A New Earth

*Foreword* Before starting this post, let me shamelessly plug the Philopolis Guelph festival of philosophy, taking place October 12–14, 2012. It's a festival that promotes public discourse on philosophy, especially looking to elucidate the impact of philosophical ideas on other domains of questions (including those in other academic fields), much like this very blog. We're currently looking for people to host activities, which basically means (in its simplest form) discussing ideas just the way I do here, except doing so viva voce along with a whole bunch of other people who are also interested, though we also encourage panel discussions, roundtables, etc. It's a lot of fun, and I sincerely hope that some of you will take the time to explore our website, with submission form. If you're wondering what kinds of ideas have been presented in the past, here's the schedule from our event in March, which will give you full descriptions of the activities if you click on them.

So, on to this week's post. In the last couple of weeks, I've discussed some ideas about rites, as well as a difference that I see between covenants in the Old Testament and in the New. In both of those posts, I believe, I've mentioned my wariness of Christianity as a metaphysical thesis. What I'm referring to as the "metaphysical thesis" of Christianity is the straightforward and (what some would call) the "obvious" reading of Christianity. I'd like to flag the fact that there are numerous apparent contradictions in the Bible, and so no reading is obvious. However, let's jump right in and discuss a little bit of what this obvious reading entails.

As I mentioned in my last post, I see the covenant of Christ as demanding of us that we love those around us, that we love them selflessly. As Kant put it, we should always be treating our fellow men (and women, though Kant definitely did not put it that way) as ends unto themselves, and never strictly as a means. So stealing is wrong because you are not respecting the inherent dignity and worth of a fellow person, you are disrespecting their right to property by taking that which is theirs and making it your own. We are never supposed to put ourselves before others in this way, we are always supposed to be selfless. Note here that the opposite of "selfless" is "selfish," not "self-interested." We can do things in our own interests, certainly; we just cannot put our interests before those of others. That's in Kant, too, as he says that we cannot use people strictly as a means to an end. We must respect them as an end unto themselves, but that does not prohibit us from also using them as a means to an end. This qualification is important, because it makes acceptable working towards mutual benefit.

However, in both Kantian and Christian doctrine (Kant himself was a devout Christian, so the congruence is not surprising), it's important not only that the outcome be mutually beneficial, but that the intention be to bring about mutual benefit. This is a pretty stringent condition to put on people's behaviour. In fact, the Bible claims that no one is up to this standard; humanity is inherently fallible, and strong as one's will may be, it is never strong enough to overcome all temptation all the time. Everyone lapses. And even if you don't lapse personally, you are a descendant of Adam and Eve: thus, you are stained with their original sin, which was to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. (The most compelling and interesting interpretation I see for that story: it's a symbolic representation of the dawn of rationality in humankind.)

So here we are, a bunch of sinners, an inherently weak lot of folks who are generally pretty good to each other but lapse from time to time. How, then, could we possibly fulfill our end of the bargain? How can we hope to achieve this impossible feat? The achievement of the ideal in reality is impossible in principle, as discussed in the comments section of my post about the Lord's Prayer. However, the New Testament speaks of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God conceived by the Virgin Mary, who lived an entire human life without lapse. This Godman is the paradox: he is the ideal instantiated, he is the perfect realized, he is the impossible achieved. And his sacrifice was to die to bridge the gap between unwaveringly loving our neighbours as ourselves, on the one hand, and on the other hand and our best, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to do so. His death is the symbolic taking on of the burden of our imperfection. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

We've got a pretty simple formula here. First, do your very best to treat everyone equitably. Second, recognize that ultimately your efforts will be insufficient, no matter how much you try. Third, chase after that ideal anyway, fully aware of the paradox, knowing that the sacrifice of Christ makes up the gap. That's our end of the bargain; that's our part of the covenant fulfilled. God's end of the agreement is that whosoever doeth that shall have everlasting life.

