Category: Uncategorized

Reach for a supernatural explanation only after having exhausted naturalistic ones. That's a maxim of mine.  But there are so many outrages being perpetrated these days by so many people who ought to know better, people in high places, that I am sorely tempted to suspect something diabolical at work. And I am not the only one given to this suspicion.

Here is an example. "An Italian monastery worth millions is another in a succession of religious houses being shut down by the Vatican for questionable reasons." You decide what's going on here.

If you want to secularize and thereby destroy Christianity, an otherworldly religion if ever there was one, then you are well-advised to demolish the monasteries, not all at once, but slowly, one by one, so as not to call attention to your Satanic mischief. An incremental approach to the excremental, to put it scatologically.

Kierkegaard (1813-1855) rightly described Christianity as "heterogeneity to the world." Monasticism is one form this heterogeneity takes. I must immediately point out, however, that S. K. was himself anti-monastic.  I have a post on this which I need to find, revise, re-think, and upload to Substack.

While you are at Crisis Magazine, please read the pithy A Brief History of Our Annihilation. I could quibble with some of the points, but the basic drift, I fear, is correct. And the drift is downward, into the Pit.

Along the same dark downward trajectory, Satanic Grammy Awards . . . Brought to you by Pfizer.

I did not watch the Grammies because of my personal 'no pollution' policy: do not allow toxins into your body or into your mind/heart except in such limited quantities as are harmless or necessary to stay informed of such developments it would be imprudent to remain ignorant of.

Finally, The Return of the Anti-Christ. You will know him by his lies, descended as he is from the Father of Lies.  No, not Joey B, or Alejandro Mayorkas, or or Al Gore of the "boiling oceans" climate prophecy delivered to the faithful in Davos.  You know who I am talking about.

But as I said at the outset, we invoke the supernatural only after we have exhausted naturalistic explanantia. So, secularists, what explains these developments?

A mixed bag for your enjoyment, but mainly mine.  I post what I like and I like what I post. And I post what I've posted before. Links go bad, and even when they don't I never get tired of the old tunes I like. It's Saturday night, friends, pour yourself a stiff one and relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow.  I am drinking the fermented juice of the agave cactus mixed with the Italian aperitivo, Aperol. Straight up, in a generous shot glass, three parts of Hornitos to one part Aperol. This combo is a synaptic lubricant nonpareil.  Schmeckt gut! What's your libation? Forget for a time the swine who have taken over our great country, and enjoy the moment.

Thelonious Monk, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

Wes Montgomery, 'Round Midnight

Cannonball Adderley, 74 Miles Away. In 7/4 time.

Ry Cooder, I Think It's Going to to Work Out Fine

Jeff Beck, Sleepwalk. The old Santo and Johnny instrumental from 1959.

Danny Gatton, master of the Telecaster. Phenomenally good, practically unknown.

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. When your name is 'Bob Dylan' you have your pick of sidemen. A great band. "The walls of pride, they're high and they're wide. You can't see over, to the other side."

Joe Brown, Sea of  Heartbreak.  Nothing touches Don Gibson's original effort, but Brown's is a very satisfying version.

Elvis Presley, Little Sister 

Carole King, You've Got a Friend

Buddy Guy, et al., Sweet Home Chicago. Looks like everyone is playing a Strat except for Johnny Winter.

Ry Cooder, He'll Have to Go.  A fine, if quirky, cover of the old George Reeves hit from 1959.

Marty Robbins, El Paso. Great guitar work.

 One of the points I made earlier was that presentism as a non-tautological, substantive thesis in the philosophy of time cannot be formulated without the notion of existence simpliciter. I then asked David Brightly whether he accepted the notion. Here is his reply:

Do I accept the notion of existence simpliciter? Yes and No. In so far as 'X exists simpliciter' appears to be a shorthand (a computer scientist's macro) for the disjunction of tensed claims 'X existed or X exists or X will exist' then I can guardedly accept it. This does seem to capture what is meant by 'listed in the final ontological inventory', does it not? But I worry that if we aren't very careful it can lead to logical mistakes. 'Simpliciter' here is a strange beast. It isn't an adverb qualifying 'to exist' for that would make 'to exist simpliciter' into a tenseless verb, and there are no such things. Nor, I think, does 'exists simpliciter' attribute a property to an item, so I cannot see 'existence simpliciter' as a concept. There is a whiff of 'grue' about it.

