I
will die. That is accepted by everyone. But what happens afterwards?
When
talking about the afterlife, there are really two broad options. (1) I will be
dead and nothing will happen. My neurons will stop firing and my existence will
have come to its end of ends, or (2) I will experience some kind of afterlife
or some sort of future state of continued being.
Most
of our thinking on this topic this semester stems from option (2). According to
Christian doctrine over the course of the last 2,000 years, there are two (or
three) live options: Heaven or hell (or purgatory).
In an article published in Ratio titled “The
Problem of Heaven,” Brian Ribeiro presents a problem that would seem utterly
ridiculous at first pass to many evangelicals. He starts with the assumption
that, if hell were to exist, no human being could possibly desire it. But he
sees no reason to have to defend such a position. Instead, Ribeiro himself says
he is setting out to “defend the view
that no human being has any reason to desire to spend eternity in heaven – if
there is a heaven.” He ultimately argues that every path leads to a sort of
hell, or at least a state that no human being could desire. His argument against
the desirability of heaven takes the form of a trilemma, resting on three horns,
which can be paraphrased as such:
(1) If I stay myself, an
eternal heaven cannot be desirable.
(2) Basking in the eternal
light wipes away any semblance of self.
(3) There is a loss of identity
in the transition between me and “my” transformed self.
The first horn depends on how time relates to human
nature. As it stands, to be human is to be mortal. Temporal limitation is an
inseparable part of our existence. Starting with this widely held assumption,
Ribeiro thinks it is possible to make two claims: First, all significance and
meaning in our lives is tied directly to the fact that we will not live
forever, and secondly, that if we were to live forever, eternity would have no
meaning and would be a state of infinite monotony. It is only in relation to
this limit that anything is meaningful.
The first claim, that meaning is tied to our
impending death, says that destroying the restraints of mortality would also
destroy the possibility for any significant choices. What makes a choice
significant, though? A choice is significant if it entails some sort of loss, a
divergence of paths, in which the direction not chosen can never be chosen
again. For example, many people struggle with choosing a course of study and
career path. The significance, to a lesser extent, lies in whatever value is
ascribed intrinsically, but perhaps the greatest factor that contributes to
significance is the fact that we only have one shot at life. While it is
possible to take many paths in life, the very act of choosing a path results in
the death of another. However, if time was not a constraint, there would be no
real choice in anything. The unchosen paths can always be revisited if there is
an infinite amount of time to work with. Then choice only becomes a matter of
sequence, not significance.
The second claim is related to the first. If we
live forever, and the significance is stripped from our choice, how can we find
meaning, or even pleasure? Ribeiro thinks there is absolutely no way around the
problem that to do something ad infinitum leads to doing it ad
nauseum. There is absolutely nothing that we could do that would not
eventually become dull and tedious. So, in our eternal quandaries, the problem
of meaning leads to the problem of monotony.
Of course, on earth, we find many things to be
enjoyable. It is even very possible to say that some are intrinsically
enjoyable. And to take this further, let’s suppose that there are things which
are not only intrinsically enjoyable, but also intrinsically significant
regardless of choice, contrary to the first claim. Even judged independently
from the problem of significance and meaning, Ribeiro thinks the problem of
monotony remains. Of course there are “repeatable pleasures,” but in the grand
scheme of things, a human lifespan doesn’t give much time for repetition. Let’s
make this an exercise. Take a moment and think of the most satisfying thing you
could possibly do. Now imagine doing it for trillions of years. In the infinite
ocean of infinitude, those trillions of years are not even a drop. You haven’t
made any progress whatsoever towards an end. Is there anything that can survive
that amount of repetition?
Eventually even our deepest desires, when fed for
eternity, damn us in a most sardonic way.
I can see another problem that stems from this that
Ribeiro doesn’t mention. Even if we start from the assumption that there will
be an infinite number of intrinsically satisfying things to fill eternity with,
there seems to still be some danger of monotony. Instead of each individual
thing becoming monotonous, the mere act of always doing something else might
itself become dreadfully arduous. Your meta-activity consists of doing various
things, and thus the monotony would affect this meta-level.
That’s Ribeiro’s defensive of the first horn of the
trilemma. If we were to retain our personal identity, heaven could not be
desirable because nothing would be meaningful and all pleasures would become
repetitive to the point of intolerance.
The defensive of the second horn rests upon the
common view that heaven will consist of “basking in the divine
presence.” The concern here,
of course, is that the very process of being bathed in glory leads to an
impersonal existence.
There
can be two routes here. Either the blessed are “bathed” forever, completely
entranced by the splendor of God, or they are still aware of something else.
