Tag Archives: resurrection

Does the resurrection of the dead make sense?

Sir Stanley Spencer, The Resurrection, Cookham, 1924-7

Quick thought(s) on the sense of resurrection, the interruption of sentient animal thriving, and the experience of life:

Resurrection: an unnatural event (i.e., an act of God or a miracle) whereby sentient animals are returned to significant striving/thriving (i.e., to purposeful living) after the experience of dying and remaining dead for more than one day.

The resurrection of the dead is surely an irrational/unnatural idea. Yet, I think it does make sense as an expression of sentient animal desire for uninterrupted thriving.

Sentient animals strive significantly; that is, they engage in long-term projects, like family building (see, e.g., Martha Nussbaum, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility–or my reading of the relevant philosophical arguments, though for a different reason, here). Significant striving is purposeful living. Purpose is an enjoyable characteristic of sentient animals’ thriving.

Thriving is a source of pleasure, although pain may be a temporary feature of it. Child-birth, for example, is typically painful–but the aim of family-building requires it. The aim of thriving may require a brief interruption of it.

Long-term or incurable pain impedes thriving. Thriving does not require it. Thus, sentient animals rightly avoid the experience of such pain.

Pain is caused by either natural or social causes. Pain is caused by, for example, certain genetic abnormalities that are unrelated to social factors, like environmental pollution. Pain not attributable to social causes is necessarily a form of harm because it is not the fault of any sentient animal or group of animals and impedes thriving.

Pain attributable to social causes can also be a form of harm. For example, the attainment of academic or artistic achievement may require the short-term experience of pain. Its cause is social/cultural–but it is not directly caused either by the neglect or intent of a sentient animal or group of animals. Nonetheless, it does temporarily impede thriving.

Pain is unjust when its cause, due to neglect or intent, is attributable to another sentient animal or group of sentient animals (i.e., society). It seriously impedes sentient animal thriving. Its duration is irrelevant, as it is pain unrelated to the aim of thriving.

Death interrupts animal thriving. Thus, it is also a source of pain. As such, death is either a very serious harm or, when it is directly linked to social factors, it is an injustice.

The desire for resurrection does not make sense if death is morally neutral–simply a natural fact. If life is not an unqualified good to us, then why would we want more of it?

As an obviously serious interruption of animal thriving, death harms sentient animal life. The resurrection of the dead makes more sense if life is a good that death interrupts. Resurrection makes sense as an expression of desire for uninterrupted animal thriving.

Animal thriving is good. It is the embodiment of justice. Thriving is what sentient animals want. Death gets in the way of it.

Resurrection is, by definition, an act of God. And while you may be willing to grant that resurrection makes sense as an expression of desire to cure the suffering caused by death, namely the interruption of sentient animal thriving—you are likely not as eager to entertain the idea that it is reasonable to think that a divine being will, in fact, overturn death.

Surely, logical argument will fail to convince us of the reasonableness of divine intervention in the natural order of things (i.e., death interrupts thriving). Widespread agreement to the main premises of such an argument—for example, the reality of a divine being—is not likely. Moreover, appeals to authority (i.e., “It’s the word of God!”) will fail us. Thriving entails the freedom to think for ourselves.

But what of our experience of life?

Our experience of life is a source of information when logic or reason cannot help us. Experience, for example, of the tenacity or exuberance of life—the way in which nature is constantly churning out life from death—is not proof of the resurrection—but such experience (and desire for more time to live, to carry out one’s projects) is intimately related to the shared reality of sentient animal life.

It seems feasible for us to use our shared physical senses to observe/feel that life is not easily knocked down—and when it is, it tends to get back up again. Even nature seems to point beyond itself–to something it cannot achieve on its own.

Reason and experience take us to the banks of the Jordan. Death is not good for us. While we may recognize a shared desire to thrive, we can’t be certain of future thriving. But if we are willing to look, there seem to be promising signs of future thriving within and before us.

Ash Wednesday & the Animal Body

Mark Ryden, The Angel of Meat, 1998, Oil on Panel, 38″ x 33″

It’s Ash Wednesday.

Imagine you are driving to Starbucks to get your cold brew before going to your church parking lot to get some ashes spread on your head in the shape of a cross. On the way, you notice a dead deer on the side of the road. It is bloated, and a vulture is perched on its neck.

Farther up, you notice a weirdly shaped, otherwise indescribable stain in the center of the road. You realize the blotch interrupting the road’s yellow lines is all that remains of the opossum that had languished and died at that spot earlier in the week.

Imagine further that the ashes to be spread on your head contain deer hair and bits of its bones and meat. Your pastor is like the vulture you noticed earlier.

As you drive into the church parking lot, perhaps you see a sign that reads: “The ashes about to be spread on your head have been collected from countless car tires, the remains of opossums, raccoons, turtles, snakes, chickens, deer, bears, cats, and dogs who suffered and died on the roads near the church.”

