describes all sorts of weirdness. I wouldn't take it as literal truth in any way.
Ha! Fair enough, especially as I don't take it as literal truth either.
That said, I do take it as metaphorical truth, or perhaps as truth packed away in lots of weirdness. So, I think the descriptions in the last chapters of the redemption of creation and of the new heaven and new earth are worth paying attention to, as is the fact that Revelation ends pretty much where Genesis begins—with a tree in the middle of a garden.
I certainly think the last chapters are worth reading, they paint an amazing picture!
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
When you hear the phrase 'in the image of God' what does it imply to you?
To me, being in the image of God means that we have a capacity that other animals do not have - love and not just loyalty to a provider.
Creativity rather than just activity.
Choice rather than mere instinct.
Reason rather than just reaction.
Worship, rather than immediate perception of surroundings.
Hope?
Guilt?
Redemption...
These things arose gradually. Imagine the time when humanoids just passed the 'line' where 'image of God' was allowed - therefore all the benefits of that - heaven etc? Not very fair on the folk who only missed out by a whisker of creativity or whatever.
But this rightly belongs on the thread I linked to.
If we have another body in heaven whatever will it eat?
Heaven with no eating? Not very human then.
Heaven with no steak? I don't think so!
[ 07. January 2016, 16:23: Message edited by: Boogie ]
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
Who says no eating?
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Who says no eating?
Steak?
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Who says no eating?
Steak?
Yes please
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
So we'll be killing cows in heaven?
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
So we'll be killing cows in heaven?
Possibly not. Lots of milk and honey perhaps - and no apples!
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Will there be toilets?
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
This is my problem. If life is just like now there is too much biology which would have to be 'switched off'. If nothing dies then nothing would work as it does now - including food. Which is fine - unless, as Mudfrog says, it's just like now but with no sin. Not possible imo.
So it may as well be a 'spiritual world' or 'uploaded world' as it would be completely changed as to be not in the least natural!
Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
So it may as well be a 'spiritual world' or 'uploaded world' as it would be completely changed as to be not in the least natural!
If the afterlife were not 'completely changed' from the one we have so far experienced then surely we'd be looking at an eternal hell of sorts. Not saying my own life is so very bad but even by thinking and distilling it into the moments of joy, then having that experience extend for all eternity? Doesn't really work somehow.
The Joy of the afterlife has to been something ethereal/spiritual, something that can never be properly defined in this realm.
TMM the Resurrection embodies all this, but maybe not in the cartoon- cutout type way in has been presented by the church in times past.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
This is my problem. If life is just like now there is too much biology which would have to be 'switched off'. If nothing dies then nothing would work as it does now - including food. Which is fine - unless, as Mudfrog says, it's just like now but with no sin. Not possible imo.
So it may as well be a 'spiritual world' or 'uploaded world' as it would be completely changed as to be not in the least natural!
This is the kind of thing that Swedenborg talks about in his best known work,
"Heaven and Hell."
The clever part, to my way of thinking, is the realization that earth is modeled "in the image and likeness" of heaven, so the appearance is altogether similar. The big difference is that the spiritual world is made of spiritual substance, and this causes everything there to work better, so it is a more real, complete and satisfying existence.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
What are the laws of physics in the spirit world? They are what they have to be in this, so what do they have to be in that?
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
Reading the OP again, which seemed to me to be taking a clear, realistic view of the idea of resurrection, I can see that, yes, the idea of any kind of life following death in some form or another could be considered as a comfortand have, as usual, found the subsequent posts very interesting. I hope I have time to ask Joanna Elizabeth
Her views on this when Ivisit the Sisters of Bethany in February.
Apart from the fact that one way or another the physical matter of our bodies reverts to being atoms, or something, scientifically, resurrection or continuing existence of any aspect of our personality hasn’t got a leg to stand on, has it? All ideas of and thoughts of spirits, souls, etc need a living brain to be thought of or imagined.
I do not know any atheists who fool themselves into thinking that any aspect or part of them will live again in any way.
If we have children, our genes will be passed on and we hope we will be remembered by those we have known. Even when I believed there was god, the possibility of something after death made no sense and I have never seen or heard anything since which could even begin to persuade me otherwise.**
The story of a person coming to life again after death does, I believe, have a place In many ancient cultures, but Science has moved a long way since then, hasn’t it?
**So why would I be sad if I had to leave
SoF?!! It’s the people of course. It’s just lovely to be a part of a group who love to present their views, find out the views of others, and communicate, communicate, communicate!
’ views,discuss,
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
What are the laws of physics in the spirit world? They are what they have to be in this, so what do they have to be in that?
I think that is the right way to think about it.
The laws of physics are about the fact that the stability of the physical world depends on, or springs from, the existence of universal, unchanging laws that govern the behavior of matter.
Surely it is not that difficult to imagine a parallel set of laws that exist on a spiritual plane, and that govern life there.
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on
:
I think Resurrection theology must be grounded on the theology of the love of God, not on whatever mechanics or what form of "body" we might have. If resurrection is about entering into eternity, talking about eating or drinking or marriage does not make much sense to me, considering that our earth and universe will physically end eventually.
