Into the Wardrobe

It looks like this has been a very interesting discussion. I've had a few thoughts reading these posts, not terribly organized but here they are:

One is that I for one, most surely do NOT think that our risen bodies will have the same atoms etc that we have now. I don't even have the same ones I did 3 years ago, so I do not think that is required. Moreover, that's not a new position, some of the church fathers said much the same thing, and even implied that anyone who thought so was a real moron.

I may even be willing to go with this mathematical pattern idea. I've always thought of God as being kind of an equation, though personal (whatever that means.) And the logos that runs through all things are the equations that make each thing what it is. And I'd even be willing to say that it is a kind of energy or potentiality that the logos animates or makes real. I don't think that God s made out of that energy though, I don't think. Something about his nature, about what his equation says I suppose you could say, compels or creates that energy. I think the idea of equating that with prime substance could have potential. So could the risen body be some sort of energy and pattern that is incorruptible? I think that sounds plausible and to my mind that would be a physical resurrection.

And speaking of Aristotle, I believe that horse matter is just what it sounds like - matter from a horse. If the horse is eaten by a lion, what was horse matter would now be lion matter, or dung beetle matter. But I could be wrong about this.

I think it's fine to talk of plants having a vegetative soul or life force and so on for other living beings. I tend to think that if our bodies were lost we would just be a rational soul, and that would mean we weren't really saved at all - anything tied to the body, like memory, would be gone. We wouldn't be ourselves at all.

Entropy - this will likely totally discredit me and show me to be a crazy person, but I really don't like entropy, something about the idea doesn't sit well with me. My husband thinks I am totally nuts, and I realize that it would be a major problem in the world, well for everyone, if it was thrown out, but I have an irrational feeling about it. Perhaps entropy is a result of the fall? I'll tell myself that anyway.

All this has made me think of John Scotus Eriugena. He suggested that after the resurrection Jesus had no gender. (I don't know how he squared this with Genesis.) He said in heaven we would have no gender either, and I can see a number of scriptural reasons for this idea. And we don't think, for example, that it's important that Jesus had brown hair (or whatever) so it could be the same with gender. I also think it would be a popular idea in many circles today, though that might be reason to be suspicious.

The church rejected this though, and it seems true for most people that their gender really constitutes part of who they are, at least in their own minds. No one, for example, thinks a sex change is the same as a dye job. And of course Genesis does suggest that we are meant to be men and women. But I think it is an interesting idea in any case.