William Stoeger: Cosmic Death is Certain
The late William Stoeger, world-class astronomer at Vatican Observatory, noted several possibilities exist for our terrestrial demise: destruction of earth by asteroids and comets, the decline of our sun, and the explosion of a nearby supernova in an article with the daunting title, “Scientific Accounts of Ultimate Catastrophes in Our Life-Bearing Universe.” As Christians we know that our own death is guaranteed, and that is why we hope for resurrection. Even more we are promised that God will not only raise us up at the last day (Job 19:25-27, John 11:24), but that God will create a new heavens and a new earth (Revelation 21).
Walter Kim: Is the Resurrection of Christ Unscientific?
A questioner at an American Association for the Advancement of Science panel on evangelicals and science presented a challenged: the center of the Christian faith, the Resurrection of Jesus, is fundamentally unscientific. And National Association of Evangelicals President Walter Kim answered this way:
“To say that the laws of nature were suspended at a particular moment is not to deny the laws of nature. The actual predication of a miracle is dependent upon a worldview that presumes regularity, scientific exactitude. So, Jesus' resurrection from the dead wouldn't actually be noticeable if people were popping from the dead.” NAE President Walter KimIn fact, Kim continued, the Christian worldview necessarily assumes principles that are necessary for science, he continued.
“The very fact of a miracle is predicated on the notion that the Christian worldview affirms principles that are essential to scientific endeavor, [such as the] regularity of the laws of nature [and the] predictability of the laws of nature. And the fact that Jesus' resurrection contravened those things is in fact predicated on a wider worldview.... But it does introduce the fact that the laws of nature are not the only aspect of reality.” Walter KimThe God who made this world and its natural laws can do greater things than we see in this world now. Because our God is not bound by this world.
John Polkinghorne: Easter and Irruption of Quantum Theory
There may be some analogies to the radical newness of the Easter message, or perhaps hints.
John Polkinghorne has stated that the irruption of this new idea of Jesus’s Resurrection may in fact be like the experience in the 1920s with the newness, and oddness of quantum theory. After describing how the New Testament writers came to terms with Christ as the risen Lord while maintaining a commitment to Jewish monotheism, he writes,
As a pastor, I knew that church members remain unsatisfied with only generalities. In fact, when I have taught this material in adult education classes, the specifics captivate the students. In fact, I have also been asked the practical questions: “What exactly will be the nature of my resurrected body? Will my father recognize me in heaven? On other hand, can I cremate my grandmother? What will my disabled child look like?”
The critical element in our resurrected bodies as the New Testament understand it, is not our flesh and bones. It is our concrete selves. Our resurrected bodies will be us, but freed from the defects inherent in a fallen world. And we will recognize one another in heaven. Who and what we are on earth represents the concrete self that God created. The body-soul unity that now comprises us will dissolve at death, but our individuality—the “pattern of information” is another metaphor—will be instantly recreated at death into the resurrected body. Interestingly, Gregory of Nyssa, in the 5th century, believed that the soul watches over the atoms and reconstitutes them at our resurrection.
The English writer, Susan Howatch—who made her own headlines by funding a chair at
Oxford in science and theology—described this teaching in her novel, The Wonder Worker.
There may be some analogies to the radical newness of the Easter message, or perhaps hints.
John Polkinghorne has stated that the irruption of this new idea of Jesus’s Resurrection may in fact be like the experience in the 1920s with the newness, and oddness of quantum theory. After describing how the New Testament writers came to terms with Christ as the risen Lord while maintaining a commitment to Jewish monotheism, he writes,
“There are times in the history of science—the period 1900-26, in which quantum theory came to birth, would be one of them—in which strange and perplexing experience heralds a radical revision of previously cherished beliefs.” Physicist and Theologian John PolkinghorneSusan Howatch on the Nature of our Resurrected Bodies
As a pastor, I knew that church members remain unsatisfied with only generalities. In fact, when I have taught this material in adult education classes, the specifics captivate the students. In fact, I have also been asked the practical questions: “What exactly will be the nature of my resurrected body? Will my father recognize me in heaven? On other hand, can I cremate my grandmother? What will my disabled child look like?”
The critical element in our resurrected bodies as the New Testament understand it, is not our flesh and bones. It is our concrete selves. Our resurrected bodies will be us, but freed from the defects inherent in a fallen world. And we will recognize one another in heaven. Who and what we are on earth represents the concrete self that God created. The body-soul unity that now comprises us will dissolve at death, but our individuality—the “pattern of information” is another metaphor—will be instantly recreated at death into the resurrected body. Interestingly, Gregory of Nyssa, in the 5th century, believed that the soul watches over the atoms and reconstitutes them at our resurrection.
The English writer, Susan Howatch—who made her own headlines by funding a chair at
She presents a dialogue on the bodily resurrection between a confused agnostic, Alice, and an Anglican priest, Nicholas Darrow, using the contemporary analogy of information. Alice’s aunt has just been cremated.
“But if Aunt’s now ashes, how can one talk of a resurrection of the body?”That indeed may be a place to leave this post—with a vision for our personal Easter hope. Especially in a COVID-19 world.
“‘Body’ in that context is probably a code-word for the whole person. When we say ‘anybody’ or ‘everybody’ or ‘somebody’ we’re not talking about flesh and blood—we’re referring to the complex pattern of information which the medium of flesh and blood expresses.”
I struggled to wrap my mind around this. “So you’re saying that flesh and blood are more or less irrelevant?”
“No, not irrelevant. Our bodies have a big impact on our development as people—they constitute to the pattern of information, and in fact we wouldn’t be people without them. But once we’re no longer confined by space and time the flesh and blood become superfluous and the pattern can be downloaded elsewhere… Do you know anything about computers?” “No.”
“Okay, forget that, think of Michelangelo instead. In the Sistine Chapel he expressed a vision by creating, through the medium of paint, patterns of colour. The paint is of vital importance but in the end it’s the pattern that matters and the pattern which can be reproduced in another medium such as a book or film.”
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