The metaphors of a great feast or banquet at the end of time are rich and wonderful metaphors for the age to come. But they are still metaphors , signs or descriptors of a reality we can't fully comprehend or grasp.
Resurrection theology is grounded on the mystery of God's love for us. For God, who has no beginning, and not end, yet, whose nature is unbounded, unconditional, divine and incomprehensible love, is more powerful than the grave. And it is in that love, that I believe knows no end, is where we place our ultimate hope, speculation about where disability or eating or drinking, notstanding.
[ 08. January 2016, 18:03: Message edited by: Anglican_Brat ]
Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
**So why would I be sad if I had to leave
SoF?!! It’s the people of course. It’s just lovely to be a part of a group who love to present their views, find out the views of others, and communicate, communicate, communicate!
I have no wish for you to leave SoF SusanDoris.
The "T" word is banded about way too freely these days.
I'm always more than happy to discuss massive issues with anyone who believe science alone can, and will, provide every answer to every question that every human is capable of asking.
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Apart from the fact that one way or another the physical matter of our bodies reverts to being atoms, or something, scientifically, resurrection or continuing existence of any aspect of our personality hasn’t got a leg to stand on, has it? All ideas of and thoughts of spirits, souls, etc need a living brain to be thought of or imagined.
I do not know any atheists who fool themselves into thinking that any aspect or part of them will live again in any way.
It's telling that you think that anyone who considers life after death to be a possibility is fooling him or her self.
I have met atheists who still believe that they will see their loved ones after death even though they don't believe that God exists. More people believe in angels and in heaven than those who say that they believe in God.
To you, our existence is inextricably linked to our physical bodies, so much so that nothing can exist unless it can be processed by a human brain? I find that extraordinary.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
I think Resurrection theology must be grounded on the theology of the love of God, not on whatever mechanics or what form of "body" we might have.
Great point. I think it is just a matter of our efforts to get our heads around the idea.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
I think Resurrection theology must be grounded on the theology of the love of God, not on whatever mechanics or what form of "body" we might have.
Great point. I think it is just a matter of our efforts to get our heads around the idea.
Buildings are "grounded" on the bedrock but people still talk meaningfully about the furnishings in the upper floors.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
All ideas of and thoughts of spirits, souls, etc need a living brain to be thought of or imagined.
Clearly not. People have been thinking of and imagining an afterlife for tens of thousands of years. And people continue to do so up to this very minute. Your claim here is patently incorrect.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
The fact that atheists can believe in an afterlife, and that indeed a percentage of them do, is well documented.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
All ideas of and thoughts of spirits, souls, etc need a living brain to be thought of or imagined.
Clearly not. People have been thinking of and imagining an afterlife for tens of thousands of years. And people continue to do so up to this very minute. Your claim here is patently incorrect.
Turn off my brain with an anaesthetic and I stop thinking, being conscious and feeling that I'm me. Let it be damaged by a stroke or injury and my awareness may be very impaired and my personality may change. Cut off my head and it seems logical that I will be gone for ever.
Christians and atheists alike know this and worry about it. In life at least our consciousness seems entirely dependent on our brains, so why should, say, the final stoppage of oxygenated blood to a severely damaged brain not complete the work of many years of mini strokes?
But this discussion has shifted to the afterlife, which is not the same as resurrection.
Resurrection, I maintain, is about the defeat of death's power to cripple life.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Aye, but they have no rational basis for it. To atheistically believe in an afterlife, a beyond; a 'spirit', super-natural, meta-natural matrix tracelessly extending the physical - which includes mind - is to believe in a physics with no meaningful entropy. Which is what the multiverse entails on a 'smaller' (Cantor and all that: a lesser infinity) scale. Mind does not survive aging let alone death. How can it or anything transcend a material world?
It's simpler, neater not to give such nonsense the time of day. Which of course applies to theism too. Existence is ineffably, eternally strange. De-localized quantum entangled indeterminate electron pairs communicating instantaneously over irrelevant distance. Dark energy. These HAVE to be so and we haven't the faintest idea why and never will. Why bring an Exister in to it?
Jesus.
He's the explanation.
The assault on the senses, on rationality. It means that this infinite material mystery is the lowest holodeck. And as below so above, if Daniel and John are anything to go by. With meta-gravity. Meta-mechanics. Meta-optics. Meta-vision. Meta-chemistry. Meta-biology. Meta-psychology.
It means that God is the penultimate infinity. The penultimate set.
And without a trace except in our thinking from that One intrusion, excession, in to the noosphere.
And that.
[ 09. January 2016, 09:04: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Turn off my brain with an anaesthetic and I stop thinking, being conscious and feeling that I'm me. Let it be damaged by a stroke or injury and my awareness may be very impaired and my personality may change. Cut off my head and it seems logical that I will be gone for ever.
Christians and atheists alike know this and worry about it. In life at least our consciousness seems entirely dependent on our brains, so why should, say, the final stoppage of oxygenated blood to a severely damaged brain not complete the work of many years of mini strokes?
Yeah, yeah, but you've moved the goalposts. The claim was that it isn't even imaginable. Clearly it is. Claim refuted. Next.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
All ideas of and thoughts of spirits, souls, etc need a living brain to be thought of or imagined.
