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Below is an excerpt from: An Emergentist Account of the Biosemiotic Categories of Religion from a panentheistic perspective The article is rather dense insofar as it takes us on a possible journey from physics thru biology thru moral & aesthetical sensibilities thru unspoken & unreflective presuppositions thru implicit & explicit philosophical approaches to religion & theology at warp speed. In that sense, it can only be an outline. I do unpack many of the concepts, so those who are interested in this type of stuff may find some useful conceptual placeholders and bridges, and maybe some useful distinctions. pax, amor et bonum, jb The philosophic describes our ethical, aesthetical and epistemic sensibilities and includes the concepts that we might symbolically abstract from our primary level encounters with reality via our cognitive-affective juxtapositions. An inward personal response to 1) a deeply felt ethical sensibility might be that of reverence ; 2) an aesthetical sensibility might be that of awe ; and 3) an epistemic sensibility might be that of assent . To be philosophic is not the same as to do philosophy . Philosophy tries to change these sensibilities into standards and employs the language of norms (best practices). If the philosophic describes our evaluative sensibilities, then philosophy describes standards (norms) to help us realize their corresponding values. The philosophic answers the question: "What's it to ya?" and philosophy answers the question: "Where can I get some of that?". The philosophic is thus evaluative, while philosophy is normative. The philosophic is spiritual and thus deals with the prioritizing of values, describing not only what it is we value but what it is we value most and the order in which we place our often-competing values (ordinacy). I associate the normative with the Jungian category of Thinking, located in the left frontal cortex of the human brain, because our ethical, aesthetical and ethical sensibilities, here, give impetus to our rational attempts at normative justification. These rational attempts are meta-level processes that consciously reflect on the answers to the question "Where can I get some of that?" and then attempt to answer this question: "Why should I trust your, my or anyone else's answer to that question?" or, to use Kantian interrogatories, they attempt to navigate us, regulatively, to the answers to: What can I know? What can I hope for? What must I do? The positivistic describes our scientific endeavors and answers the question: "Is that a fact?" and is thus descriptive (associated with the Jungian category of Sensing, located in the left posterior convexity of the human brain). It aspires to successful reference through heuristics and explanatory adequacy through theory. It includes our emergentist perspective. Classically, it answers: �What can I know?�. The pragmatic and moral describe our prudential judgments , hence informing our outward communal responses, answering the question: "What must I do?" and is thus prescriptive, aspiring to harmony between people (associated with the Jungian category of Feeling, located in the right posterior convexity of the human brain). Pragmatically, the question is: �Is it useful?� Morally: �Is it good?� The paradigmatic describes our overall orientations, including our positivistic understandings of nature, our philosophic and spiritual evaluations arising from the sensibilities that ensue from our primary level encounters of reality, and our pragmatic and moral responses to one another as radically social animals, as a symbolic species. The paradigmatic is interpretive, aspiring to harmony between ideas (associated with the Jungian category of Intuiting, located in the right frontal cortex of the human brain). It is an attempt to answer the question: �What�s it all about, Alfie?� or put in more anagogical terms: �What can I hope for?�. How new is any of this? In my view, it is very old. In some sense, I internalized these distinctions from patristic and medieval mystics, like Origen, pseudo-Dionysius and Duns Scotus. Origen�s senses of scripture 1) moral 2) allegorical/spiritual 3) anagogical and 4) literal/historical, correspond to moral, spiritual, interpretive and positivistic understandings set forth above. The dionysian logic and predications, alternately analogical, anagogical, mystagogical, apophatic, kataphatic, univocal and equivocal are precisely what is at work in these present considerations using different concepts. And Scotus and Peirce resonate semiotically (such as between the scotistic formal distinction and the peircean distinction between objective and physical realities). References to brain quadrants are over-simplified but the functional categories of temperament type are meaningful. At this point, I have only mapped the categories of Religious Naturalism to my Peircean categories. I want to now describe the practical implications of my Peirceanesque tetradic heuristic: The philosophic mediates between the positivistic and the paradigmatic to effect the pragmatic. Daniel Helminiak , building on Lonergan, describes four progressively expanding horizons of human concern, the determinations of each successive horizon constraining those of the previous horizons. He describes the 1) positivistic 2) philosophic 3) theistic and 4) theotic. These correspond to my genericized categories of the 1) positivistic 2) philosophic 3) paradigmatic and 4) pragmatic. These correspond to the RN categories of 1) emergentist perspective 2) spiritual 3) interpretive and 4) moral. As Phil St. Romain interprets Helminiak: "Spirituality, as a uniquely human phenomenon, is grounded in the philosophic level" and grounded in authenticity. Helminiak describes it thus: "For