It’s Ash Wednesday, and it’s too pretty. “From dust you are and to dust you shall return.” That’s nice. But the reality of our shared bodily vulnerability isn’t so pious. It’s not so neat.

It’s Ash Wednesday, and it’s meat—not fucking glitter and star dust. And we would get that if we dared to look at and to consider (our) animal bodies.

WAX, "the figure, with its fetal pose and exposed spine, becomes a primal emblem that engages viewers in issues of individual and collective health and disease, heroization and victimization, and life and death (particularly because of the dual potential of human blood in the era of AIDS)." SOURCE: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/122231/blood-pool
BLOOD, "Untitled (Body Tracks) from 1974 is a compact work, a short one minute and ten seconds, wherein Mendieta silently executes a powerful wall drawing. Mendieta stands facing the wall, both blood-stained hands and forearms raised above her head against its white surface; she gradually slides down onto her knees, tapering the stained markings from her hands to a place where they meet at the bottom of the wall but never quite converge in on one another. This recorded action commences when Mendieta stands, shaking, and turns to address the audience for a brief moment before exiting the field of view." SOURCE: https://drainmag.com/contentNOVEMBER/REVIEWS_INTERVIEWS/Ana_Mendieta_Review.htm
THE DEAD, "One of his most outstanding undertakings is “The Morgue Series“, a group of pictures that confront the audience with the starkness of death." SOURCE: https://www.singulart.com/blog/en/2024/03/17/the-morgue-series-by-andres-serrano/?srsltid=AfmBOoqlHifgRfM8UGGiTZkxHz5rDSwFMdkbAl6yyYwq2nex6P8bGAUh
Plaster or Concrete, "Especially when seen in person, the works. . . have a monumental quality, in which many lives seem to be subsumed into a larger pattern, and they also deliberately evoke a sense of what is lost or threatened ‘every time a violent act takes place' . . . . ‘It would be a trap to try to portray violence,’ she says, in any literal way. ‘Because violence is exerted whenever you show it, whether in art, or in cinema, or in reality. When you reproduce a violent act. . . violence is being exerted and re-enacted once again, and I don’t think we need that.’" SOURCE: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/committed-to-memory-the-art-of-doris-salcedo/

It’s Ash Wednesday. It could become the first act of a passion play that ends with accepting our animal vulnerability. But that requires knowing the terror of crucifixion as an animal act of absolute disregard for the animal body.1

It’s Ash Wednesday, and today may be different. We may begin to feel the resurrection of the dead: the pleasures, extricated from the terror of violence, of our shared animal bodies. After all, our animal bodies make our lives—and the lives we desire—possible.

Recommended Spiritual Practice:

Explore and consider Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy (1964), originally performed at Judson Memorial Church. Schneenman describes the aftermath of the meat-filled performance:

“It was performed in the center of the church and of course, the incredible aroma never left of the raw mackerel the old chickens and the old sausages. Howard Moody accepted that and did his sermons in regard to the smells, sermons on the loaves and the fishes. It was wonderful.”

Notes:

  1. Art Notes (from left to right):

    Image 1: Kiki Smith, Blood Pool, (1992), wax: “the figure, with its fetal pose and exposed spine, becomes a primal emblem that engages viewers in issues of individual and collective health and disease, heroization and victimization, and life and death (particularly because of the dual potential of human blood in the era of AIDS).” See here for more information.

    Image 2: Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Body Tracks) (1974), blood, “is a compact work, a short one minute and ten seconds, wherein Mendieta silently executes a powerful wall drawing. Mendieta stands facing the wall, both blood-stained hands and forearms raised above her head against its white surface; she gradually slides down onto her knees, tapering the stained markings from her hands to a place where they meet at the bottom of the wall but never quite converge in on one another. This recorded action commences when Mendieta stands, shaking, and turns to address the audience for a brief moment before exiting the field of view.” See here for more information.

    Image 3: Andres Serrano, Hacked to Death (The Morgue) (1992), the dead: “One of his most outstanding undertakings is ‘The Morgue Series,’ a group of pictures that confront the audience with the starkness of death.” See here for more information.

    Image 4: Doris Salcedo, Untitled (1992), plaster or concrete, “Especially when seen in person, the works. . . have a monumental quality, in which many lives seem to be subsumed into a larger pattern, and they also deliberately evoke a sense of what is lost or threatened ‘every time a violent act takes place’ . . . . ‘It would be a trap to try to portray violence,’ she says, in any literal way. ‘Because violence is exerted whenever you show it, whether in art, or in cinema, or in reality. When you reproduce a violent act. . . violence is being exerted and re-enacted once again, and I don’t think we need that.’” See here for more information. ↩︎