It is very good. I recommend it, though Kreeft is so sure he's got it all figured out that it's irritating sometimes.
the second model Blaising discusses is the “new creation model.” This model is contrary to Platonism and the spiritual vision model and emphasizes the physical, social, political, and geographical aspects of eternal life. It emphasizes a coming new earth, the renewal of life on this new earth, bodily resurrection, and social and political interactions among the redeemed.39
I broke this paper into 2 parts and will post the 2nd part in a couple days. Also, I left the footnotes in and italicized them so anyone who wishes to see the sources can do so.
I think the great question to look at is how we view Heaven. Is it strictly a spiritual realm, or is it also physical. Any thoughts?
I broke this paper into 2 parts and will post the 2nd part in a couple days. Also, I left the footnotes in and italicized them so anyone who wishes to see the sources can do so.
I think the great question to look at is how we view Heaven. Is it strictly a spiritual realm, or is it also physical. Any thoughts?
Excellent - thank you for posting.
Do you have an “eschatological ping list”? I’m interested in the 2nd installment. 8^)
I can't agree with his view of the influence of Platonism, but I don't think he's WAY off base at all. In Catholic and, especially, Orthodox conversations, we would have to work on the distinction drawing pretty carefully. It wouldn't be a wholesale operation at all, IMHO.
Two semi off the wall observations:
(1) The “Greeks” I know don't think all that much of Augustine.
(2) The writer uses the phrase “an historical eternal state.84” To me that illustrates how difficult the conversation would be. That, to me, is almost a contradiction in terms. It is more Aristotelian than Platonic thinking that leads me to think that God is “eternal” and that in some sense “eternal” means “Outside of time”and therefore outside of history.
Here is why I say “almost” and “in some sense”: When “sophisticated” non-believers challenge the idea of a personal God, two things become speedily apparent. Their idea of personality includes the defects of character and ability that we experience in ourselves and in every other personal being (excepting angels). We would say those defects are the result of the fall or of the limitation of being a creature. They are not of the “esse” of personality as such. We can envision a person without defects and inabilities.
Further, when you ask them, “Well, what is God LIKE then?” they come up with something which, upon examination seems lifeless and pallid in comparison with persons. In denying that God is personal, they come up with — or are stuck with — an idea that God is LESS than personal.
So, in talking with such folks, I adopt the language of “God is AT LEAST Personal, MORE than personal, not less.”
So if the idea of an eternal God ends up being described as —or having the ‘flavor’ of — something LESS than temporal, then it is rightly rejected. A kind of pallid, wispy, anemic Spirituality just won't do the job. Heaven may be sexless for example, but that's because it's BETTER than sex. (It's more like beer,I guess.) :-)
And this is even implicit in the careful thought of Aristotle and the “Unchanged changer” argument. The Unmoved Mover MUST have SOME sort of relationship with temporality, because where there is change, there is time, and what “the First Cause” causes is change, and therefore temporality and history.
So the usage I have come up with, with no pretense that I understand what I am saying, is that Eternity “comprehends” temporality.
I ‘get’ that some dispensationalists, JW’s in particular, are all over the idea of the eschaton working out on a new earth. Certainly they make a fine Biblical case. I think, to be less rigorous, I would say that compared to the transforming vision of God it SEEMS to me (but maybe I misunderstand) a lesser promise than being able to see with perfect vision Him who made me and who loved me before all worlds.
I don't mean any of this to be confrontative or argumentative. This is just meant to be a friendly response by a Dominican Catholic who is kind of an auto-didact in theology.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
Gnoticism teaches that human spirit was God, is now trapped in the evil matierial and only through the sufficient knowledge, can we return to be God. The process of being removed from God is called “alienation”, a theme that should be familiar to students of Marx, even as he put a secular interpretation on it. Humanity could return to God when it achieved the perfect socialist condition. The foundational ideas of Gnosticism go back to the time of Plato.