The presentist faces a problem of formulation. He tells us that only what exists at present exists. The problem is to say what the second occurrence of 'exists' in the italicized sentence expresses or denotes. What are the combinatorially possible views?

A. The second occurrence is present-tensed. This reading yields tautological presentism which is of no philosophical interest.  Note that if presentism is a tautological thesis, then 'eternalism,' according to which past, present, and future items are all equally real/existent, is self-contradictory.  If the only viable presentism is tautological presentism, then the dispute between presentists about what exists and eternalists about what exists is of no philosophical interest and is a pseudo-dispute.  This 'possibility' cannot be dismissed out of hand. I suspect that David may be luring us in this direction.  We should also be clear that presentism about what exists is not the same as presentism about existence. This is a distinction the explanation of which must wait.

B. The second occurrence expresses what I will call disjunctively omnitemporal existence: the (putative) property a temporal item has if it either existed, or exists, or will exist, where each disjunct is tensed.  On this approach, the presentist thesis amounts to this:

Everything in time that either existed, or exists, or will exist, exists (present tense).

But this is manifestly false. Kepler existed but does not exist (present tense).  I would also add, alluding to David's 'grue' remark, that while there are disjunctive predicates, it does not follow that there are disjunctive properties.  Existence simpliciter cannot be a disjunctive property any more than being either anorexic or underinflated is a property. 'Either anorexic or underinflated' is true of some basketballs, but surely, or at least arguably, the predicate picks out no property.  Likewise, 'existed or exists or will exist' picks out no property even on the assumption that existence is a first-level property. 

C. There is also conjunctively omnitemporal existence: the (putative) property a temporal item has if it existed, and exists, and will exist, where each conjunct is tensed.  The everlasting (as opposed to eternal) God is both disjunctively and conjunctively omnitemporal.  To save bytes, I will leave it to the reader to work out why this suggestion won't help us with our problem.

D. The second occurrence of 'exists' expresses timeless existence.  This obviously won't work because Only what exists at present exists cannot mean that only what exists at present exists timelessly.  For anything that exists at present exists in time and is therefore precisely not timeless.  So the existence simpliciter of temporal beings cannot be timeless existence. Yet it must somehow be tenseless.   Indeed, it it would seem to have to be irreducibly tenseless, where a definition of tenselessness is irreducibly tenseless just in case the definiens contains no tensed expressions. But then the problem becomes nasty indeed: how can temporal items, items in time, items subject to intrinsic change, both substantial and accidental, exist tenselessly?

At this point we need to note, contrary to David's claim that there are no tenseless verbs, that there are tenseless uses of 'exists' and tenseless uses of the copulative and identitarian 'is.' That the number 7 exists, if true, is tenselessly true. That the number 7 is prime is also tenselessly true. If I tell you that 7 is a prime number, it would be a lame joke were you to reply, "You mean now?" The same goes for the proposition that 7 is 5 + 2. If you object that these truths are not tenselessly, but omnitemporally, true I will say that they are true in all worlds including those possible worlds in which there is no time, and are therefore atemporally true, and thus tenselessly true.

And similarly for the eternal as opposed to everlasting God. If God is outside of time, then all truths about him are timelessly tenseless.

The above examples assume that there are atemporal items, items outside of time.  I expect David to balk.  If he denies that there are atemporal items, I will have him consider the case in which I say to my class, "Hume is an empiricist." A smartass might object, "Hume cannot be an empiricist because he no longer exists." I would then explain that to say that Hume is an empiricist is to use 'is' tenselessly.  Similarly if  I report that for Hume all significant ideas derive from sensory impressions.  'Derive' here functions tenselessly. Same with 'are' in 'Cats are animals.'  The same goes for extinct species of critter. In 'Dinosaurs are animals,' 'are' functions tenselessly. Ditto for 'Unicorns are animals.'

So now I ask David: have I convinced you that there are tenseless uses of verbs in ordinary English?

E. Could we say that the second occurrence of 'exists' in Only what exists at present exists expresses the quantifier sense of 'exists'? In the quantifier sense, x exists =_df for some y, x = y. We would then be saying that 

Only an item that exists at present is such that something is that item

which is equivalent to

Only an item that exists at present is identical to something

which is equivalent to

Whatever is identical to something exists at present.

