A.Suarez's Treatment on a Pope's Formulation for Original Sin's Transmission!

So if I understand well you are assuming the following:

After “a life of toil and struggle” with help of the grace of Jesus Christ “the human mind” becomes “a vessel appropriate for God’s use” and enters eternal life.

But this means that our “mortal condition” is only a temporary one, and the “imperfect shells of flesh” are in principle capable of immortality.

@AntoineSuarez,

Now how did you come up with that?

Genesis tells us that the fleshy body we are born with is no immortal… unless we eat of the Tree of Life. The normal state of the human body is mortality.

So being denied access to the Tree of Life meant Adam only had 9 centuries or so to regret his actions, right?

Poor guy.

The human mind (or soul?) becomes reconciled to the divine nature of God through labor, faith and whatever miraculous “poofing” God performs once one’s mortal body dies and our mind (or soul?) enters the elusive tunnel of light.

Paul didn’t know whether we get a brand new fleshy body … or a body made of completely different material… maybe the same substance that angels are made of.

Gnostics thought the only thing that survived death was the “divine spark” that God gave us at birth. I think that’s about as reasonable a scenario as one could ask for.

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Are you claiming that the bodies will not resurrect?

How then do you interpret 1 Corinthians 14 [By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also]?

@AntoineSuarez

In the New Testament we learn that there are many meanings to the term “raise up”. While there was more than one word that could be used to mean resurrection, Strong’s Greek G450 is the most comprehensive of all the terms:

anistēmi, used 112 times in the King James Version

arise (38x),
rise (19x),
rise up (16x),
rise again (13x),
raise up (11x),
stand up (8x),
raise up again (2x),
miscellaneous (5x)

"to cause to rise up, raise up"
raise up from laying down
to raise up from the dead
to raise up, cause to be born, to cause to appear, bring forward
to rise, stand up
of persons lying down, of persons lying on the ground
of persons seated
of those who leave a place to go elsewhere
of those who prepare themselves for a journey
of the dead
at arise, appear, stand forth
of kings prophets, priests, leaders of insurgents
of those about to enter into conversation or dispute with anyone, or
to undertake some business, or attempt something against others
to rise up against any one

Of all the miraculous “resurrections” that occur in the New Testament, the one resurrection that we don’t get to see is the one reserved for the end of days, presumably referenced by 1 Corinthians 14.

I am inclined to think that if there is going to be a bodily resurrection, it will not be a body like the angels, and not like the ones that died.

Do angels dine? Are angels mortal? I think the answer to such questions is the answer to the general resurrection.

George, there is no doubt in my mind that the primary question most Christians ask is: “What is going to happen to me when I die?” St. Paul certainly realized this, and he was honest enough to admit he did NOT know precisely what became of one’s body and how one would be resurrected at the end of days. He was the only founder of the Church who was a scholar, and yet he could not offer nothing more precise than “it’ll be better than anything you can possibly imagine.” You and @AntoineSuarez as modern day scholars, can enlighten us about what the early church fathers taught and believed, but, as far as direct input from Jesus, we must rely mostly on his parables: “Heaven is like………” I value the interpretations of both you and Antoine, even tho you seem to have reached somewhat different conclusions. I contrast this with a humanistic approach of explaining how Homo sapiens became conscious of their own mortality–for example the book by Varki & Brower: “DENIAL, Self-deception, False Beliefs, and the origins of the Human Mind.” I don’t know of a better example that illustrates how insipid and vacuous the humanistic world view becomes when compared to a view based on a loving God who has a Purpose for us in the Universe.
Al Leo

Albert, here you seem to convey the same idea as Benedict XVI in his interview: The theology of “the suffering Father, who, as Father, inwardly shares the sufferings of the Son.” This theology was contained in the image of the “throne of grace” (also called “throne of mercy”), which spread during the Middle Age in Central and Western Europe as expression of the popular devotion to the Holy Trinity:

“the Father supports the cross and the crucified one, bends lovingly down to him and the two are, as it were, one on the cross. So in a grand and pure way, one perceives there what God’s mercy means, what God’s participation in human suffering means. It is not a matter of a cruel justice, nor of the Father’s fanaticism, but rather of the truth and the reality of creation: the true intimate overcoming of evil that ultimately can be realized only in the suffering of love.”

