Near Death Experiences

[a mere housewife]

Jacob, was Christ just reviving Jairus' daughter, the widow's son, Lazarus etc., in a certain window of opportunity after they stopped breathing, or went into a coma, etc? Are we sure their experiences are the same as what happens when someone is medically revived? (This goes back to whether science can even determine at what point the soul leaves the body?)

Re: possible conclusions -- all of these seem potentially valid:

1. The boundary between the flesh world and the spirit world *may* be weakened in some conditions: though in Scripture, God manifested the spiritual world to someone's senses quite apart from physical states (Cornelius, Gehazi, etc).

2. Chemicals released in the brain *may* be causing the mind to experience something 'spiritually' that is not a genuine spiritual experience. All kinds of bodily conditions (in my case, tea deprivation) affect us in ways we translate spiritually precisely because mind and brain are distinct, but they do not involve genuine spiritual exercise. My tea drinking or lack thereof does not constitute any exercise of faith or any reception of anything by means of it. I may have to exercise faith against my 'spiritual' perceptions when I'm deprived of tea, or against the sense of a good conscience I have simply from being replenished thereby, even though I may be neglecting prayer, etc.

3. People's subconscious minds *may* be producing something akin to a dream. Just as a lot of people dream about insects under stress -- people with any sort of spiritual consciousness may tend to 'dream' about bright lights and presences -- soothing or troubling -- in certain physical states.

4. There *may* be some combination of various factors of the above, or others I haven't thought of.

It would seem impossible to do more than give a scattershot of possibilities, which could vary from case to case -- even on a Christian worldview. The Christian tradition accepts the validity of all the above explanations. If we didn't accept 2 and 3, we'd have to grant some kind of unveiling of ulterior reality to dreams about giant insects, and we'd have to treat physical depression as a primarily spiritual problem.

The Bible does teach the reality of the spiritual world; but I don't think the experiences add anything to its authority, and they confuse its testimony -- and other religions can also offer an explanation. I think you're right that they would make a weak polemic. I wouldn't be convinced of anything by it -- though I'm a fairly gullible person who natively doesn't put much stock in scientific claims to explain everything.

They do however, absorb a lot of peoples' attention -- the evidence of that abounds -- which would be so much better focused on something we can actually know, and that would exercise faith on its true object.

 

[RamistThomist]

My misunderstanding of your position then. Forgive me. For some reason I had thought you were discussing a state where a soul had left the body to enter into Outer Darkness and had met with demons. How does a soul which has not left the body interact with Demons & Outer Darkness?

Souls that haven't left the body interact with demons all the time. That's the logic behind demon possession. As to "outer darkness," I Have no position on that.

 

[RamistThomist]

Jacob, was Christ just reviving Jairus' daughter, the widow's son, Lazarus etc., in a certain window of opportunity after they stopped breathing, or went into a coma, etc? Are we sure their experiences are the same as what happens when someone is medically revived? (This goes back to whether science can even determine at what point the soul leaves the body?)

Scripture seems to think they were dead.

Re: possible conclusions -- all of these seem potentially valid:

1. The boundary between the flesh world and the spirit world *may* be weakened in some conditions: though in Scripture, God manifested the spiritual world to someone's senses quite apart from physical states (Cornelius, Gehazi, etc).

No disagreement there.

2. Chemicals released in the brain *may* be causing the mind to experience something 'spiritually' that is not a genuine spiritual experience. All kinds of bodily conditions (in my case, tea deprivation) affect us in ways we translate spiritually precisely because mind and brain are distinct, but they do not involve genuine spiritual exercise. My tea drinking or lack thereof does not constitute any exercise of faith or any reception of anything by means of it. I may have to exercise faith against my 'spiritual' perceptions when I'm deprived of tea, or against the sense of a good conscience I have simply from being replenished thereby, even though I may be neglecting prayer, etc.

For one, what is a "spiritual experience" and how does the brain cause the mind to experience a non-spiritual experience spiritually?

I agree with you that the brain and mind can supervene on one another. That is part of the logic behind the CIA's MK-ULTRA program.

