Probably then Interbane, nor does your "mind grab onto anything" when transubstantiation is mentioned. I raised that topic in response to Mary's comment about magic and modernity. The broader context here, in assessing the relation between spirituality and religion, is the possibility of systematic philosophy. Many people, eg Popper, say flat out that philosophy cannot be systematic on principle, because system is a totalitarian attitude. Christian theology has long sought to be systematic, explaining time against the framework of eternity, except that science has shown the Christian idea of system is based on false premises.Interbane wrote:Part of my problem with your philosophy as times, Robert, is that your chosen language drifts. Most is able to be interpreted objectively, but some is not. Imagining a connection between time and eternity is abstract pattern seeking. Your not really referring to anything, other than an appeal to the shared qualities of two concepts that are already nebulous. My mind doesn't grab onto anything when you mention a connection between time and eternity. The conceptual definitions overlap, sure, but a "connection"? You would have to define what you mean by connection, because it doesn't parse. Is it meant to be explanatory, where there is a neural connection that's made?But I flatly disagree that this concept, transubstantiation, is built up out of the material of experience. Rather, it derives from what Kant termed the transcendental imagination, our abstract capacity to imagine a connection between time and eternity, between the contingent and the absolute.
The traditional key to systematic theology is the discipline known as Christology, in which this theme of the connection between time and eternity is central. The idea is that there is what is called a hypostatic union in the one person Jesus Christ of the eternal Christ and the historical Jesus, so that eternity is manifest within time. Read that again if you didn't understand it.
You can say Christology is not a real discipline, or that this language of hypostatic connection is meaningless. But that would be to ignore the whole effort to provide a rational explanation of Christianity as a way to connect human life to a divine absolute. Many people find hypostasis an entirely obscure and metaphysical concept, but many also find it comforting that 'the suffering dying Jesus is the Christ upon the throne', an entirely hypostatic idea.
I don't agree that time need be a nebulous concept. In fact, time is among the most simple and familiar of all ideas, as the relation betweeen before and after. But like size, we have immense difficulty in putting our everyday familiar understanding of time into the real context of science, since the universe is far older and bigger than we can easily imagine against historical orders of magnitude.
I grant that eternity is nebulous. I tried to give a clear deconstruction of the meaning of eternity in my comments above. I just don't think we can say much that is sensible about spirituality and religion without a philosophical analysis of metaphysical concepts such as eternity. The reductive atheist attitude will try to dismiss such language, but the fact remains that eternity is a meaningful concept, meaning either forever or outside time.
Some people may find various terms that I have used here to be hot button stumbling blocks. That is fine by me, but I would be very happy if people do as you have done, and explain that a statement I made meant nothing to them.
