Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

Personal Identity

Resurrection

(Text as at 06/07/2023 00:43:12)

*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***

Plug Note¹

• Thesis Text:
  1. Belief in a resurrection to paradise has occasionally pernicious effects and is also important to millions of non-explosive Americans. Consequently, the metaphysical² possibility³ of the resurrection of beings like us⁴ is very important.
  2. This Thesis will aim to prove that resurrection requires substance dualism⁵.
  3. I will need to ensure I understand just what is believed by intellectually-respectable Jews, Christians and Muslims (though the topical believers are not amongst the ranks of the intellectually-respectable).
  4. Some discussion will be had about the orthodox Christian view being that there is no continuity of matter⁶ (the conundrum about the person consumed by cannibals was early recognised), and that the resurrection body⁷ is said to be in some sense a “spiritual” body.
  5. A good place to start for an understanding of what resurrection meant to Christians prior to the modern era is "Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336".
  6. The best place to start evaluating contemporary Christian philosophical views on the metaphysical possibility of resurrection is "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?".
  7. One thing that strikes me is that the resurrection of Christ, taken to be the guarantee of our own resurrection, is no such thing in the sense of “showing it can be done”. The physical⁸ and metaphysical issues in resurrecting Jesus (or Lazarus, or Jairus’s daughter, or any recently-deceased⁹ person whose body¹⁰ is substantially intact) are much less than in the case of those whose bodies have been destroyed. Indeed, it might one day be possible¹¹ to resurrect the recently-deceased¹² by way of microscopic repair; at least this seems conceivable, whereas the resurrection of a human being whose body has become dispersed and whose parts have been recycled doesn’t even seem to make sense (on a materialist¹³ account of what we human persons¹⁴ are).

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  Further Remarks:
  1. This is a sub-topic of Life after death¹⁵, the others being:-
     1. Immortality¹⁶, and
     2. Reincarnation¹⁷.
        
  2. To these historical options we can now add the various hopes of Transhumanism¹⁸.
  3. This topic – the subject of the projected 11th Chapter¹⁹ of my Thesis²⁰ – will add interest, though hopefully some of the Islamist topicality will have gone by the time my Thesis is presented.
  4. I have some other notes on this and related topics as part of Philosophy of Religion²¹ and my Blog²²:-
     1. 1 Corinthians: 15²³
     2. Death and Eternal Life²⁴,
     3. Resurrection²⁵, and
     4. Resurrection (Metaphysics)²⁶.
        
  5. Currently, the categorised reading-list below includes a host of Biblical or theological discussions of resurrection of very variable quality which are irrelevant to my philosophical concerns. In the lists below, I’ve separated out what seems of value and segregated it into items that focus on philosophical matters on the one hand and those on the other that – while having some philosophical interest – are written from a religious perspective and anticipate religious motivation in the reader.