(A Paschal meditation, intended for posting on Friday, April 13th, 2012. Russian Orthodox Pascha (Easter) is coming this Sunday, April 15th, 2012.)
Christian Pascha (Easter) is the greatest symbol of the Christian faith: Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. It can be said, however, that the meaning of Pascha “contrácts” from the transcendent of God to the theologically inferior, yet no less transcendent, in the sense of unknowable, mystery of man.
Looking into the faces of our dead, unseeing, unfeeling, we are awestruck by the perennial puzzle of life: Is this all there is, or is there a sequel more meaningful than being a miniscule part of the giant cycle of nature, as the atheists and some others insist? But even for the believing Bible readers, God’s punishing verdict on Adam is nothing short of frightening and disconcerting:
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Genesis 3:19.)
…From dust to dust… Ipse dixit!…
Man’s fear of death as the end of subjective existence goes hand-in-hand with a hope for future existence in some form of continued consciousness. Most nations of old had an idea of reincarnation, or transmigration of souls, which, however, habitually failed to address the question of continued consciousness. Pythagoras’s dog was not supposed to remember its previous life as a human: otherwise, each of us would have had some memory of our previous lives as well. Now, granted that we carry no such memory (Kant’s aprioris are not very helpful in establishing the fact of our prior existence), the theological significance of reincarnation has as much comfort for man as the general realization that, just like trees living on as coal, or, like lower animals living on as part of nature’s food chain, the end of “me” is to serve as fodder for a reincarnated something.
Now, here comes the Christian idea of life after death. Although in religious terms it is strictly limited to just one cluster of historical cultures, and I would be among the first to object to its imposition on non-Christian cultures (my blistering opposition to all forms of proselytizing should already be well known to the attentive readers of my blog), the oh-so-comforting promise of a life eternal, although philosophically unsustainable, is, psychologically, probably the strongest in Christianity through the mystery of one person’s death, burial, and resurrection, which, for the Christians, has become the symbol of their religious faith.
Christian Pascha (Easter) is the greatest symbol of the Christian faith: Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. It can be said, however, that the meaning of Pascha “contrácts” from the transcendent of God to the theologically inferior, yet no less transcendent, in the sense of unknowable, mystery of man.
Looking into the faces of our dead, unseeing, unfeeling, we are awestruck by the perennial puzzle of life: Is this all there is, or is there a sequel more meaningful than being a miniscule part of the giant cycle of nature, as the atheists and some others insist? But even for the believing Bible readers, God’s punishing verdict on Adam is nothing short of frightening and disconcerting:
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Genesis 3:19.)
…From dust to dust… Ipse dixit!…
Man’s fear of death as the end of subjective existence goes hand-in-hand with a hope for future existence in some form of continued consciousness. Most nations of old had an idea of reincarnation, or transmigration of souls, which, however, habitually failed to address the question of continued consciousness. Pythagoras’s dog was not supposed to remember its previous life as a human: otherwise, each of us would have had some memory of our previous lives as well. Now, granted that we carry no such memory (Kant’s aprioris are not very helpful in establishing the fact of our prior existence), the theological significance of reincarnation has as much comfort for man as the general realization that, just like trees living on as coal, or, like lower animals living on as part of nature’s food chain, the end of “me” is to serve as fodder for a reincarnated something.
Now, here comes the Christian idea of life after death. Although in religious terms it is strictly limited to just one cluster of historical cultures, and I would be among the first to object to its imposition on non-Christian cultures (my blistering opposition to all forms of proselytizing should already be well known to the attentive readers of my blog), the oh-so-comforting promise of a life eternal, although philosophically unsustainable, is, psychologically, probably the strongest in Christianity through the mystery of one person’s death, burial, and resurrection, which, for the Christians, has become the symbol of their religious faith.
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