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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What's a liberal? Who's a liberal?
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
We all have a potent personal involvement in these questions. For me, my unhealthy interest in graveyards (though I've moved house, now) and my theology, are sharply shaped by the death of my father when I was sixteen. But we all have similar stories. Everyone has lain awake and been terrified by being and non-being.
Life continues to pick at theology. When my two grown sons who I miss, sort of, so much, come to stay for Easter weekend I muse on what it means to have those we love around us still. Them being alive is better than them being dead, but when, at Easter, was I really with them? Was there a meeting of minds, a conversation where we listened to each other properly, a moment of honesty?
When I visit my mother, who now has very little language, has ischaemic dementia dismantled her person? Is she there in her chair? Is she thirty per cent Mum?
I cannot afford anything that seems to me to be wishful thinking. There must be no false hope.
I find something good in the idea that persons being present is not about the body or its proximity, but about the quality of our fleeting inbetweenness. We can be alive but unavailable, near but distant. Perhaps it has to be so or we might fall inside each other. But those moments, rare and imperfect, when we are fully present, when we are genuine and honest and listen to each other as if it was the first or last chance to do so, they seem to transcend time and space.
Do we not revisit them? Memories of the dead that stay fresh, that speak new truths? Thoughts of the absent that are part of our ongoing conversation? That's what he meant!
When Mary was in the garden, her confused and tearful encounter with the 'gardener' is penetrated by one word, and it's her own name. She is given her self.
It's not just memory or hope persisting. It's where we live and move and have our being, this space between us, transformed by the way of love. When I have struggled to find things to say to Mum for half an hour, playing her music she doesn't recognise and listening to her fumble for lost words, she sometimes says, as I stand in the doorway, as fluent and clear as anything, 'Goodbye, darling.' And the years of childhood are there in the few feet between us.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
N T Wright (who is definitely not on the liberal side of this debate!) reckons that "physical" and "spiritual" are pretty bad translations of what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 15, esp. 42-49. His argument is that the Greek words Paul uses cannot mean "made out of physical stuff" vs "made out nebulous, spiritual stuff" (my words, not Wright's, or Paul's for that matter); it's about what animates or powers the body. The pre-resurrection body is powered by what's mortal and doomed to die; the post-resurrection body is powered by what comes from God, what comes the Spirit, which is immortal. It doesn't say anything about what it's made from, so to speak.
This makes some sense.
I seem to recall that the same word that is translated as "spiritual" here is also used in the description of Hero's engine (a primitive steam-powered rotating device). Or to put it another way, it is not made of steam but powered by steam.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
... so we can be sure that our resurrection will be equally tangible (another Great Divorce fan here).
How tangible is a person who can walk through walls and teleport?
Perhaps a different kind of body, that can switch between matter and energy, or some such? Or something like our current bodies, but with an innate knowledge of the physics required to move our atoms between those of a wall?
In various spiritual traditions, there are accounts of people doing that kind of thing with their current tangible bodies, by learning to focus their energy.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
... so we can be sure that our resurrection will be equally tangible (another Great Divorce fan here).
How tangible is a person who can walk through walls and teleport?
Perhaps a different kind of body, that can switch between matter and energy, or some such? Or something like our current bodies, but with an innate knowledge of the physics required to move our atoms between those of a wall?
In various spiritual traditions, there are accounts of people doing that kind of thing with their current tangible bodies, by learning to focus their energy.
Yeah, but none of them have managed to claim Randi's money, have they? Call me sceptical if you like, but this makes no sense to me. We can talk about atoms and physics if we like but what you describe is magic, not physics.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
When I have struggled to find things to say to Mum for half an hour, playing her music she doesn't recognise and listening to her fumble for lost words, she sometimes says, as I stand in the doorway, as fluent and clear as anything, 'Goodbye, darling.' And the years of childhood are there in the few feet between us.
Thank you for posting that, hatless. The paragraph I've quoted resonates very much with an experience of my own.
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
I cannot afford anything that seems to me to be wishful thinking. There must be no false hope.
