Resurrection Discussion for March

There is another preparatory paper for the next St Mary's Barton-on-Humber In Depth Group. I shall just hand this to the presenter. We are looking at resurrection for the second time, in a meeting brought forward. My first paper examined issues of history, and this one examines issues of objectivity, subjectivity and postmodernity.

It can be found at http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/relthink/indepthresurrosp.html

Or go via the Pluralist Website to Learning - Religion - Anglican (scroll down for St Mary's) and the March 2008 In Depth Group Paper.

Resurrection shares the Star Trek problem introduced in the first paper. It is that when the captain and crew enter the transporter to be energised, they are annihilated as they go into energy. They sacrifice themselves. The energy reconstitutes as material elsewhere according to a perfectly scanned pattern, and therefore although the people on the destination planet or other ship remember the time they entered the transporter, they are only copies of those who went in. They also have to annihilate themselves in order for copies to get back.

In fact they don't - like the holodeck they can be copied without being annihilated. The only function of annihilation is to stop a multiplicity of instant clones.

The same is true of a crucified Jesus, if the Christ that is the transformed body is continuous with the Jesus who died. The Jesus who died knows no more - he is truly dead. The one resurrected if continuous with the one who died may have memories of the Jesus who lived, but they go only backwards. He is like a copy, if a transformed one. According to objective bodily resurrection belief.

There is a way to bridge this: read the paper!

Spiritual resurrection can be subjective or objective; bodily resurrection must be objective: but what happens when there is neither objectivity nor subjectivity?