Lonergan, authenticity implies on-going personal commitment to openness, questioning, honesty, and good will across the board. In this sense, commitment to authenticity is exactly what characterizes the philosophic viewpoint." Now, the most immediately obvious practical upshot of this heuristic is that, while one is entitled to one's own overall interpretive orientation, or paradigm, one is not entitled to one's own positivistic determinations . I think it was Senator Moynihan who admonished: "One is entitled to one's own opinion, but one is NOT entitled to one's own facts." In fact, Helminiak's hierarchy of human foci of concern, placing the philosophic between the positivistic and theistic, is an implicit recognition of my peirceanesque heuristic, which would treat his concepts thusly: The philosophic mediates between the positivistic and theistic to inform the theotic, which is nothing less than the journey to authenticity via intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious conversion (think: development e.g. Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, Fowler et al). | |||
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A good, meaty post!  This seems to be something of a summary of your many years of reflection on these issues. You know my fondness for Lonergan/Helminiak, and I see you've tweaked and nuanced their approach in the light of Pierce, Gelpi, and others. Thanks for posting this resource. Wouldn't it be wonderful if this kind of perspective were taught (in age-appropriate manner) all the way through school? How many dumb arguments would be avoided if people recognized the constraints implicit in the various areas of concern. | ||||
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Another practical upshot of this heuristic is the integral nature of creed/doctrine, code/law, community/fellowship and cult/liturgy/ritual, each presupposing the other, religiously. These would correspond to orthodoxy, orthopraxis, orthocommunio and orthopathos. In my own life, it has not seemed so very difficult to keep orthodoxy out front, probably because of my thinking-oriented temperament. And the same thing is true for orthopraxis, probably because this has been drilled into us, perhaps even overemphasized?, by our tradition's magisterium. And the community/fellowship aspect comes naturally enough, I suppose, for one in a large family. Orthopathos was a gift from family and church at a young age. A personal prayer life and a life of communal worship thus came natural to me as a young Catholic. However, it has been the one aspect of that fourfold integral nature of religion described-above that, in my experience, is the quickest to slip away. And I know this happens for many reasons in our lives. And I can also say that it has been very painfully felt when I have thus lapsed. Such desolation is a great gift. To feel the need to pray as urgently as one feels the need to breathe underwater is a description Merton used to describe the spiritual life. It sure describes my own. In an age-appropriate way, yes, we need to continue to touch all four bases. Being Catholic helps, in my experience, in precisely this way, as long as one's approach is balanced with no over/under-emphases. | ||||
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I agree, JB, and this is one of the main reasons why it's so difficult for many to recognize and affirm the reality of these four bases. Without some kind of spiritual practice, religion and its theologies becomes just another philosophical variant. I think spiritual practice is the only way one can validate for oneself what Helminiak (mentioned above) calls the "theotic level." Then, theology has a relationship to theotic experience and can be distinguished from philosophic perspectives. | ||||
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johnboy, Your paper is a wonderful contribution, and it is a great priviledge to learn from such a treasure trove of learning and synthesis. I offer for your consideration this letter from Tolstoy to Gandhi and his followers, especially section VI. From such a perspective, the West has much to learn. Even prodigies such as George Will might benefit. He might even become a Cricket fan! http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Ana...y/lettertohindu.html Would sincerely like to know what you think. I would also like to know what Jerry Fodor would do about the potential for God to raise children of Abraham, bread, or songs of praise from stones.  shalom, A Place, Where Great Russian Novelists Meet Biosemiotics, Panentheism, SEP and Nonviolence... spoonboy | ||||
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Johnboy, This is my first time reading your writings. As I paged through a few days ago, a lot went past me and did not leave much of an impression. But there is one argument that was both new to me and illuminating: The strong distinction between socialization (formation in virtue) and transformation (theosis) found on this page. http://bellsouthpwp.net/p/e/pe.../Rogation%20Days.htm Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I've been reading the sermon on the mount where Jesus says that your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, where he distinguishes loving those who love you - anyone can do that - from loving your enemies, and where, in "the beatitudes," he reverses ordinary expectations. I'm now seeing all of this as Jesus bringing his readers beyond socialization to theosis. I'm curious what you think of this application of the idea. | ||||
