quote:

Originally posted by Ryan:
[qb]

quote:

Originally posted by johnboy:
[qb] Maybe it would be a good exercise for you to restate what you think I said? [/qb]

I'm working on it. After getting clear on all your terms, I do think I understand what you are saying. But putting it into my own words is another matter. i think it may be worthwhile. But it may take a while. [/qb]

Don't do it for me! Feel free to just ask questions or to critique or challenge. I wasn't assigning homework. It was important to me that Phil found that faux pas (google that!) re: science and possibilities because it needed correction elsewhere and was MAJOR.

Some additional comments re: modal phenomenology and modal ontology ---

Both often employ metaphors, analogies and models, not just pedagogically (as teaching tools) but epistemologically (in empirical methodology).

Both propose hypotheses, some more highly speculative than others, some more readily falsifiable or verifiable than others.

Both can involve naturalistic speculation about reality's givens in terms of space, time, matter and energy (primitives), forces (4 forces, so far) and axioms (laws like thermodynamics and quantum mechanics); about the advent of consciousness, the origin of life and other apparently emergent realities; about reductive and nonreductive physicalism; and such.

Various Theories of Everything (TOE's) and various God Hypotheses are modal ontologies.

It is difficult to draw a line of distinction between highly speculative cosmology and theoretical physics, on one hand, and what has traditionally been called metaphysics, otoh. However nuanced one's distinctions, those enterprises cannot really be facilely dichotomized. Some propose falsifiability as a criterion to separate science and metaphysics, but propositions can be framed up that are falsifiable or verifiable, we might say, eschatologically. Others might suggest that any time we tweak, amend, addend or modify reality's givens, as presently received by most scientists, then we are going beyond physics to metaphysics. Maybe defining metaphysics is not as important or as meaningful as keeping track of our categories and their associated grammars and rubrics and looking over our shoulders at our various leaps of faith.

Some thinkers, who have an apparent antipathy toward metaphysics, and a palpable animus toward theology, in their anxiety to annihilate those spheres of human concern from the realm of the cognitively meaningful, end up, inadvertently, trashing the epistemological methods that humanity has long employed at the frontiers of science (and those frontiers have of course changed greatly through time).

Metaphysics, however broadly or narrowly conceived, is here to stay and for at least as long as science and faith. It is an integral aspect of human value realization and in a dynamical relationship with the positivist, and all other, horizons of human concern.

Coming full circle back to the resurrection event and the highly improbable proposition "c" --

once combined with other positivistic propositions, which vary in probability but many of which are highly probable, e.g. from different types of exegesis, historical analysis, etc,

as well as combined with our other evaluative and interpretive and moral and practical value realization attempts,

do we not, then, come away with: "Geez, something highly improbable probably took place!"

in which case, then, it would not be unreasonable to wonder: "Could it have been proposition c or something like that?"

and this observation THAT something highly improbable probably took place is made in the phenomenological mode

and it seems that all the other positivistic & phenomenological attempts to account for the extraordinary ensemble of facts of the resurrection event get exhausted with no explanatory candidate satisfying us

so any putative description of WHAT & HOW it might have taken place would then require an ontological or metaphysical explanatory attempt because there is, as of yet, nothing known to science that could robustly explain what in the world one might mean by reanimated or resurrected

JB, of course I read your posts, as the level of linguistic and philosophical discipline you bring to a topic is rare indeed. Sometimes I don't have much comment as I'm just absorbing it, or waiting to see what emerges from within.

quote:

do we not, then, come away with: "Geez, something highly improbable probably took place!"

in which case, then, it would not be unreasonable to wonder: "Could it have been proposition c or something like that?"

Amen! But only if A and B are also present.

quote:

and it seems that all the other positivistic & phenomenological attempts to account for the extraordinary ensemble of facts of the resurrection event get exhausted with no explanatory candidate satisfying us

Which is precisely what we'd expect to happen when encountering Mystery. It goes beyond our explanatory frameworks without requiring that we sacrifice our reason to accept it.

quote:

so any putative description of WHAT & HOW it might have taken place would then require an ontological or metaphysical explanatory attempt because there is, as of yet, nothing known to science that could robustly explain what in the world one might mean by reanimated or resurrected

Right, although we might be catching a glimpse of how consciousness and the body inter-relate in our studies of psycho-somatic phenomena (including healings, here). The interactions between consciousness and matter present a range of possibilities that I don't think we've even begun to consider, much less explore.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb] Amen! But only if A and B are also present. [/qb]

