Ahanu
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I wish to ask Thomas a question.
First, I would like to make some quick comments.
Then, I will proceed to ask my question second.
Unfortunately, I do not have the time to learn the terminology used by the writer of the book entitled the Phenomenology of Perception, a work I feel is a highly complicated book until one has learned about the history of phenomenology, which is its own epistemology, and, therefore, I could not find any short twenty page articles that could sum up what phenomenology is. Phenomenology has different shades of meaning depending on the scholar you're reading; thus adding to its complexity.
I might as well be speaking Chinese: 你叫什么名字？ I'm learning Chinese, by the way. The point is that it would take a huge portion of my time to learn from the Phenomenology of Perception and understand it. Thomas, if I was responding to your posts entirely in Chinese on this forum, would you learn Chinese just to understand what I'm writing?
Too much work. Well, that's all I can muster to justify my laziness.
Now to the next point, the main point that my questions come from.
Thomas brought up the Phenomenology of Perception and resurrection in the Why Do People Try to Change Christianity? thread with the following quote:
http://www.interfaith.org/forum/the-role-of-the-body-6617.html
Thomas offers various interpretations of the role of the body here:
For in another post you write:
This question is important, I believe. My idea of life after death is quite different. You see, I think physics must take biology into account in some way, or to some degree, in understanding the universe. I would go so far as to say our reality is relative to the biological organism. Here's an interesting question to ponder: what sphere of reality does the moth experience? Indeed, if there is a life after death, then our sphere of reality is not the ultimate reality. On the next step of the ladder, the universe as we know it will not be the universe as we know it. Therefore, I can't accept this idea that glorified bodies will exist on Earth. I can't accept the idea that, in a life after death, we'll have physical bodies--only updated with incorruption. It seems to me that life after death (if it is beyond humanity's perception) would remain off limits to such precise details.
First, I would like to make some quick comments.
Then, I will proceed to ask my question second.
Unfortunately, I do not have the time to learn the terminology used by the writer of the book entitled the Phenomenology of Perception, a work I feel is a highly complicated book until one has learned about the history of phenomenology, which is its own epistemology, and, therefore, I could not find any short twenty page articles that could sum up what phenomenology is. Phenomenology has different shades of meaning depending on the scholar you're reading; thus adding to its complexity.
I might as well be speaking Chinese: 你叫什么名字？ I'm learning Chinese, by the way. The point is that it would take a huge portion of my time to learn from the Phenomenology of Perception and understand it. Thomas, if I was responding to your posts entirely in Chinese on this forum, would you learn Chinese just to understand what I'm writing?
Too much work. Well, that's all I can muster to justify my laziness.
Now to the next point, the main point that my questions come from.
Thomas brought up the Phenomenology of Perception and resurrection in the Why Do People Try to Change Christianity? thread with the following quote:
It is in fact through the body that we are present in a world of bodies. However, this presence, of which we believe ourselves to be the masters since it is somehow identified with us, is in reality a passive and involuntary presence. It was Merleau-Ponty who showed, in The Phenomenology of Perception, that to see an object is 'to be able to make a tour of it'. And how is it possible to make a tour of it if not because the object imparts itself indefinitely and inexhaustibly to the surveying gaze, because it can do nothing but offer itself to our gaze, it can do nothing but be seen. To be seen, and to be corporeally present, is all one. My corporeal presence is my visibility, but my visibility is not my own; it belongs to every gaze, unbeknownst to me and without being able to do anything about it — an ignorance and impotence constituting the every essence of my visibility. Thus, no one is master of his corporeal presence, and, even more, to be corporeally present is not to be master of this presence.
What happens then, to the contrary, in the Resurrection of Christ? What happens is that the resurrected Body is as if a witness, a living proof, a saving irruption of the glorious nature of the created within the bosom of its dark and opaque modality: Christ's body is still the instrument of presence in the world of bodies, but, by a total change, it is no longer of the essence of this presence to be passive and involuntary. The soul which inhabits this instrument is entirely master of it and makes use of it at will. Christ can actualize the corporeal mode of His presence according to His own decision and as He judges good. The relationship that He entertains with the corporeal medium of His presence has been completely transformed. A presence active throughout the entire world because a presence really in act, all relationships which unite this corporeal medium with the rest of the bodies, that is to say with the entire world and with the conditions that define it, all these relationships have been changed. Christ is no longer seen, He causes Himself to be seen. This is exactly what the Gospels teach, and which so many modern exegetes are incapable of understanding. Christ glorious is not 'above' the world of the senses, except in a symbolic sense. Simply put, He is no longer subject to the conditions of this corporeal world. His bodily presentification becomes, then, a simple prolongation of its spiritual reality, entirely dependent upon this reality (whereas in the state of fallen nature, it is the person's spiritual reality which extrinsically dependent upon its bodily presence), a presentification which the spiritual person may or may not effectuate, as freely as human thought can, in its ordinary state, produce or not produce such or such a concept or sentiment. Whoever stops to consider this doctrine of the reversal in the relationship of the person to his corporeal medium and the consequences that this entails, will take into account the remarkable light that it casts on the significance of Christ's post-pascal appearances according to the Gospels. (Jean Borella Gnosis and anti-Christian Gnosis — emphasis mine)