@aleo

Something to stoke the fire of discussion !!! A very important article about Consciousness and “The Hard Problem” !

CONSCIOUSNESS: The Hard Problem
Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?
by Oliver Burkeman (Wed 21 Jan 2015)

One spring morning in Tucson, Arizona, in 1994, an unknown philosopher named David Chalmers got up to give a talk on consciousness, by which he meant the feeling of being inside your head, looking out – or, to use the kind of language that might give a neuroscientist an aneurysm, of having a soul. Though he didn’t realise it at the time, the young Australian academic was about to ignite a war between philosophers and scientists, by drawing attention to a central mystery of human life – perhaps the central mystery of human life – and revealing how embarrassingly far they were from solving it.

… “As the organiser, I’m looking around, and people are falling asleep, or getting restless.” . . . “But then the third talk, right before the coffee break – that was Dave.” With his long, straggly hair and fondness for all-body denim, the 27-year-old Chalmers looked like he’d got lost en route to a Metallica concert. “He comes on stage, hair down to his butt, he’s prancing around like Mick Jagger,” Hameroff said. “But then he speaks. And that’s when everyone wakes up.”

The brain, Chalmers began by pointing out, poses all sorts of problems to keep scientists busy. How do we learn, store memories, or perceive things? How do you know to jerk your hand away from scalding water, or hear your name spoken across the room at a noisy party? But these were all “easy problems”, in the scheme of things: given enough time and money, experts would figure them out.

There was only one truly hard problem of consciousness, Chalmers said. It was a puzzle so bewildering that, in the months after his talk, people started dignifying it with capital letters – the Hard Problem of Consciousness – and it’s this: why on earth should all those complicated brain processes feel like anything from the inside? Why aren’t we just brilliant robots, capable of retaining information, of responding to noises and smells and hot saucepans, but dark inside, lacking an inner life? And how does the brain manage it? How could the 1.4kg lump of moist, pinkish-beige tissue inside your skull give rise to something as mysterious as the experience of being that pinkish-beige lump, and the body to which it is attached?

What jolted Chalmers’s audience from their torpor was how he had framed the question. “At the coffee break, I went around like a playwright on opening night, eavesdropping,” Hameroff said. “And everyone was like: ‘Oh! The Hard Problem! The Hard Problem! That’s why we’re here!’” Philosophers had pondered the so-called “mind-body problem” for centuries. But Chalmers’s particular manner of reviving it “reached outside philosophy and galvanised everyone. It defined the field. It made us ask: what the hell is this that we’re dealing with here?”

Two decades later, we know an astonishing amount about the brain: you can’t follow the news for a week without encountering at least one more tale about scientists discovering the brain region associated with gambling, or laziness, or love at first sight, or regret – and that’s only the research that makes the headlines. Meanwhile, the field of artificial intelligence – which focuses on recreating the abilities of the human brain, rather than on what it feels like to be one – has advanced stupendously.

But like an obnoxious relative who invites himself to stay for a week and then won’t leave, the Hard Problem remains. When I stubbed my toe on the leg of the dining table this morning, as any student of the brain could tell you, nerve fibres called “C-fibres” shot a message to my spinal cord, sending neurotransmitters to the part of my brain called the thalamus, which activated (among other things) my limbic system. Fine. But how come all that was accompanied by an agonising flash of pain? And what is pain, anyway?

[ See link to read the entire, challenging, difficult article. ]

In my view angels are pure spirits, that is, they have no body and consequently neither dine nor die. They are uninterruptedly conscious and do not sleep.

By contrast, humans are incarnate spirits, that is, they have a body and are only intermittently conscious. One could also define humans as spirits who periodically sleep.

After general resurrection humans will have bodies but will not need to eat, procreate, sleep.