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I like the concept of "beyond" more than that of "reverses." Since today is the feast of St. Bernard, let us consider Bernardian Love, which includes: 1) love of self for sake of self; 2) love of God for sake of self; 3) love of God for sake of God; 4) love of self for sake of God. Put another way, agape doesn't reverse eros, for example. We are invited to go beyond eros to agape but not without eros. We go beyond love of family to love of enemies. And so on. Some would argue that only Jesus has issued this invitation, that the theotic focus of concern is what distinguishes Christianity from all other religions, including the other Abrahamic faiths. In that sense, your application of the idea is right on. | ||||
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The theological anthropology implicit in this letter is, in my view, too optimistic. Indeed, it expresses a "theoretic truth" not entirely acceptable for the "guidance of our conduct." We cannot expect it to be otherwise at this point on humankind's journey inasmuch as we are a Pilgrim People. Now, mind you, this is not such a harsh criticism. The same critique has been leveled at the great Transcendental Thomists of the 20th Century, most notably, Rahner. The simple fact of the matter, too painfully obvious and everywhere emprically observable, is that most people are not spontaneously longing for the Beatific Vision. There are serious gaps between our (essentialistic) ideals and our (existential) realization of those ideals. The perspective in this letter is also, in my view, overly dialectical, which is to say that it seems to deny the incarnational reality that is present in all human strivings as we fallibly but inexorably institutionalize conversion in science, religion, anthropology, history, jurisprudence and the litany of so-called "harmful, stupifying ballast." The Spirit is every bit as much at work in these all-too-human enterprises as it is inherent in individuals and in the great traditions. Of course, love IS the law of laws. It's realization is not a mere matter of snapping into awareness or of experiencing Enlightenment or of ridding ourselves of delusion. It comes back to the previous post re: theosis. We are all on a life-long journey of conversion: intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious. Our traditions are efficacious insofar as they successfully institutionalize these conversions. The gifts from the East that I most appreciate are those of ascetical discipline or of spiritual technology, or of mastery of one's internal milieu, all that one might make an oblation of same to God, that one might experience solidarity with other humans and the cosmos, that compassion might ensue from our awakening to this solidarity. One gift from the West, from the Abrahamic traditions, that I most appreciate is science, and another is Western philosophy. Above all, I appreciate the Gospel, the Good News. | ||||
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Johnboy, Tolstoy was reactionary, and therefore dialectical and unhappy in his personal life. Still striving to evolve further, frustrated. Is this the case? What about De Mello in his later life? Too apophatic? Not sure where I am going with this. Your paper is brilliant! Perhaps a dozen people in North America could have written it. Perhaps only one.Have you delved very deeply into Aurobindo? He absolutely rocked my world this last year. FWIW, thank you! shalom, spoonboy | ||||
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Tolstoy was one of several Russian novelists with whom I felt (and still feel) a deep resonance and kinship, existentially and spiritually, prior to when I commenced my Russian language studies. I cannot answer your question, though, because my engagement of those writers was not so much academic and historical but was moreso existential and soulful. Their suffering and angst were palpable, expressing my own. Their striving for transcendence was courageous and beautiful. Tony may not have been as heterodox as he appeared on the surface. If only we could tease more nuance out of his thought ... People like Teilhard, Polanyi and Aurobindo have, in my view, thought deeply and in the right direction, but otherwise "prove too much" with their metaphysics. This is still far better than those who "prove too much" with their science and metaphysics in what seems to me to be the wrong direction! That Fr. Bede and Merton and other spiritual technologists engaged the East seriously and recognized gifts for all of humankind in the Eastern traditions is important. It makes me want to pay attention, to take them seriously but not necessarily literally (speaking of such as Aurobindo's evolutionary ideas). In other words, however much their spiritual practices are integrally related to their ontologies and doctrines, it is curious that we can borrow their practices (again, for example, Aurobindo's accounts of Yoga) and have them work very well for us even if we do not buy into their ontologies and doctrines. Personally, I see all major traditions, not just Christianity, in search of a metaphysic. I think those (all) ontologies represent rather fallible and awkward attempts to articulate what humankind had ALREADY discovered to be the truth phenomenologically, which is to say that we know THAT such realities present themselves and THAT such practices work even as we do not always know HOW and WHY. This is to suggest that folks like Aurobindo were paying incredible and excellent attention to reality, especially human reality (like the Sufi mystics and the Enneagram, for example). The same is true for kundalini, just for another example. That we experience this reality, phenomenally, is not in dispute for those who have experienced such energies. The WHAT and HOW is of less importance. That we submit all to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the counsel and discernment of community is what we are called to do. If we dug into these seemingly disparate doctrines and ontologies and their attendant language games and cultural embeddedness, then we just might find, at least, some minimalistic grounds for a syncretistic approach that is not heterodox after all; a true mystical core shared by the great traditions. My suspicion is that those grounds would be pneumatological, which is to suggest the involvement of the Holy Spirit. Interreligious dialogue could proceed with our [Christology] in brackets and the Spirit out front and center. Finally, your FWIW comments are worth much to me and are sincerely appreciated. | ||||
