multi-dimensional Jesus
In last week's adult study (aka Sunday School), we were talking about the resurrection. At one point somebody was emphasizing that Jesus did physically resurrect at Easter with a new physical body and that when we are resurrected we will also have new bodies. They'll be even better than our current ones because they won't get sick and die. Anyway, the question came up about how Jesus could have appeared and disappeared, especially entering rooms with all the doors locked, if he had such a physical body.
And then it struck me: Jesus' new body could move in more dimensions than the common three. You only need one extra dimension (and it doesn't have to be "time") for it all to make sense. Mathematicians and physicists generally accept the probability that our universe contains many extra dimensions, so this isn't even a wacky "out there" idea.
Imagine that the entire world is 2-dimensional like a flat piece of paper. And on this paper you draw a blueprint of a house, and you draw little stick people Christians into a room with all the doors locked. If that sheet of paper is all they know, and they can't comprehend how to look "up" at you because all they know is how to look forwards/backwards and left/right, then the appearance of your fingertip in their locked room (if you poke the paper) will seem like a miraculous appearance!
I'm really hoping this means that our resurrected bodies will have the ability to move through multiple dimensions...maybe we can evade illness bacteria and such by simply sidestepping them via another dimension. Why should we be locked up in a mere three-dimensional universe when there is infinitely more of it to discover?
3 comments:
Consider a 2 dimensional being bound to a sphere who has no concept of "away from" or "into" the sphere. If it drew a big enough triangle on the ground and measured the angles, it would discover that they do not add up to 180 degrees (like they should), and thus it could support a theory that its plane of existance is bent along a 3rd dimension.
It's my understanding that we've made very similar kinds of measurements that support thoeries of more than 3 dimensions. Einstein's general relativity postulated that the force of gravity is caused by the curvature of spacetime, and as far as I know that's a pretty generally accepted thoery. I hesitate to say more because I've never been taught these concepts directly, and because some people who read your blog *cough* Adam *cough cough* probably have a much better understanding of whats going on.
Hooray for physics!
You're such a geek, Karl.
*sniff* I'm so proud!
Interesting idea! See, this is one big reason why I'm interested in religion & sci fi. Counter-intuitive religious ideas that looked like ridiculous, irrational fantasies to 19th century Newtonian rationalists now look more interesting and somewhat more plausible, given the oddness of the deeper workings of nature.
John C. Wright uses the fourth-dimensional-being idea quite a lot in "Orphans of Chaos." It's very cool. Amelia has all sorts of weird and wonderful powers and senses because her human form is only a sliver of her actual fourth-dimensional self. And there's this idea that our entire "fallen" universe is kept on a microscope slide in a lab in her father's palace.
Gene Wolfe uses lots of interesting Christ-figure-moving-through-space-and-time ideas in "The Urth of the New Sun."
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