What a fantastic image flooded into my mind at the end! You've prompted something terrifying in my mind.
I imagine in the new heaven and earth after that bodily resurrection where the world remains divided between those whose carnal desires have tethered them to a misaligned relation of "breath to dust" and those whose new, recast unities delight in the revelation of God's life in the new earth.
Do the blessed remember the cursed? Do they see them roaming about in the deep carverns and tempestuous waters moaning, and gnashing teeth while the blessed do the work once meant for Adam to start of divinizing creation? Do their high terraces have the view of the rotting fleshing and darkened brows of the cursed ones? Do the blessed weep for them with mercy and love but praise God for his justice and love?
What if I am both a pleasure-seeker and a pain-avoider, while also both too proud and too unfaithful to God, unable and unwilling to ask truthfully for mercy? What hope is there for sinners so depraved?
This is timely, thank you. In thinking about this, I struggle to understand how such a paradigm does not lead one to, even if in anticipation of the bodily resurrection, attempt a gnostical ecstasis from the flesh in its present state, so as not to be tormented later. So far as I understand it, our embodiment would necessarily become a constant threat. As you say, there is deep consolation even in the feeling of the intake of breath or the weight of one’s steps or in the feeling of fair weather. Do these need to be escaped in order for us to prevent ‘phantom-pains’? The soul is created as well, and not by nature immortal, so what makes it inherently spiritual as opposed to the body? I think you answered some of this already, but I’d appreciate it if you had more thoughts.
Thanks once again, Cormac, your articles are always very helpful! God bless and forgive my longwindedness.
What a fantastic image flooded into my mind at the end! You've prompted something terrifying in my mind.
I imagine in the new heaven and earth after that bodily resurrection where the world remains divided between those whose carnal desires have tethered them to a misaligned relation of "breath to dust" and those whose new, recast unities delight in the revelation of God's life in the new earth.
Do the blessed remember the cursed? Do they see them roaming about in the deep carverns and tempestuous waters moaning, and gnashing teeth while the blessed do the work once meant for Adam to start of divinizing creation? Do their high terraces have the view of the rotting fleshing and darkened brows of the cursed ones? Do the blessed weep for them with mercy and love but praise God for his justice and love?
What if I am both a pleasure-seeker and a pain-avoider, while also both too proud and too unfaithful to God, unable and unwilling to ask truthfully for mercy? What hope is there for sinners so depraved?
This is timely, thank you. In thinking about this, I struggle to understand how such a paradigm does not lead one to, even if in anticipation of the bodily resurrection, attempt a gnostical ecstasis from the flesh in its present state, so as not to be tormented later. So far as I understand it, our embodiment would necessarily become a constant threat. As you say, there is deep consolation even in the feeling of the intake of breath or the weight of one’s steps or in the feeling of fair weather. Do these need to be escaped in order for us to prevent ‘phantom-pains’? The soul is created as well, and not by nature immortal, so what makes it inherently spiritual as opposed to the body? I think you answered some of this already, but I’d appreciate it if you had more thoughts.
Thanks once again, Cormac, your articles are always very helpful! God bless and forgive my longwindedness.