The Critical Analysis of the Lynne Rudder Baker’s Theory on Resurrection According to Transcendent Theosophy

Abstract

Lynne Rudder Baker wants to reconcile the doctrine of resurrection in Christianity with materialism. He claims that we can present proper philosophical and theological explanation of the manner of the life after death on the basis of theory of constitution as a physical approach. Lynne Rudder Baker, Instead of philosophically explaining how mental life is related to the other-worldly body, asserts theologically that the resurrection is the miraculous act of God. One of the consequences of the theory of constitution is that numerical identity of physical and other-worldly body is not important. But it seems that it will not be possible to explain possibility of life after death, unless we take the identity of physical and other-worldly body to be granted. Because human being is composed of soul and body and they are related to each other necessarily rather than contingently. In terms of comparison, we can say that Mūllā Sadrā explains the identity of mundane person and the other-worldly one by the theory of the unity of soul (while accepting the variety of bodies), that is, the human soul determines the matter in every phase and, in terms of the principle of substantial motion, the corporeal and other-worldly body are two aspects of a hierarchical reality.

Keywords

• resurrection
• the imaginal body
• the theory of constitution
• christianity
• lynne rudder baker
• mūllā sadrā