In any case, accepting “a bodily resurrection” means acknowledging that it is in principle possible for a human body NOT to die with help of God’s grace.

Thanks for the inspiring post about “The Hard Problem of Consciousness”. I will comment in a coming post.

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George,

In the article about “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” you refer to it is asked:

In my view these questions arise from a bias similar to that about the movement of the earth and the sun: Intuitively we tend to think that the sun moves around the earth, but considering the observations more comprehensively we reach the conclusion that it is more appropriate to describe things assuming that the earth turns around the sun.

Similarly intuitively we tend to consider that matter is the basic reality and then we wonder how consciousness and free will can emerge from the brain, and so we ask:

Actually it is more fitting to consider things the other way around: It is consciousness and free will that are giving rise to brains and bodies.

Indeed consciousness and free will are basic assumptions we take for granted from the very beginning when we do science.

As a matter of fact each scientist takes for granted his/her personal identity and will claim for authorship and royalties.

Any experimental science relies on observations, and to define observations one has to establish who the observers are: For the science we know and do, the observers are human observers.

The famous physicist John A. Wheeler was once asked: "But if the universe only starts with our observations, is then the big bang here?” Wheeler answered: “A lovely way to put it -‘Is the big bang here?’ I can imagine that we will someday have to answer your question with a ‘yes’.”

In other words: Without human choices, no physical reality. This might provide an original perspective to look at the 6 days of Genesis 1.

@AntoineSuarez,

For about 35 years of my life, I was a determinist, who had no hope for an ultimate freedom of will.

Then I started listening to one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, the philosopher named Dennett, who makes a great impression (though unintentionally) of Santa.

He said that he thought that there was a valid notion of human Freedom (like there is a valid notion of magic) … but that it was not quite what humans think it is.

But to me, this is a quibble. He is merely making a veiled reference to what we need to define in order for humans to be considered legally responsible for their actions.

But I had the inspiration to turn logic on its head… instead of observing that Divine Foreknowledge leads inexorably to Predetination, I have reached the opposite conclusion:

Humans can only be free if a divine awareness lays the groundwork for freedom!

I propose that human will operates in another spatial dimension, one of the 10 required by string theory. And the human brain is the terminal point of the soul, the divine spirit, where decisions are made in one dimension and delivered to this dimension. Some people really need their biological brain … some people only need it as a pipeline of the soul’s activities.

George, here you make a great point!

Divine Foreknowledge lays the very groundwork for freedom.

God’s mind contains all conceivable histories that result from all possible choices humans of all times can make.

When I make a particular choice, I freely decide which of these histories I want for me and realized it accordingly.

In this sense “the Multiverse” some atheists advocate is nothing other than a parable for God’s omniscience.

This may allow us to understand a bit better what Predestination means: God knows the names of those who are saved (the names written in the “Book of Life”) because to be saved means to be known by God. If I choose to be “damned”, I choose to be unknown for God, that is, to be without name (to be none) forever. This is the reason why there is no “Book of Death”: there are no names to be written in, to be “dead forever” (“damned”) means to have no name, to be insignificant forever, and to be aware of this, yes, to be aware only of this.

Note that to be none means to bear no relationship to God and others. We meet here the “relational view” of Roger:

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I would like to expand on this insight.

God’s Foreknowledge can be understood in the following sense:

  1. God’s mind contains all conceivable histories that result from all possible choices humans of all times can make.

  2. When I make a particular choice, I freely decide which of these histories I want for me and realized it accordingly.

Therefore the scenario where humans do not sin is also contained in God’s mind as a possible world. In such a world it would not hold that “all people are in need of salvation because they all have sinned against God”. Nonetheless one could still assume that in such a world there is Incarnation of the Son of God as completion of creation, and all people reach eternal life through the Grace of Jesus Christ.

One could certainly assume that even in a world without sinners God foresees that humans suffer and die as a mean to reach eternal life. But it is equally (ore even more) fitting to assume that in such a world humans would not have to suffer and consequently would reach eternal life without going through the hard trance of the illness and the death.

