Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers and wouldn’t have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were not saying: “I think he’s still with us in a spiritual sense” or “I think he’s gone to heaven”. All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical and theological nerve.
The historian must explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite His execution (He hadn’t defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape that it did. The only explanation that will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians insisted upon – He really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just reanimated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.
Let’s be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything, more so. When St Paul speaks of a “spiritual” resurrection body, he doesn’t mean “non-material”, like a ghost. “Spiritual” is the sort of Greek word that tells you,not what something is made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God’s life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul, that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect – and in the whole world.
Apostolic proclamation at its best. Too few for our tired fellowship.
We will miss Bishop Tom, instead of which we get….Nick Holtam.
Oh well.
Christ cannot have a physical body, however purified. If he had a physical body, then he would have dimension, would exist in time and space. This would mean that at this moment, he is actually somewhere in the universe. If he is God himself, he cannot be thus limited, can he? Besides, the normal question would be, “Where is he then?” And if he is sitting a the right hand of God., then God himself is some specific Where in the physical universe. This is, in short, nonsense. Larry
Larry. So, to clarify, you believe that Christ is no longer fully God and fully man?
[blockquote]If he is God himself, he cannot be thus limited, can he?[/blockquote]
You imply that God is limited to his own creation, the one we see around us, and the physics that he made to govern it. Recall Thomas’s doubts and Jesus’s proof at the end of John’s Gospel. Recall, also, Jesus’s admonition in Matthew 23:29. Perhaps it’s best to rely on God to fulfil the promise in His way.
Larry, if the resurrected Christ did not have a physical body, then what feet did the women take hold of as they worshipped Him? (Matthew 28:9) Was Jesus lying when He told His terrified disciples “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:39) And where did He put the piece of broiled fish that He took and ate in front of them? (Luke 24:41-43) Did Jesus make an empty boast when, responding to the Pharisees demanding a sign from Him, He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, speaking of the temple of His body? (John 2:18-22)
I expect this kind of unbelief from skeptics, atheists, Muslims, Bible illiterates and revisionists, but not from a professing believer. Maybe God needs to enroll in Larry’s physics course to learn what He can and cannot do according to the natural and supernatural laws He created.
The laws of physics exist because God made them so. He IS the law of physics, so to speak. Of course God is limited by his own creation. He IS it as well, as the creator thereof. Does this mean that God is limited in some derogatory sense? No, obviously not, because what I have cited is not a “limitation” in the sense that there lives a greater and more inclusive possibility – a yet greater deity. Rather, he has an established boundary that is he himself – whatever this boundary is – and he cannot exceed it because the possibility cannot exist. Language fails here because language is simply inadequate to the task.
You cannot make real flesh and blood – like yours and mine – and not have it exist in time and space. This is simply a condition of the universe. Physics may describe it, but it is not man’s science that makes it real. (Incidentally, Paul didn’t think of him as common flesh and blood either.)
Farstrider, you are correct. After his death, he is no longer fully man, for he sits at the right hand of God (whatever that means) and you cannot place the physical in the same existence as the supraphysical.He needed to be fully human because God needed one who was fully human so that other humans could hear and understand and believe. This is no longer necessary. This is hardly rocket science – or rocket theology(?). And it certainly doesn’t alter Christ’s message or his divine gps.
Clearly, he has a physical body but not the one you and I inhabit. We are told that he has been transformed, whatever that means. Did he have feet a human could touch? So it appears, but his feet are not your feet. His point is that he is NOT a ghost, and as usual he chose hyperbole to make it clear. Eating the piece of fish is grandstanding; clearly the fish was not going through his gut, get digested, and then come out as stool. Or are you telling me that it does? You can’t mean that, can you? If so, all I can do is burst out laughing.
You people are all suffering from a too ardent literalism. Christ almost NEVER spoke literally because he knew, presumably, that human language was not sufficient for the task and because his listeners weren’t up to the task either. How he was transformed (or transfigured) you cannot know and neither can I, but transformed (or transfigured) he was, and it was a process. Remember he tells Mary not to touch him because he is not “fully real” yet. What does THAT mean? Here you can see the process of transformation actually going on, can’t you?