Socrates, however, is identical to something, namely himself, but he does not exist at present.  The trouble with the existence expressed by the existential quantifier is that it is general, not singular, existence. It is the existence that we attribute to a property or to a concept when we say that it it instantiated.  'Cats exist' says that the concept CAT has instances.  It is not about any particular cats, and because it is not, it does not attribute to any particular cat existence. 'Honesty exists' in ordinary English says that some people are honest, that the virtue honesty has instances. But of course those instances, honest men and women, must themselves exist. Their existence is singular existence. The latter, however, is presupposed by the so-called 'existential' quantifier and cannot be expressed by it.

Interim Conclusion   

Here is the predicament we are in. Presentism about what exists seems to make sense and seems to be a a substantive (non-tautological) thesis about a metaphysically weighty topic, that of the relation of time and existence: Only what exists at present exists. But the thesis collapses into a miserable tautology if the second occurrence of 'exists' is present-tensed.  So I went on a hunt for a sense of 'exists' that is not present-tensed.  But nothing I came up with fits the bill or The Bill.

David, I fear, will simply acquiesce in tautological  presentism, option (A) above. But 'surely' we are in the presence of a genuine metaphysical question!  Or so I will argue.

Your move, David.

I post what I like, and I like what I post. It's a nostalgia trip, and a generational thing. There's no point in disputing taste or sensibility, or much of anything else. It's Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, stop thinking, and FEEL!

Traveling Wilburys, End of Line, Extended Version

"The best you can do is forgive."

Who, Won't Get Fooled Again. Lyrics! 

Gary U. S. Bonds, From a Buick Six. Sorry, Bob, but not even you can touch this version.

Bob Dylan, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes  a Train to Cry.  Cutting Edge Bootleg version.

Bob Dylan, Just Like a Woman.  This Cutting Edge take may be the best version, even with the mistakes. I'll say no more, lest I gush.

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. The Bard never loses his touch. May he die with his boots on.

Bob Dylan, Corrina, Corrina. And you say he can't sing in a conventional way?

Moody Blues, Wildest Dreams. Nostalgia City.

Johnny Cash, I've Been Everywhere, Man

Soggy Bottom Boys, Man of Constant Sorrow

This new online journal looks really good.  From the 'About' page:

Our editorial choices are shaped by our desire for a strong social-democratic state that defends community—local and national, familial and religious—against a libertine left and a libertarian right.

I too oppose libertinism and libertarianism.  I note in passing that they in some respects feed each other. See Libertarians and Drug Legalization and Arizona Pot Prop 205 Defeated.

A compact is a political union drawing together different people for a common end. It is neither a contract nor a covenant, neither a market relation nor a religious sodality. It depends not on shared blood, but on shared purpose. We are concerned with advancing this properly political form of solidarity.

I too am opposed to the Blut und Boden mentality of some on the alternative Right. I have come out strongly against tribalism and race-based nationalism while conceding that in the present circumstances a certain amount of pro tempore white tribalism may be necessary to counter our political enemies effectively.  In a war you must do things that you don't want to do and would not have to do in times of peace.

That being said and well understood, I am skeptical of finding "shared purpose" with people from radically different cultures.  What "shared purpose" could we have with sharia-supporting Muslims,  to take but one example?

We believe that the ideology of liberalism is at odds with the virtue of liberality. We oppose liberalism in part because we seek a society more tolerant of human difference and human frailty.

That's strange. The touchstone of classical liberalism is precisely toleration.  I wonder how these boys are using 'liberalism.'

Compact will challenge the overclass that controls government, culture, and capital. Whoever does this is bound to be called radical. We do not shy from the label, but we insist on its proper meaning. Rightly understood, to be radical does not mean going to extremes. It means getting to the root of things.

Very good. 'Radical' is from the Latin radix, meaning root. A radical goes to the root of the matter. But not like the Communists who literally e-rad-icated (uprooted) their class enemies breaking millions of eggs for an impossible omelet. (That's what we call a mixed metaphor, by the way.)

The trick here is to avoid both deracination and a form of autochthony rooted in soil and nourished by blood. We need to find the via media between Bodenlosigkeit and Bodengebundenheit.

One more pun. I have come out against, not masculinity, but toxic masculinity which could be characterized as Blut und Hoden, blood and balls, given the tendency of some on the alt-Right to embrace toxic masculinity in conjunction with an illiberal attachment to the indigenous.

Humanity certainly has its work cut out for it, assuming we don't nuke ourselves into oblivion. 

I stand for free speech against the fascists of both the Left and the Right. And so I wish the COMPACT-ers all the best.