This is where the "straightforward" metaphysical reading starts to get murky for me. What exactly does that "everlasting life" entail? Many people take it literally, thinking that at the Second Coming of Christ, all the good Christians will be raised from the dead. This causes some serious issues for notions of personal identity, as treated quite comprehensively by Mark Johnston in his book Surviving Death. Johnston makes some compelling arguments that even raising "the same" body is extremely problematic. What happens to all the bodies that have decomposed, etc? There are serious problems trying to give a criterion in virtue of which it is still "the same" body, or "the same" person.

Johnston worries that these problems lead to darker consequences. Specifically, he worries that if death is the great leveler, then there's nothing to make being good worthwhile. If bad people get all the good stuff in life, and no one gets anything after life, then the value of the Good itself is seriously in jeopardy.

Johnston doesn't leave the Good in the lurch, though. He does offer us a way forward. To sum up very briefly, Johnston makes an important distinction between the self (me) and the person (David Brooke Struck, DBS for short). Let me illustrate with a thought experiment. Suppose I wake up one morning, look around me, see my house being relatively normal, etc. But as I pass by the mirror, I realise that I have a different body than I did yesterday. Instead of my good old normal body, I have some nice fit body. I look down and my hands are different, my stomach is flat, etc. The idea in imagining these things is that we can dissociate the field of consciousness, i.e.: that arena or field of presence in which everything in our lives is presented to us, and the person who is found at the centre of that arena out from whom that field of presence emanates. Johnston calls the field "the self" (i.e.: me), and "the person" is what's found at the middle of that field (i.e.: DBS, in my case).

The next question is to ask what we're concerned with when we talk about resurrection. Am I concerned that DBS be resurrected, or that this field of consciousness be resurrected? The body swap case that I just outlined seems to suggest that I'm concerned about the arena of presence and not the person. For instance, I'd be really worried if I, in the new body, were going to undergo some kind of very painful procedure, whereas I would have a different kind of concern if someone newly inhabiting the DBS body were going to undergo such a procedure. That latter kind of concern might be similar to the concern you'd feel if a friend were going to experience a bunch of pain (yes, bunches are the appropriate SI unit for measuring pain), but it's not self concern, and that's what at issue here. So says Johnston.

Johnston then goes on to suggest, through some rather complex arguments regarding "merely intentional objects," is that this self, this arena of presence, is actually determined by concern for the future. As in, it exists so long as the things that it concerns itself with exists. So if all you're interested in is the small and vulgar pleasures (to borrow a phrase from de Tocqueville) of Earth-bound life, then when those pleasures cease, life comes to an end. It's only going so long as the going's good, and when that good is entirely wrapped up in the self, it dies when you do. However, for the virtuous folks that value the benefit of other individuals equally, Johnston suggests that you live on (literally remain conscious) so long as other people are around to be concerned about. Major conclusion at the end of the day: Johnson tries to prove that bodily death is the end of the line for the self-centred, but for the selfless bodily death is only another step along the way for a consciousness that persists when the body perishes, and specifically because concern for the good of others does not end when your body does.

I agree with Johnston that there are problems trying to bring back "the same" body. I also agree that our concern follows the arena of presence rather than the person, as the body-swap-and-painful-procedure thought experiment was supposed to show. However, I don't agree that these things can be separated. My response here is to say that we can't actually imagine swapping bodies. We can imagine looking in the mirror and seeing a body that we don't recognize, but that's not the same thing as imagining ourselves living in another body. To illustrate the point, let me use an example (not a thought experiment). In my mother's house, I basically never wear my shoes. No one does, on pain of death by flaming bamboo shoots under the finger nails. However, every once in a while, I get my shoes on as I'm ready to jump out the door, and I realize that I've forgotten my keys on the kitchen table. Rather than laboriously untie my shoes, take four steps into the kitchen and four steps out only to put my shoes back on again, I'll sneak into the kitchen incognito with my shoes on. Strangely enough, the whole room looks different from up there. The heels of my shoes add about an inch or so to my height, and the room looks remarkably different from that perspective. Every time, I'm amazed. It's kind of charming to realize every once in a while just how much the particular features of one's body determine what the world looks like, and how seldom one is aware of any of that.

