Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/21/2007 9:46:38 AM (GMT-5)

What a discussion! We may be certifiably insane by now!

Theoria: Jesus is God in the flesh, correct, POW?  In other words, whenever Jesus gave up the spirit on the cross, we would still say that Jesus' body was the Son of God's body, right? In other words, when Jesus' dead body lay in the tomb for however long, we would want to say that said body IS the body of God the Son.

Tom: I’d observe that we’d want to say “This body WAS the body of God the Son.” When people die, we recognize the real absence of the ‘person’ with respect to the body. But that’s not to say there isn’t a real relationship between God the Son and that piece of flesh in the Tomb. It’s just that between “giving up his spirit” (which seems to be to establish SOME kind of dualism) and being raised, the ‘person’ of the Logos is NOT an embodied person.

Theoria: Now, what this means is that within the organic makeup of Jesus' body was the fullness of God in it's entirety.

Tom: Jesus was fully God, embodied.

Theoria: We are not Docetists, from what I gather.

Tom: No, they at least insisted on making rational sense of the beliefs they embraced.

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Theoria: We would say that Jesus' body was real and an important part of what the Incarnation is supposed to represent in the first place. All of this leads to the idea that the blood, bones, organs (and all the makeup of those things) was real, lived completely human existence...and completely the Son's existence. We people beheld the flesh of Jesus, they were beholding God in the flesh as human person. Flesh created from Immaculate Conception, yes?

Tom: A LOT of time I get the feeling that you think the human in Jesus was a distinctly human person. But that’s not orthodoxy. POW said it already. The SUBJECT (the ‘person’, the ‘rational, dispositional SELF’) of Jesus is the divine Logos. No other “person” comes into being. What this divine person takes on is a human ‘nature’, not another human person. One person (divine, not human), two natures (divine and human).

Feel uncomfortable? That’s because it’s irrational. But you already celebrated this fact with SK and gloried in the leap! Just keep leaping. With that move you’re off the hook bro. You don’t HAVE to think!

Theoria: I don't see how it wouldn't be the case that if I had gotten some cells from the man Jesus...and cloned him...that THAT CLONE would not be another "body" of the Son of God.

Tom: No, no my friend. It’s like you think the ‘person’ is stuffed into any given cell of his body and invariably travels with every cell of that body wherever it goes and remains THAT person’s body wherever it goes. But this is ridiculous implausible, impossible even. That’s why we made the distinction between straight up cloning that involved gestation and the emergence of self over time with the development of the brain (on the one hand), and the reduplication of an already developed brain that was the embodiment of an already emerged self (on the other hand). You can’t avoid it; if somebody clones you from a piece of your liver, gestates it, and a newborn arrives nine months later, the ‘self’ or ‘person’ that will emerge in that newborn is not your ‘self’.

Dude, let’s just stop talking about cloning and just talk about having kids! The sperm is MY body. The egg is my WIFE’S Body. But the newborn body isn’t MY body, or my ‘self’ in another body. It’s a new embodied self. There’s biological continuity between my body and my kids’ bodies. We’re the origin. But emergent systems being what they are means that the discontinuity is as important, even more important in a sense, for the identity of a person as a unique self the responsibility of whose agency STOPS with the exercise of its OWN will, means that it is something over and against its origins.

A CLONE of Jesus (gestated, newborn, with an INDEPENDANTLY developed brain) would NOT be another “body” of the Son. That new body would be the body OF the person it embodies, and that person would not be the Son but a new emergent self. Divinity of nature would NOT travel with a slice of Jesus’ liver. No.

But like Jeff said, if all selves, all human persons, are the same self as the Logos extended out into our bodies, then the divine Logos presently has some 6 billion bodies that are HIS bodies because those selves just ARE the self that is the Logos. But if that’s the case, then we’re as equally God incarnate as Jesus was. It’s just that Jesus was the only embodiment of the Logos that didn’t FAIL at the purpose for which God got all this started. All the other failed embodiments of the Logos crucified the embodiment of the Logos that was Jesus!

Whew, I’m glad you have SK-irrationality to go to when all this doesn’t make sense.

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Theoria: Again, if the human body of Jesus WAS the Son of God's body, I don't see how we can say otherwise.