For further reading, Thomas has also discussed this point in the link below: What happens then, to the contrary, in the Resurrection of Christ? What happens is that the resurrected Body is as if a witness, a living proof, a saving irruption of the glorious nature of the created within the bosom of its dark and opaque modality: Christ's body is still the instrument of presence in the world of bodies, but, by a total change, it is no longer of the essence of this presence to be passive and involuntary. The soul which inhabits this instrument is entirely master of it and makes use of it at will. Christ can actualize the corporeal mode of His presence according to His own decision and as He judges good. The relationship that He entertains with the corporeal medium of His presence has been completely transformed. A presence active throughout the entire world because a presence really in act, all relationships which unite this corporeal medium with the rest of the bodies, that is to say with the entire world and with the conditions that define it, all these relationships have been changed. Christ is no longer seen, He causes Himself to be seen. This is exactly what the Gospels teach, and which so many modern exegetes are incapable of understanding. Christ glorious is not 'above' the world of the senses, except in a symbolic sense. Simply put, He is no longer subject to the conditions of this corporeal world. His bodily presentification becomes, then, a simple prolongation of its spiritual reality, entirely dependent upon this reality (whereas in the state of fallen nature, it is the person's spiritual reality which extrinsically dependent upon its bodily presence), a presentification which the spiritual person may or may not effectuate, as freely as human thought can, in its ordinary state, produce or not produce such or such a concept or sentiment. Whoever stops to consider this doctrine of the reversal in the relationship of the person to his corporeal medium and the consequences that this entails, will take into account the remarkable light that it casts on the significance of Christ's post-pascal appearances according to the Gospels. (Jean Borella Gnosis and anti-Christian Gnosis — emphasis mine)
http://www.interfaith.org/forum/the-role-of-the-body-6617.html
Thomas offers various interpretations of the role of the body here:
To some, the body is utterly disposable, nothing but a vehicle for the soul which is, in effect, a separate entity inhabiting, for reasons either pedagogic or punitive, the material realm. To others the body is a necessary mode of being but is of itself inconsequential and again, disposable – such a view covers the ideas of reincarnation in its transmigrational modes. To others again, the body exists in a conjoined hierarchical psychodynamism with the soul, and manifests and symbolises the soul in the material domain, in which each is intimately and indivisibly joined to the other, each subject to degrees of contingency and limitation according to its essential nature.
Ah, yes. What I highlighted above is the Christian position correct?
For in another post you write:
The Hellenic (and Hebraic) idea regards the Great Chain of Being as a strictly delineated procession of subsistence by emanation, 'subsistence' in that the lower is dependent on the higher for its being – and the higher is always subject to the lower in the lower's domain, so that the higher can only manifest itself a lower-than-itself, and thus not the totality of its essence. Each successive mode of manifestation is thus 'removed' by one degree from its immediate higher.
Christian philosophy agrees substantially with the above
I'm starting to see how your metaphysics will allow miracles and dead people to live again. Jesus exists on the next level on the ladder in relation to the soul during his appearance to the disciples. Thomas goes on by writing: Christian philosophy agrees substantially with the above
but in addition holds that the Logos, which is 'existence that does not subsist' or the Cause that is not Itself caused, can manifest Itself as Itself in any domain It chooses, and can manifest Its essence whole and entire, in any mode of manifestation, according to Its will, precisely because the Logos is the ontological source of all that is, and holds the 'pattern' of everything in itself.
Now here's my question: is each domain the material domain as we know it? I did read some of the Church Fathers' writings on resurrection and I get the sense that yes is the answer; Irenaeus wrote:
Esaias says: The wolf also shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard shall take his rest with the kid; the calf also, and the bull, and the lion shall eat together; and a little boy shall lead them. The ox and the bear shall feed together, and their young ones shall agree together; and the lion shall eat straw as well as the ox. And the infant boy shall thrust his hand into the asp's den, into the nest also of the adder's brood; and they shall do no harm, nor have power to hurt anything in my holy mountain. And again he says, in recapitulation, Wolves and lambs shall then browse together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and the serpent earth as if it were bread; and they shall neither hurt nor annoy anything in my holy mountain, says the Lord. Isaiah 40:6, etc. I am quite aware that some persons endeavour to refer these words to the case of savage men, both of different nations and various habits, who come to believe, and when they have believed, act in harmony with the righteous. But although this is [true] now with regard to some men coming from various nations to the harmony of the faith, nevertheless in the resurrection of the just [the words shall also apply] to those animals mentioned. For God is rich in all things. And it is right that when the creation is restored, all the animals should obey and be in subjection to man, and revert to the food originally given by God (for they had been originally subjected in obedience to Adam), that is, the productions of the earth. But some other occasion, and not the present, is [to be sought] for showing that the lion shall [then] feed on straw. And this indicates the large size and rich quality of the fruits. For if that animal, the lion, feeds upon straw [at that period], of what a quality must the wheat itself be whose straw shall serve as suitable food for lions?
CHURCH FATHERS: Against Heresies, V.33 (St. Irenaeus)
Once creation is restored in the resurrection, these animals, for example, will eat from the "productions of the earth," to quote Irenaeus.CHURCH FATHERS: Against Heresies, V.33 (St. Irenaeus)
This question is important, I believe. My idea of life after death is quite different. You see, I think physics must take biology into account in some way, or to some degree, in understanding the universe. I would go so far as to say our reality is relative to the biological organism. Here's an interesting question to ponder: what sphere of reality does the moth experience? Indeed, if there is a life after death, then our sphere of reality is not the ultimate reality. On the next step of the ladder, the universe as we know it will not be the universe as we know it. Therefore, I can't accept this idea that glorified bodies will exist on Earth. I can't accept the idea that, in a life after death, we'll have physical bodies--only updated with incorruption. It seems to me that life after death (if it is beyond humanity's perception) would remain off limits to such precise details.