I was surprised, but pleased, to see that the late Lawrence Auster, traditionalist conservative, photo to the left, 1973, had a deep appreciation and a wide-ranging knowledge of Dylan's art.  Born in 1949, Auster is generationally situated for that appreciation, and as late as '73 was still flying the '60s colors, if we can go by the photo, but age is at best only a necessary condition for digging Dylan.  Auster's Jewishness may play a minor role, but the main thing is Auster's attunement to Dylan's particularism.  See the quotation below.  Herewith, some Dylan songs with commentary by Auster.

This from a reader:

It would be very interesting to hear your take on Trump — why do you think that his leadership of the country, despite obvious personality flaws, is less risky for the US and the world than a reasonable alternative? Yes, the ideological, thoughtless, and totalitarian far-left is dangerous, but isn't unprincipled, pugilistic and me-and-my-family first leadership any better? Is your thinking driven by "the lesser of two (or three) evils"?

Merry Christmas everybody.  Pour yourself a drink, and enjoy.  Me, I'm nursing a Boulevardier.  It's a Negroni with cojones: swap out the gin for bourbon.  One ounce bourbon, one ounce sweet vermouth, one ounce Campari, straight up or on the rocks, with a twist of orange.  A serious libation.  It'll melt a snowflake for sure. The vermouth rosso contests the harshness of the bourbon, but then the Campari joins the fight on the side of the bourbon. 

Or you  can think of it as a Manhattan wherein the Campari substitutes for the angostura bitters.  That there are people who don't like Campari shows that there is no hope for humanity.

 

As a sort of intro, The Who, My Generation. "I hope I die before I get old." My English readers will enjoy the video.

Charlie Watts at 80, 1941-2021. Rolling Stones, Sittin' on a Fence. A lovely tune. Trigger warning!  Under My Thumb. Eerily appropriate these days: Gimme Shelter

Don Everly at 84, 1937-2021. When Will I Be Loved?

Nanci Griffith at 68, 1953-2021. Boots of Spanish Leather. Bob would be proud.

B. J. Thomas at 78, 1942-2021. I Just Can't Help Believing

Lloyd Price at 88, 1933-2021. Stagger Lee. Personality

Chick Corea at 79, 1941-2021. Armando's Rhumba

Mary Wilson at 76, 1944-2021. Our Day Will Come

Jimmie Rodgers at 87. 1933-2021. Honeycomb

Phil Spector at 81, 1939-2021.  The Wall of Sound

Charley Pride at 82, 1938-2021. 

Len Barry at 78, 1942-2020. You Can't Sit Down

Jerry Jeff Walker at 78, 1942-2020. Mr. Bojangles

Spencer Davis at 81, 1939-2020. Gimme Some Lovin'

Returning to the ongoing thread:

So to summarise the discussion so far. The doctrine of Reference and Identity is that empty names can refer. That is because the verb phrase ‘refers to’ is intentional. That is, “S refers to N” is consistent with “there is no such thing as N”. Contrast with “S touches N” which implies there is such a thing as N.

[. . .]

Do you see any problem with that position?

When you say, "empty names can refer," do you mean that some empty names refer and some empty names do not refer? Or do you mean that all empty names refer? (Compare: If I said that integers can be either odd or even, that would be equivalent to saying that  some integers are odd and some are even.)

I will assume that you mean that all empty names refer.  You say that this is because 'refers to' is intentional. It is intentional in the very same way that thinking-of is intentional. To think is to think of something. But 'A thinks of  N' is logically consistent with 'there is no such thing as N.'  If I am thinking of Asmodeus, it does not follow that I am thinking of something that exists.  So far, so good. Now I take it that you hold that the following are all logically equivalent where the substituends for 'N' are proper names such as 'Moses' and 'Asmodeus.' 

• There is no such thing as N
• There exists no such thing as N
• It is not the case that there exists an x such that x = N
• It is not the case that some existing thing is identical to N
• It is not the case that something is identical to N
• No existing thing is identical to N
• Nothing is identical to N
• N is not a member of the class K of existing things.
• N is not a member of class K of things.  

You are making the following additional assumptions. Everything exists. (Quine contra 'Wyman.') 'Is' and 'exists' have the same sense. 'Existential quantifier' and 'particular quantifier' are two different names for one and the same quantifier.  'N does not exist' says just this: it is not the case that something is identical to N.