When Thomas touches his wounds, you want a nice simple answer: His flesh is unchanged from that which you inhabit. That cannot be, and you are unwilling to say, “I don’t know what he was” but cheer up, you will know in time. Larry
Larry, then I don’t get the point of your original post at #3. Wright said it was a different sort of body than we have, but that it was certainly physical in some sense. As he has written elsewhere we do not know exactly what this means but we do have clues (He could be touched by Thomas, He still bore the scars from the Cross, He could eat fish on the beach, but He could also appear and disappear as on the road to Emmaus and pass through locked doors to appear before the disciples). John’s Gospel was intended precisely to make that point and to combat the Gnostic idea that Christ had just been spirit from the get go. What fascinates me is that you accuse the others of literalism when you yourself take a very limited view of physics. I for one do believe that Christ still has a physical body in some sense, some where, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be in this dimension. If anything modern quantum physics leaves all sorts of room for when and where a physical body of our Lord could still exist. It’s not nonsense, it’s the linchpin of an orthodox Christian understanding of the Resurrection. Because if He was just spirit then the Resurrection had no real meaning. And if not spirit, then there had to have been some physicality.
No, I fundamentally believe that He was physical in some sense and that His physical body does still exist, it is why we used the present tense yesterday when we said “Christ is risen”. We didn’t say “Christ was risen” or “Christ rose”. Christ is in the present tense, and same hands that Thomas touched still exist today, and we will touch them ourselves someday. But if light can be both a particle and a wave, and if quarks can appear and disappear, it incredibly conceivable that Christ’s Resurrection body is more physical in a physics sense than anything we now imagine. But it certainly isn’t nonsense to suggest that it is physical in some way. It’s why the Feast of the Ascension is so important. He didn’t just vaporize, and He certainly didn’t die again, He was taken up in all His physicality back into Heaven. To suggest otherwise seems to me to be flirting with Gnostic dualism. Or am I missing something?
Good points, Alta Californian. To those I will add:
1. Not only was Jesus taken “up” in His glorified physical body to “Heaven” (John 17:5 “And now, glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I had with THee before the world was.”), but at the Ascension, two angels (men in white clothing) told the disciples, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11) OK, Larry, where has Jesus parked His physical body to take it on again before He returns? If He no longer has a physical body, at what point after He disappeard from sight did it somehow vanish or transform to something immaterial?
2. You seem to be drawing a distinction without a difference between our use of “physical” and your use of “physical” regarding Jesus’ resurrection body. None of us ever stated or implied that His resurrection bady was like our mortal bodies. All we are asserting is that the resurrection body (which we also will have at our resurrection, see Psalm 17:15, 1 John 3:2) obviously had some different properties from our mortal bodies, it was and is and forever now will be, physical and tangible.
3. You write: “Remember he tells Mary not to touch him because he is not “fully real†yet.” You are remembering two things that are not in the text, John 20:17. [i]No[/i] translation I have read reads “I am not fully real yet”. NASB reads “”I have not yet ascended to the Father”. In what sense could Jesus ever be said to be “not fully real” at any point of time or eternity? Also, Jesus did not tell Mary not to touch Him. Look at the parallel passage in Matthew 28, especially v.10. He tells the women after they took hold of His feet (touched Him!) and worshipped Him, “Do not be afraid; go and take word to My brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they shall see Me”. In both the passages, Jesus is not scolding Mary but reassuring her that He is real, He has risen bodily, He will not vanish like a puff of smoke if she doesn’t cling to Him. He then reminds her (them) to tell the other disciples that they have seen Him alive and to meet Him in Galilee, as He had prophesied. (Matthew 26:32 “But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.”)
The continuing permanent humanity of Christ is one of the most important doctrines of Christian faith. Christ did not become incarnate to save our “souls.” He became incarnate (and remains so, for all time) to save us–in our complete humanity. Christ was mediator between God and humanity not only during the thirty-some years of his earthly life, but is still the one and only mediator between God and humanity because he continues to be fully God and fully human. We do not approach the naked God, but approach the Father only as we participate in the vicarious and risen humanity of his Son.