That really gets to the heart of it for me; indeed, it seems to be very much what's on Paul's mind in 1 Cor 15 too.
I've certainly wrestled with this myself, and couldn't summarise that wrestling as eloquently as you have. Neither do I wish to discount or minimise your insights into what counts as genuine interaction and relationship in the here and now.
All I can say is that in addition to (and perhaps partly because of) all that, I can't shake off the hope of a future resurrection, and the conviction that if that hope is wishful thinking, then all hope is false.
And Christ being risen, as himself, not just simply in the minds of his followers (again, however meaningful and impactful for them such a "resurrection" might be in your terms), underpins that hope for me.
There I stand, at least at present.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
All I can say is that in addition to (and perhaps partly because of) all that, I can't shake off the hope of a future resurrection, and the conviction that if that hope is wishful thinking, then all hope is false.
And Christ being risen, as himself, not just simply in the minds of his followers (again, however meaningful and impactful for them such a "resurrection" might be in your terms), underpins that hope for me.
There I stand, at least at present.
Fascinating. This says to me that we're not very far apart, but we're looking at very similar pictures rather differently. I see Thomas's fist in Jesus's side, and set it against the appearance through walls, and the not-entirely-matter-like behaviour of Christ's body in the post-resurrection appearances, and emphasise what is not like what we know. I think I do it because of my entirely convinced emphasis on realised eschatology: that, to quote the hymn, now is eternal life, and Christ has joined us in that life through the resurrection, and that this is the bit that matters, the bit that gives life, not questions about physicality or otherwise, and not intellectual subscription or subservience to a particular normative narrative account; the experience of God alive and active within and among us now.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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TomM
Shipmate
# 4618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
N T Wright (who is definitely not on the liberal side of this debate!) reckons that "physical" and "spiritual" are pretty bad translations of what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 15, esp. 42-49. His argument is that the Greek words Paul uses cannot mean "made out of physical stuff" vs "made out nebulous, spiritual stuff" (my words, not Wright's, or Paul's for that matter); it's about what animates or powers the body. The pre-resurrection body is powered by what's mortal and doomed to die; the post-resurrection body is powered by what comes from God, what comes the Spirit, which is immortal. It doesn't say anything about what it's made from, so to speak.
This makes some sense.
I seem to recall that the same word that is translated as "spiritual" here is also used in the description of Hero's engine (a primitive steam-powered rotating device). Or to put it another way, it is not made of steam but powered by steam.
I'm not sure about other uses of 'spiritual' (πνευματικός), but Paul's word that is being translated as 'physical' is ψυχικός, which when in the form of a noun (ψυχή) is usually translated as something like 'soul'. I have to say I find the ESV's translation as 'natural' more appealing than the NRSV's choice of 'physical', though neither strikes me as perfect.
Definitely strikes me as a misreading to simply equate the resurrection body with the opposite of a physical, fleshy body. (Paul's alternative is not based on the σάρξ)
Posts: 405 | Registered: Jun 2003
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I think there's a more than enough cigarette paper for terminal emphysema between "in the minds of his followers" and "bodily".
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
But those moments, rare and imperfect, when we are fully present, when we are genuine and honest and listen to each other as if it was the first or last chance to do so, they seem to transcend time and space.
Yes. Those times are there too after they have died.
Are they from within or without ourselves?
I don't know.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
This brings up one of my pet questions* which is: why are some of the post-resurrection miracles of Jesus taken as evidence of a change in his body, rather than just miracles?
When Jesus walks on water it's miraculous but he's still a regular human. When he's transfigured it's a sign of his uniqueness and deity, but again he's still fully (normal) human. Somehow when he appears in the upper room, it's evidence he has a new type of body.
I've never understood this.
(*I don't want to say "peeves" or "hobby horses" because that over-stresses how I feel about it)
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
I think I do it because of my entirely convinced emphasis on realised eschatology: that, to quote the hymn, now is eternal life, and Christ has joined us in that life through the resurrection, and that this is the bit that matters, the bit that gives life
Again, I'm tempted to ask, in the words of a famous internet meme, Why Not Both?
