In his book On Being A Christian, discussing the Resurrection of Jesus, as described in the Gospels, Hans Kung takes a position that might not be in the current style among theologians who are more inclined to take a more sciency, naturalistic position on these things but it is a position that is closer to my ideas on it.
The Crucified Lives. What does "lives" mean here? What is concealed behind he diverse time-conditioned ideal types and narrative forms which the New Testament uses to describe it? We shall attempt to convey the meaning of this life with two negative definitions and one positive.
No return to this life in space and time. Death is not canceled but definitively conquered. In Friedrich Durrenmatt's play Meteor a corpse (faked, naturally) is revived and returns to a completely unchanged earthly life - the very opposite of what the New Testament means by resurrection, Jesus' resurrection must not be confused with the raisings of the dead scattered about in the ancient literature of miracle workers (even confirmed with doctors' attestations) and reported in three instances of Jesus (daughter of Jarius, young man of Nain, Lazarus). Quite apart from the historical credibility of such ancient accounts (Mark, for instance, has nothing about a sensational raising of Lazarus from the dead), what is meant by the raising of Jesus is just not the revival of a corpse. Even in Luke's account Jesus did not simply return to biological earthly life, in order - like those raised from the dead - to die again. No, according to the New Testament conception, he has the final frontier of death definitively behind him. He has entered into a wholly different, imperishable, eternal, "heavenly" life: into the life of God, for which - as we have seen - very diverse formulas and ideas were used in the New Testament.
That, alone, shows your mocking is way off the mark.
He goes on:
Not a continuation of this life in space and time. Even to speak of life "after" death is misleading; eternity is not characterized by "before " and "after". It means a new life which escapes the dimensions of space and time, a life within God's invisible, imperishable, incomprehensible domain. It is not simply an endless "further"' "further life,'" "carrying on further," "going on further." But it is something definitively "new"; new creation, new birth, new man and new world. That which finally breaks through the return of the eternal sameness of "dying and coming to be." What is meant is to be definitively with God and so to have definitive life.
So, you miss that too, as so many people of fashion such as George Bernard Shaw did. I think it's typical of the affluent, the fashionable, the witty, the clever, those very impressed with their intellects (quite often more than those who know them), the merely and accidentally fortunate, that they can't begin to conceive of anything as heaven except in terms of the easy, pleasant life they have, just as they can't possibly conceive of the lives of those who aren't privileged as they are on Earth, in the here and now. The witty, then fashionably esteemed Woody Allen when asked if he'd like to live on his work quipping " No, I'd like to live on in my apartment," is the perfect example of that. Even those who became affluent, often through the attainment for the first time in their families of elite educational advantage seem to imbibe a drug of forgetfulness in regard to the lives of those they leave behind. Maybe that is part of the ritual of receiving such an education or, rather, it is what drives them to obtain one, so often most useful for finding ways to live off of other peoples' labors, toil and misery. So often it's the pleasures of the intellectual life, replacing material accumulations, the presumed esteem that that gets someone, which is the lotus juice. *
Later in the same section Hans Kung says addresses one of the more common, "enlightenment" interpretations of this in a way that is apropos to the context of Lent and Easter:
From this negative and positive definition it follows that death and resurrection form a differentiated unity. If we want to interpret the New Testament testimonies in a way that does not run counter to their intentions, we may not simply make the resurrection into an interpretative device, a means by which faith expresses the meaning of the cross.
Resurrection means dying into God; death and resurrection are most closely connected. Resurrection occurs with death, in death, from death. This is brought out most clearly in early pre-Pauline hymns in which Jesus' exaultation seems to follow immediately on the crucifixion. And in John's Gospel especially Jesus' "exaltation" means both his crucifixion and his "glorification" and both from the one return to the Father. But in the rest of the New Testament the exaltation comes after the humiliation of the cross.
"Dying into God" is not something to be taken for granted, not a natural development, not a desideratum of human nature to be fulfilled at all costs. Death and resurrection must be seen as distinct, not necessarily in time but objectively. This is also emphasized by the ancient presumably less historical than theological reference: "on the third day he rose again," "third" being not a date in the calendar but a salvation date for a day of salvation, Death is man's affair, resurrection can only be God's. Man is taken up, called, brought home, and therefore finally accepted, saved, by God into himself as the incomprehensible, comprehensive ultimate in death or - better - from death as an event in itself, rooted in God's act and fidelity. It is the hidden unimaginable act of the Creator, of him who calls into existence the things that are not. And therefore - through not a supernatural "intervention" contrary to the laws of nature - it is a genuine gift and a true miracle.
I know you won't like it and will probably not understand what those sentences mean- Kung is hard but he isn't impossible to understand - that takes preparation that Kung provides in that long book but for that belief any argument from "the laws of physics" is, logically and ultimately, irrelevant. I strongly suspect that you don't, actually, have any real understanding of "the laws of physics." You don't bring it up but I've found that when atheists bring up the Second Law of Thermodynamics in this instance, whenever I've pressed them on it, it turns out they knew no more about it than the phrase, "it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics" as learned, not from a physics textbook, but from some atheist screed. I've found that popular atheism consists mainly in the rote memorization and haphazard flinging around of such phrases in contexts that make them meaningless.
* I think that that's often true in secular political "leftist" politics in which even a pantomime of charity enters into it even as I'm certain of that for the right wing form of virtue and charity that is more an "exercise in pragmatic idealism" than charity. I think that's why it's so remarkable how easily such leftists can accept the most appalling of depravity involving many murders when it's done "for the greater good," especially easy when that virtuous rigor is conducted half a world away, in ways that never impinge on the material comfort and comfortable esteem of the lefty intellectuals. I'll have something to say about that in relation to Sartre and Camus soon.
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