Tom: I’ve just said otherwise. A cloned person (any person, including Jesus), whose clone gestates and whose newborn brain develops over time, emerges into a NEW and distinct person from the person who donated the original piece of liver from which the clone was conceived. The body of the clone would be the body of the PERSON that embodies it, the new self that comes to emerge.

Now, what the status would be of an exact duplication of a person’s ALREADY developed brain, the seat of an ALREADY emergent self, into another body, THAT’S different. That’s why the brain is IT BABY. Forget the liver and the lungs. It’s ALL about the brain.

Theoria: But let's go on to say that, by some means, it WAS actually possible to have cloning and "personality transfer" by some means...such that what Tom was describing obtains. You'd have two "Jesuses" having every reason to think that each individually WERE the Son of God. Neither being would have any reason to think otherwise, especially if they interacted with their environment before they had a chance to "meet" and understand what was going on. The self-understanding of BOTH humans would be the pretty much the same. Both would say their name was Jesus. Both would say their mother and father where Mary and Joseph. Both would pray to the Father in the same way...believing themselves to be the Messiah in the same way. So besides being in two distinct bodies...(which I guess would lead to two different spirits)...what would happen? Would we say that only ONE of these beings had the Son as the subject of it's being? If so, how?

Tom: In this case we’re talking not about cloning via gestation (doing that with Jesus’ liver would NOT yield another incarnation of the Son) but the duplication of the brain of the fully developed and emerged Son of God. If the science were possible and it occurred, I’d be inclined to say that the clone would be a second instantiation of the SAME ‘person’. I say that on the assumption that the person being instantiated here IS the divine, omnipresent person of the Son, so there’s no real problem locating THAT kind of person in two or more places. For example, I see no logical or metaphysical contradiction generated by notion of the Son’s simply choosing to incarnate in two different places at the same time. I don’t see how such a thing would be impossible. But I think it’s possible because of the preexistent infinite capacities of the PERSON being considered in this case. I’m not so sure that same thing would apply with you or me. If my brain were duplicated and placed into another body, something tells me that though the duplicated self would identify himself in the same way I identified myself, I and the clone would be two different self-determining agents from that point on and not two instantiations of the same “self.” I could be wrong. I don’t see that a whole lot hinges on it. And we always have SK-irrationality to call to save us when we need it.

Theoria: This is why I don't think the "Jesus' body would be merely human" thing doesn't work. When Jesus took on human nature, he basically took on all of the principles of Creation the circumscribed human becoming.

Tom: Maybe. I guess so. I’m not sure just what constitute human nature’s essential properties. We like to think we know, but it’s more complication that we think. I’m reading Tom Morris’ The Logic of God Incarnate right now. It might just save my faith in the rational coherence of the belief. If so, I’ll change my logon name back to something more cheerful.

Theoria: This would include the all the ways that the human body normally works in our world. This would include having DNA, blood cells, and all that. This means Jesus would have "taken on" all of the requisite nature needed to have the ability to have a human clone produced from his human cells.

Tom: Jesus did have a clonable body. But there’s a big difference between cloning via gestation and reduplicating as is an already developed brain with all its emergent properties. It’s only the latter case that poses anything worth discussing.

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Theoria: Incidentally, I asked my wife a question yesterday along these lines. We ask each other crazy questions all the time, anyway. “Honey, let's say that my ‘mind’ somehow got irrevocably placed into the head of an 11 year old Chinese girl. There was nothing we could do about this. If I were to continue living, I would functionally live as a female from the developmental age of 11. How would you say that our relationship should proceed?” My brilliant wife thought about it for a sec and then says... "Well, I'd say that we'd both need to go to counseling to begin the grieving process." I smiled. She knew.

Tom: You would need to grieve. But not because the ‘person/self’ embodied in a black, male body straight up died. Presumably when you woke up from the operating table you would have all your same memories. Your default self-perception would be to ID your embodied state as a black male. That would be gone. You’d have to adjust (as you say later!). You’d just have to adjust.

Theoria: Whoa! A thought. What power do WE have that other animals most likely DON'T have? We would have the ability to ADAPT to the situation above. It would be possible (difficult, but possible) for a PERSONAL BEING to change their self-understanding over time to allow for a NEW self-understanding given a NEW set of external delimitations.