Certainly an over-emphasis on future eschatology can be detrimental to how we live life in the here and now, especially to our social interactions.
But I think there's at least something about hope that is incontrovertibly future. "Hope that is seen is no hope at all", says Paul in Rom 8:24 (again in a context in which he mentions bodies!) and Hebrews 11 says much the same.
Shifting gears somewhat, one of the reasons the European Court of Human Rights is against "life means life" sentencing is because they see the right to hope - here, the future prospect of freedom - as a fundamental human right.
The "resurrection in this life" ideas appeal to me, but they don't work for me unless there is also the hope of a final resurrection and all things being made new.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I think there's a more than enough cigarette paper for terminal emphysema between "in the minds of his followers" and "bodily".
You're going to have to exegete that, at least for me.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Again, I'm tempted to ask, in the words of a famous internet meme, Why Not Both?
Or, as Paul put it rather earlier, as I now realise, "for me to live is Christ, to die is gain".
[ 30. March 2016, 10:48: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I think there's a more than enough cigarette paper for terminal emphysema between "in the minds of his followers" and "bodily".
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
You're going to have to exegete that, at least for me.
Do you mean you don't follow the expression about cigarette paper between alternatives, or you don't believe there are any options between those two, or that you want scriptural support for the options?
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
you don't follow the expression about cigarette paper between alternatives
[tick]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
A cigarette paper difference means no difference at all (i.e. one can only get a cigarette paper in between them).
I wondered if I'd dreamt up the expression but I can find some other uses of it.
Hence my comment that there's enough cigarette paper for emphysema between "bodily" and "in the minds" in Christian understanding of the resurrection.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
[looks up emphysema (which is the part I was struggling with) in dictionary]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
Exactly. "It was all in the disciples' minds" and "there was a resurrection complete with atoms, DNA, fish digestion and all" aren't the only options open to God.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
I guess I just don't see why it can't just be a miracle - of course it's unbelievable, that's the point of a miracle. And if God is not a God who can perform miracles, what power or point does God have at all? For me it's just a case of logic - if God parted the Red Sea and Jesus walked on water, then a bodily Resurrection is no harder to believe in. I believe in the former so there's no reason for me to not believe the latter.
Also maybe I'm the odd one out here, but I don't see the problem with choosing to believe something. If a doctor diagnoses me with something, I may not be able to see all the evidence but I choose to believe them because they have authority in this area. Choosing to believe those who drew up the historic creeds of the Church because they have authority in that area doesn't seem much different. People choose to believe things based on things other than feelings all the time.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
[looks up emphysema (which is the part I was struggling with) in dictionary]
Smoke-induced damage where holes get punched throughout the lung tissue.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
I guess I just don't see why it can't just be a miracle - of course it's unbelievable, that's the point of a miracle. And if God is not a God who can perform miracles, what power or point does God have at all? For me it's just a case of logic - if God parted the Red Sea and Jesus walked on water, then a bodily Resurrection is no harder to believe in. I believe in the former so there's no reason for me to not believe the latter.
Also maybe I'm the odd one out here, but I don't see the problem with choosing to believe something. If a doctor diagnoses me with something, I may not be able to see all the evidence but I choose to believe them because they have authority in this area. Choosing to believe those who drew up the historic creeds of the Church because they have authority in that area doesn't seem much different. People choose to believe things based on things other than feelings all the time.
Why would you "choose" to believe something unless you think it's true? And if you think it's true, then you already believe it. If you don't, then you already don't believe it and I don't get how you can pretend to yourself that you don't know it's not true. Or don't know that you don't really know.
Which is the case with the resurrection. I don't know whether it's true or not. I have no firm basis really to think it is or it isn't; so by definition I neither believe in it nor believe it didn't happen. I don't know. I can't know.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
My understanding of eternity is outside of the time flow we observe in this life. So eternity is always "now". When we die, we proceed to the new now "without passing go or collecting 200 dollars" (my thanks to Tom Lehrer). We will all go together when we go. Even though we depart separately. Go figure.
Which, amongst other things, is how I resolve the pre-millenial, post-millenial, a-millenial views about the last days and the general resurrection.