The second route quickly ends up in the first horn, where the awareness and
ability to think or do something eventually leads to meaninglessness and
unfulfillment.
So
let’s consider the first route a bit more. Becoming completely lost in the
eternal light might very well entail just that: All personhood is wiped away. Without
self-consciousness, there doesn’t seem to be a case that the being that was
once you is still a person. At best, it might be like a sort of hypnosis, where
all perception of others is destroyed by the blinding light, but this
distinction doesn’t seem very satisfying to me, because the result is still the
same.
Ribeiro
is adamant that this is just about all that is needed to defend the second
horn. So while the first centered on the impossibility of me enjoying heaven if
I remained the person that I am now, the second centers on the absurdity of me
desiring to become something impersonal, whether by becoming a non-person or
some kind of hypnotized zombie.
But
is there a way past these two horns? Christians often talk about a glorified
existence, of a final and ultimate sanctification where I will be made perfect
while still remaining me at some
essential level. However, Ribeiro thinks that the process of perfection will
ultimately destroy me as a person.
Thus the defense of the third horn rests upon the problem of personal identity,
as Ribeiro thinks that “At best, some other person enjoys his heavenly
home, not me.”
Ribeiro’s
argument against a continuity of identity is based upon four elements of heavenly
transformation:
“The heavenly changes we are considering will be (1)
instantaneous, (2) radical, (3) unmixed, and (4) directed from without.”
While
Ribeiro recognizes that our personal identity has some flexibility to it, as
all of us change throughout our lives, he thinks that the extent of change
involved in glorification severs the continuity of self-consciousness that make
me, me. So while the person in heaven may very well be a person, with my memories and perhaps some of my personality quirks
and characteristics, that person is ultimately not me.
It
might help to look at the four elements in a little more detail to see just how
Ribeiro thinks personal continuity is lost in heavenly transformation. First,
the change is instantaneous. While we do change throughout our lives, it is
generally a gradual process, where there is some conservation of identity each
step of the way. Glorification happens instantly upon death and entry into the
new life. In a way, the gradual nature of earthly change keeps that change from
being too radical. It is clear that the nature of glorification is radical in
every sense. On earth, even if a change is radical, it is still mixed, i.e.
change for the better and change for
the worse will occur. Heavenly change promises to be unmixed and entirely for
the better; no flaws are retained or even possible. The fourth and final
element is rather important. We usually think of identity-preserving change as
self-directed, but the heavenly transformation would be directed from without,
with God doing the change himself.
Ribeiro
likens the heavenly change to a divine mule kick. On earth, if I were kicked in
the head by a mule and my brain was damaged, it might cause an instantaneous,
radical, and outwardly directed change in personality, perhaps to the point of
breaking personal continuity and thus creating a new person. The change doesn’t
even necessarily have to be unmixed to consider this possibility. The heavenly
transformation promises to be even more radical than this. Ribeiro says, “This
new choir member has different hopes, different plans, and different faculties
than I do. He has lost my hopes and fears, my projects and concerns.” And this
is the crux of the matter for him. He addresses purgatory briefly, but reaches
the same conclusion. The fact that Ribeiro 2.0 has different hopes, plans, and
faculties is enough for him to consider the defense of the third horn complete.
Thus the impenetrable trilemma
stands. Heaven cannot be desirable to me,
because (1) it would drive me insane through hellish monotony if I stayed as I
am now, (2) it would make me into a non-person, and (3) it would destroy me and create another person in my place.
I might be willing to grant
Ribeiro the first two horns of the trilemma, but I’m not so sure he has defended
the third horn as adequately as he might think. He claims, perhaps correctly,
that an immaterial soul is not a factor in determining the continuity of
personal identity. But I think he fails to note how much change individuals can
go through. I know for a matter of fact that I have entirely different hopes,
plans, and faculties than I did at age five, and we’ve all heard stories about
individuals who have undergone enormously radical change in a short amount of
time.
There is a lot more that could be
said about this, but I’ve already gone too long. I’ll end with this. There are
two types of change that we can consider when dealing with questions of
personal identity: accidental change and
essential change. Ribeiro is arguing
that heavenly transformation initiates an essential change, that is, a thing
(in this case a person) ceases to exist because it has become another thing.
However, I think it may be possible that what he is describing is in fact an
accidental change, that is, a thing (person) retains its identity even though
its accidental properties have changed.
Bibliography
Ribeiro, B. (2011), The Problem of Heaven. Ratio,
24: 46–64. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9329.2010.00482.x
The full article can be accessed here:
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