Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Auferstehung der Toten - Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Wunder, Kopie); Ende des Kosmos vs. E. d. Geschichte; 2. thermodynamisches Gesetz; stete Ausdehnung vs. Big Crunch (Masse);

Kurzinhalt: If, however, we seek to maintain the notion of natural immortality of the soul and the necessity of resurrection as the reestablishment of intimate connection with the materiality, then the question remains, When do we locate the general resurrection ...

Textausschnitt: THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD

200c Of course, the more Platonic our thinking, the less interested we are in such a question. If resurrection is viewed as just a religious metaphor for "life after death," conceived in terms of the continued existence of our spiritual soul (and nothing more), then the fate of both human history and the cosmos is of little interest to us. The material universe is like an eggshell, something we discard as we emerge into a new spiritual form of existence. Matter no longer matters and only spirit survives. (Fs)

200d It seems to me, however, that this sells short Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. Throughout this work we have emphasized the fundamental unity of body and soul. This is clearly part of the biblical understanding of human existence, and it is further supported by the philosophical account of human existence given by Thomas Aquinas. Further, modern biology is making ever clearer the close connections between mind and brain. The human spirit is not a separate substance from our bodies; it is a higher-order integration of all our physical, chemical, biological, and psychic systems, on which it depends for its proper operation, particularly operations of memory, understanding, and reasoning. A disembodied soul may possess a natural immortality, but of its own natural resources its capacities to remember, to understand, and to reason are severely compromised. Its natural orientation is to the material world, and the grace of beatitude does not destroy this orientation but completes and perfects it. Hence the need for resurrection, not just as a purely spiritual event, but as something that reestablishes the relationship between the soul and the material order.1 (Fs)

Resurrection versus Immortality of the Soul

201a It has become common to claim an opposition between notions of resurrection and natural immortality of the soul. Often this opposition is expressed in terms of some supposed opposition between biblical revelation and Greek philosophy.2 We have already indicated the inadequacy of this opposition in other areas and here again it is misplaced. Some argue that resurrection is simply a miracle of God and so does not require any notion of natural immortality. God can raise me up by simply recreating me, with all my memories and other relevant attributes. However, such a notion of resurrection is indistinguishable from replication. If God can recreate me, God can also create multiple copies of me with all my memories and other attributes. Unless there is a spiritual component which is an essential constituent of my existence that survives death, a spiritual component that is then reunited to materiality, then it is not me that is being resurrected but rather a replica of me that God creates. Resurrection in fact requires the natural immortality of the soul to be meaningful.3
202a The problem we face is one of timing. When do we place the general resurrection of the dead? The traditional answer-at "the end of the world"-raises more problems than it solves. Do we mean the end of the cosmos, however we might measure this, or do we mean the end of human history, an event we can plausibly locate sometime in the near future (cosmically speaking)?
Some seek to solve this question by abolishing it. Resurrection is then said to occur "immediately"; that is, the dead are raised immediately by God.4 Either this is conceived as a "spiritual" event, or, while it may be "future for us" in our temporal existence, it is immediate in terms of our experience, for we experience no temporal gap between our death and our resurrection. This is a "neat" solution in that it makes any gap between the end of cosmos and end of history irrelevant, since our lack of any conscious experience of such a gap means that it makes no real difference to us how long the gap might be. However, it also renders meaningless any notion of the natural immortality of the soul, since on this account the immortality would be "unconscious," which really defeats the significance of any such immortality.5

202b If, however, we seek to maintain the notion of natural immortality of the soul and the necessity of resurrection as the reestablishment of intimate connection with the materiality, then the question remains, When do we locate the general resurrection of the dead?

202c Let us explore the possibility that the resurrection is at the end of the cosmos when, as Aquinas states, "the heavenly movement will cease" (ST III Suppl. q. 77, a. 1). Now just as theology has been forced to abandon literal readings of Genesis in relation to the creation of the world and work with modern scientific accounts of creation, so too in the area of eschatology we should begin to reevaluate our Christian imaginings about the end of the world and begin to consider what science is telling us about cosmic unraveling. Given the fact that God established the world according to scientific processes, there is no reason to expect that the final stages of the universe will be anything other than according to those same processes. Just as creation is not a series of divine interventions, as proposed by so-called "scientific creationism" or "intelligent design," so too the end of all things is likely to occur according to the inner dynamics already discernible through the insights of modern science. If that is in fact the case, then the "end of the cosmos" is an event billions of years in the future (a Big Crunch), if indeed it can be thought of as an event at all, since in some cosmologies the "heavenly movement" simply never ceases. We shall consider two major scenarios in the next section below, but in none of the commonly accepted possibilities are we looking at a short time frame. (Fs)