Hi Larry,
Sorry I haven’t been able to respond until now. Having said that, the responses given above would echo my own. If Christ is not fully man, (even now,) we have not been saved, we are not being saved, and we will not be saved. Christ is not just God the Son, he is the last Adam– the head of a new humanity. Humanity’s history has been recapitulated in him. This means (at least) two things:
1) Looking back to our original commission to rule over the created order, Christ has taken that rule up himself, having overcome sin, death and hell on our behalf.
2) Looking towards God’s original intent for humanity (not yet present in the original created order), Christ has brought humanity into union with God. In a sense, God and man were reconciled to God in the incarnation, although for that reconciliation to extend to us all, Christ had to die and rise again (as one who is still fully man).
No one is saying that the body in which Christ raised is limited in the same way that his pre-resurrection body was; there are clear differences between the two. But there is still a one-to-one correspondence between the body that was sown and the body that was raised.
This isn’t a wooden literalism– it reflects the faith of the Church throughout the ages. To quote one of my fellow priests, from a recent series on the Eucharist, “the incarnation wasn’t a short-term missions trip.” A human being now fully shares in the life of the Trinity. And because he does, so can we.
Larry, I understand your desire to reduce the Incarnation to something simple, rational, and in accord with known physics. But, by definition, the Incarnation is a Mystery–and not just any mystery, but the central Mystery of the Christian faith. The Resurrection of the Body is a central feature of the Incarnation, and more than that, is the entire point of the Incarnation.
To be a Christian is to accept on faith certain Mysteries, the Incarnation and the Resurrection are of a piece along with the Trinity and Creation, the Church, the Sacraments, etc.
To deny these mysteries is to cease to be a Christian. To deny any one of them in isolation is to be a heretic.
I pray that you come to have a full Easter faith, without which there is no salvation.
[b][i]Larry Morse[/i][/b],
You write: [blockquote]Christ cannot have a physical body, however purified. If he had a physical body, then he would have dimension, would exist in time and space.[/blockquote] and [blockquote]The laws of physics exist because God made them so. He IS the law of physics, so to speak.[/blockquote] I think you need to read [i]The Physics of Christianity[/i] by Tulane University Professor (joint Math and Physics) Frank Tipler before you continue making authoritative categorical assertions about God, Physics, space, time, [i]etc.[/i] You might learn that your certitudes are not certainties, by any stretch of the imagination. This comment is not meant as a putdown, but rather is offered in the hope that you might come to understand just how limited your understanding is (as I learned in reading his book that mine was, and I’m an MS-level graduate in Physics) by doing so. He is a practicing Christian (not sure which denomination), and the book is a reasonably accessible work for those of us who are not mathematical physicists working in quantum mechanics.
You can also find more info on his ideas online, including at his [url=http://129.81.170.14/~tipler/]personal website[/url].
[i]Pax et bonum[/i],
Keith Töpfer
It is a terrible shame that this is being buried in the archives. There is so much more to say, es[. to the literalists. Notice that no one replied to my question about Christ eating a fish and the results thereof.
This really is too bad. Larry
Hi Larry,
Notice the amount of text that has been entered in response to your two posts. I wouldn’t call it “buried” just yet. I gather that others have assumed (as I have) that your question was answered:
1) the body that is raised is not like the body that is sown.
2) we are dealing with mystery.
In either case, the question of digestion processes of a resurrected body hardly provide a knock-out blow to the plain teaching of Scripture and the teaching of the Church down the ages. You write, “literalists” as if that reading is unusual. In fact it is Catholic (in the broadest sense of the term). Even the most neo-platonic of the Church fathers proclaimed that Christ was raised bodily from the grave.
As an addendum, read [i]On the Soul and Resurrection[/i], by Gregory of Nyssa for an example of the Cappadocians’ faithfulness to the doctrine of physical resurrection.
Father J: The resurrection is indeed a mystery, but the trinity, creation, the church, the sacraments, are anything but mysteries. What’s mysterious about the trinity.? In fact, it is a rational solution if
God’s intention was to open communication with the Jews, esp. the lost sheep of Israel, in a way that Jews could understand. Where’s the mystery? Creation’s very beginnings are not yet known, but they will be, as evolution is now reasonably well understood A it was not 100 years ago. The church’s growth could hardly be more obvious, less Mystery-hidden, given its rapid spread, nor is the spread itself mysterious. If you feed people miracles and tell that that the maker thereof has shown a way for people to get what they have always wanted – to live forever in a trouble free world – where’s the mystery?