Clearly not. People have been thinking of and imagining an afterlife for tens of thousands of years. And people continue to do so up to this very minute. Your claim here is patently incorrect.
I'm not quite sure what you mean! All those people had living brains when they were thinking those thoughts, didn't they?
[ 09. January 2016, 17:01: Message edited by: SusanDoris ]
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Turn off my brain with an anaesthetic and I stop thinking, being conscious and feeling that I'm me. Let it be damaged by a stroke or injury and my awareness may be very impaired and my personality may change. Cut off my head and it seems logical that I will be gone for ever.
Christians and atheists alike know this and worry about it. In life at least our consciousness seems entirely dependent on our brains, so why should, say, the final stoppage of oxygenated blood to a severely damaged brain not complete the work of many years of mini strokes?
Yeah, yeah, but you've moved the goalposts. The claim was that it isn't even imaginable. Clearly it is. Claim refuted. Next.
Actually, I think SusanDoris was saying you need a brain to imagine.
I was pointing out that if a damaged brain damages consciousness then no brain might mean no consciousness.
Funny arguing style that announces someone's point is clearly wrong and says 'Claim refuted. Next.' I think your snappy style is missing all the points.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
Ah! I cross-posted with SusanDoris, but it seems I read her correctly.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
Perhaps it would help if people said what they mean. She said it's not imaginable. I took her words at face value. It's easily imaginable. If she meant it's unexplainable given what we know about how brains and thoughts work (which let's face it isn't much), that's another call. But she didn't say that. She made an unsupportable and patently false claim. That's not helpful in a discussion like this, although all too common, whether from the religion or anti-religion side.
Saying "a brain thought those thoughts" is a million miles from "it is necessary to have a brain to think those thoughts." Going from "A did X" to "X can't exist without A" is not a valid mode of inference.
What it really boils down to is, "there is no scientific explanation* of how thought could happen without a brain." To get to "thought cannot happen in a scientifically unexplainable way" you add "and only scientific explanations are acceptable," which is to say you have to drag in scientism, and we're right back to our usual resting place. Susan expounds scientism; others reject it. Deadlock.
_______
*a humble person would add 'at the current time' at this point in the sentence
[ 09. January 2016, 17:20: Message edited by: mousethief ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
Her's a potential analogy, make of it what you will. A damaged TV might project/display a distorted image of what the EM signal contains. If it is broken bad enough, or you have no TV, you can't decode the signal at all. From this you cannot conclude, however, that the signal does not exist.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Perhaps it would help if people said what they mean. She said it's not imaginable. I took her words at face value. It's easily imaginable. If she meant it's unexplainable given what we know about how brains and thoughts work (which let's face it isn't much), that's another call. But she didn't say that. She made an unsupportable and patently false claim. That's not helpful in a discussion like this, although all too common, whether from the religion or anti-religion side.
No, she said that thoughts and ideas needed to be thought or imagined by a brain. You may disagree, but it's hardly insupportable or patently false. We know of nothing other than a brain that can think and imagine.
To protest that of course something is imaginable is a bizarre misreading. Anything, including nonsense, is imaginable, so why would someone deny that?
The idea of the brain as a receiver of thoughts was put forward by Rupert Sheldrake amongst others. There's no good evidence I know of for this. If brains were receivers, a very different mode of working from being creators and processors of thoughts, you would expect this to show. Ideas might crop up in distant people simultaneously (what RSheldrake thinks), perhaps in huge numbers of people at once.
Brain damage should have effects that reveal the way the brain works. We know that there are areas for language, for sight, etc. If the brain is a receiver there ought to be bits analogous to an aerial and a tuner. Damage to these would cut the brain off from its signal, even though the rest of it were intact. This doesn't seem to happen, though.
Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on
:
Its interesting how people are happy to imagine all sorts of after-worlds no two of them exactly alike. And postulate things like "spiritual substance", "spiritual worlds" . All things for which there is no solid evidence whatsoever. But when people bring up what the evidence we actually have points to its "scientism", or its preposterous to believe.
What is the "essence" of a human being? As people have pointed out we are a particular kind of animal that is the product of billions of years of evolution. There is no solid boundary between us and other animals. I find it strange to believe that there is a "me" that would survive my body. Actually the boundary between "me" and the rest of the world is a self imposed illusion that is useful for survival nothing more. If "I" believe "I" can exist independently of "other" people animals or simply the material world around "me". I would snap out of it pretty quickly when dumped in the vacuum of outer space.
This particular body is all anybody else would describe as "me" and if there is anything else
that could survive the destruction of the body nobody has ever found any evidence for it.
[ 09. January 2016, 20:45: Message edited by: Ikkyu ]
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
What signal?
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
The idea of the brain as a receiver of thoughts was put forward by Rupert Sheldrake amongst others. There's no good evidence I know of for this. If brains were receivers, a very different mode of working from being creators and processors of thoughts, you would expect this to show. Ideas might crop up in distant people simultaneously (what RSheldrake thinks), perhaps in huge numbers of people at once.
Brain damage should have effects that reveal the way the brain works. We know that there are areas for language, for sight, etc. If the brain is a receiver there ought to be bits analogous to an aerial and a tuner. Damage to these would cut the brain off from its signal, even though the rest of it were intact. This doesn't seem to happen, though.