Your view implies a contradiction:

1) Empty names such as 'Asmodeus' refer. (R & I, 9-10)

2) To refer is to refer to something. (R & I, 9-10)

Therefore

3) 'Asmodeus' refers to something. (As you explicitly state, ibid.)

4) In the case of 'Asmodeus,' an empty name, 'Asmodeus'  refers to something that does not exist.

5) Everything exists.  (There are no nonexistent things. 'Something does not exist' is contradictory.)

Therefore

6) 'Asmodeus' refers to nothing.  (3, 4, 5)

Therefore

7) (3) and (6) are contradictories.

Therefore

8) One of your assumptions is false. 

For Cyrus

"I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body and life everlasting." Thus ends the Apostles' Creed. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) addresses the meaning of this article of faith on pp. 347-359 of his Introduction to Christianity (Ignatius Press, 2004). The book first appeared in German in 1968 long before Ratzinger became Pope.  Herewith, some interpretive notes and commentary.

1) Despite the undeniable Platonic elements in Christianity, to which Ratzinger is sensitive, the Biblical promise of immortality pertains to the whole man, not to a separated soul. Some, Lutherans in particular, recoiling from Platonic soul-body dualism, have gone so far as to maintain that the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul is positively un-Christian. (347) This is going too far. It is clear, though, that on Christianity a man is not in his innermost essence a pure spirit like an angel; he is, by nature, a corporeal, embodied  being whose ultimate good is to live forever in an embodied, not an angelic, state.  'By nature' implies that we are not accidentally embodied, as on Platonism, but essentially embodied.

2) On the other hand, the idea of immortal (living) bodies, immortal animals, seems utterly absurd given what we know about the natural world, as Ratzinger admits (348).  Schopenhauer mocks this notion as immortality mit Haut und Haar, with skin and hair.  By contrast, the notion of human immortality as the immortality of a simple (metaphysically incomposite) soul substance is not absurd but defensible, even if not Christian. 

So we face a problem. Platonic dualism cannot do justice to our  unitary corporeal nature. It involves an ontological denigration of the body and of materiality in general.  The material world, however, created by God, is good, and not to be flown from in Platonic-Plotinian-gnostic fashion.  The body is not the prison-house of the soul, but something rather more positive: its necessary expression or realization.  But how on earth could the living bodies of humans live forever?

3) One solution that suggests itself  — call it the additive solution — is to add the Biblical notion of bodily resurrection to the Platonic notion of soulic immortality. When you die, soul and body separate: the soul continues to exist while the body returns to dust. ("Remember man, thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return . . .")  At the end of the world, the dead are raised and soul is reunited with its body, the same one it had on Earth, although presumably spiritualized and transformed or transfigured.  Although Ratzinger does not cite Aquinas in the stretch of text I am commenting on, the Angelic Doctor's view is additive.

On this view, (i) resurrection is resurrection of the (human) body, not of the whole man, and (ii) this resurrected body will be numerically identical to the body that lived and died on Earth. In other words, the pre-mortem and post-mortem bodies of a resurrected person are one and the same.  After the resurrection you will have the very same body that you have now. This is compatible with the resurrected body being property-wise different from the earthly body.   I take this same-body view to be the traditional view. We find it, for example, in Aquinas:

For we cannot call it resurrection unless the soul return to the same body, since resurrection is a second rising, and the same thing rises that falls; therefore resurrection regards the body which after death falls, rather than the soul which after death lives. And consequently if it is not the same body which the soul resumes, it will not be a resurrection, but rather the assuming of a new body. (1952, 952, quoted from here)

For the sake of concretion, let's assume the Aristotelian hylomorphic dualism of Aquinas according to which a human being is a composite of soul and body where the soul is the form of the body. For Aquinas, the soul continues to exist after the body ceases to exist, and resurrection is the uniting of that soul with its body, not some body or other, but its body, the same one it had on Earth, although perfected, subtilized, spiritualized, and rendered free of defects.

4) The Thomistic synthesis of the Greek and the Biblical is an uneasy one, fraught with difficulties. I'll mention just one.  On the Platonic view, salvation is salvation of the soul from the body; it is not the salvation of the whole, undivided, man.  The soul is a naturally immortal spiritual substance** that comes into its own only when freed from the evil predicament of embodiment.   Death, as separation of soul from body, is release and therefore something good.  The Biblical conception is very different: death is not good, but bad: the fitting punishment for Adam's sin. Death is not a welcome release from the material world, but the calamity of all calamities. We were intended by God to live forever in Paradise in an embodied, material form. But Adam (man) fell, and is now subject to sickness, old age, and death in a material world that is itself fallen and in which demonic agents are at play in various ways.