“To understand [alienation] we have to go back behind Hegel, the immediate source of Marx’s ideas, to Hegel’s own ultimate source: viz. Gnosticism. For alienation is the central theme of Gnosticism, along with the saving knowledge of how we became alienated, and from what, and of how we can escape from it. That theme is summarized in the Valentinian
formula:
‘What liberates is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we were, whereinto we came; what birth is and what rebirth.’
All the Gnostic texts, though they differ in details, declare that we are strangers, aliens, sparks of Light or Spirit trapped in evil matter. They recount the cosmic process whereby the circles of the world have been
created, by ignorant or evil creators and not by the Light, and whereby we have become entrapped in the midmost or deepest dungeon. Finally they impart the knowledge needed to escape back to the one Light whence we have come and which is our real home.
This is the pattern of thought that Hegel took over. But, rejecting all other-worldliness, he sought to reconcile men to this world, of nature and society, from which they had become estranged. We are the vehicles of a self-creating Geist which, in order to become and to know itself, has gone out into what is most alien to itself—the merely physical
world of Newtonian science—and is progressively coming thence to its full self-realization and self-knowledge in and through human life and history. With this knowledge, given by Hegel’s own philosophy, man’s alienation from the world is in principle, overcome although Geist has not yet fully realized itself in the world.
Marx took from Hegel two basic themes of Gnosticism, which Hegel had secularized, and re-interpreted them in his own way: viz. the cosmic drama of a fall into alienation from nature and one’s fellow men, and the saving knowledge, Marxism, which explains this and the way out of alienation back to an unalienated existence. But in one central
respect Marx did not fully learn the lesson that Hegel had to teach him about modifying ancient Gnosticism.
The Gnostic texts state that we are sparks of Light or fragments of Spirit (pneuma), and imply that we are distinct from each other and from the Light or Spirit only because of our fall or seduction into the circles of the world. As we fell through each circle, we were clothed with an outer covering. The return to the Light will be a reversal of that
process, so that, as we pass back through each circle we shall strip off each coating. Consequently, but this is never stated, as far as I know, at the end of that process each spark or fragment will cease to be distinct and will merge back into the One Light or Spirit. Hence the End will be the same as the Beginning.”
From Flew, Marx and Gnosticism, by R.T. Allen,
Philosophy Vol 68, No 263, (Jan, 1993),
pp. 94-98
(”Flew” is Antony Flew, 1923-2010, a British philosopher)
see also:
Marx as Millennial Communist
http://mises.org/daily/3769
Bookmark
It is very good. I recommend it, though Kreeft is so sure he's got it all figured out that it's irritating sometimes.
How many Fundamentalist Protestants, JW's, and other advocates of a redeemed material creation understand that in classical, historical chrstianity Adam's time in the garden was not meant to be his permanent state but a mere period of testing, after which he would have been translated (without death) to a spiritual heaven? I certainly never realized this for most of my life. To many of us the idea that Adam brought death into the world meant that had Adam not sinned he would have lived on earth forever, not that he would have passed out of material existence by some other means. To me and many others the only reason a "spiritual heaven" existed as all was to hold the "saved" souls who otherwise would have been cutting the mustard forever on a paradise earth.
The predominant chrstian position (the classical one upheld by the ancient liturgical churches and, I assume, by classical Reformation Protestants) is that the Garden of Eden has already been "restored" by being replaced by the chrstian church. Just as Adam would have spent a brief period on earth and then passed over without death to "heaven," redeemed man now passes through the church instead and eventually goes to heaven by dying. Thus there will be no restored Eden in the future because the chrstian church with its sacraments and ceremonial has literally taken its place. The church is the kingdom of G-d, the the millenium, and the "redeemed world." All the terminology in both scripture and in liturgy of a wonderful redeemed world without sin and without death already exists in the church, which is the ultimate fulfillment of all prophecies. Hence the unrelenting hostility to what is termed a "political messiah" by classical chrstianity.
