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Hatikvah
Guest
This is good. With the way things are going, some would start to interpret that as “allegory” and “symbolism.”
(I’m not talking Genesis, I’m talking about how some Christians interpret the entire Bible or much of it as allegory, even Christ’s miracles and God’s other doings. What a waste of paper that would be!)
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fladreamer
Guest
How can someone recite the Creed week in and week out for 25 years and be dumb enough to not understand that ‘‘I believe in the resurrection of the flesh’’ means just that. It makes me wonder how much of the much more complicated stuff they also miss.
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Beryllos
Guest
The Nicene Creed says “resurrection of the dead”, while the Apostle’s Creed says “resurrection of the body,” at least in the current US translation. If someone is brought up on the Nicene Creed, that might explain the misunderstanding.
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edwest2
Guest
God bless Pope Francis.
Ed
Ed
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RPRPsych
Guest
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Cheiron
Guest
I’m disappointed. I have often read that the pope thought faith and science were not in conflict with each other. But bodily resurrection clearly contradicts our scientific understanding of death.
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twf
Guest
The Church doesn’t dispute what science can observe and measure. But that doesn’t mean that the Church excludes the possibility of divine intervention. Science can’t prove nor disprove the divine- it’s beyond science’s competence. How the body is formed, how the body works, even how the body dies - these are matters for science.
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zz912
Guest
A deity who created the laws of physics and chemistry is not bound by those laws.
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Michael1978
Guest
Are you seriously disappointed that the POPE believes in the the truth of the bodily resurrection of Jesus?
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Cheiron
Guest
You’re right; that was a bit naive on my part. I think my real disappointment is that the pope wants to have it both ways. Science does contradict religion and bodily resurrection is one of those items where the scientific consensus is in conflict with the teachings of the Church.
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Bookcat
Guest
No it does not.
That is the Nature of the Resurrection!
(just as that is the nature miracles per se - of Jesus walking on water or healing the blind…)
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Bookcat
Guest
Huh?
What scientific consensus on what?
The Resurrection?
No.
By nature such transcends the empirical sciences.
And as to the resurrection of persons at the end of time - at the second coming of Christ - that is YET to come and by nature too is beyond the realm of the empirical sciences.
*Empirical sciences cannot study what has not happened yet and so is not repeatable! *
There is* no contradiction *thus with the empirical sciences.
At this point in history such is impossible.
And once it happens - there will be no interest in asking.
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twf
Guest
Scientific consensus is that dead bodies don’t spontaneous rise again from natural causes. No one disputes this. However, if one believes in a supernatural Deity, who is beyond the natural world we can observe and measure, there is no conflict…that is simply beyond the realm of science.
How did our bodies evolve over time? How do our current bodies form in our mother’s womb? How do our bodies age and eventually die? These are all questions for science.
Where does the soul come from? What happens to the soul after death? Can God raise dead bodies by His power and will He do so at some point in the future? These are questions of faith.
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abucs
Guest
Yes i agree. Many non religious people confuse their materialist philosophy with science.
I thank the pope for his statement.
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Bookcat
Guest
"The resurrection, then, is not a theory, but a historical reality revealed by the man Jesus Christ by means of his “Passover”, his “passage”, that has opened a “new way” between heaven and earth (cf. Heb 10:20). It is neither a myth nor a dream, it is not a vision or a utopia, it is not a fairy tale, but it is a singular and unrepeatable event: Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who at dusk on Friday was taken down from the Cross and buried, has victoriously left the tomb. In fact, at dawn on the first day after the Sabbath, Peter and John found the tomb empty. Mary Magdalene and the other women encountered the risen Jesus. On the way to Emmaus the two disciples recognized him at the breaking of the bread. The Risen One appeared to the Apostles that evening in the Upper Room and then to many other disciples in Galilee. "
-Pope Benedict XVI Urbi et Orbi message 2009
Another great text from Pope Benedict XVI April 2009
“Consequently, it is fundamental for our faith and for our Christian witness to proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as a real, historical event, attested by many authoritative witnesses. We assert this forcefully because, in our day too, there are plenty of people who seek to deny its historicity, reducing the Gospel narrative to a myth, to a “vision” of the Apostles, taking up and presenting old and already worn-out theories as new and scientific. For Jesus, of course, the Resurrection was not a simple return to his former life. Should this have been the case, in fact, it would have been something of the past: 2,000 years ago someone, such as, for example, Lazarus, was raised and returned to his former life. The Resurrection is placed in another dimension: it is the passage to a profoundly new dimension of life that also concerns us, that involves the entire human family, history and the universe. This event that introduced a new dimension of life, an opening of this world of ours to eternal life, changed the lives of the eye-witnesses as the Gospel accounts and the other New Testament writings demonstrate; it is a proclamation that entire generations of men and women down the centuries have accepted with faith and to which they have borne witness, often at the price of their blood, knowing that in this very way they were entering into this new dimension of life… This is the victory of Easter, our salvation! And therefore we can sing with St Augustine: “Christ’s Resurrection is our hope!”, because it introduces us into a new future.”
