Why are we resurrected to eternal life? (This being the central and strangest claim of Christianity.)
A child's understanding is probably the correct one - it might run like this...
If I am going to live forever I want to do it in a body, of course!
If I lived-on just as a spirit it would not be me.
I don't want to be just a ghost, forever.
If I lived forever as a ghost, that would be as bad as a dream - it wouldn't be really-real.
For things to be real they need to be solid.
Your discussion on resurrection puts Hobbes in an interesting light. Apparently he was accused of atheism, which doesn't fit at all with his earnest study of the gospels. His denial of incorporeal substances seems synonymous with atheism to the modern mind, but that is because the modern mind wrongly thinks all corporeal matter dead.
ReplyDeleteHis other unorthodox view is that the home of the resurrected was *not* heaven, but earth: the earth of a 'new heaven and a new earth'. A new earth is a fitting home for a solid, resurrected man.
Another point of interest was his insistence that doctrine was not important to salvation. The *only* thing that mattered was that, after resurrection, we must accept Christ as our Lord.
@Crosbie - That's interesting - and it does sound similar to where I've reached.
ReplyDeleteBut I haven't read Hobbes with any thoroughness at all, and don't recall much of what I read. Indeed, I was wondering at first, on reading your comment, whether a stuffed tiger could really be an atheist...
Related, I think, to this and recent posts, his metaphysics also led Hobbes to deny the existence of angels and demons, at least as independent really existing spiritual entities. His gospel analysis was that Jesus used the demon terminology when healing in areas, especially northern and galilean, where the people were culturally inclined to believe in them. Greco-pagan influenced? But in more traditional Hebrew cultural areas, the same sort of symptoms and healings were described more conventionally. Psychic illness epilepsy, deafness etc. were sometimes described as a demon or spirit of same, but were healed in any case.
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking of C.S. Lewis' saying that if you want to visualize spirit, think of it as being heavier than matter, more 'real'.
ReplyDelete@ap - To my mind, that is being deliberately mystical, because it does not make common sense. It is like trying to imagine the reality of infinity or omnipotence or the Trinity - a brain jammer.
ReplyDeleteCrosbie, where in Hobbes can I find the views you’ve mentioned? In Leviathan, or somewhere else? (Hobbes has been on my ought-to-read shelf for ages, waiting for something like your comment to pique my curiosity enough to make me actually crack him open.)
ReplyDeleteLeviathan, somewhere in volumes 3 or 4. Sorry, I can't be more specific from memory. Now I am thinking I need to re-read it myself!
ReplyDeleteAs you said, he claimed to believe in a kingdom of heaven on earth. Consistently, he denied a spiritual hell, insisting that the references to an earthy hades, fiery gehenna, bottomless pit, utter darkness, lake of fire were ways of indicating eventual eternal destruction. So instead of contrasting eternal bliss with eternal torment, he contrasted eternal life with eternal death. Interesting that he chose the term Leviathan, a sea monster symbol of evil or chaos.
ReplyDelete