Yes, and time is inextricably linked with space, and therefore matter. Eternal life in this sense cannot be material.
Because our physical universe and its rules are not only immutable, but the only imaginable reality?
No Fr, it cannot be left to the imagination. You demonstrably cannot have any spatially extended stuff, aka matter, without time. If eternal is to mean timeless then eternal things must also be non material. It ain't poetry, it's modern physics.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Pomona: I don't see the problem with choosing to believe something.
Neither do I, but I do have a problem with choosing to believe a particular thing and then saying to anyone who doesn't: "you're playing fast and loose", "you're lowering the bar for yourself" or questioning the strength of their faith.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Heck, sub-atomic particle physics is increasingly a consistent (or at least attempted-consistent) imagining of that which is behind that which is observed. It's model building.
There is a difference between asserting that a) eternal things must be non-material (fundamentalist position) and b) arguing that you cannot see how eternal things can be material, based on current understandings (admission of possible ignorance) of the laws governing the physical universe. My position is b) by the way.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Heck, sub-atomic particle physics is increasingly a consistent (or at least attempted-consistent) imagining of that which is behind that which is observed. It's model building.
There is a difference between asserting that a) eternal things must be non-material (fundamentalist position) and b) arguing that you cannot see how eternal things can be material, based on current understandings (admission of possible ignorance) of the laws governing the physical universe. My position is b) by the way.
Yes, mine too, what I wrote was rash. I'm just annoyed that people go on 'imagining' and dipping in CS Lewis etc whilst utterly disregarding the laws of thermodynamics, or Augustine, or Aquinas... Good luck showing how physical objects can be eternal in the face of entropy though.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
And I do understand that people want to be faithful to Scripture, but Scripture is simply inconsistent on the matter: the kind of body that digests fish on the beach simply cannot pass through brick walls as it were fog; and yes, pneumatikos means powered by pneuma as Wright asserts, which must mean not powered by digestion, that's definitely somatikos.
[ 30. March 2016, 12:44: Message edited by: Joesaphat ]
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I'd still like to know your thoughts on Paul's line of argument in 1 Cor 15, failing which I'll tend to assume it amounts to nothing more than "why bother listening to Paul at all?"
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And I do understand that people want to be faithful to Scripture, but Scripture is simply inconsistent on the matter: the kind of body that digests fish on the beach simply cannot pass through brick walls as it were fog;
Again, why are you assuming this is a property of the body rather than a miracle? Also Scripture doesn't say he passed through brick walls, it says he appeared in the upper room.
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
God the Creator of the Universe is too great to be squeezed into our limited understanding of it.
Jesus convinced me of his resurrection, his eternal existence, through a sighting which combined a physical body with light, and a voice which spoke as a resonance on my soul. It is continually affirmed through relationship, guidance and prompting into service.
For me, all of the above and more are the truth. Therefore if any one individual is holding onto one morsel, even though the morsels differ and each thinks they have the only one, they are members of Christ's church. As was I, before the sighting when the resurrected body was for me an impossibility as I too confined God to the limits of my own education.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Jesus convinced me of his resurrection, his eternal existence, through a sighting which combined a physical body with light, and a voice which spoke as a resonance on my soul.
I have had these kinds of experiences and spoken these words in testimony.
I no longer believe them myself - I think it was my own perception of powerful feelings (love of Jesus) which induced this in my (sub)consciousness. No outside influence, however much it seemed so at the time. Sadly.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I have had these kinds of experiences and spoken these words in testimony.
I no longer believe them myself - I think it was my own perception of powerful feelings (love of Jesus) which induced this in my (sub)consciousness. No outside influence, however much it seemed so at the time. Sadly.
I had no such powerful feelings of love. The experience was not imagined. In fact, it was affirmed through an unwitting third party, as such profound experiences often are so that we may tell them apart from self-induced dreams.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
I guess I just don't see why it can't just be a miracle - of course it's unbelievable, that's the point of a miracle. And if God is not a God who can perform miracles, what power or point does God have at all? For me it's just a case of logic - if God parted the Red Sea and Jesus walked on water, then a bodily Resurrection is no harder to believe in. I believe in the former so there's no reason for me to not believe the latter.
