{"id":4409,"date":"2018-07-21T13:46:28","date_gmt":"2018-07-21T13:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/07\/21\/presentism-and-bodily-resurrection\/"},"modified":"2018-07-21T13:46:28","modified_gmt":"2018-07-21T13:46:28","slug":"presentism-and-bodily-resurrection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/07\/21\/presentism-and-bodily-resurrection\/","title":{"rendered":"Presentism and Bodily Resurrection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are presentism and bodily resurrection logically compatible? Edward Buckner wonders<\/a> about this. He got me wondering about it.  So let me take a stab at sorting it out. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Resurrection of the Body<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I will assume the traditional doctrine of the resurrection according to which (i) resurrection is resurrection of the (human) body<\/em>, and (ii) this resurrected body will be numerically identical<\/em> to the body that lived and died on Earth. In other words, the pre-mortem and post-mortem bodies of a person are one and the same.  After the resurrection you will have the very same body that 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:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For the sake of concretion, let's assume the 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<\/em> body, the same one it had on Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Presentism<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I should also say something about presentism. The formulation of presentism is fraught with difficulties, but for present (!) purposes presentism is an ontological thesis about temporal entities and says nothing about any atemporal or timeless entities that there might be.  An ontological thesis is a thesis about what fundamentally exists, and the ontological thesis of presentism is that only present items exist. This is of course not the tautological claim that only present items are present or that only present items presently exist. It is the claim that only present items exist in the sense of belonging to the ontological inventory. It is the claim that only present items exist in the sense of 'exist' that the presentist shares with the eternalist when the latter claims that past and future items also exist. (This is admittedly not quite satisfactory, but I must move on, brevity being the soul of blog.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The claim, then, is that for any x in time, x exists if and only x is present. This is a biconditional formulation. More common is the 'only if' formulation: x exists only if x is present.  It is presumably taken to be self-evident and not worth pointing out that all that is present exists. <\/span><\/p>\n

Presentism implies that what no longer exists, does not exist at all<\/em>, and that what does not yet exist, does not exist at all<\/em>.  Please note that it is trivial to say that the wholly past no longer exists. For that is but Moorean fallout from ordinary language and no controversial ontological thesis.  The presentist is saying something controversial, namely, that temporal reality is restricted to what exists at present. What no longer exists, does not exist at all. This is far from obvious, which allows so-called eternalists to deny it. Steven D. Hales puts it<\/a> like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Presentists agree that there may be things that do not exist in time, like abstract objects or God, but the root presentist idea is that everything that exists in time is simultaneous. You can\u2019t have (tenselessly) existing things at<\/span>
different places in time. Everything that [tenselessly] exists, exists at once.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Presentism is rejected by those who hold that both past and present items exist, and by so-called eternalists who maintain the unrestricted ontological thesis that all temporal items (individuals, events, times) exist, whether past, present, or future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buckner's Question<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Suppose all that exists is present. So Socrates, no longer present, no longer exists. But at some point in the future, Socrates will be resurrected and come to be judged. So Socrates no longer exists, yet will exist, assuming the possibility of bodily resurrection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Does this mean presentism is inconsistent with bodily resurrection? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The question is better formulated in terms of Socrates' body. It doesn't exist at present, obviously, and on presentism it does not exist in the past or in the future either.  But if it doesn't exist in the future, how can Socrates' earthly body and resurrected body be numerically the same body?  Buckner smells a contradiction:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

p. Socrates' body does not exist at all: not in the past, not in the present, and not in the future. (presentism)<\/span><\/p>\n

~p. Socrates' body exists in the future. (resurrection doctrine)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The conclusion would then be that presentism and the traditional resurrection doctrine are logically incompatible.<\/span><\/p>\n

If this is what Buckner is driving at, the presentist could answer as follows.  It is true now that Socrates' body does not exist. It is also true now that Socrates' body WILL exist.  Where's the contradiction? There is none.  The following propositional forms are logically consistent:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

It is the case that ~p<\/span><\/p>\n

It will be the case that p.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A Fly in the Ointment?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

If it is true, and true at present, that Socrates' soul will, in the fullness of time, be re-united with his body, what is the truth-maker of this proposition? Contingent propositions need truth-makers. On presentism, the truth-maker must be a presently existing entity of some sort. Obviously, it cannot be a future entity.  So what, in the present, makes true the future-tensed proposition?<\/span><\/p>\n

Since questions about bodily resurrection presuppose the existence of God, we are entitled to invoke God as truth-maker. We can perhaps say that it is God's present willing to resurrect Socrates' body that makes true the future-tensed proposition that Socrates will get his body back.<\/span><\/p>\n

But then it seems that our presentism cannot be of the open future sort.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are presentism and bodily resurrection logically compatible? Edward Buckner wonders about this. He got me wondering about it.  So let me take a stab at sorting it out.  The Resurrection of the Body I will assume the traditional doctrine of the resurrection according to which (i) resurrection is resurrection of the (human) body, and (ii) … Continue reading “Presentism and Bodily Resurrection”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,184,204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-death-and-immortality","category-time-and-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}