Interesting that you did not address what I believe was my primary evidence, i.e. the saints, angels, and the resurrection of the body, which your theory has to deny of necessity, yet are all core tenets of the Christian message.
The Sirach quote is talking about Heaven being better than a miserable existence on earth. How exactly is that supposed to support you theory?
In my last post, I expressed surprise that you were trying to quote non-Catholic modern philosophers. They have seen the Church’s doctrine and have rejected it in some degree. Bringing Camus and Schopenhauer only further prove that your idea is not a Catholic one.
I think we may define existence in the ‘normal’ sense it means being a ‘thing’ in the Universe (I agree that this is a pretty limited definition, but it is how it is generally used).
How about we just go to a standard dictionary, “the state or fact of having actual being”. You cannot introduce “thing” into the definition, because “thing” refers only to substance and would exclude the other 9 categories of Aristotelean being. Whiteness exists, but it is not a “thing”. There is also no need to throw in “in the universe”.
Since God is not a ‘thing’, nor is He in the Universe, it is a reasonable to say that God, in the ‘normal’ sense of the word, does not exist. It is also fair to say, again using the NORMAL sense of the word, that Heaven is non-existence. In speaking of God and Heaven, we have to get beyond the limits of ontology, whose relevance is limited to THIS Universe.
God may not be a “thing” insofar as His Existence and his Essence are the same thing implying God cannot fit into or be a genus, and hence God cannot rightly be considered a “substance”. However, going by the “usual” meaning of existence, which is what a dictionary provides, dictionaries are afterall, based on “common usage”, God most certainly exists. He has actual being, in fact He IS actual Being.
The philosophy of ontology was partly created to talk about God and was never intended to be strictly limited to this material world. Its relevance is not limited, though its abilities to penetrate every mystery of the Divine Nature may be.
And as for the self remaining in Heaven, what is self but individuation, self-will, in other words, the source of all sin and multiplicity?
Individuation is the source of all sin? I bet you have a hard time explaining why God made man to be individual then. Actually, that is perhaps the heart of the matter. You have no choice but to calls God’s creation evil since God is the author of individuation. Man did not make himself individual, he was made that way by God, and God called it good. In fact, the story of creation is all about individuation. To deny the goodness of individuation is to be daulist, and eventually you have to deny the goodness of matter itself, which is partly what Buddhism does.
The bottom line is, I understand this view is currently and has historically been held by many, but it has always been condemned by the Catholic Church at every step. I am thus not surprised to find someone who holds the view, but am shocked to find someone who claims it is consistent with Catholicism.