Tom: Dude, I said this very thing on the phone yesterday. Really, I did! Almost word for word. And consider this thought experiment. Take the deception element out. Just suppose that a person agreed to duplicating herself! Say it’s Mother Theresa and she was convinced by the world that putting her brain into a younger body would perpetuate the goodness she propagates and manages. She agrees. They do the operation. The duplicated clone wakes up from the table knowing this arrangement was made. Both the original Theresa and the clone know who the original is and who the copy is because the copy is in a younger body. The clone would just have to adjust to the fact and move on.

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Jeff: Here's my take. If dualism is true (and I think it is), then like Tom says, from the moment we're duplicated (spirit, soul, body), we starting living separate lives and making separate choices which, in turn, cause different associations and memories and personal identity. So the two would diverge as soon as they started experiencing the world differently.

Tom: I think so too.

Jeff: With respect to Christ, I would assume such a cloning would simply mean that two persons, instead of one, would have that divine nature which we, ourselves, will one day partake of. But the identity of the first would be the co-creator of the universe. The other would be a created being, like us.

Tom: I don’t know. My inclination is to think that a duplicated adult Jesus-brain would result in a second incarnation of the Son. I don’t think we have to say the same thing about the duplication of any other adult brain since we are not universal minds/persons. Surely this distinction in itself determines the possible status of these duplications.

Jeff: At first, the dissimilarity would simply be the numerical non-identity of the two. I.e., there are TWO and not ONE. But in less than a second, they would already have experienced sense perceptions as their location that would distinguish them. But your right, of course, about the self-understanding. But one would be DECEIVED. He would think he was someone he was not. He would think he had existed in the deeper past, when in fact, he hadn't. One would believe truly about his past. The other wouldn't.

Tom: If this is meant to describe duplicated non-divine persons, yes. I agree. I’m just not sure about a duplicated divine person.

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Theoria: Don't forget the Mahayana view, which posits a Great Self (see what I wrote above). This is how that view solves that problem. They posit Great Person (Supreme Self) from whom all other persons (and created things) are grounded. Sound familiar?

Jeff: Very familiar. :0) Would you agree that that is the ONLY solution? I would. So then it gets down to what is true. Are we distinct beings or not? If we aren't distinct beings, then the whole cloning thing becomes moot for those of us who can't even make sense of substance monism.

Tom: Exactly. I don’t see how D isn’t a straight up substance monist. Has to be. In that case, there is NO real difference in the identity of the self that each person feels is their unique self. It’s all God’s self. That’s the only self that exists. What we perceive as our unique self is just the limited perspective that localized embodiment places on our perceiving. But enlightenment would be perceiving this very fact and so resigning one’s self to it. D seems to think that this is precisely what Eastern Orthodox Christianity believes. I can’t figure out POW’s position.

Tom

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 7/21/2007 12:56:39 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 7/21/2007 11:31:06 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/21/2007 11:42:32 AM (GMT-5)

Theoria: One could say that we are distinct "nodes" of personhood inherent in the Son that are contingent expressive corporeal forms of personhood.

and…

We are distinct persons that inhere in the One Person.

Planis: This is where you’re not making sense D. To be a “node” of some personhood is to be a localized expression of THAT person. One person. One subject. But in the case of “nodes” what’s distinct about THE NODE is not the identity of the PERSON but just properties OF THE PERSON. In my view this destroys individual personhood. We can’t be nodes of divine personhood and also be distinct persons. The distinction comes in localized expression (tall, blank, white, Chinese, etc.) not in 'spirit/soul' or 'person'. The PERSON, on your view, is provided for by God. He's the only PERSON around. Sorry. It just doesn’t work.

Theoria (to POW): Are you saying that it was possible for the Son to have "incarnated" in more than one body? That God's Person could actually take being differentiated into MULTIPLE distinct human embodiments? Fascinating.

Tom: POW came back and answered this with no. I’d say I can’t think of a single reason why we should not answer this with “yes” (on the assumption that divine incarnation is even possible and our leap into irrationality isn’t just that, an irrational leap).

Tom