Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

develop mentally and physically.

Almost all traditions have the belief in the soul somehow surviving death, either to be reincarnated in a new physical body or to have some kind of non-corporeal existence after physical death. This idea of an immortal soul raises even more difficulties. One is the notion of purpose. It seems impossible to have purpose without implying a sense of time. If, as Christianity would have us believe, the purpose of the universe is to produce beings who love God for His own sake and will ultimately be brought to perfection, then what happens after that? Perhaps we’d have to fall back on the notion of the soul being outside of time and so not being aware of infinite time ticking by. But that rather stretches our understanding of what a soul might be. The soul seems so intimately connected with the body that it is difficult to think of it as outside time.

The Christian gospel, of course, would have little meaning without the concept of souls that survive a physical death. Christianity accepts this on the authority of its scriptures. It is not clear, however, whether a disembodied soul is really accepted. Everyone, it seems, is resurrected and has a body which is physically recognisable but of a different substance to Earthly bodies. This points to the problem of disembodied souls, along the lines alluded to above. A physical existence of some kind seems to be necessary in order for a person to be recognisable. Also, our thoughts rely heavily on the experience of time and memory. This is itself a feature of physical existence. Nonetheless, God is said to be Spirit, and some

130