Also maybe I'm the odd one out here, but I don't see the problem with choosing to believe something. If a doctor diagnoses me with something, I may not be able to see all the evidence but I choose to believe them because they have authority in this area. Choosing to believe those who drew up the historic creeds of the Church because they have authority in that area doesn't seem much different. People choose to believe things based on things other than feelings all the time.
Why would you "choose" to believe something unless you think it's true? And if you think it's true, then you already believe it. If you don't, then you already don't believe it and I don't get how you can pretend to yourself that you don't know it's not true. Or don't know that you don't really know.
Which is the case with the resurrection. I don't know whether it's true or not. I have no firm basis really to think it is or it isn't; so by definition I neither believe in it nor believe it didn't happen. I don't know. I can't know.
If you go to the doctor and they diagnose you with something that they can see (whether visually or via assessment) but you cannot, surely you are choosing to trust their judgement and believe them? Ultimately you cannot really know for certain without having medical knowledge yourself - you choose to believe them and trust their knowledge. You wouldn't turn around and say 'the doctor says I have xyz condition but I don't personally know, therefore we can't say for certain'. It's the same for me with the Church and the early lines drawn in the sand around canon and creeds etc. I choose to believe and trust the knowledge of the Church Fathers and Mothers as in this instance they have knowledge I don't have.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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TomM
Shipmate
# 4618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
quote:
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
My understanding of eternity is outside of the time flow we observe in this life. So eternity is always "now". When we die, we proceed to the new now "without passing go or collecting 200 dollars" (my thanks to Tom Lehrer). We will all go together when we go. Even though we depart separately. Go figure.
Which, amongst other things, is how I resolve the pre-millenial, post-millenial, a-millenial views about the last days and the general resurrection.
Yes, and time is inextricably linked with space, and therefore matter. Eternal life in this sense cannot be material.
Because our physical universe and its rules are not only immutable, but the only imaginable reality?
No Fr, it cannot be left to the imagination. You demonstrably cannot have any spatially extended stuff, aka matter, without time. If eternal is to mean timeless then eternal things must also be non material. It ain't poetry, it's modern physics.
Do we need to go back a step there and define 'eternity' a bit better? (Or for that matter 'timeless'?) On my desk at present, I happen to have a copy of a paper by Dimitru Staniloae, the Romanian Orthodox theologian, entitled Eternity and Time (published by the Sisters of the Love of God in 2001, I think from a 1971 talk - no idea if it exists in any other form). He makes an intriguing suggestion that:
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Eternity cannot be simply an unchangeable substance... Such an eternity would not be inexhaustible... Eternity must include an interior dimension and freedom of will.
If we ran with something like that, it could imply a time-like quality to eternity that allows something that is essentially matter to continue to subsist? His argument seems to stem from the living character of God, which he suggests requires 'continual newness'.
I also would query your assertion that this is 'demonstrable'. I'm not sure I have access to a reference frame without time to demonstrate that hypothesis!
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Joesaphat
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# 18493
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Posted
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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I'd still like to know your thoughts on Paul's line of argument in 1 Cor 15, failing which I'll tend to assume it amounts to nothing more than "why bother listening to Paul at all?"
I don't understand what he means by a 'spiritual' body. I've read Wright, and I think I agree, it's a Spirit-animated body as opposed to one powered by the flesh, but that does not say much about the nature of the said body as such. He seems to envisage some sort of continuity between the two (what is sown int he flesh... is raised etc). I don't bother listening to him at all when in Thessalonians he envisages some kind of rapture of a physical nature. Jesus descending on the clouds and taking us beyond the seventh heaven... nah, I don't think it's worth listening to, or inspired.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Yes, mine too, what I wrote was rash. I'm just annoyed that people go on 'imagining' and dipping in CS Lewis etc whilst utterly disregarding the laws of thermodynamics, or Augustine, or Aquinas... Good luck showing how physical objects can be eternal in the face of entropy though.