It seems to me that you're taking the analogy too literally, and then extrapolating from it even further in order to discount it. Even if the brain was literally a receiver, there would still be no need to assume that there are thoughts being broadcast so that multiple people can receive the same thought. The question boils down to whether or not there is more to our mind than our physical brain and body.
As for evidence that there is more to our mind than our physical brain, I can see why some people come to the conclusion that there isn't, but I don't see how that's the only reasonable conclusion. We know that what we call "seeing" starts with light coming into our eyes, which then triggers electrical nerve impulses that travel to the visual cortex, which in turn triggers other electrical nerve impulses throughout our brain to interpret the signals from the eye nerves and do a lot processing and pattern matching, including recognizing what we're seeing, retrieving memory associations, and responding to what we think we see. However, there is nothing to suggest how our brain could then use these electrical impulses to somehow produce what we experience in our conscious awareness as mental images, or how it allows us to "see" or "hear" and be aware of our own thoughts that are triggered as part of our response.
Could it all be inherent in the physical brain processes going on? Sure, but there is no more evidence to support that idea than the idea that there is something separate from our brain that is interpreting the brain activity. It may not be scientific evidence, but for me personally, it is very convincing mental evidence that I am more than my brain and body.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Yeah it's 50:50, either/or ...
Like the evidence for God.
Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
(snip)
Could it all be inherent in the physical brain processes going on? Sure, but there is no more evidence to support that idea than the idea that there is something separate from our brain that is interpreting the brain activity. It may not be scientific evidence, but for me personally, it is very convincing mental evidence that I am more than my brain and body.
You were describing vision using scientific ideas that needed nothing "separate" from the brain.
There is experimental evidence for your description of how vision works (Of course a Neuroscientist might quibble here and there with your description but i'm not one)
There are decades of increasingly more detailed
and explanatory studies supporting the "brain only" side. What is the evidence for the other side?
What is this "very convincing" mental evidence that is as good as the other one? What is this "other thing" separate from the brain, we all have? Does it have a measurable effect on the brain? You don't explain.
[ 09. January 2016, 23:33: Message edited by: Ikkyu ]
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
:
Of course I use scientific ideas to describe the physical activity of the brain - that's what science is for.
The mental evidence that convinces me that there is something more is my experience of my own self awareness.
Where is the evidence that physical matter can be arranged in such a way as to generate awareness the way people experience it, even in a small degree? Do you think a sufficiently complex computer might be able to experience similar self awareness?
Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
Of course I use scientific ideas to describe the physical activity of the brain - that's what science is for.
The mental evidence that convinces me that there is something more is my experience of my own self awareness.
Where is the evidence that physical matter can be arranged in such a way as to generate awareness the way people experience it, even in a small degree? Do you think a sufficiently complex computer might be able to experience similar self awareness?
About evidence for matter being arranged in such a way as generating awareness. Every being that I have perceived as aware (and that includes other animals as well as men) has a body composed of a very intricate arrangement of matter. I have never seen or heard evidence of awareness existing in a "disembodied" state. And as has been mentioned before physical alterations to the brain do in fact alter its functioning. Exactly
like the materialist explanation predicts. How does a "non-physical" mind explain this?
Also you did not explain how that "non-physical" part of the brain interacts with the physical.
So your alternate explanation seems incomplete.
About computers so far we seem to be further from the goal of a self aware computer than many people had predicted we would be by this stage.
That does not mean I believe its impossible in principle but its one of those problems that seems hard enough that we won't really know until we find definite proof one way or the other and its hard to predict which way it will fall.
Maybe artificial self aware brains will have to be "grown" or "evolved" in some organic way but that's just speculation on my part.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
I'm going to drop the imagine thing. I can't imagine it will do any good to continue down that path.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
The idea of the brain as a receiver of thoughts was put forward by Rupert Sheldrake amongst others. There's no good evidence I know of for this. If brains were receivers, a very different mode of working from being creators and processors of thoughts, you would expect this to show. Ideas might crop up in distant people simultaneously (what RSheldrake thinks), perhaps in huge numbers of people at once.
I posited that as an analogy, not as a theory. Merely to say there are potential ways of explaining why brain damage affects thought other than positing that thought cannot happen without a brain. Not to say that this particular explanation is the right one.
You missed this part of my post. I hope you will get to it later.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Saying "a brain thought those thoughts" is a million miles from "it is necessary to have a brain to think those thoughts." Going from "A did X" to "X can't exist without A" is not a valid mode of inference.
quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
About evidence for matter being arranged in such a way as generating awareness. Every being that I have perceived as aware (and that includes other animals as well as men) has a body composed of a very intricate arrangement of matter. I have never seen or heard evidence of awareness existing in a "disembodied" state.
This is question-begging.
quote:
And as has been mentioned before physical alterations to the brain do in fact alter its functioning. Exactly
like the materialist explanation predicts. How does a "non-physical" mind explain this?
One potential explanation is the receiver thing as has been discussed above. Of course a busted receiver is going to mangle the signal. This may or may not be what's going on, but it's not like there's no possible explanation.
quote:
Also you did not explain how that "non-physical" part of the brain interacts with the physical.
