RE: [asa] Physicalism and Incarnation

At 09:45 AM 3/1/2007, Alexanian, Moorad wrote:
>One must understand what the word "incarnation" means and see if one
>can define it in purely physical terms. If one cannot, then the
>incarnation of Christ is incompatible with physicalism. ~ Moorad

@ For those interested, the commentary at this link touches on that subject:

The Impossible Faith Or, How Not to Start an Ancient Religion -
James Patrick Holding
[snip]
Below I offer a list of 17 factors to be considered -- places where
Christianity "did the wrong thing" in order to be a successful
religion. It is my contention that the only way Christianity did
succeed is because it was a truly revealed faith -- and because it
had the irrefutable witness of the resurrection. I may add more
factors as my research continues. For now, this should be enough to
keep the skeptics busy if they aren't otherwise engaged in such
scholarly pursuits as looking for contradictions between numbers in 1
Kings and 1 Chronicles or digging up obscure and irrelevant pagan
figures who sold snake oil. Veteran readers will note that there is
little new actually reported in this article that is not found
elsewhere on this site; indeed much of what is below is taken
verbatim from other articles -- it is only the application that is new.
[snip]
Factor #3 -- Getting Physical! The Wrong "Resurrection"

As we have shown <http://www.tektonics.org/lp/physrez.html>here, the
resurrection of Jesus, within the context of Judaism, was thought by
Gentiles to be what can be described as "grossly" physical. This in
itself raises a certain problem for Christianity beyond a basic
Jewish mission. We have regularly quoted the dictum of Pheme Perkins:
"Christianity's pagan critics generally viewed resurrection as
misunderstood metempsychosis at best. At worst, it seemed
ridiculous." It may further be noted that the pagan world was awash
with points of view associated with those who thought matter was evil
and at the root of all of man's problems. Platonic thought, as Murray
Harris puts it, supposed that "man's highest good consisted of
emancipation from corporeal defilement. The nakedness of
disembodiment was the ideal state." Physical resurrection was the
last sort of endgame for mankind that you wanted to preach.

Indeed, among the pagans, resurrection was deemed impossible. Wright
in Resurrection of the Son of God quotes Homer's King Priam:
"Lamenting for your dead son will do no good at all. You will be dead
before you bring him back to life." And Aeschylus Eumenides: "Once a
man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is no
resurrection." And so on, with several other quotes denying the
possibility of resurrection. [32-3] Wright even notes that belief in
resurrection was a ground for perseuction: "We should not forget that
when Irenaeus became bishop of Lyons he was replacing the bishop who
had died in a fierce persecution; and that one of the themes of that
persecution was the Christians' tenacious hold on the belief in
bodily resurrection. Details of the martyrdom are found in the letter
from the churches of Vienne and Lyons to those of Asia and Phrygia.
The letter describes how in some cases the torturers burnt the bodies
and scattered the ashes into Rhone, so that no relic of the martyrs
might still be seen on earth. This they did, says the writer, 'as
though they were capable of conquering god, and taking away their
rebirth [palingenesia]'."

Judaism itself would have had its own, lesser difficulty, albeit not
insurmountable: there was no perception of the resurrection of an
individual before the general resurrection at judgment. But again,
this, though weird, could have been overcome -- as long as there was
evidence! Not so easily in the pagan world. We can see well enough
that Paul had to fight the Gnostics, the Platonists, and the ascetics
on these counts. But what makes this especially telling is that a
physical resurrection was completely unnecessary for merely starting
a religion. It would have been enough to say that Jesus' body had
been taken up to heaven, like Moses' or like Elijah's. Indeed this
would have fit (see <http://www.tektonics.org/tsr/tsr914.html>here)
what was expected, and would have been much easier to "sell" to the
Greeks and Romans, for whom the best "evidence" of elevation to
divine rank was apotheosis -- the transport of the soul to the
heavenly realms after death; or else translation while still alive.
So why bother making the road harder? There is only one plausible
answer -- they really had a resurrection to preach.

[snip] Continue here: http://www.tektonics.org/

~ Janice

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Received on Thu Mar 1 10:08:24 2007