Given that I was one of the imaginers, you can take it that I do not utterly disregard the laws of thermodynamics or our understanding of entropy. By the same token, I think Augustine and Aquinas get a pass if any of their imaginings show a disregard of future findings.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Joesaphat
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# 18493
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Posted
"Eternity cannot be simply an unchangeable substance... Such an eternity would not be inexhaustible... Eternity must include an interior dimension and freedom of will.'
What the hell does Staniloae want to say?
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
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Originally posted by Pomona:
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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
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Originally posted by Pomona:
I guess I just don't see why it can't just be a miracle - of course it's unbelievable, that's the point of a miracle. And if God is not a God who can perform miracles, what power or point does God have at all? For me it's just a case of logic - if God parted the Red Sea and Jesus walked on water, then a bodily Resurrection is no harder to believe in. I believe in the former so there's no reason for me to not believe the latter.
Also maybe I'm the odd one out here, but I don't see the problem with choosing to believe something. If a doctor diagnoses me with something, I may not be able to see all the evidence but I choose to believe them because they have authority in this area. Choosing to believe those who drew up the historic creeds of the Church because they have authority in that area doesn't seem much different. People choose to believe things based on things other than feelings all the time.
Why would you "choose" to believe something unless you think it's true? And if you think it's true, then you already believe it. If you don't, then you already don't believe it and I don't get how you can pretend to yourself that you don't know it's not true. Or don't know that you don't really know.
Which is the case with the resurrection. I don't know whether it's true or not. I have no firm basis really to think it is or it isn't; so by definition I neither believe in it nor believe it didn't happen. I don't know. I can't know.
If you go to the doctor and they diagnose you with something that they can see (whether visually or via assessment) but you cannot, surely you are choosing to trust their judgement and believe them? Ultimately you cannot really know for certain without having medical knowledge yourself - you choose to believe them and trust their knowledge. You wouldn't turn around and say 'the doctor says I have xyz condition but I don't personally know, therefore we can't say for certain'. It's the same for me with the Church and the early lines drawn in the sand around canon and creeds etc. I choose to believe and trust the knowledge of the Church Fathers and Mothers as in this instance they have knowledge I don't have.
I don't choose to believe the doctor. I believe him, but it's not a conscious decision. I know the processes by which doctors come to their conclusions, and that the process works, so I think he's probably right. Indeed, I couldn't choose not to believe him, because I'd know I was just trying not to believe what I was pretty sure was true.
This is not so of the Church. There is no outside test that its process does produce truth. It might just produce tosh. I can't know, and I can't pretend to myself that I do, which is what "choosing to believe" would mean to me. It's really hard to explain this, but to me "believe" and "think" are virtually synonyms; if I think something's true then I don't need to choose to believe it because I already do by definition. If I don't think something's true, why would I choose to believe it? If I don't know, then I don't know, and I can't pretend that I do think it's true or that I think it is false.
Even if I managed by some weird alchemy to choose to believe something (whatever that might mean), I'd still know I'd done that, and therefore I only believed it because I wanted to, not because I really thought it was true. And that would mean I didn't really believe it.
Choosing to believe is, for me, as logically meaningless as a square circle.
Now, I could decide that on a provisional basis I will act as if such and such a proposition is true, but that's not belief.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Joesaphat
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# 18493
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Posted
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Originally posted by Paul.:
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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And I do understand that people want to be faithful to Scripture, but Scripture is simply inconsistent on the matter: the kind of body that digests fish on the beach simply cannot pass through brick walls as it were fog;
Again, why are you assuming this is a property of the body rather than a miracle? Also Scripture doesn't say he passed through brick walls, it says he appeared in the upper room.
He did, 'and the doors were locked for fear of the Jews.' The narrative takes great care to show that this would not normally be possible, as with the stone rolled (and under guard, and sealed, ta dah, as magicians do) before the tomb. I am definitely not assuming it's a property of Christ's body, in fact I'd hesitate to speak of a 'body' at all, though I have no other words.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Joesaphat
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# 18493
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Posted
'Choosing to believe is, for me, as logically meaningless as a square circle.' I've got to agree, Karl, and I bet your detractors could not choose not to believe either. It's not something you stop and resume doing on command or at will.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Pomona
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# 17175
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Posted
I'm not a 'detractor', but I do choose to believe. It's a position of faith and trust, not knowledge. This is possibly the issue here? Believe and think are not synonyms for me, believing is an action.