Now suppose you are a philosopher and a Christian who wants to find a way to accommodate man's essential corporeality. Following Aristotle, you bring Plato's Forms down to Earth where they cease to be substances in their own right and become factors in the ontological analysis of such sublunary substances (prote ousiai) as statues, horses — and humans.  Socrates, then, is not a naturally immortal soul accidentally attached to a perishable body, but a hylomorphic compound of form and (proximate) matter in which  anima forma corporis, the soul is the form of the body. 

The soul, which was a substance for Plato becomes in Aristotle a non-substantial 'principle' invoked in the analysis of genuine substances.  The I that thinks when Socrates thinks is then presumably not his soul but the whole man, the entire hylomorphic compound. That which thinks when Socrates thinks is Socrates, not the form of his body. For how could an enmattered form think?  How could it be the subject of thinking (of cogitationes in the broad Cartesian sense)? An enmattered form is a respect in which a sublunary substance is intelligible, but it is not intelligent, being merely one factor in the ontological analysis of a whole man who is the one doing the thinking.   A subject of thinking must be a substance, and on the Aristotelian analysis, the soul is not a substance but a form.

Might it be, contrary to what I have just maintained, that the soul is an enmattered form that is both intelligible and intelligent? If so, then the soul-form is what I refer to when I thoughtfully deploy the first-person singular pronoun, and not the whole man, body-cum-soul.  This seems to lead us back to the view according to which I am identical to my soul, and away from the Aristotelico-Thomist view according to which I am not identical to my soul, but identical to a composite of soul and body.

To state the problem succinctly, Thomas is an Aristotelian on Earth, but a Platonist in heaven, and he has to be both to satisfy simultaneously the exigencies of both Christianity and Aristotle. But the exigencies are in tension one with the other, a tension tantamount to contradiction. Thomas qua Christian needs a substantial soul capable of surviving bodily death, a soul that then 'waits' for its completion in the resurrection of the body.  Qua Aristotelian, however, the soul must be a form and not a substance.  The upshot is a contradictory construct: a form that is and is not a substance.  A soul-form which is not a substance but a principle when embodied,  becomes a substance on its own after death.

5) Ratzinger rejects the additive approach to resurrection. A restored body is not added to a post-mortem soul.  For "the biblical train of thought . . . presupposes the undivided unity of man." (349) Scripture speaks of "the awakening of the dead, not of bodies!" (349)  The "real heart of the faith in resurrection does not consist at all in the restoration of bodies . . . ." (349)  Man is not composed of body and soul with the soul the carrier of his immortality. If you start with that conception, then resurrection becomes the restoration of bodies, which are then added onto the souls which have been waiting  for their bodily completion. This scheme is precisely what Ratzinger is opposing. So how does he propose that we understand resurrection?

6) He speaks of a "dialogic immortality" that is an "awakening."(350) Man cannot "totally perish because he is known and loved by God." (350)  As against Platonism, there is nothing in man that is indestructible.  Man is saved from annihilation by being drawn into dialogue with the Creator. In this way the whole man, not just his soul, is awakened and brought to life.

From here on out the discussion tapers off into vagueness.  Resurrection is not a restoration of one's earthly body. The person "goes on existing because it lives in God's memory." (353)  To go on existing as a merely intentional object of someone's memory, even of God's, seems insufficient. I remember my mother, but does she live on in my memory? Such an afterlife would be a paltry thing indeed, and not just because my memories of her are both incomplete and in some respect erroneous.  The main problem is that an object of memory cannot be by being remembered be transformed from a non-living subject into a living one.  My memory cannot be constitutive of your subjectivity. But perhaps with God it is different . . . .

_______________________

*While man is not a pure spirit, the Christian worldview admits the existence of  finite pure spirits, namely angels and demons (fallen angels). Christianity is therefore not a materialist worldview: it does not hold that finite intelligence cannot occur except as physically realized or materially embodied. And of course God himself, the infinite, archetypal spirit, is a pure spirit, fully real, and fully concrete, despite being wholly immaterial.  Christianity is not materialism, but it does, in the teeth of Platonism, valorize the material world.

**An individual substance is definable as anything metaphysically capable of independent existence.

A Substack rumination over a Brunton observation.