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Johnboy, When I was reading the excerpt from your paper, the question on my mind was, "What happened to the bodily remains of Jesus of Nazareth?" You know, the issue we were discussing on another thread. Some would say that in a literal/historical reading of scripture, it is clear that his remains were taken up into his resurrection body. Others would argue a priori, that Jesus' physical remains must have decomposed in the manner of all physical things on earth. While that debate falls within the categories of your outline, since terms are not defined exactly, your outline offers no direct guidance for deciding how best to understand that debate. Nor does it say how you view the event of Jesus' bodily resurrection. Would you care to clarify how your conceptual scheme relates to this specific case? | ||||
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JB will answer, I'm sure, but it's worth noting that the schema outlined is more about levels of explanatory concern than metaphysical ontology. But even using the four levels approach, one can note that theosis has a profound influence on thought and even the body. The body, after all, isn't just an inert material conglomerate, but living, and responsive to states of consciousness. One's physiology and even appearance changes with states of consciousness. Another thought is that we err if we forget that matter is mostly empty space and, really, compacted energy. What happens to matter when it's influenced by the energy of spiritual consciousness? Why rule out bodily resurrection out-of-hand? The possible relationships between matter and consciousness are not limited by the usual behavior of matter, even that of a corpse. | ||||
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My conceptual scheme is meta-ontological or meta-metaphysical. In fact, the core of my scheme comes from the Peircean categories that precisely prescind from metaphysics to a phenomenological approach, which is then characterized by ontological, semantical and epistemic vagueness and a grammar attendant to each (all described in the essay but which I will not reiterate here). My scheme, then, is a normative approach that would regulate our positivistic and descriptive and scientific takes on reality, including how we might best undertake Scriptural exegesis. So, the Peircean core of my approach would not speak, in principle, to what happened to Jesus' bodily remains, EXCEPT that it would positively eschew any a priori accounts of what must've happened from any quarters. Around this Peircean core hypothesis (heuristic really), I did place some auxiliary hypotheses, some peripheral ideas: emergentism and semiotics. While those approaches make a lot of sense to me, they are more provisional than my Peircean heuristic. In other words, I'm ready to take their fallibilistically derived propositions, or leave them, as new evidence comes available. So, let me attempt to answer your question at two levels. First, let me employ the phenomenological approach bereft of any biosemiotic or emergentist accounts. Phenomenologically, I would simply reiterate what I said on the other thread. In my present lingo, this is to say that folks can take the same facts and interpret them differently; the same positivistic accounts and view them through very different paradigms. I was gifted with my master paradigm near birth, at baptism, and then formed in it, reformed in it, somewhat deformed in it but, I hope, mostly transformed by it. In other words, I was graced in my human experience. It is just not going to be as much of a leap for me, as it might be for someone not similarly situated, to place my faith in the resurrection event (on my good days). It has been said that Christianity is in search of a metaphysics. I agree. Great minds are making progress using different root metaphors and different ontological concepts. But, all that aside even, from a purely phenomenological perspective, I can confidently affirm THAT something WAY OUT OF THE ORDINARY happened even if I can give no account of exactly WHAT or HOW it came about, in purely positivistic terms, i.e. in terms of givens, primitives, forces, laws of physics. As far as I am concerned, Jesus' moral nature was and is totally transparent to human knowledge; we have seen THAT aspect of the face of God; we have even seen the Father's love in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. We have had a foretaste of our own future and gathered in the first fruits of our own resurrection in our experience of church in the Spirit. Jesus' metaphysical nature is for the theo-policy wonks to figure out and, even then, it will be a reality we can perhaps successfully refer to in analogical terms and with crafty univocal, equivocal, apophatic, kataphatic and other esoteric predications. It won't be a reality we can robustly describe in physicalistic terms or even metaphysicalistic concepts with exhaustive explanatory adequacy. What happens once my phenomenological approach is combined with my biosemiotic and emergentist accounts? Just like the Peircean heuristic, the emergentist perspective is only a heuristic device. As such, it is more like a Rest Area on the metaphysical