Furthermore, any prior belief in a deity, whether from common sense notions of causality, intuitions of Being, philosophical argument, formation in the Jewish faith, or even familiarity with the hellenistic unknown God --- such serve as preambles to faith in the Father revealed in Jesus. In other words, in so many ways, whether through natural (general) or positive (special) revelation, the ground has been prepared in human hearts to receive such Good News, especially if others travel life's road with us and open us to an understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. (Luke 24:32)

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb]Which is precisely what we'd expect to happen when encountering Mystery. It goes beyond our explanatory frameworks without requiring that we sacrifice our reason to accept it. [/qb]

Exactly. And this is what the church does when declaring a miracle, such as at Lourdes. It does not propose it as an article of faith but declares it worthy of belief. Of course, many Gospel Mysteries are precisely core teachings and belong to our Creed, but the point is that an analogous examination of facts has taken place.

So, which aspects of the Resurrection mystery have y'all decided were essential (or core) and which, accidental (or peripheral)?

Also, Phil, did my comments re: chi and kundalini fit your take on those realities?

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb]Right, although we might be catching a glimpse of how consciousness and the body inter-relate in our studies of psycho-somatic phenomena (including healings, here). The interactions between consciousness and matter present a range of possibilities that I don't think we've even begun to consider, much less explore. [/qb]

[reverent silence]

quote:

So, which aspects of the Resurrection mystery have y'all decided were essential (or core) and which, accidental (or peripheral)?

We have another discussion on this forum. Everyone believes the Apostles experienced a resurrected Jesus and we all probably believe there was an empty tomb. Ryan doesn't see the necessity of "bodily" resurrection and thinks the corpse of Jesus was probably stolen and destroyed. I've held that Jesus' body was transformed and that this is an essential part of the teaching.

Re. kundalini -- I've already written and shared so much about this. What you said works for me. There are lots of ways to account for this process.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb] Re. kundalini -- I've already written and shared so much about this. What you said works for me. [/qb]

I take considerable comfort in that. Thanks.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
[qb]

quote:

So, which aspects of the Resurrection mystery have y'all decided were essential (or core) and which, accidental (or peripheral)?

We have another discussion on this forum. Everyone believes the Apostles experienced a resurrected Jesus and we all probably believe there was an empty tomb. Ryan doesn't see the necessity of "bodily" resurrection and thinks the corpse of Jesus was probably stolen and destroyed. I've held that Jesus' body was transformed and that this is an essential part of the teaching. [/qb]

Thanks for the summary. It helps to know where everyone has been coming from inasmuch as I do not have time to follow the other thread. I've said about all I can (or care to) say on both threads.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:

quote:

So, which aspects of the Resurrection mystery have y'all decided were essential (or core) and which, accidental (or peripheral)?

I've held that Jesus' body was transformed and that this is an essential part of the teaching.

Yes! Why else would the Apostles have had difficult recognising Jesus? That would not have been the case with a mere "physical" resurrection.

As I read scripture, what is essential concerning the doctrine of Jesus resurrection is the credo, "God raised Jesus from the dead." The curse of the cross is not the final word, Jesus and his followers remain beloved of God.

I believe the resurrection of Jesus was bodily in the sense that Paul describes it. It is a spiritual body. I see the bodily resurrection as indeed "bodily" in that spiritual way. Although I don't claim to know exactly what Paul meant I can say this for sure, by way of experience: My relationship to my body is more spiritual now than it was before my baptism in the spirit, my "fire baptism," that is, my vicarious participation in both the death and resurrection of Christ. In that experiential mediated immediacy, I do know what a spiritual body is. Indeed, my body of flesh died, my spiritual body was revealed to me experientially when I was raised to newness of life.

My daily spiritual disciplines are done with the goal of living fully in my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit; of living in gratitude of the Holy Spirit of God poured onto me.

In The Future of the Body, Michael Murphy suggests reading Aquinas's teaching on the glorified body while keeping in mind the extraordinary capacities that people experience in the body at advanced spiritual stages. For example, Aquinas writes: "...just as the soul which enjoys the divine vision will be filled with a kind of spiritual lightsomeness, so by a certain overflow from the soul to the body, the body will in its own way put on the lightsomeness of glory..." For those of us experiencing energy transformations, such lightsomeness may no longer seem so distant and unattainable such that we imagine it only in the future. The hoped for future is to some extent -- although not fully -- present.