The Resurrection and Prayer
On August 6, 1945 the United States Air Force detonated a nuclear weapon over the city of Hiroshima. 140,000 people died in the blast, many of whom were immediately vaporized into their constituent atoms, leaving no remains at all. Yet a majority of Christians in the US believe that those victims of the bombing will one day be made whole and stand in judgment before God. A majority of Christian Americans believe in a God so powerful he can reconstruct the exact DNA and protein sequences of each of those bodies, in exactly the form they were in at the moment before they died in that blast.
Yet a sizable number of commenters on this blog seem to believe this powerful God, who is keeping track of the DNA sequences of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the certainty of a future resurrection at some date uncertain, is unwilling to heal a girl of diabetes, or meningitis. They believe he can't even make the common cold go away, or clear up a horrendous case of warts. This incongruity is rarely pointed out, and making it more explicit is what I will try to do in this post.
Christianity is based on the belief that a man, Jesus, lived and died. Christians to some degree or another also believe that this man was divine, most believing that he was the God of the universe in human flesh. In addition, most Christians further argue that this man's life was sinless, and that by his death, Christians can escape the consequences of their sin. Most also assert that his resurrection is the evidence for a future resurrection of all mankind. Thus, most Christians believe that God will, at some point, bring all the dead humans who have ever existed back to life.
Thus, when we discuss issues about prayer and healing, the assertion that God can do nothing about sickness, suffering and pain on earth is a perfectly reasonable assertion to make if there were no future resurrection. For instance, a Deist can hold to this position with no logical contortions. Certain Jews such as the Sadducees could reasonably hold to this, since again, they do not believe the human exists again after his death.
For the bulk of believers though, and here I mean those who accept Jesus' resurrection as a historical fact and those who believe in a future resurrection, the inaction of God in the face of suffering has to be deliberate. For Christian believers, the argument that God is somehow hamstrung from acting to heal the sick flies directly in the face of the miracles of Jesus. Even after Jesus' death, the Bible is full of stories of wondrous healings on the part of the apostles, none of whom felt it was necessary to hold back from helping the sick because it would leave them without free will.
The modern concept of free will is not mentioned in the Bible. It's an ex post facto justification for the modern finding that faith healing doesn't happen. Even medieval Christians firmly believed God healed the sick. The relic of the "one true cross" was determined to be such because it had the power to heal the sick when it touched them. There was no begging for the wonders of free will to be manifest in the lives of those supposedly healed by it. In France, the touch of the king was believed to heal scrofula, and this was due to the king's proximity to the deity, yet nobody in France complained that the king was violating the free will of those who were healed.
No. This free will defense is weak tea, the only leftovers of a warmed-up, thrice picked-over last meal. But again, think of the victims of Hiroshima. They are spread throughout the ecosystem now after they were thrown up into the atmosphere by the cloud of gas that flew up from the city. Yet their free will had nothing to do with their vaporization. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. My explanation for the facts is simple: the victims of Hiroshima, and all other people who ever died, are dead now, and will remain so. My explanation fits all available facts.
Some Christians may adopt the idea that the resurrection will not be one of bodies, but only one of spirit. I applaud them for this, but then the conundrum of Christianity grows even deeper. For if the resurrection of the dead does not entail the reconstruction of their bodies, why was it necessary for Jesus to be resurrected at all? After all, sacrifices given by the Israelites prior to Jesus were of animals, and God did not need to resurrect those sacrificed animals for the deaths to be atoning. In fact, the bodily resurrection of Jesus makes the atonement suspect, for all Jesus really did was experience the absence of cellular activity for something like 36 hours. Is this really such torture?
To hold the position that the cessation of cellular activity in a man-god for 36 hours is an adequate recompense for all the evil mankind has done over roughly 150,000 years of history -- including Hiroshima, the Holocaust, the pogroms of the medieval era, the countless genocides, petty violences, rapes, murders, infanticides and slavery of human existence -- is one of the silliest beliefs I've ever heard. It sits up there with flat-earthism, phrenology and young earth creationism.
So the Christian believer is presented with a quandary and I suspect their lack of unanimity in the face of this quandary is the single best evidence for the essential vacuum at the core of this system of belief. For if there were a cogent explanation, one that was satisfactory to all, Christianity would at least be unanimous in accepting it. This suggests to me that if I ask questions of Christians, their answers to these questions should be the same, since the same divinity that remembers the exact sequence of DNA in the victims of Hiroshima could certainly make the followers of his One True Religion aware of the truth of it. Yet the answers to the following questions are probably as varied as the answers to questions about taste in food, clothes, or film, but I will ask them anyway:
1. Is it the position of Christians that all humans will be resurrected bodily at some future time by God?
2. Is it their position that God has the power to do this phenomenal act of healing, but cannot heal the children who are dying because their parents are praying for their life, or rid someone of a crippling, deforming disease because to do so would harm their free will?
3. If so, why were Jesus and the apostles, the "one true cross" relic and the king of France able to heal without violating free will? If not, why do we have no evidence that God does any healing at all?