freeway than an ontological Exit Ramp. The reason I am parked there, along with many others, is that I am still trying to discern the precise locus of my ignorance, e.g. Am I methodologically thwarted, epistemically? Is there some type of in principle-occulting of this or that aspect of reality, ontologically? Do I know more than I can say? In other words, how can I speak authoritatively to Jesus' consciousness when the hard problem of consciousness is yet to be solved for the rest of us? And, how can I speak authoritatively to his human life, when, notwithstanding what we know from evolution, explanatory adequacy is woefully lacking when it comes to robustly describing how it is that life came from the nonliving in the first place? So, without claiming to know any particulars, without being able to robustly describe WHAT is going on, THAT the reality of God is an incredibly good logical inference and very compelling to me, I can confidently affirm. THAT biosemiotic realities are irreducibly triadic, with Peirce, I can also confidently affirm. THAT downward causation occurs in observable, empirical reality, I can confidently affirm (albeit without violation of physical causal closure). THAT semiotic reality is efficacious even in a nonenergetic way is implicit in this notion of downward causation. It is even reminiscent, though not robustly so, rather, in a minimalist way, to aristotelian formal and final causation. That nowhere in reality do we encounter the necessary; everywhere it eludes us; That everywhere in reality the inference of the necessary presents itself; nowhere do we escape it; it does not seem unreasonable to infer the Reality of the Necessary. And it does not seem unreasonable to infer that it is eminently triadic, analogous to our biosemiotic realities. And it does not seem unreasonable that, both in the cosmological grounding of reality and the teleological coaxing of reality, that an eminently semiotic reality, both immanently and transcendently, could efficaciously influence reality in an otherwise very unobtrusive manner (at least, ostensibly so). Any Divine Action would be able to affect and effect reality omindirectionally, much less via mere downward causation. Any constraint on Divine prerogatives would be in place strictly under the aegis of Divine fiat and kenosis. Any ensuing theodicy issues would be intelligible but not fully comprehensible. If reality as we know it, radically contingent, can reasonably be referred to in modal terms of possible, actual and probable, where every actuality is a radically finite and bounded reality ... And if the Reality of God admits of Necessity, then we are confronted with a reality that is wholly other, that is no/where to be found, that is utterly transcedent. And if the Reality of God admits of semiotics, then we encounter a reality that immanently dwells closer to nature as we know her than we would be in a position to discern without eyes to see and ears to hear. We would be supported by an implicate ordering and tacit dimensionality that is utterly efficacious and uncannily unobtrusive. And, we would be constantly invited by signs in the heavens above and wonders on the earth below, through sign and symbol, story and song, to take in the eminently Semiotic Reality in mysterium tremedum et fascinans. It would be the Holy Spirit that interfaced Necessary to Probable. It would be the Father in Whom all possibility richly resides. And it would be Jesus, the eminently actual, the eminently ontic, Who, though He shared estate with God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but became like us in everything but sin. What was your question? God could do whatever He dang well pleased ... yesterday, today and forever. If you want a more robustly metaphysical account, I recommend Jim Arraj's take and suggest one stay away from Bishop Spong's. Anyone familiar with aristotelian accounts, especially as appropriated and modified by the different Thomisms, will see a lot of parallels between semiotic accounts of formal and final causation, downward causation and analogical imagination -- and similar accounts by the Thomists. The process folks, in my view, tend to be nominalistic and fail to take the emergentist nature of reality into account, not discriminating between, for example, the truly exceptional and novel biosemiotic reality of human consciousness and the quasi-semiotic nature of nonliving realities, much less, other biosemiotic realities that present sans any robustly conscious and moral functions. I wrote this on the fly and may well have lapsed in accessibility. Just ask questions and seek definitions. I'll flesh it out through time for any truly interested. It is hard to download all of this highly nuanced stuff without jargon. I may not have lapsed merely in accessibility but also in coherence, because I never really bothered with this specific question before insofar as my faith ... let me stop here. | ||||
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I agree. I'm thinking of three mind body states where theosis is linked to bodies: before bodily death, after bodily death and in some sort of bodily bilocation. Before bodily death, there is the sense of being and/or of witnessing an incarnate spirit. After the bodily death of others, something of that person's spirit can linger with the remains. I have felt inspired being near the remains of saints. The oddest, but I think also somehow possible relationship of body and spirit, is when a person is bodily in one location and at the same time is perceived by friends in another, perceived in a physically recognizable, but not immediately physical form. This often happens when a person dies and the death is perceived at a distance by loved ones. Scientific studies of all these conditions could, in my view, be properly placed in the biology section of the library. But resurrection, in my view, still belongs in the religion and philosophy section. Phil, are you trying to get resurrection into the biology section of the public library? A branch of "creation science" perhaps? | ||||