Edited to add that it's a position of faith and trust, not knowledge, but also not the lack of knowledge - it's just not on the same axis, if that makes sense as an analogy. It's just not related to knowledge at all.
[ 30. March 2016, 13:48: Message edited by: Pomona ]
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Pomona, you are wired to. No choice can be involved.
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Love wins
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
In that case, it's conceivable that something could be on the +ve on the belief axis but -ve on the thinking axis - i.e., as Mark Twain said, believing something you don't think is true. I have no use for that.
So, as an exercise, you could choose to believe that grass is blue, even though you know it's green, because they're independent, yes? No? Why not?
Belief may lead to action, but it's not an action itself. It's an affirmation that you think something's true. I believe a doctor when he tells me I've got a hernia because I think he's right. I'm not sure what it would mean to divorce believing something is true from thinking something is true. In Latin and French it's not even possible.
[ 30. March 2016, 13:53: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Pomona
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# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
In that case, it's conceivable that something could be on the +ve on the belief axis but -ve on the thinking axis - i.e., as Mark Twain said, believing something you don't think is true. I have no use for that.
So, as an exercise, you could choose to believe that grass is blue, even though you know it's green, because they're independent, yes? No? Why not?
Belief may lead to action, but it's not an action itself. It's an affirmation that you think something's true. I believe a doctor when he tells me I've got a hernia because I think he's right. I'm not sure what it would mean to divorce believing something is true from thinking something is true. In Latin and French it's not even possible.
I think maybe I would divorce thinking something is true from knowing something is true....for me I believe in things I don't know are true, but that's not the same as not thinking they're true - I don't know and usually it's not possible for me to know, so I choose to positively believe. That's not the same as thinking something is untrue and choosing to believe it anyway. The resurrection isn't something I can know the answer to in an intellectual sense, but I make the choice to believe in it because people I trust (eg Paul) have said that it's true. To me that is no different to choosing to believe in gravity because Isaac Newton says it's true.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
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Karl: Liberal Backslider: So, as an exercise, you could choose to believe that grass is blue, even though you know it's green, because they're independent, yes? No? Why not?
Depends on how much of the grass they'd let me smoke first.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
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Originally posted by Pomona:
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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
In that case, it's conceivable that something could be on the +ve on the belief axis but -ve on the thinking axis - i.e., as Mark Twain said, believing something you don't think is true. I have no use for that.
So, as an exercise, you could choose to believe that grass is blue, even though you know it's green, because they're independent, yes? No? Why not?
Belief may lead to action, but it's not an action itself. It's an affirmation that you think something's true. I believe a doctor when he tells me I've got a hernia because I think he's right. I'm not sure what it would mean to divorce believing something is true from thinking something is true. In Latin and French it's not even possible.
I think maybe I would divorce thinking something is true from knowing something is true....for me I believe in things I don't know are true, but that's not the same as not thinking they're true - I don't know and usually it's not possible for me to know, so I choose to positively believe. That's not the same as thinking something is untrue and choosing to believe it anyway. The resurrection isn't something I can know the answer to in an intellectual sense, but I make the choice to believe in it because people I trust (eg Paul) have said that it's true. To me that is no different to choosing to believe in gravity because Isaac Newton says it's true.
But I don't believe gravity is true because Isaac Newton says it's true. I believe it's true because apples fall to earth. I believe Newton's equations are true because they work. And, indeed, I believe they are false in situations as they don't work - such as where very strong gravitational fields or very high velocities are concerned.
It seems to me that what you're calling "belief" is what I call "provisionally accepting as true". In the case of the resurrection, for example, it means that you think it might be true, and you act is if it were, but you also think it could not be, is that correct?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528
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Posted
Pomona, I think maybe we have a language problem going. To check--if you are able to choose to believe a doctor, are you able also and equally to choose NOT to believe that same doctor, holding all the other circumstances the same?
