Re: Where are the dear departed? (was Re: [asa] Sin, animals, and salvation)

Hi Gordon,

You wrote:
> Murray,
>
> What is your opinion as to where Moses and Elijah came from to appear
> with Jesus at His transfiguration?
>
> Gordon Brown (ASA member)

One might ask the same question with respects to Samuel's appearance to Saul in 1 Sam 28, not so?

In response, I'll simply point out once again that wherever they came from it seems clear that it isn't a place within our space-time coordinate system. At least, I don't know that anybody wants to locate the place where they come from with respects to (say) a latitude, longitude, and distance above or below the earth's surface.

But if we're NOT locating this place within our spacial coordinate system, then I simply don't know how to speak of a relation between their and our TEMPORAL coordinate system.

To me there's simply no way to correlate what we speak of as the "spiritual realm" (heaven / hell) in temporal terms unless we also do so in spatial terms - i.e. unless we affirm something like the ancient "multi decker universe" or some modified version of the same.

At the end of the day, one simply can't ask "where do these folk come from?" without also asking "WHEN do they come from?".

And on neither question can I provide much of an answer except to say "from the spiritual realm" - whose spatial and temporal coordinates, I hasten to add, don't seem to me to stand in any definable relation to our own.

As a very tentative analogy, I'd offer here the problem of demonstrating the existence of multiple universes. One might have very good reason to assert their existence but if there are beings who inhabit them, then there's simply no way of relating their reality to ours. I'm not saying that heaven / hell are simply other universes - I think the idea of God dwelling in a spatial coordinate system is maybe a bit wrong-headed for that - just that I see some level of analogy here. Particularly, I'm thinking that just as other hypothetical universes are dislocated from ours in respects of both space AND time - so an analogous sort of "space-time dislocation" might exist in respects of the heavenly and the earthly perspectives.

The real bottom line is this: given that space-time coordinates are (as I understand) inexorably linked I don't think we can choose which elements of space-time we reject and which we retain. Particularly when the element that we seem to be retaining (a common temporal coordinate system) seems to be based on a questionable concept of Newtonian time.

I'll only restate my quandary: that IF Elijah, Moses, Samuel and whoever else (the saints raised at the resurrection of Jesus perhaps - Matt 27:52-53) appear to us from heaven then I still don't grasp how this relates to a FUTURE resurrection and judgment.

So to give SOME sort of answer to your question: where do I think Moses and Elijah come from? Well I'd suggest that Jesus' words in Matthew 22:31-32 might give an insight into how intractable this question might be. Note, first, that Jesus is speaking concerning the resurrection of the dead. Yet despite making reference to a future event the central point is that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are NOT dead, but living. The simplest explanation of this is that they have ALREADY been resurrected - which ONLY makes sense if one allows that the temporal relations between their experience and ours are utterly fantastic and don't allow us to relate their experience of time with ours. In that context, I'd offer the very tentative suggestion that Moses and Elijah are not just translated from "there" to "here" but from "then" to "now" to appear with Jesus on the mountain.

And thinking of it, perhaps I might say the same about the thief on the cross and Paul (indeed ALL the departed) - at death we are not only translated from "here" to "there" but also from "now" to "then". Certainly, if death removes them from our spatial coordinate framework (it's not literally "up" to heaven, remember), then I can't see how our temporal coordinate framework can be used as a frame of reference either. If they're not anyWHERE relative to "here" then they're not anyTIME relative to "now" - or so it appears to me.

I await comment by the physicists amongst us with not a little trepidation.

Blessings,
Murray

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Received on Fri Nov 21 23:37:13 2008