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This may or may not be pertinent. One may have come across it in my essay, where I placed it in 2 different places. Bias for Methodological Naturalism? We do well to look for our lost keys underneath the lamp post, for there is little hope of finding them in the dark. For some of us, that does not, at the same time, suggest that we have a priori decided where those keys may or may not be. This is to suggest that we must not confuse our understandable bias for methodological naturalism with a bias for philosophical naturalism. Reality has not presented itself in a way that would warrant a bias toward metaphysical naturalism. That position is much harder to defend philosophically. | ||||
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In search of definitions of these terms I went to wikipedia and found these: philosophical naturalism: any of several philosophical stances wherein all phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural, are either false, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses o Methodological naturalism is the methodological assumption that observable events in nature are explained only by natural causes without assuming the existence or non-existence of the supernatural, o Metaphysical naturalism, a view whereby the world is amenable to a unified study that includes the natural sciences and in this sense the world is a unity. Johnboy, are those the definitions you are using? Maybe I'm being a little lazy here. Sorry if I'm making your repeat yourself. | ||||
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Close enough. And another useful distinction would be between naturalism and physicalism. For example, some philosophy of mind perspectives are not physicalistic, let's say, in the sense that they might consider consciousness to be a primitive along side space, time, mass and energy. Still, they would be naturalistic if they did not view such super-naturalistically. | ||||
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Re. the resurrection of Jesus, we are surely dealing with a mystery that escapes full explanation and accounting-for. What helps me to make some sense of this is a consciousness-centered approach. Ryan, I know from our previous exchange on this topic that you believe Jesus' consciousness was raised/transformed in a manner different from that of a disembodied soul. I.e., the resurrection encounters are different from spiritualist phenomena. So you have already made a leap of faith in accepting that, with death, Jesus' consciousness doesn't simply go the way of all human consciousnesses, and this is the biggest step to take, imo, for in doing so, you recognize Jesus to be "firstborn of the new creation," and the One who is able to baptize us with the Holy Spirit. Is it really such a great leap to affirm that the risen consciousness of Jesus re-animates the matter of his body, with which it was once clothed, and toward which it is naturally oriented (and vice versa -- the matter of his body being formed by his soul)? Given what we know now about the "flexible" energetic properties of matter, I do not think it is completely incomprehensible. Matter is obviously open to embodying and expressing life; who will place a limit on the degree to which it can do so? Might the matter of Jesus' body vibrate at such a high frequency now as to be fully en-Spirited (Paul's pneuma-ikon)? Can he not lower this vibration to manifest physically, as he wills? That's what the resurrection narratives seem to suggest. So here's the progression: The human soul of Jesus is resurrected through its hypostatic union with the Word, or Second Person of the Trinity. Then the body of Jesus is raised by virtue of its connection with Jesus' human soul. Thus is the fullness of Jesus' Person/humanity raised up -- nothing left behind. These are religious affirmations, not scientific ones, but they do not dishonor or violate the explanatory schema JB laid out so long as one gives matter a little more room to "wiggle." | ||||
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re: What helps me to make some sense of this is a consciousness-centered approach. What theory of consciousness is being used here? | ||||
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In baptism, a vicarious participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus, we die to the old self, and we are raised to newness of life. Biologically, our bodies look the same before and after baptism, in fact the pre and post baptismal bodies are demonstrably the same objective, physical bodies! By analogy, it seems fitting to tell the story of Jesus death and resurrection in the way you tell it, emphasizing that the resurrection body was the same body that was laid in the tomb. That much I can agree with. But that is not a critical reading of the history. And modern theologian's willingness to also accept a critical reading of the history is where we differ, I think. A critical reading cannot prove with certainty that the literal bodily resurrection did not happen. The method is not built for that style of argument. But it sure can say, "That is highly improbable!" Your side of this conversation reminds me of my mother's high school friend, preacher's grand-kid, and former "village atheist," Marilyn McCord Adams, the philoispher theologian, now teaching at Oxford: In her book that came out in 2006, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology, she argues at length in favor of literal bodily