Turning back to my criticism of the thought experiment, I think that we can't actually imagine what life would be like in a radically different body. We would actually need to live in it to see what the world looks like from there. So what are we actually imagining? Simply the world the way it looks to us in our own body, but with another physical body attached to that perspective. Similarly, I argue that our memories and values, that which compose the person that we are, also plays a role in constituting our arena of presence (and actually our bodies, too). So the my body, my memories and values, and my consciousness all condition one another and can't be pulled apart. This means that the identity conditions for bodily resurrection make such a thing unrealistic to expect.

Following Johnston, I'll also want to establish a differentiation between the good and the evil. I want the good people out there to have something that bad people don't have. And it seems possible: for good as well as for bad people, I think that bodily death is the end. Finished. However, for bad people (who I'm defining here as selfish people, not just self-interested remember) what is good in the world is entirely tied up with their interests. So when they die, and they no longer have interests, the Good itself is gone. However, for people who value others for their own sake, treating them as means rather than solely as ends, the Good is not entirely dependent on their own lives. Simply put, death jeopardizes the Good for self-centred people, but it doesn't for people who defined the Good more broadly than their own self-interests.

So the integrity of the Good itself is something that good people gain by not being bad people. That's something. But what about all this resurrection business? What about the New Heaven and the New Earth, the Old Heaven and the Old Earth being passèd away (Revelations 21:1)? My stance is that the resurrection of which we hear so much in the New Testament actually happens within the time of bodily life. I used the example of walking into the kitchen wearing shoes to show the intimate connection between body, world, consciousness, and values. When one grows out of selfishness, that is to say, when one changes one's ideal of the Good, that has repercussions on the whole system. Seeing one's neighbour as one's equal, worthy of all the respect that we pile on ourselves, that drastic change in values (part of the person, e.g.: DBS) results in a change in the way that we see our world, our selves, our body, because all of these things are interrelated. So what is the resurrection? It's the fundamental change in one's world when one sees oneself in the other, recognising a fundamental equality among all persons and peoples. The world will just never be the same after that.

Turning back to some of the points I made in my "new translation" of the Lord's Prayer, these last points allow me to elucidate some of what I said earlier on. The ideal is never fully instantiated in the world, but one's values definitely condition the way in which the world itself is formed for us. Heaven, the ideal way that we think the Earth ought to be, actually conditions Earth, the place where we live out our lives day to day. We are brought into a new world, resurrected, when we drop our selfish values in favour of selfless ones. When the Old Heaven (the ideal of selfishness) passes away, so too must the Old Earth (the way the world appeared to us, as partially constituted by selfishness). The adoption of the New Heaven (the ideal of equality) brings along with it the New Earth (the way the world appears to us, as partially constituted by the value of equality). For those who remain forever selfish, there is only the Old Heaven and the Old Earth, and those come to a close when the curtain closes on the theatre of the mind (i.e.: at the time of bodily death). For those who take up equality instead, the New Heaven and the New Earth outrun one's own self-interest, and so when the body dies and the lights go out, the New Heaven and the New Earth just go right along trucking.

*Postscript* Anyway, now that I've probably got lots of people all riled up, ready to accuse me of heresy, etc, I'll sign off. I hope that you've enjoyed reading it, and that it will stir up some reflection on your part. For my part, writing this has been difficult, mostly because I've tried to make it a manageably readable length. I've tried here to boil down a rather drawn out argument by Johnston, as well as my response, and I hope that I've made myself at least a little bit clear. However, it rests on some pretty heavy philosophical stuff, so this short treatment probably doesn't do it justice. I offer a more lengthy and detailed response in a paper I wrote last year, and I would be happy to send that off to anyone interested. Alternatively, you can just read Johnston's book for yourself; it's actually quite palatable, even to the non-philosopher. If you do, I'd really like for you to read my paper as well, and hopefully send me your feedback.