In fact, many of these "platonists" blame Communism itself on belief in a paradise earth at the end of time and regard the rejection of such a thing in favor of a spiritual heaven after death (or after the physical world has been absolutely destroyed) as the only antidote to Communism! If you don't believe me, a simple web search will show that "chiliasm" and "messianism" is a rejection of "G-d's plan" in favor of a "naturalistic revolution." Many chrstian anti-Semites like the late Fr. Denis Fahey critiqued the "Jewish revolutionary spirit" and defined the conflict of our age as "Jewish naturalism" vs. "chrstian supernaturalism." What must be understood here is that by using the terms "naturalism" and "supernaturalism" Fahey was not referring to orthodox religion vs. materialistic reductionism but quite literally to the "spiritual heaven" vs. the redeemed physical earth. (This example was not given to start a fight with Catholic FReepers. Fr. Fahey simply believed along these lines and so did many conservative Catholics of an earlier era, as well as radical Catholic traditionalists of today. He was chosen as an example of this mindset and nothing more.)
I myself grew up believing that Communism was caused by religion abandoning the earth for heaven. If religion promises nothing but heaven after death, then this world is ours to do with as we please. The only comfort in this world would lie, not with a future Divine intervention, but on human activity, and in fact some religious people would try to earn their way to their spiritual reward by creating a temporal (and very disappointing) "paradise" on earth. Of course, the ultra-quietistic dependence on Divine intervention alone (without the human responsibility to obey G-d's commandments) is an error I now recognize.
The notion of whether "heaven" is a super spiritual world that awaited Adam or the natural state in which he was created affects other areas of theology as well. For example, because Adam was not created in what was meant to be his permanent position on a paradise earth, because "heaven" awaited even him, then human merit has a role to play. In fact, one reason for the Catholic belief in purgatory and Orthodox belief in a mediate state (though not called purgatory) is that "heaven" requires a purity not even the newly-created Adam had. Adam himself, even in Eden, had to "merit" heaven; therefore, even chrstians in sanctifying (or deifying) grace are apt to spend much time after death before entering heaven. For Fundamentalist Protestants and other advocates of paradise earth as the end in creation (rather than a temporary home in which man is to merit heaven), the notion that anything other than "being saved" is necessary to enter "heaven" is ridiculous. What did Adam do to merit being created in the Garden? Nothing, of course. Similarly, nothing more is required to enter "heaven" at death than to have been "saved." Man can no more be expected to have undergone any sanctification process to enter heaven than Adam could have undergone to be created in Eden. It's a shame more people don't see this point of contention.
This is a genuinely interesting and important topic. I did not post this to antagonize or attack anyone, but simply because I have had to deal with this own issue in my own life and I know it's much more important than the way people treat it.
MadDawg, thank you for your respectful and thoughtful response to the original poster. That was very kind of you.
Please continue!
Kabbalistic Cosmology
and its parallels in the
‘Big-Bang' of Modern Physics
Adam McLean ©
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/luria.html
In Isaac Luria's book, 'Ten Luminous Emanations' he describes gravity and electromagnetism with the phrase binding by striking and he preceded Newton and Maxwell by miles...
Read the book and watch The Elegant Universe, I had to!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/elegant-universe.html
One of the problems with carrying on a discussion in this subject area is that the dichotomies don’t line up real nice. What’s present and what’s future (eschatological) is not exactly divided between matter and spirit.
And by 325CE, it was promulgated as Dogma.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
But not entirely contrary, which explains why Plato's thoughts remain attractive to Christians. Overall, Plato's writings are a beneficial antidote to the contemporary materialism and sophistic spirit of the age. Plato and Aristotle were not atheist. A real distinction in Christianity is the historical plan of redemption and new creation. But even though Socrates' understanding of history appears empty in comparison, he was adamant that there would be a final reckoning and accountability for human actions after death. So the body/soul dualism so enmeshed in the New Testament makes Plato especially attractive reading for Christians. Like Plato, Christianity admits such a body/soul dualism, considering the body as dead and the soul alive to God. St. Paul, especially, emphasizes the redemption of the body, something not found in Plato, and definitely not in Plotinus.
There are so many other ideas in Plato's writing that are so supportive of Christian thought that it has led some to suggest that the source for these ideas are Judaic. Compare some of the passages in the Timaeus and Socrates' defense in the Apology.