resurrection, Christ's and ours. I picked that book up again today. Although I want to respect her admittedly prodigious philosophical acumen, I find her argument difficult to take seriously. She does not seem to accept, or even fully understand, the analogical character of theology, and as a result, like a naive little child, she objectifies the metaphors. You can't argue with her: her mind is set. And, even if you could, it breaks your heart to think of winning such an argument. It would be like spoiling a child's innocence, her belief in santa clause, or something. A lesson I take from that is, academic honors don't necessarily make you humble, mature or right. Maybe Marilyn has all those virtues in some areas. And so long as she isn't arguing that her views of resurrection should be taught in biology class, what does it matter if she objectifies her metaphors? I wonder whether this dialoge is really worth having, especially if we evaluate it in terms of way pre-modern sermon-on-the-mount values. Indeed, I cannot think of any case where Jesus engaged in an argument over an issue of critical history, over what really happened in such and such a time, in such and such a place. Can you? | ||||
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What theory of consciousness is being used here? JB, but would defer to Lonergan's approach if that's considered one. But what I wonder is if the post you responded to requires such clarification, or did the points I made make sense without? | ||||
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Ryan, with all due respect, I think that I and many others who believe in the bodily resurrection understand very well the "analogical character of theology." As we've already discussed/debated the merits of belief in the bodily resurrection on another thread, I'll keep the focus in this one on the approach JB presented. I replied in that framework above, indicating how it might be possible to explain bodily resurrection given an understanding of matter/energy and life. A lesson I take from that is, academic honors don't necessarily make you humble, mature or right. Maybe Marilyn has all those virtues in some areas. And so long as she isn't arguing that her views of resurrection should be taught in biology class, what does it matter if she objectifies her metaphors? Not that the modern exegetes who deny the bodily resurrection are "humble, mature, or right," of course. I don't follow your point about biology. It's one thing to say that bodily resurrection isn't necessarily incongruent with the laws of physics, and another to say that it should be taught in a biology class if we really believe this. No one's arguing for the latter. | ||||
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I'm thinking of the way creationists want to their view taught in public school science classes. They don't seem to understand that their view is not scientific in the modern sense. They can be wrong all they want too in private. It seems harmless enough. But when they want to bring it to the public schools, that is crossing a line. By comparison, you are not arguing for that kind of boundary crossing, so you can go medieval in your views, without bringing our science education back to the middle ages. My point is about disciplinary boundaries. JB's conceptual scheme seems to me like a kind of cataloging system: it does not resolve a debate, only places in its proper domain, or its disciplinary boundaries. In this case, the argument you are making is primarily, I think, in the domain of "metaphysics," and only secondarily and anecdotally, biology. | ||||
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By theory of consciousness, I was really thinking of the different philosophy of mind positions, some which are panpsychic, epiphenomenal, eliminativist or even dualistic. Except for the a priori and crypto-atheistic presuppositions that often get snuck into an articulation of some of those positions, which approach one chooses doesn't much matter to me. I was just wondering why it would make more sense to "use a consciousness-centered approach," especially once-considering how precious little we know about it. In this sense, then, our core beliefs, or Christianity's essential message, need not be tied to any particular philosophical or metaphysical or even scientific hypotheses. At the same time, this is not to suggest that this Good News is not tied to particular phenomenological and common sensical interpretations. And this is where we draw an important distinction between a successful reference of a given reality and a successful description of that reality (the latter entailing explanatory adequacy vis a vis robust positivistic and metaphysical accounts). Many of our accounts use concepts that function more like conceptual placeholders and not so much like robust descriptions. They point to realities that we validly infer as real even as they fail to give us much more info than that regarding those realities. We observe effects and then infer possible causes that would be proper to those effects alone, best we can. And we describe those unknown causes in terms of their known effects and then, analogously, in terms of other causes, which are similar to known causes in some ways but dissimilar in so many others, way dissimilar. When we use words like eternal or atemporal, we have no idea what that type of reality entails. We are pointing to that reality in an attempt to indicate that, whatever is going on, it mostly ain't nothing like any reality one would ever encounter in this space-time plenum. And we make halting attempts to then describe it analogically. We are perhaps saying, then: You know what time is? Well, eternity is kinda like a whole lot of it! And this isn't true only for putative supernatural