This is no more mysterious than the spread of Mithras and the Roman army.
I’m game for a real mystery – e.g., the resurrection – but I see no need to become a gull because of a passion for the Unknown.
And we DO need time and space to take up The Physics of Christianity.
Well, farstrider, how DO you deal with eating a fish – and a literal reading? And wounds that you can touch – so he was raised bodily with his injuries in place? And then, what of those who have been cremated or dissolved in the sea?
but you know, there are other options in the “raised bodily” business to the common notions. Larry
Larry, if the resurrected Jesus’ physical body could manifest to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, take bread in His fingers and break it and vanish in the breaking (you didn’t ask if the bread hit the table and rolled onto the floor), and then manifest inside a locked room, can you allow for that same glorified, immortal, physical body following a rather different physics than the current set of observed laws that you are insisting will apply in the new creation? Might that new body find it a trifle to dispose/consume/atomize/transform a piece of broiled fish directly into more of itself without any waste, or make it manifest somewhere else as something else entirely, such as air?
And what of those who have been cremated or dissolved in the sea or simply decomposed naturally so that not even their bones can be found? Is it too difficult for God, whose eyes behold our unformed substance, who has held the perfect blueprint for each of us in His mind for all eternity, since before He spoke light into shining or made the first speck of dust, to reshape us, now glorified and incorruptible and immortal, out of the transformed elements of the redeemed creation at our resurrection? After all, Peter writes that “the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up…the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat” (2 Peter 3:10, 12). But this is not annihilation, but instead transformation. Revelation 20:11 and 21:1 describe the same removal of the corrupted physical order and its replacement by the redeemed, transformed new physical order. “And I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. … And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer [i]any[/i] sea.”
Paul also describes the corruption of the current physical order, caused by the curse God placed on it in Genesis 3:17, “Cursed is the ground because of you”, and its redemption and transformation at our resurrection. “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:19-23)
Revelation 21 and 22 describe the new Jerusalem, the eternal city of the redeemed as having physical reality, though transformed past our current physical reality. Some aspects of the description may be metaphor, but John confirms that much of it is literal in Revelation 21:16-17. “And the city is laid out as a square, and its length is as great as the width; and he measured the city with the rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal. And he measured its wall, seventy-two yards, [b][i]according to[/i] human measurements, which are [i]also[/i] angelic [i]measurements[/i][/b]. (bolding mine for emphasis, italics NASB to indicate words inserted for clarity) Why would angelic measurements be necessary for something immaterial? And why does John point out that the human and angelic measurements are the same, if not to describe a transformed but physical reality?
Larry, you write, “If you feed people miracles and tell that that the maker thereof has shown a way for people to get what they have always wanted – to live forever in a trouble free world – where’s the mystery?” Are you implying the Apostles fabricated the accounts of miracles, including Jesus’ resurrcetion? I pray not. If so, then be a man, stand up for your assertions openly, throw the entire Bible in the trash as a pious fraud, deny the cross’ sacrifice and the empty tomb, and walk away honestly from the faith which was given once for all to the saints.
Larry, we read the Bible with an awareness of genre, purpose, and as a unified whole whose unity comes from the Holy Spirit, who inspired men of old to speak from God. We do not read with the wooden literalism that would have God as a big chicken because we shelter under His wings, or because Jesus wept over Jerusalem, who refused His longing to gather her as a hen gathers her brood. We believe the Bible literally means what its human authors were literally trying to say, whether through poem, metaphor, or literal description. Beware trying to spiritualize and metaphorize it [i]all[/i] down to our or your level of understanding.