What I mean is, imagine you are in exactly the same circumstances--same diagnosis, same doctor, same internal knowledge of how Western medicine works, what science is, everything about you, your sickness, and the doctor exactly the same--the situation is a clone of the one in which you choose to believe--
could you, if you wanted, choose to disbelieve, knowing everything you do?
Please note I'm not saying "choose to ignore" or "choose to blow off." I mean "choose to disbelieve, refuse to give credence to, mentally disagree with the correctness of."
That's the thing I can't do. Not as a pure act of will.
[ 30. March 2016, 14:15: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
On the resurrection of the body--
The problem I see here is that we don't bloody know what bodies are, precisely what their limits are, and etc. and etc. and etc. How exactly does a human body "live and breathe and have its being" in a multidimensional not-sure-how-many-there-are can't-perceive-more-than-three-anyway set-up? And where are the limits between body and spirit, and how are they interconnected, and all that.
If we can't say with surety what our bodies are now, making self-confident dicta about how God handles the resurrection body is foolish. All the evidence we have right now is the text, and that's pretty mysterious.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Paul.
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# 37
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Posted
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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
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Originally posted by Paul.:
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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And I do understand that people want to be faithful to Scripture, but Scripture is simply inconsistent on the matter: the kind of body that digests fish on the beach simply cannot pass through brick walls as it were fog;
Again, why are you assuming this is a property of the body rather than a miracle? Also Scripture doesn't say he passed through brick walls, it says he appeared in the upper room.
He did, 'and the doors were locked for fear of the Jews.' The narrative takes great care to show that this would not normally be possible, as with the stone rolled (and under guard, and sealed, ta dah, as magicians do) before the tomb. I am definitely not assuming it's a property of Christ's body, in fact I'd hesitate to speak of a 'body' at all, though I have no other words.
If that's so then where's the inconsistency? There's only a conflict between a fish-eating body and appearing in the locked room if the later was done by some mechanism of the body. But the Scripture doesn't say that. It simply presents an impossible act i.e. a miracle, as it does in numerous other cases, many pre-resurrection.
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TomM
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# 4618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
"Eternity cannot be simply an unchangeable substance... Such an eternity would not be inexhaustible... Eternity must include an interior dimension and freedom of will.'
What the hell does Staniloae want to say?
HIs point seems to be that we cannot simply say that eternity is a constant, unchanging reality. If it were so, then there is not 'space' for God to be the living God. He goes on to cite Barth, as referring to a God who is entirely unmoved is dead, and goes on to identify the movement of love as a key feature of eternity.
And so, if there is movement (change?) in eternity then this seems to imply something very roughly analogous to time.
(Though saying all that, he also wants to recognise the tension of setting this against God as the same yesterday, today and forever.)
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Joesaphat
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# 18493
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Posted
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Originally posted by Paul.:
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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
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Originally posted by Paul.:
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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And I do understand that people want to be faithful to Scripture, but Scripture is simply inconsistent on the matter: the kind of body that digests fish on the beach simply cannot pass through brick walls as it were fog;
Again, why are you assuming this is a property of the body rather than a miracle? Also Scripture doesn't say he passed through brick walls, it says he appeared in the upper room.
He did, 'and the doors were locked for fear of the Jews.' The narrative takes great care to show that this would not normally be possible, as with the stone rolled (and under guard, and sealed, ta dah, as magicians do) before the tomb. I am definitely not assuming it's a property of Christ's body, in fact I'd hesitate to speak of a 'body' at all, though I have no other words.
If that's so then where's the inconsistency? There's only a conflict between a fish-eating body and appearing in the locked room if the later was done by some mechanism of the body. But the Scripture doesn't say that. It simply presents an impossible act i.e. a miracle, as it does in numerous other cases, many pre-resurrection.
Not sold. Of course the Gospel describes a miracle, the question is: did an immaterial 'body' eat fish or did a material body pass through closed doors?
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