So your alternate explanation seems incomplete.
This is the Achilles' heel of the "theory" of the non-material soul. Descartes the interchange between body and "mind" took place through the pituitary gland. I don't suppose even the most diehard dualists these days go for that.
(Gotta fly right now; will respond to more later)
Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
And as has been mentioned before physical alterations to the brain do in fact alter its functioning. Exactly
like the materialist explanation predicts. How does a "non-physical" mind explain this?
The functioning of a legal trial that takes place in a court room can be altered by physically changing the court room or by moving it to a different venue, but that does not imply that the court room causes the trial. The trial does need to be "embodied" in some kind of forum and the particulars of the chosen forum will affect how the trial manifests itself as it proceeds, but that does not imply that the court room is identical to the trial. The trial has its own reality above and beyond the court room per se.
quote:
Also you did not explain how that "non-physical" part of the brain interacts with the physical.
So your alternate explanation seems incomplete.
Of course it's incomplete - I never attempted to present it as such. Are you suggesting that your explanation is complete?
I'm not trying to prove my point of view, or convince you of it's accuracy, or change your mind. I'm objecting to the idea that the "brain-only" view you describe is complete and sufficient enough to make the alternate view unreasonable. I continue to give both views serious consideration from time to time and often ask myself which seems more believable. I just always end up at the question of how to explain my own self awareness and I come to the conclusion that an extra-physical explanation is less outrageous than a "physical-only" explanation.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
Mousethief, I’ve re-read my post and I don’t see how you could have thought I said ‘it’s not imaginable’, but I see that Hatless and Ikkyu have responded better than I could.
[ 10. January 2016, 05:46: Message edited by: SusanDoris ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Mousethief, I’ve re-read my post and I don’t see how you could have thought I said ‘it’s not imaginable’, but I see that Hatless and Ikkyu have responded better than I could.
As I have said, I've dropped this. I suggest we all do.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
W Hyatt wrote:
quote:
I'm not trying to prove my point of view, or convince you of it's accuracy, or change your mind. I'm objecting to the idea that the "brain-only" view you describe is complete and sufficient enough to make the alternate view unreasonable. I continue to give both views serious consideration from time to time and often ask myself which seems more believable. I just always end up at the question of how to explain my own self awareness and I come to the conclusion that an extra-physical explanation is less outrageous than a "physical-only" explanation.
I don't think the extra-physical is outrageous; it just doesn't seem subject to any metric. How would we go about describing it, when most of our terms are suited to a physical world with physical measurements?
Well, it's possible that we're all in the Matrix, but in a sense, that idea is uninteresting, because there is no method whereby we could say if it's true or false, (as far as I'm aware).
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
I think we need to take more seriously the relational quality of human self-hood. We too easily focus on the existential anxieties of the lonely small hours: will I survive? As if I was the thinking entity in my skull.
But I am the person who knows who he is because of the way those who know me respond to me. I am the player who inhabits and interacts with the representations in my mind of the people who are important to me. I am the person who discovers he has been having an effect on people I haven't seen for months, because they have been thinking about me.
I am not changeless. When I am lost in a book, when I am amongst strangers, when I am with my family, at work, walking alone, making music or taken out of myself by great art, then I am different, my way of being alters. I am a child of my time, different from my parents and my children because the world moves on, the social and political climate changes - these things are influencing me all the time.
So who am I? Where is my being? My brain is where I am according to one sort of answer, but I am also in the relationships I've committed to, and in the causes I care about. Part of me is invested in the Kingdom of God (to be pious) and does not depend on me and my power. My faith tells me that when, in love, I lose my self, then I gain my self.
I think it's possible to free ourselves from the Cartesian brain-in-the-dark model and conceive of ourselves as embedded, contextual and as a function of our allegiances and longings. A shifting personhood emerging from the polyphonic interplay of our complex relational networks, captured better by poetry than an electro-encephalogram.
And this, I think, is where resurrection must be understood. What sort of life is beyond the power of death? What sort of life rises again? The answer must be the life founded on love like that we see in Jesus.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
It's just as well the Gospel is so simple! Why not accept that as God raised Jesus so he will raise us to and that we will live whole and complete with him in eternity.
All this philosophical argument and deliberation has got me lost - even with a BA Hons in Theology and Ministry!
[ 10. January 2016, 18:34: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
Yes. The gospel is perfectly simple: build your life on love.
Simple doesn't mean easy, though.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
British understatement at its finest.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
Hatless
Super posts, as usual, which is why I always wonder, why isn't this man an atheist?!!
[ 11. January 2016, 05:51: Message edited by: SusanDoris ]
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
I'd better add that of course no slur on anyone else implied.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Why not accept that as God raised Jesus so he will raise us to and that we will live whole and complete with him in eternity.
Which means nothing at all. It just takes us back to the question in the OP.
Is there even such a thing as 'eternity'? I like what hatless said about living on in relationships and the memories of others, this is true and makes perfect sense. Anything else seems to be pure conjecture - philosophy/theology, call it what you will.
Of course there is hope that there is an entropy-free 'somewhere' that we somehow have completely new bodies which contain 'us'. But the idea (whist being full of hope and comfort) is no more real than the Rainbow Bridge as far as I can see.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Why not accept that as God raised Jesus so he will raise us to and that we will live whole and complete with him in eternity.