realities but is also true for natural realities. Ursula Goodenough likes to quote Jerry Fodor: And this is why the emergentist perspective, epistemologically, has some of our epistemic cars parked at the Rest Area of the metaphysical superhighway. As discussed in my essay, some folks who consider such as consciousness to be epistemologically open, take a position on whether it is then ontologically closed or open, reducible to physical laws or not. And they get real agitated with one another in defending such positions, which, metaphysically, I mostly could not care less about. So, when we are talking resurrection (an eternal reality), and we are talking consciousness, and we are considering them together, then, physically and metaphysically, one can square how much we do not know what it is we are talking about! This does not at all mean that such utter incomprehensibility implies a lack of apprehensibility or intelligibility. The fact that we can successfully reference the Reality of God, of Jesus, and of the Resurrection Event, and that it is vastly mysterious can be considered to render the mystery eminently intelligible, which is to say that we will never exhaust the meanings to be mined from this treasure of the faith. Our analogical imaginations can probe this reality, in the context of other mysteries and realities of the faith (some literal, some allegorical, some moral, some anagogical, etc) and come up with many valid metaphysical inferences that can only be determined to be "sound arguments" at the eschaton. The analogues and inferences are weak, but weak inferences about LARGE REALITIES should have profound existential and normative import for our lives, small as they are, by comparison. Now, I do not, at the same time, advocate metaphysical hypotheses that run way, way out in front of what we know from our positivistic stances and science. It takes more than logical possibility and logical consistency to construct a compelling argument. There is some merit in employing Occam's Razor and not wildly speculating using categories and concepts that would gain very little traction in most people's everyday experience, that are mere tautologies. We need to be able to cash out our beliefs in practical terms, which is to ask what difference would this proposition or another make if it were true or false. What happens if I act on this belief? Most folks do not need an explicit metaphysical hypothesis or a philosophical approach to practice their faith. Good thing insofar as Christianity is STILL in search of a metaphysic and philosophy is an autonomous probe of reality (though incredibly entangled with the other probes). Thing is, most folks have an implicit philosophy or metaphysic, and, in that regard, I think they are unconsciously competent in their common sensical approaches and phenomenological references and extremely competent when it comes to common sense notions of causality and inferences regarding a Creator. If they study too much philosophy, their competence often descreases (has been my observation, and I do not offer it in a humorous vein). Chrst has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again. How has He risen? He is present in the People gathered. He is present in the Word proclaimed. He is present in those who Preside at Eucharist. He is present in Sacrament & Symbol, which points to a Reality and successfully references same evn if not robustly describing the Mystery. In the Sacrament, He is present: in Memorial; at Meal; in Covenant; with Thanksgiving; in a very particular and intimate way in Species. He is present in us all as Mystical Body. He is present in the action of the Holy Spirit. Many of our beliefs and common sense notions that appear to be only weakly justifiable when taken alone as single strands, when wound together tight into a cable-like rope, are then stronger than many other inferences we make in everyday life. However improbable, from an a priori perspective, a physical resurrection might sound, it is but one strand, to be sure, but it cannot be unwound from the cable, which has been produced from over 2000 years of experience, where this constellation of beliefs has had an enormous practical impact in human history, as a whole, and on individual souls, each one of us. For that matter, since a resurrection is an eternal reality, even the idea of "physical" resurrection sounds like an oxymoron, or at least a philosophical category error. The moment we use the word "resurrection" to reference Jesus, we have a priori retreated into unfathomable Mystery. It is not, however, one that will drown us but will rather keep us afloat. It is not unintelligible. It is something like, oh, let's say, Living Forever. It is something like, oh, let's say, a Family Reunion, where we will be reunited with loved ones. Do we need more than common sense and analogy to refer to this reality that we cannot fully describe, that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has been conceived by the heart of wo/man? CHANGING GEARS -- Another way of thinking of consciousness, aside from the philosophy of mind --- hard problem of consciousness, is by using the combination of Jungian terms and Thomistic accounts that Arraj has employed in his Christology. That was a very good bit of theological speculation by Jim. And one that I think most people could relate to because folks are fairly literate nowadays re: Jungian and Jungian-like approaches. So, that's the other approach I had in mind, when wondering what all were referring to. Finaly, the points you made, Phil, made sense independent of this or that view of consciousness, to me (for many of the reasons I laid out above). | ||||
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Well put. | ||||
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