So Trinity is not mysterious, you have plumbed its depths, it is merly “a rational sloution” rather than an essential and eternal aspect of God’s being that He revealed to us? You would do well to read the Athanasian Creed. God did not become Trinity at some point to get through to Jewish heads or our heads. If that was His reason, it didn’t work out very well, because Jesus’ assertion of divinity and identification as one with and equal to the Father, to YWHW, was the Pharisees’ stated reason for condemning Him to death. There are not three Christian gods, as the Muslims claim. The persons of the Trinity are not each 1/3 God. Jesus as true God did not die; Jesus as true man died, full-stop, assume room temperature, medically certifiable death. Who raised Jesus from the dead? In different places in Scripture it is phrased “the Father raised Him”, “the Holy Spirit raised Him” and “Jesus rose”? Which one and only one is it, Larry? All 3 are true simultaneously and without contradiction. No, I do not “comprehend” it, but God graciously gives us by faith to “apprehend” as much as we are able, enough to save us. By the way, there is a near explicit statement of the Trinity in the OT. Isaiah 48:15-16 “I, even I, have spoken; indeed I have called him, I have brought him, and He will make his ways successful. Come near to Me, listen to this: From the first I have not spoken in secret, from the time it took place, I was there, and now the Lord GOD has sent Me, and His Spirit.”
Larry, I pray the LORD God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, open your eyes and heart to all the things about Jesus in the Scriptures and to confess the bodily risen, alive forevermore Lord Jesus Christ as did Thomas and all the Apostles and all true disciples then, and now, and even to the end of the age.
[blockquote]Well, farstrider, how DO you deal with eating a fish – and a literal reading?[/blockquote]
The difference between you an me, Larry, is I’m not particularly interested or troubled with the eating of the fish. I have already said, the resurrection body is a different kind of body– a glorified body. It is mystery. Milton presents some possibilities that you can consider if you wish…
I find it interesting, though, that you refuse to accept the overwhelming testimony of Scripture and the Church (both of which are in perfect harmony regarding the bodily resurrection), because you don’t understand the physics of it all.
Between all of us I am sure we could come up with a number of plausible theories. But that’s all they could ever be: theories. God hasn’t seen fit to explain the physics of the new creation to us. He [i]has[/i] seen fit to proclaim the bodily resurrection of Christ and the coming resurrection of all those who belong to him. That is an article of faith. It’s something we are expected to believe whether we understand it or not.
I am rather surprised at the certainty with which people on this thread express their knowledge on how the human and divine aspects of the risen and ascended Christ work and interact. I think a bit more humility and acceptance that we may not understand it all, or perhaps be able to understand it all would be in order, and consequently rather more respect for one another’s views on the subject and less scorn would be more appropriate.
I also consider that comments to other Christians such as:
“To deny these mysteries is to cease to be a Christian. To deny any one of them in isolation is to be a heretic.”
are completely inappropriate.
Pageantmaster (#21)
It seems to me, rather, that people have been quite careful in avoiding concrete statements as to “how the human and divine aspects of the risen and ascended Christ work and interact.” The predominant theme has been the mystery of the resurrection.
What people have been firm on is that “the human and divine aspects” are both present in Christ– that he remains, as we say, fully God and fully man.
#23 farstrider+
It seems to me that all we need to know is that the Lamb remains worthy. The rest and how it works, is not the point, and I don’t think the discussion has reflected that. Speculation is fine, but I think it is wrong for it to become personal, which from my reading of this thread it has become. In some senses the human and the divine always interact, because we were made in His image. In Christ, one crucial aspect of humanity is missing, mortality, but of course that, we believe, was in any event a consequence of The Fall. It is interesting to speculate on fish, but none of us really know, and are such things necessary for us to be believed as essential for salvation? No, so a little gentleness with one another and our speculations would perhaps be appropriate.
[blockquote]It is interesting to speculate on fish, but none of us really know, and are such things necessary for us to be believed as essential for salvation?[/blockquote]
I am in complete agreement here. The question of fish is neither here nor there– except that Scripture tells us Jesus ate it. More, Scripture says he ate it to demonstrate that it was he, in the flesh, and not his ghost.
This latter point, I would argue, is vitally important. The precise physical nature of the resurrection body is unknown to us, and it would be foolish to debate the physics as though it were a salvific issue.
The fact that Christ was raised bodily, however, is central to the Christian faith. It is not adiaphora.
Our measure of the discussion above is obviously different, but I don’t see the above posts (including those made by others) as being particularly inappropriate– vigorous, yes, but not inappropriate.