Which means nothing at all. It just takes us back to the question in the OP.
Is there even such a thing as 'eternity'? I like what hatless said about living on in relationships and the memories of others, this is true and makes perfect sense. Anything else seems to be pure conjecture - philosophy/theology, call it what you will.
Of course there is hope that there is an entropy-free 'somewhere' that we somehow have completely new bodies which contain 'us'. But the idea (whist being full of hope and comfort) is no more real than the Rainbow Bridge as far as I can see.
Which, to me, is called faith. Faith is precisely that hope that a creative force is there which is capable, ultimately, of overcoming the many forces of destruction we see at work in our lives day by day. It is hope that this creative principle will ultimately overcome destruction in ways of which we currently receive only hints: tiny clues to the life that is yet to come into being. That, for me, is resurrection. Not a complex idea to explain, but it takes a lifetime (at least) to live out.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
Which, to me, is called faith. Faith is precisely that hope that a creative force is there which is capable, ultimately, of overcoming the many forces of destruction we see at work in our lives day by day. It is hope that this creative principle will ultimately overcome destruction in ways of which we currently receive only hints: tiny clues to the life that is yet to come into being. That, for me, is resurrection. Not a complex idea to explain, but it takes a lifetime (at least) to live out.
So it's only available to those who have faith and live a lifetime full of faith?
What do you mean by 'destruction'?
I get these hints and tiny clues all the time, especially that my Dad is still around - but I am a very imaginative and creative person, there is nothing whatever that tells me these experiences are not from within myself.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
Which, to me, is called faith. Faith is precisely that hope that a creative force is there which is capable, ultimately, of overcoming the many forces of destruction we see at work in our lives day by day. It is hope that this creative principle will ultimately overcome destruction in ways of which we currently receive only hints: tiny clues to the life that is yet to come into being. That, for me, is resurrection. Not a complex idea to explain, but it takes a lifetime (at least) to live out.
So it's only available to those who have faith and live a lifetime full of faith?
What do you mean by 'destruction'?
I get these hints and tiny clues all the time, especially that my Dad is still around - but I am a very imaginative and creative person, there is nothing whatever that tells me these experiences are not from within myself.
I am coming at this from a perspective of faith, so those are the terms in which I explain it. The other mysterious force at work, which seems at times so cruelly arbitrary in its operation but which I nevertheless experience as a force of love, is grace. I think what you are describing is the barely discernible, barely comprehensible operation of grace, which leaves those hints behind and equips us to follow them. Or not.
I'm not condemning those whose experience is different; what I'm trying to do is to point out the unhealthy link between understanding and control, which are linked through the roots of the word "comprehend". To understand something is to control it, to nail it down and to prevent it from growing. Faith is something different: it is the discernment of fugitive movement and a determination to be open to that movement and its effects, and to resist the urge to comprehend, to nail down, because of its deathly effect on this fugitive life-force.
ETA: reading back through what I have written, I have implied a near-equation between faith and grace, which I have to conclude is probably right. I have no idea otherwise why some people have faith and others don't - it can only be by the incomprehensible, apparently inchoate operation of grace.
[ 11. January 2016, 08:26: Message edited by: ThunderBunk ]
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
I have implied a near-equation between faith and grace, which I have to conclude is probably right. I have no idea otherwise why some people have faith and others don't - it can only be by the incomprehensible, apparently inchoate operation of grace.
Or why some people have faith in bucket loads, then lose it.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
I also have a strong sense of the presence of grace in life. I don't conceive it as a personal power, a God that exists, but when I am low, when I am stuck, when I've had to conclude that life or some aspect of it makes no sense at all and lacks worth, sometimes, often, the unexpected comes along and turns me round.
Good stuff happens as well as bad, of course, and we are poor at judging probabilities or what is or isn't a coincidence. It maybe says something about human nature or my nature that I can find myself questioning myself and my life to a disturbing degree, letting a problem empty me of the very resources I need to deal with it. It maybe says something about us all that people will do the astonishing and generous thing. But it certainly feels, over and over, as if the world bumps into me with a great big smile on its face. Usually a smile in a place, or on a face, I've been refusing to look at.
I can't be sure I'll bump into something good next time I need it. I don't think the world is managed for my benefit. Maybe I'm just saying it's hard to be miserable for a very long time. I don't think there's any intervention going on here. But I am so glad of these experiences of grace that I receive and remember them, and trust that, so far, they are telling me something important about the nature of the world.
It's much the same with beauty. Does beauty exist? Do I see it? Do you? Do I choose to see it? I have no clear answers to any of these, but a sense of beauty is important to me. If I could no longer find beauty I would be lost. (Grace, though, whispers that it's amazing what you can find beauty in.)
I spent a long time last night going through the hundreds of letters my mother received when my father died, fairly young. I was sixteen and it felt like the end of everything. What does resurrection mean for Dad or me?
What I wanted, for many years, was to discover it had all been a mistake and for him to walk back through the door. But you grow up, live a bit, realise he would be aging, too, and that the most miraculous resurrection you could dream up wouldn't give you back what you want. The loss of those years of being a son with a father is permanent.