In the light of this conclusion it seems rather appropriate to assume as well that in all possible worlds God planned to create humans in a stage of original grace and blessing, without illness and decay, whereas let creatures without free will under the mechanisms of evolution. And then also assume that for the sake of Redemption God planned to let sinners on earth submitted to suffering and death, and He himself to suffer and die on the Cross to show us sinners that He is primarily Love and not power or majesty (see before in this thread the post about The Throne of Mercy). Once we have sinned, God’s suffering and our suffering is God’s amazing way to move us to love Him and avoid delusion by pride and arrogance.

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I do not believe in Predestination as it is normally considered, that is God guides those chosen to salvation. Whereas humans cannot earn salvation or save themselves, we do have a choice as to whether we follow you or not. Accepting the gift of salvation is just that, accepting gift from God, and not earning or deserving that gift.

All are called, but only a relatively few answer, and yet God works with them and others to do God’s Will and to build God’s Kingdom. God has a plan to fulfill the Kingdom and end history with heaven on earth, but the plan is not a specific one as Antoine seems to say. Humans would like peaceful climax to history, but the Bible seems to foretell a violent cleansing of history.

I do not know what is going to happen. It is up to God how things workout. It is God’s responsibility to work that out, but of course we must be ready and work with God until God’s Will be done on earth as it is in heaven, which I take to be a promise.

Roger,
After reading attentively what you claim, I get the impression we are stating nearly the same. In any case, like you I do not believe in Predestination if by this one means that “God chooses some and guides them to salvation”.

God has a plan to fulfill the Kingdom. That is at the end of history there will be a number of persons in heaven. This number, no matter how huge, has to be finite, and for this reason history must have an end.

We can freely choose whether to follow or not God’s will. Nonetheless we cannot thwart God’s plan.

This means that we can only influence the path by which history fulfills God’s plan but not frustrate His aim for creation.

All those who will be in heaven will be known by God and have a name forever.

Those who freely decided not to follow God will have no name, that is, they will be unknown to God forever. Incapable of any relationship their existence will be insignificant for God and for any other:

The own insignificance is the only thing damned are aware of.

If we assume that “God knows what is going to happen”, and “humans are really free to do His will or not”, this means that for each of my choices God has two alternative worlds in his mind:

  • In World 1: I choose to do His will, and thereby contribute to the coming of His Kingdom on earth.

  • In World 2: I reject His will, and God works another way out for His Kingdom to come.

In my view this speaks in favor of the existence of many possible worlds in God’s mind, that is, the Multiverse.

@AntoineSuarez

I’m quite sure this is the traditional view in some quarters of Christianity.

But I’ve never thought it made much sense.

I think it would have to be re-phrased like this:

In World 1: I choose to do His will, and thereby contribute to the coming of His Kingdom on earth.
[But my choice can only be free if my soul is making its choices in some other “realm”, “dimension” or “bubble universe” where the binding effects of causality in the universe in which my body and its biological member, the brain, operates have only the smallest influence on the nature and actions of my soul."]

In World 2: I reject His will - - but God knew I would and his plan continues as it has from the first moment of Creation.

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Maybe the4 problem is that If God knows something it must be real or true. If God knows the future than it must be real or true, but since the future is not set, it cannot be real or true unless it provides for all possible choices, which is truly absurd.it.

Instead we need to say that God “knows” all that is. The future is not yet, so God does not know it. Of course God knows all the possibilities and all the probabilities for the future, so God knows all that might be and probably will be, but not all that will be until it is.

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Oh but He does. Just as God can be everywhere at the same time He can be at every now at the same time. God stands at the end of time looking back, at the beginning of time looking forward, and right now looking over your shoulder.

God knows how time will end, because that is part of God’s plan, but when God gave humans freedom God lost the ability to control how they used it.

God knowing what you are going to have for breakfast tomorrow does not reduce your freedom to choose corn flakes in the least bit. How can we say God is all knowing if he doesn’t know what is going to happen in the next millisecond, much less next week? Notice I have said nothing about how God works out His plan. That is the big mystery to me.