Being Saved

Explorations in Human Salvation

Cortez, Farris, Hamilton, Marc Cortez, Joshua R. Farris, S. Mark Hamilton

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780334054955
• eBook ISBN: 9780334054979
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

With contributions from leading theologians and philosophers, "Being Saved: Explorations in Human Salvation" brings together a series of essays on the major topics relating to the doctrine of salvation. The book provides readers with a critical resource that consists of an integrative philosophical-theological method, and will invigorate this much-needed discussion.

PART 1

Sin, Evil and Salvation

1

Identity Through Time and Personal Salvation

R. T. MULLINS

After reading other chapters in this book, one will naturally come to the opinion that the Christian understanding of salvation is complex and multifaceted. In this chapter I shall narrow my focus to two facets of Christian salvation: the defeat of evil and the proleptic hope of resurrection. The first facet is with regards to a future salvation that awaits fulfilment. The second facet focuses on the present salvific and life-transforming work of the Holy Spirit that comes with the hope of this future salvation.

It is my contention that human persons need salvation from evil and death. Part of the Christian story of salvation is that God shall ultimately defeat evil and bring about eschatological healing. Christianity claims that one day redeemed human persons will be saved from death by being resurrected to everlasting life. These individuals shall be healed by God and placed in everlasting community with God and the rest of the redeemed. These facets of Christian salvation are intended to fill believers with hope towards the future and shape the way that believers conduct their daily lives. However, this hope might be unfounded if certain theories of time are true.

In this chapter, I shall introduce readers to basic issues with regards to personal identity through time, and its relevance for understanding our future salvation from evil, and the hope that is supposed to spring from this. Section 1 of this chapter will introduce readers to basic theories in the ontology of time, and the corresponding theories of persistence through time. Section 2 will briefly note some reasons why Christians adopt certain theories on time called four-dimensionalism and eternalism. In section 3, I will then lay out my own theological and philosophical beliefs on the nature of time. Sections 4 and 5 will examine the problems that arise when four-dimensional eternalism is combined with Christian belief. Ultimately, I will argue that Christians ought not to be four-dimensional eternalists because it undermines Christian hope in salvation from evil.

1 The Ontology of Time and Persistence Through Time

Presentism and eternalism are theories about the ontology of time, or about what moments of time exist. Each is typically linked with a theory of change and persistence through time. Presentism is usually held alongside endurantism, whereas eternalism typically holds some version of four-dimensionalism. Allow me to elaborate.

Presentism is the thesis that only the present, the now, exists. The past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist.1 Time involves temporal becoming, or absolute generation, as well as real passage from one moment to the next. New things that did not formerly exist come into existence, and other things pass out of existence or cease to exist.2 For the presentist, it simply is the case that the only objects that exist are the ones that presently exist. As Trenton Merricks says of presentism, ‘an object has only those properties it has at the present time. The difference between past, present and future is metaphysical, not perspectival.’3

On presentism, an object endures through time. To say that an object endures through time is to say that an object is wholly present at each moment of its existence. Numerically one and the same object exists at each time that it exists, and it does not have parts at other times. On presentism and endurantism, objects undergo change by gaining and losing accidental properties over time. Let us say that some object O begins to exist at time t1 and persists all the way through to time t3. On this account, O exists entirely at each instant of time. Given presentism, as t2 comes into existence t1 ceases to exist and t3 does not yet exist. So O exists entirely at each instant only when that instant is the present. As O endures through time it will gain and lose various accidental, or non-essential, properties. Let us say that O is an armchair. At t1 the armchair is blue, and then at t2 someone paints the armchair such that at t3 the armchair is red. The armchair has retained all of its essential properties, but it has lost one accidental property – that of being blue – and gained a new accidental property – that of being red.

Eternalism will disagree with the presentist in several respects. On eternalism, all moments of time have equal ontological existence. To put it roughly, the past, present and the future all exist – they are all equally real. To put it more technically, there is no real distinction between past, present and future. There is just the four-dimensional space-time manifold with no privileged moment that marks the present.4 On this account there is no real passage of time, or temporal becoming, because all moments of time exist. Nothing ever comes into existence nor ceases to exist because everything simply does exist in the space-time manifold. As such, the experience of temporal passage is illusory.