I realised one day that what I most missed, his example, encouragement and guidance, was still there. I lived deeply in my memories of him, painful though it was. Things I recalled but that made little sense made more sense as I grew in understanding. I did have a sense, not quite as I wanted it, but powerful nonetheless, of growing up with the company of my father alongside me.
After last night's immersion in those letters I would say that he is a bit more alive, his influence on me stronger and easier to share, his early death less defining. There has been a further degree of resurrection. I will keep working on it, because it's my resurrection, too.
I am an atheist, in your terms, SusanDoris. I don't believe in anything more than you do. Our world view is the same. I'm just trying to make atheistic sense of Christianity. I need a sense that the world us beautiful and life good, I need trust and hope and meaning. I want to find them not breaking in from outside, but in the human, worldly and commonplace. Easter in ordinary, to borrow a fine phrase. Resurrection for me and Dad, and not in another world, but here and now, reaching and redeeming the years back to my childhood and on into the future.
A very nice letter from Trevor Huddleston CR amongst all the others.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
I thought it was grace that led me away from Christianity, to a new place, where I have found a non-home, if I can put it that way. I mean, it was grace that led me in, and grace that led me away.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
Well, wherever grace leads you, it will be somewhere good.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Or not! Just remembering a great quote from Bowie, that he wrote about the highlights of his life, loneliness, anxiety and abandonment. But yes, there is love.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Why not accept that as God raised Jesus so he will raise us to and that we will live whole and complete with him in eternity.
Which means nothing at all. It just takes us back to the question in the OP.
Is there even such a thing as 'eternity'? I like what hatless said about living on in relationships and the memories of others, this is true and makes perfect sense.
Yes, but it's not 'me' is it?
I want to be me - conscious, sentient, individual.
I don't want to be a memory or a dispersed collection of DNA.
I don't want to be uploaded to a collective mind or absorbed into a sea of consciousness.
I want to be myself, loved and in relationship with God and others.
That's what resurrection is - anything else and I'd be a Buddhist or even an atheist.
And having said that the Christian faith is not just about 'me' wanting to live forever, it's about relationship with God in Christ. I have been offered that reconciliation with God into eternity where nothing will separate me from his love. He knows me and one day I will know him as perfectly.
I know that my redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
27 I myself will see him
with my own eyes – I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
That is my desire and hope - it's so important to me I had the first line tattooed on my bicep.
It's my resurrection hope.
[ 11. January 2016, 15:22: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
:
But that is your resurrection hope.
Me personally, I hope that resurrection takes me out of this tiresome self and I am caught up into something broader and wider perhaps the great praise of heaven.
Jengie
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
But that is your resurrection hope.
Me personally, I hope that resurrection takes me out of this tiresome self and I am caught up into something broader and wider perhaps the great praise of heaven.
Jengie
My resurrection hope necessarily includes Jesus and a 'me' that, as you say is broader and wider - change from this creature that I am, but still me as an individual.
If Jesus is not there, it won't be heaven.
Resurrection is pointless if he is not there.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I don't want to be a memory or a dispersed collection of DNA.
I don't want to be uploaded to a collective mind or absorbed into a sea of consciousness.
I want to be myself, loved and in relationship with God and others.
But you are not an individual - you are part of the Body of Christ.
Indispensable yes but egotist no.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
If you want to see Jesus, look at your neighbour, especially those in need. He said as much.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
And weep with them. Laugh with them. Eat with them. Work with them. Walk with them. Until we transition to doing that non-entropically with God in person.
Resurrection starts at the end of Tree of Life. ALL of us walking on the beach. Forever.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
ALL of us walking on the beach. Forever.
Yikes! On the beach? Forever?!
So I'll be resurrected into Hell, apparently.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
I thought there was no sea in heaven.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
So, not only do I exist as an individual because I am part of the Body of Christ, Jesus himself is also not an individual being because he only exists in the guise of the unfortunate?
What claptrap.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Or why some people have faith in bucket loads, then lose it.
Often it's one tragedy too many, although for many it's coming to believe that science explains everything that's necessary to know, and that faith is not "necesssary" (which is kind of circular but than again so are many atheists' atheisms).
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
Mudfrog: So, not only do I exist as an individual because I am part of the Body of Christ, Jesus himself is also not an individual being because he only exists in the guise of the unfortunate?
What claptrap.
No, that's not it. It's about priorities. I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that this whole Christianity thing, it isn't about me and my buddy God.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
That's my heaven. North Norfolk. With ones menagerie. With the Forest of Bowland behind it. Of course one has to stop for lunch. Grow food. Will one draw, paint, sculpt? Learn the piano for sure. You'll have to come over from your world.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
Can I bring my trumpet?
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
Mudfrog: So, not only do I exist as an individual because I am part of the Body of Christ, Jesus himself is also not an individual being because he only exists in the guise of the unfortunate?
What claptrap.
No, that's not it. It's about priorities. I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that this whole Christianity thing, it isn't about me and my buddy God.
But that's the point - it's not just about me!
It must be about God.
The thinking behind some posts and a lot of attitudes amongst the population at large, is that life after death (or even resurrection) is all about me still being around.