#25 farstrider+
[blockquote]The question of fish is neither here nor there—except that Scripture tells us Jesus ate it. More, Scripture says he ate it to demonstrate that it was he, in the flesh, and not his ghost.[/blockquote]
We know that the resurrected body was human because of the fish incident, and also because of Thomas testing it out. We also know that something else was going on because Jesus initially gave instructions that he was not to be touched. I have not given it any thought before but I do not know whether God born as man continued or was further transformed on ascension into heaven. Is he in the same state as he was on Earth? I have no idea, or whether he eats or breathes oxygen or anything else. I also have no idea whether it is even appropriate to talk of Christ in heaven, in these human terms. I know He will come again in glory and every eye will see him, but again I have no idea how, or how it works, nor in my view does it matter for me to know. How do the divine and human aspects interact on the ascension and the return? Do they change? Again I have no idea.
Christ’s bodily resurrection is as you say not adiaphora, but it seems to me that as to the rest, Larry is perfectly entitled to speculate on this subject without being accused of not being Christian or told he is a heretic, which goes rather further than ‘vigorous’ discussion.
Pageantmaster: I agree with most everything you’ve written in your last post. If you read through the above posts, I think you’ll see that the reaction to Larry’s post had nothing to do with broad speculations. My reaction (and, as far as I can see, everyone else’s reactions) revolves around one key point:
1) Larry wrote: [i]Farstrider, you are correct. After his death, he is no longer fully man[/i]
If Larry simply said, “I haven’t thought about this very much,” we may have had a very different discussion. In fact, he began with the accusation that the idea of Christ’s continued humanity (and yes, his physicality, whatever that means here)– a point of faith for the Church for some 2000 years– is nonsense.
#27 farstrider+
Larry will have to explain what he meant by “after his death, he is no longer fully man”. I am not sure I would have expressed things that way. As far as I am concerned on resurrection he was fully human, but not as he was. For one thing, initially people did not recognise him at first, and there were the physical signs of a crucified man, with holes in hands and his side, which normally would not go along with his form before, and perhaps would preclude life, depending on the damage done. There were processes of transformation, perhaps regeneration going on, but we really don’t know. He was man, but perhaps not as we have known it. I think Larry picks up on that and he follows that on into what might be happening in heaven, but I am not sure what conclusion he reaches, but it seems to me that this is a valid enquiry for the “Physics of Christianity” as he puts it, although I remain unconvinced that terrestrial physics is a concept with which to bind God’s actions. I think this speculation is interesting and should not be closed down too quickly.
I think one interesting speculation for example is what does it mean when we are told that we are “made in God’s image”? What might that tell us about God, and is it perhaps an answer to those who say we cannot understand what God is like, and to some extent, what we are like?
[b] [i]Pageantmaster[/i][/b],
It was I who referred to the book [i]The Physics of Christianity[/i], although Larry Morse did repeat it in his subsequent comment. The propositions or possibilities discussed in the book do not in any way “bind God’s actions,” as you state the issue. Rather, they point to phenomena that are, according to the book’s author, fully consistent with Feynman’s “standard model” of quantum mechanics, which the author states repeatedly is the only model which is consistent with all of the experimental results yet obtained by researchers in the field. [b]If Tipler is correct[/b] in those assertions, then there exist mechanisms accessible to God under the Laws of Physics in His creation (in which we reside) by which He can be outside of space and time and yet present in it, and could do such things as enter a closed room. The latter is related to an observed phemonemon in particle physics described as [i]quantum tunnelling[/i]. To God’s creatures, this would always appear to us as an impossible and miraculous event, but to the author of the physical universe (or, possibly multiverses) they are not. I am not academically qualified to render any sort of judgment on Tipler’s ideas, but I find the absence of criticism of the non-theological assertions in the general literature suggestive that he is onto something.
My reason for even mentioning it was the apparent ignorance of these views present in Mr. Morse’s categorical statements about what God might and might not be able to do, which statements I believed to evince an unwarranted certitude, unwarranted because there is at least one highly respected quantum physicist who has shown plausible evidence from within his academic discipline for God’s ability to accomplish just those sorts of (seemingly) physically impossible feats.
[i]Pax et bonum[/i],
Keith Töpfer