On eternalism, the world is composed of time slices. Time slices are merely instants of time that can stand in earlier than and later than relations to other instants. The eternalist holds that all time slices simply exist in the space-time manifold. None ever come into nor pass out of existence. They are much like points on a map. In fact, most eternalists see a close connection between being located in space and being located at a time, whereas presentists reject the similarity between being located in space and located at a time.5

Recall that presentists hold that objects endure through time. On endurantism, objects persist over time by being wholly present at every moment at which they exist. There is numerically one object that persists from moment to moment. Eternalists typically disagree with presentists on how objects persist by rejecting endurantism. Thinkers who hold to eternalism typically hold to four-dimensionalism, which is the doctrine of temporal parts.6 Instead of numerically one object persisting through time, four-dimensionalism says that objects are spread out over time by having different temporal parts located at each time. Four-dimensionalists will often invoke a spatial analogy to help people understand the claim that is being made here. Objects have spatial parts that are extended throughout the three dimensions of space. For instance, my body is currently spread throughout a particular region of space. I have parts at different points in this spatial region. My feet are on the ground, my hands are on my desk, and so on. In a similar way, the four-dimensionalist says that objects have temporal parts that are extended throughout time, or the fourth dimension.7

On four-dimensionalism the entire world is a collection of numerically distinct temporal parts that exist at each instant of time.8 When thinking about how reality hangs together, four-dimensionalists commonly affirm two important metaphysical commitments that are worthy of our attention. These are metaphysical commitments that presentists and endurantists typically reject. The first four-dimensional commitment is metaphysical universalism. The metaphysical doctrine of universalism is the view that any collection of objects whatsoever has a sum, an object they compose. This is sometimes called an unrestricted mereology. ‘Any combination of temporal parts of any objects from any times, no matter how scattered and disparate, composes an object.’9 It could be possible for a four-dimensionalist to reject this metaphysical doctrine, though that will depend on other metaphysical and theological commitments she holds. For instance, she might adopt metaphysical universalism because she takes objects like bicycles and persons to be mere conventions.10 However, being a conventionalist about persons sounds much closer to Buddhist metaphysics than Christian metaphysics.11

Another metaphysical commitment that four-dimensionalists typically hold, and that presentists typically reject, is Humean supervenience. Katherine Hawley describes this as the view that ‘facts about which intrinsic properties are instantiated at which points determine all the facts there are. There are no irreducibly holistic facts. In conjunction with four-dimensionalism, this entails that all the facts about a given persisting object supervene upon intrinsic facts about its briefest temporal parts.’12 Again, a four-dimensionalist may reject this depending on her other metaphysical and theological commitments. What Christian thinkers must do, however, is make it clear which aspects of four-dimensionalism they wish to accept or reject if they wish to use four-dimensionalism in the defence and development of Christian doctrine. So far, this task has not been thoroughly undertaken.

Personal Persistence Through Time

In this chapter, I am not merely concerned with how objects persist over time. I am concerned with how persons persist over time. So I need to clear up a few issues with regards to personal persistence through time. In considering the matter of personal persistence, one needs to know how to answer the following question: what makes a person at one time the same person as an individual at some later time?

To illustrate this point, imagine that we ask Tony Bennett to sing ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’. If you are unfamiliar with this song, I suggest that you go and listen to it now. It is alright, I can wait. The song lasts for 2 minutes and 46 seconds. This book will still be here once you are done listening. Now that you are back, ask yourself this: What makes the Tony Bennett at the beginning of the song the same person as the Tony Bennett at the end of the song?

There are several ways to answer this question. The endurantist will say that Tony Bennett is entirely present throughout the 2 minutes and 46 seconds of his performance. There is numerically only one thing, Tony Bennett, who endures through the song. One might find this unsatisfying, and continue to ask what makes the Tony at the beginning of the song the same Tony as the one at the end of the song. The endurantist will say that nothing makes them the same Tony. This is because the endurantist affirms something called the simple theory of personal identity. On the simple view, there are no non-trivial or non-circular conditions for personal identity over time. This is because personal identity is a primitive notion that is not subject to a deeper analysis.13 The numerically one person that is Tony Bennett simply is identical to himself.

The four-dimensionalist will see things differently. For each seco...

Table of contents

• Being Saved
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction: Being Saved – Explorations in Human Salvation
• PART 1: Sin, Evil and Salvation
• PART 2: The Nature of Salvation
• PART 3: The Process of Salvation
• PART 4: The Body, the Mind and Salvation
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects