George Murphy wrote:
<<
Lest it appear that I'm arguing for a sceptical anti-afterlife
position, let me emphasize that the reason for challenging all
this stuff about immortality of the soul &c is that it undermines
belief in the resurrection. Our hope is that the God who, contrary
to all creaturely understanding, "justifies the ungodly" and "calls
into existence the things that do not exist" also "gives life
to the dead" (Rom.4:5-17). It isn't that God raises the half-dead,
releases our immortal souls from their prison, or any of that.
[and later]
We are not by nature immortal: God "alone has immortality."
The resurrection of the dead is God's new act of _creatio ex
nihilo_ and we know about it, not because it's reasonable
that we have immortal souls but because we believe (if we
believe!) that God raised Jesus.
>>
Interesting. This reminds me a little of what I read
in one of Polkinghorne's books:
....If we regard human beings as psychosomatic unities,
as I believe both the Bible and contemporary experience
of the intimate connection between mind and brain encourage
us to do, then the soul will have to be understood in an
Aristotelian sense as the "form," or information-bearing
pattern, of the body. Though this pattern is dissolved
at death, it seems perfectly rational to believe that it
will be remembered by God and reconstituted in a divine
act of resurrection. The "matter" of the world to come,
which will be the carrier of this reembodiment, will be
the transformed matter of the present universe, itself
redeemed by God beyond _its_ cosmic death. That resurrected
universe is not a second attempt by the Creator to produce
a world _ex nihilo_ but it is the transmutation of the
present world in an act of new creation _ex vetere_. God
will then truly be "all in all" (I Cor. 15:28) in a totally
sacramental universe whose divine-infused "matter" will be
delivered from the transience and decay inherent in present
physical process. Such mysterious and exciting beliefs
depend for their motivation not only on the faithfulness
of God, but also on Christ's resurrection, understood as
the seminal event from which the new creation grows, and
indeed also on the detail of the empty tomb, with its
implication that the Lord's risen and glorified body
is the transmutation of his dead body, just as the
world to come will be the transformation of this
present mortal world. (J. Polkinghorne, "Belief
in God in and Age of Science," Yale: New Haven,
1998. p. 22-23).
Some subtle differences, but anyway.
by Grace we proceed,
Wayne
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