Later:
"She could not entirely comprehend the fact that Donli was gone. It seemed as if at any instant yonder doorway would fill with him, sunlight across his shoulders..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 661-708 AT p. 671.
My mother said this after my father's death. I think that this psychological state explains attested apparitions. In Luke's Gospel and Acts:
the man on the road to Emmaus was a stranger, later identified with the deceased;
the Lord appeared to Peter - who was traumatized by bereavement, disillusionment and guilt;
the disciples reinterpreted scriptures in the light of Jesus' remembered words and this was later written up as Jesus appearing to them and explaining the scriptures;
Paul, experiencing a psychological and moral crisis, did not meet a recognizable individual but saw a blinding light and heard a voice...
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But this argument of yours is contradicted by the actual and literal resurrection of Christ. And by Our Lord doing things like eating fish and bread, and telling the Doubting Thomas to physically examine His wounds. I know you don't believe that, but it's what I believe to have happened.
Sean
Sean,
I think John's account is written to answer objections and to back up the idea of a tangible resurrected body. I do not think that his account is based on what really happened. It differs from the Synoptics. Paul, who saw only a blinding light, sharply differentiated between the physical body (which is like a seed buried in the ground) and the spiritual body (which is like the grown plant). The growth of a plant is different from the recognizable seed coming back out of the ground.
Paul.
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