It seems that the highest goal of divine creation according to Christianity is resurrection - which is eternal incarnation; in other words, the aimed-at completeness ("perfection") is as Jesus was after his resurrection. Which was a state of embodiment, and not the state of a discarnate spirit.
Why would this be?...
After all; most religions posit either serial mortal incarnations (incarnations with death and a spirit state in-between); or else that the highest goal is for embodied beings such as ourselves to become (or return to) a state of pure unembodied spirit.
Why does Christianity insist upon resurrection of the body?
My idea is that the Christian vision is rooted in love; and love separates and distinguishes - even as it also binds.
Incarnation can then be seen as part-of the development of love.
Incarnation is (by this account) necessary to the highest love; because to be a pure spirit is to exist in what Laeth has called a "ghost soup" - a state of assimilation or union, but not love.
Not love because lacking the separation and individuation required for love.
But in this mortal life; entropic change accumulates to sabotage love; and eventually kills love with death and loss of the body to revert to pure spirit.
So resurrection to an eternal embodied life is required in order that the highest love can become everlasting.
This, I think, is why Jesus fulfilled the work of divine creation by enabling Men to choose eternal and resurrected life; instead of the previous alternatives of serial embodied reincarnations, or else eternal existence as a spirit.
Lightbulb moment:
ReplyDelete“ Incarnation can then be seen as part-of the development of love.”
The triumvirate of creating incarnating and loving. That’s what he did it seems.
@Colin - That is how it struck me, as well.
ReplyDeleteThis is one reason why I think it is important to grasp that by love Jesus meant inter-personal love - and not an abstract universal "unconditional" "radiating force field" kind of thing!
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2018/05/christians-are-never-commanded-to-love.html
Christian love is Not (contrary to what many assert) a merging, union, dissolving, assimilation etc. My experience of inter-personal love is that it has this dual quality (which Coleridge and Barfield term "polarity") of increasing distinction between the two persons, at the same time as increasing "attraction".
I have found Arkle helpful on this.
DeleteFrom memory, he walks through a thought experiment which is something like: if you were a big God stuck on an island and you had the idea of creating some companions, What would you make them like?
Which soon leads to free will, love and independent creativity.
And yes. Individuals. Cos you would get bored in a deck chair on your own. Play, creativity fun. Love. Needs other beings.
@Colin - Yes, I too found that aspect of Arkle very helpful. It "broke a spell" wrt God, that I was labouring under.
ReplyDelete