4. Finally, if Jesus' death were necessary for the atonement of man's sin, what purpose was his bodily resurrection? Specifically why was it necessary for his atonement to include a resurrection when sacrificial animals, who were sacrificed under the rules God gave to the Israelites, were not resurrected but were eaten?
Yet a sizable number of commenters on this blog seem to believe this powerful God, who is keeping track of the DNA sequences of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the certainty of a future resurrection at some date uncertain, is unwilling to heal a girl of diabetes, or meningitis. They believe he can't even make the common cold go away, or clear up a horrendous case of warts. This incongruity is rarely pointed out, and making it more explicit is what I will try to do in this post.
Christianity is based on the belief that a man, Jesus, lived and died. Christians to some degree or another also believe that this man was divine, most believing that he was the God of the universe in human flesh. In addition, most Christians further argue that this man's life was sinless, and that by his death, Christians can escape the consequences of their sin. Most also assert that his resurrection is the evidence for a future resurrection of all mankind. Thus, most Christians believe that God will, at some point, bring all the dead humans who have ever existed back to life.
Thus, when we discuss issues about prayer and healing, the assertion that God can do nothing about sickness, suffering and pain on earth is a perfectly reasonable assertion to make if there were no future resurrection. For instance, a Deist can hold to this position with no logical contortions. Certain Jews such as the Sadducees could reasonably hold to this, since again, they do not believe the human exists again after his death.
For the bulk of believers though, and here I mean those who accept Jesus' resurrection as a historical fact and those who believe in a future resurrection, the inaction of God in the face of suffering has to be deliberate. For Christian believers, the argument that God is somehow hamstrung from acting to heal the sick flies directly in the face of the miracles of Jesus. Even after Jesus' death, the Bible is full of stories of wondrous healings on the part of the apostles, none of whom felt it was necessary to hold back from helping the sick because it would leave them without free will.
The modern concept of free will is not mentioned in the Bible. It's an ex post facto justification for the modern finding that faith healing doesn't happen. Even medieval Christians firmly believed God healed the sick. The relic of the "one true cross" was determined to be such because it had the power to heal the sick when it touched them. There was no begging for the wonders of free will to be manifest in the lives of those supposedly healed by it. In France, the touch of the king was believed to heal scrofula, and this was due to the king's proximity to the deity, yet nobody in France complained that the king was violating the free will of those who were healed.
No. This free will defense is weak tea, the only leftovers of a warmed-up, thrice picked-over last meal. But again, think of the victims of Hiroshima. They are spread throughout the ecosystem now after they were thrown up into the atmosphere by the cloud of gas that flew up from the city. Yet their free will had nothing to do with their vaporization. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. My explanation for the facts is simple: the victims of Hiroshima, and all other people who ever died, are dead now, and will remain so. My explanation fits all available facts.
Some Christians may adopt the idea that the resurrection will not be one of bodies, but only one of spirit. I applaud them for this, but then the conundrum of Christianity grows even deeper. For if the resurrection of the dead does not entail the reconstruction of their bodies, why was it necessary for Jesus to be resurrected at all? After all, sacrifices given by the Israelites prior to Jesus were of animals, and God did not need to resurrect those sacrificed animals for the deaths to be atoning. In fact, the bodily resurrection of Jesus makes the atonement suspect, for all Jesus really did was experience the absence of cellular activity for something like 36 hours. Is this really such torture?
To hold the position that the cessation of cellular activity in a man-god for 36 hours is an adequate recompense for all the evil mankind has done over roughly 150,000 years of history -- including Hiroshima, the Holocaust, the pogroms of the medieval era, the countless genocides, petty violences, rapes, murders, infanticides and slavery of human existence -- is one of the silliest beliefs I've ever heard. It sits up there with flat-earthism, phrenology and young earth creationism.
So the Christian believer is presented with a quandary and I suspect their lack of unanimity in the face of this quandary is the single best evidence for the essential vacuum at the core of this system of belief. For if there were a cogent explanation, one that was satisfactory to all, Christianity would at least be unanimous in accepting it. This suggests to me that if I ask questions of Christians, their answers to these questions should be the same, since the same divinity that remembers the exact sequence of DNA in the victims of Hiroshima could certainly make the followers of his One True Religion aware of the truth of it. Yet the answers to the following questions are probably as varied as the answers to questions about taste in food, clothes, or film, but I will ask them anyway:
1. Is it the position of Christians that all humans will be resurrected bodily at some future time by God?
2. Is it their position that God has the power to do this phenomenal act of healing, but cannot heal the children who are dying because their parents are praying for their life, or rid someone of a crippling, deforming disease because to do so would harm their free will?
3. If so, why were Jesus and the apostles, the "one true cross" relic and the king of France able to heal without violating free will? If not, why do we have no evidence that God does any healing at all?
4. Finally, if Jesus' death were necessary for the atonement of man's sin, what purpose was his bodily resurrection? Specifically why was it necessary for his atonement to include a resurrection when sacrificial animals, who were sacrificed under the rules God gave to the Israelites, were not resurrected but were eaten?