-Pope Benedict XVI Urbi et Orbi message 2009
Another great text from Pope Benedict XVI April 2009
“Consequently, it is fundamental for our faith and for our Christian witness to proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as a real, historical event, attested by many authoritative witnesses. We assert this forcefully because, in our day too, there are plenty of people who seek to deny its historicity, reducing the Gospel narrative to a myth, to a “vision” of the Apostles, taking up and presenting old and already worn-out theories as new and scientific. For Jesus, of course, the Resurrection was not a simple return to his former life. Should this have been the case, in fact, it would have been something of the past: 2,000 years ago someone, such as, for example, Lazarus, was raised and returned to his former life. The Resurrection is placed in another dimension: it is the passage to a profoundly new dimension of life that also concerns us, that involves the entire human family, history and the universe. This event that introduced a new dimension of life, an opening of this world of ours to eternal life, changed the lives of the eye-witnesses as the Gospel accounts and the other New Testament writings demonstrate; it is a proclamation that entire generations of men and women down the centuries have accepted with faith and to which they have borne witness, often at the price of their blood, knowing that in this very way they were entering into this new dimension of life… This is the victory of Easter, our salvation! And therefore we can sing with St Augustine: “Christ’s Resurrection is our hope!”, because it introduces us into a new future.”
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Our understanding, scientific or otherwise, does not encompass a great deal of reality. We already know that, what with numerous “singularities” blocking physicists from (at present, at least) delving beyond certain points of discovery.
For one thing, our present understanding does not explain the seeming phenomenon of particles passing into and out of existence. And yet, scientific inquiry, as far as we know, asserts that, indeed, they do. And so, what do we really know about recomposition of humans? Nothing. We think we do, but if we can’t explain particles, we can’t be sure we can say human bodies can’t be recomposed.
There are scientists who stoutly maintain that there are, there HAVE to be, a number of parallel dimensions about which we know nothing and can discover nothing. They are posited as ways of explaining things in physics that science cannot otherwise explain. I think they’re up to eleven dimensions so far. So, what’s in them? What goes on in them? Are they really universes like we think of them, or are they some mode of being entirely different and unreachable to us? Do those particles go from one dimension to another and only SEEM to be annihilated and come back into being? We don’t know.
Why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate? Saying it’s due to “dark” energy is only a device to explain the unexplainable from a scientific point of view. We have no idea what “space” actually is. And we don’t know what “time” is either, except by reference to the sequence of our own footsteps and heartbeats.
I, for one, have sometimes wondered whether all sorts of things we consider miracles wrought by God who suspends natural laws to do them, are actually natural phenomena, set in motion from all eternity by God that, for reasons of His own, chooses to do things that way; by intention so remote from our own existence that we can’t even fathom how it can happen. Does an atom in my body, born in a supernova (which we’re told is so) follow a design through all eternity to be a bit of my bones? Kind of neat to think of it that way. What is its destiny from there? If there are parallel dimensions, might we, at the end of days, emerge from one of them, fully formed? What is a dimension? What are they doing there if they exist? We don’t know. And at present, it looks as if we never will as part of human, scientific, knowledge.
And so, while I admire science and scientists, I am just knowledgeable enough of their limitations (and their admissions) to know that they explain very little of reality.
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zz912
Guest
A few more thoughts on this. The reason we even have science today is because Christianity believes that God created everything and that the universe is ordered and knowable. Modern science, academia, universities and education evolved from the Christian belief that knowledge is a gift from God and something man can pursue.
There is nothing in science that contradicts the Christian religion. It simply can’t, because God created both. That the Church proclaims the resurrection of Christ does not mean the Church denies the scientific reality that bodies decay after they die and don’t resurrect. The Church specifically admits that this is a miracle, it is NOT normal or follows the laws of the universe. That’s what makes it a miracle. The Church readily admits that bodies don’t resurrect, unless God wills a miracle. Otherwise the Christian religion is meaningless if people resurrected naturally.
The Christian religion is based on the truth that the Resurrection of Jesus is a miracle, that it did not follow the laws of science. It is proof that He is God.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Not to get too deep in the speculative weeds with this, but I don’t know that the Christian religion is based on a belief that the resurrection did not follow the laws of science. It is based on the belief that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. Certainly, that violates the “laws of science” as we know them to be. But that does not necessarily mean that it violated the laws of creation established by God, about which we know very little.
If, as we believe, the Resurrection was intended by God from all eternity, then the mechanism could also have been intended by God from all eternity and might be woven into the fabric of creation in ways we cannot comprehend. God’s intention is His act. We do not know all the ways in which God acts. If we did, we would be God.
I’m not saying God did not suspend the laws of creation in the Resurrection. I am only saying we do not know that for a fact.
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