… if life is a gift, and God is the donor, to whom is the gift given? Before I came to be, I was not, and simply not there to be given any gifts including the putative gift of life. But after I came to be, I already had what the Giver was supposed to bestow. Talk of life as a gift is logically problematic. No one can give you a gift unless are there to receive it, whence it follows that your being there cannot literally be a gift.
Well, experientia docet. If one has an experience of transcendence, one may not be able to use it to convince anyone else, but neither is one going to ignore it. Here is a poem of mine that I think has some bearing on all this. If we are created by God, God must have had us in mind from all eternity.
Hi Frank,
ReplyDeleteCool poem. I posted it on my FB page.
My gut reaction to what you've quoted is that it is a semantic argument, that even if you accept creation, Vallicella does want the word "gift" to be used the way it's been used.
This type of Benatar cum Vallicella argument borders on a discussion of science fiction. Let's say that this life is not a gift, but a killing off. There we were, immortal beings, and some co-immortal sociopathic mad scientist discovered this way of bring our immortal souls to ultimate destruction and entrapping us in these lives on earth, which leads to death, also leads to our annihilation. So much for the "gift" of life.
Alternatively, there is also the myth of Meng Po. Before entering this world, we each drank the tea of forgetfulness, such that we could not recall past lives, that we would perceive this life as the only one. Of course, many of us recall these lives in glimmers, some more pronounced than others. There goes the idea of "gift of life" again. However, in comes the idea that we chose this life. You decided to be Frank. I decided to be Rus. We are in no position to complain or blame. Indeed, maybe we are each other in another life, and we are the creators, and these lives are our "gifts" to ourself.
What if this? What if that? It's fun to be science fiction writers. It's fun to consider myths.
Then again, what if the mystics are right? What if the spirit is transcendent? My father just died at 89, a long life, but nothing immortal about it, physically speaking. Was this physical life all made up of spiritual? That's how we perceive it. Our perceptions are not physical. We cannot truly see a color unless we perceive it, senses be damned without perception. It's mere negative thinking, as frightful as it may be, that this physical life was not an heirloom gift to us the spiritual.
On Tuesday nights at Babilu, we have what's called The Café Poetry Challenge, in which we have 30 minutes to write a poem using a freshly given 10 words. Mine was not the "winning" poem of the week, but here it is:
Afternoon Moon Song
A nightingale in a tree by the funeral parlor
cannot sing away the grief of the decedent's lover
cannot sing a new moon to be aside
the half moon low in the afternoon sky
The art of the image is in both light and shade
The craft of creation in the charm and the rage
But praise be the love song as we endure
that could otherwise be heard as clamor
Neat poem, Rus. And true.
ReplyDeleteAs for the mystics, I agree with the late Karl Rahner, S.J. The Christian of the future will be a mystic or won’t exist at all. Faith is a matter of practice, not air-fairy theorizing.
ReplyDelete