Whilst I am most definitely on the side of those who want to be individual and entirely themselves in eternity, I have to say that really it's all about a continuing relationship between us and God. If God in Christ is not at the centre then it's not heaven. And whatever else it might be, it's not Christian.
Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on
:
I'm with Mudfrog, and eternity of 'me' does not look like heaven. On top of that, the doctrine of the resurrection as classically exposed has, I suspect, become so utterly unbelievable as to be the main reason people abandon Christianity in their droves.
I have no wish to deny the fact or experience of Christ's resurrection by the first disciples. I believe in it, but its theological articulation by St Paul does not make sense any more.
Romans 5: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned...
is unconvincing. We know death has been our constant companion since we crawled out of the original ooze. If Christ's resurrection is the flip-side of Adam's sin because death held no dominion over Christ because of his sinlessness, it makes no sense to me.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that this whole Christianity thing, it isn't about me and my buddy God.
I'd agree if a "just" was stuck in there—it isn't just about me and God.
"You shall live the Lord your God with all your all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind."
and
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
They go together, now and in the life of the world to come.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
Mudfrog: But that's the point - it's not just about me!
It must be about God.
Someone is missing here. Nick Tamen gets it.
You painted a picture of the afterlife that has two characters in it: God and you. And I'm sure that when you meet God, He will be all great and almighty and praiseworthy, and you'll make yourself all small and humble and worshippy. But someone is missing from the picture here.
The Bible has a lot to say about our neighbour. According to the prophets, our worship of God (in those days through sacrifice) isn't worth anything to Him if we don't take care of widows and orphans. And Jesus said explicitly that He won't know us unless we treat our neighbour in a certain way. Jesus only knows us — and filling in a bit here, we only know Him — by the presence of our neighbour.
Yet, my neighbour is absent from your story. He's a side remark, at most.
I'm moving more and more towards the point where I don't want to think about sin, repentance, forgiveness, salvation, love and worship, the afterlife … as being something that's between God and me. These things don't make any sense to me on those terms. All of these words only have meaning if my neighbour is involved in them.
The afterlife isn't about God and me, no matter how small I make myself towards Him. It's about God, my neighbour and me. And in that order.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
If you play as good as that, no problem.
Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on
:
Mudfrog - I think the point is that the Church as a whole is the Bride of Christ, not just individual Christians. Heaven is about *all* of us being part of the Church Triumphant in the presence of the Glory of God. Part of the tragedy of the Fall is that because we're separated from God, we're separated from each other. Part of the glory of the Resurrection and gift of the Holy Spirit is that not only are we re-connected with God, we're re-connected with each other in the form of the Church. Great cloud of witnesses and all that.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
The afterlife isn't about God and me, no matter how small I make myself towards Him. It's about God, my neighbour and me. And in that order.
Yes.
Freddy's New Church has a doctrine of 'uses', that we are not really ourselves unless being of use to others.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Freddy's New Church has a doctrine of 'uses', that we are not really ourselves unless being of use to others.
That's a nice way to put it.
Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
Mudfrog: But that's the point - it's not just about me!
It must be about God.
Someone is missing here. Nick Tamen gets it.
You painted a picture of the afterlife that has two characters in it: God and you. And I'm sure that when you meet God, He will be all great and almighty and praiseworthy, and you'll make yourself all small and humble and worshippy. But someone is missing from the picture here.
The Bible has a lot to say about our neighbour. According to the prophets, our worship of God (in those days through sacrifice) isn't worth anything to Him if we don't take care of widows and orphans. And Jesus said explicitly that He won't know us unless we treat our neighbour in a certain way. Jesus only knows us — and filling in a bit here, we only know Him — by the presence of our neighbour.
Yet, my neighbour is absent from your story. He's a side remark, at most.
I'm moving more and more towards the point where I don't want to think about sin, repentance, forgiveness, salvation, love and worship, the afterlife … as being something that's between God and me. These things don't make any sense to me on those terms. All of these words only have meaning if my neighbour is involved in them.
The afterlife isn't about God and me, no matter how small I make myself towards Him. It's about God, my neighbour and me. And in that order.
This thread seems to have a lot to say about our form and identity in the resdurrection life and that's why I have spoken about 'me' as a resurrected individual; but not exclusively.
On 6th January I wrote:
quote:
From a pastoral point of view, people want to know that in heaven they will still be themselves, that they will recognise loved ones, that they will have life and not just some vague shadow-existence.
In that idea there is very much the implication of community and society in the 'next world'.
What I am trying to emphasise is that resurrection is the raising of the whole self, as a self-aware, recognisable (by others) individual, as opposed to some DNA-survival in following generations or a spiritual 'ghost' caught up in some ethereal collective in an amorphous spirit-world.
I would have thought that the idea of bodily resurrection in the presence of Jesus would presuppose the loving presence of others - or else why bother to be a whole person?
Posted by Divine Outlaw (# 2252) on
:
I've a lot of time for that, Mudfrog. My body is the basis of my community with others.
Myself, I don't think there's any clear sense in which a non-bodily entity (a 'ghost', whatever exactly that's supposed to be, for example) would be 'me' at all. It is only the body that provides us with an answer to the question which human being I am. Look, he's that one: *points*.
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