203a The advantage of placing resurrection at the end of the cosmos is that, given the power of God and that we are starting literally with a clean slate, we can say anything we like about resurrection. God can recreate a new heaven and a new earth ex nihilo, discarding the old as simply no longer relevant. The difficulty is attempting to find some meaning in the interim state, the gap of billions of years between our own personal death and the final resurrection of the dead. What does one do with all that time? What is the meaning of such a large gap? In the absence of a human presence, does the universe continue to have theological significance? It makes the above suggestion of there being no conscious experience of the gap, or no interim period, look very attractive. (Fs)

203b The alternative is to view the general resurrection as being at the end of human history, as marking the completion of all human existence in its current form. While human history in its current form has drawn to a close, human beings as resurrected have an ongoing, meaningful, and effective participation with the rest of cosmic history. The new heaven and the new earth, then, are not a creation ex nihilo, but rather the transformation of our existing cosmos into a new and higher form of existence, suggested by Wright's use of the term "transphysical."6 Is this plausible or have we entered into the realm of science fiction?

203c The advantage of this position is that it affirms the ongoing value of the present material cosmos. It is not simply a shell to be discarded, but is taken up into a new mode of existence, resurrected existence, so that the history of human relationship to the cosmos does not come to an end with the death of the last remaining human being. Matter matters, especially for the ongoing resurrected state of human beings who by the power of God are brought back into an active relationship with the material order. The difficulty with this position remains one of confronting what it is that science tells us about the end of the cosmos. If resurrection involves an ongoing relationship with the material universe as we currently know it, then the fate of that universe is a matter of theological interest. What, then, does science say about the fate of the universe? Just as cosmology has forced us to shift our imaginations about how the world began, so too cosmology is forcing us to shift our eschatological imagination as well. What, then, does cosmology tell us about the ultimate fate of the physical universe, and should this be a matter of concern for theology?

204a While in the early twentieth century cosmologists drew on the Second Law of Thermodynamics to argue that the universe would end in a state of "heat death" with the eventually dissipation of all energy to its lowest, uniform level across the universe, more modern accounts are more complex and difficult to conceptualize. We know that the universe is in a state of expansion at present. It has been so since the "Big Bang" some fifteen billion years ago. However, the end result of this process of expansion is not clear. Will the universe continue to expand forever-whatever "forever" might mean for a physical universe? Or will its expansion cease, to be followed by a "Big Crunch," whereby the universe will, at some time in the future, collapse back down to a superheated mass, similar to that from which the original Big Bang emerged? The answers to such questions depend on the total mass of the universe, which is not so easy to ascertain. If the overall mass of the universe is large enough, eventually the force of gravity might well be enough to induce a Big Crunch. If the mass is less than a critical level it will expand forever. The matter of the universe will dissipate into fundamental nuclear particles, and even this may disintegrate into energy spread over more and more vast regions of space.7

204b At face value neither of these would seem to be an attractive scenario. The long-term prospects for some type of continuing involvement in cosmic history through the resurrection of humanity do not seem very likely. Indeed, it would be more than tempting to revert to a more "spiritual" understanding of resurrection simply as a way of avoiding the problem. Is there any way, let alone any point, in conceiving of continued human engagement with a cosmos whose fate is either to collapse into a fiery ball or to dissipate into ultimate oblivion?
204c Things are not that simple, however. Physicist Frank Tipler has been investigating the possibilities present within the universe for continued order and meaning in the various cosmic scenarios that face us. Tipler s approach reads like science fiction, with the deployment of self-replicating von Neumann machines which "embody" human meanings and values and spread throughout the galaxy and eventually the universe.8 At each stage of future cosmic evolution these machines could, with appropriate technological advances, find the necessary surplus energy to continue to manipulate matter, even to the point of "resurrecting" human beings through computer simulations. Eventually the whole cosmos would be brought under "intelligent" control, reaching whatTipler refers to as the "Omega point" of cosmic evolution.9

205a It is of course not my intention to endorse Tipler's suggestions, which many might consider verge on a caricature of genuine Christian belief. On Tipler's account, resurrection is a technological achievement, not a gift from God. However, his work does represent a steadfast refusal to adopt a "spiritualized" account of resurrection that would make the ongoing existence of the universe after the death of the last human being a matter of no theological interest. This is the question that remains for us to consider. To find some answer we might turn to the only clear account of resurrection that we know of, that of Jesus, and see what it might teach us. (Fs)