3. People's subconscious minds *may* be producing something akin to a dream. Just as a lot of people dream about insects under stress -- people with any sort of spiritual consciousness may tend to 'dream' about bright lights and presences -- soothing or troubling -- in certain physical states.

Yes, that may happen, but it doesn't explain how a person can come back with knowledge otherwise inaccessible.

They do however, absorb a lot of peoples' attention -- the evidence of that abounds -- which would be so much better focused on something we can actually know, and that would exercise faith on its true object.

I disagree. Augustine said the two most important things were to know God and to know the soul. I am simply drawing out inferences of what the soul means for the Christian tradition.

 

[a mere housewife]

Scripture seems to think they were dead.

Yes, they were dead. It's nice to agree on that . But we don't know that about the near death experiences -- we don't have revelation on those.

For one, what is a "spiritual experience" and how does the brain cause the mind to experience a non-spiritual experience spiritually?

I think Lewis is good on this -- even the Screwtape Letters, where one (*fictional*) demon is advising another to fool his subject into thinking he's having a spiritual crisis, when he really just needs to eat. A genuine spiritual 'experience' -- experience that is genuinely in touch with spiritual reality -- is in the exercise of faith. 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' (Hebrews 11:1) Faith is the vision of the soul. It rests in the word of God. (2 Peter 1:19) It sees Christ. (Hebrews 12:2) All else could be deception: the devil is fundamentally a liar, and he's trying to destroy faith, not superstition.

Yes, that may happen, but it doesn't explain how a person can come back with knowledge otherwise inaccessible.

Not all the experiences -- probably not even most of them -- grant people knowledge that is otherwise inaccessible. (None has been cited here: if you're referring to the man who knew the doctors were arguing -- that is accessible via the senses. Often I have hallucinations that involve a waking consciousness of the room I'm in, with nightmare superimposed in some fashion. Ruben has had dreams of looking down on himself from the top of a room.) If you're referring to some uncanny knowledge of future events, that can happen even without a near death experience. So the scattershot of potential explanations remain, and the witness of these experiences will not hold the weight of truth, or of working theory.

I disagree. Augustine said the two most important things were to know God and to know the soul. I am simply drawing out inferences of what the soul means for the Christian tradition.

I remember being amazed -- I think it was in the Confessions? -- at Augustine chastening his luminous and vast curiosity for running off after a -- I think it was a dog! -- because he felt it wasn't to edification. We've agreed this isn't in the realm of science, and it isn't in the realm of revelation. We can't 'know' this. Augustine's quote applies to what can be *known*.

I probably won't reply further as I think we'd just be going in circles from here. These experiences can prove nothing and be proved by nothing. Faith does at some point, like a child (not an Eastern Orthodox mystic, just like a five year old), accept a lot of mystery -- even about ourselves (Psalm 131).

 

[RamistThomist]

I think Lewis is good on this -- even the Screwtape Letters, where one (*fictional*) demon is advising another to fool his subject into thinking he's having a spiritual crisis, when he really just needs to eat. A genuine spiritual 'experience' -- experience that is genuinely in touch with spiritual reality -- is in the exercise of faith. 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' (Hebrews 11:1) Faith is the vision of the soul. It rests in the word of God. (2 Peter 1:19) It sees Christ. (Hebrews 12:2) All else could be deception: the devil is fundamentally a liar, and he's trying to destroy faith, not superstition.

While we are on that book, at the very end Screwtape (or Lewis's speaking through Screwtape) says angels and demons visit the deceased Christian at his death

Augustine's quote applies to what can be *known*.

True, and Augustine posited different modes of knowing. The soul can't be known empirically, for example.

 

[RamistThomist]

Another interesting point. I wonder if we can generalize that the righteous soul after death is floating in realms of bliss. Sure, he's in the presence of God, but that might not always mean the same thing that we would normally think. The souls in Revelation 6 are crying to God, asking for blood vengeance--and not given immediate relief except to "wait a little longer."

 

[Edward]

Personally, I find the line that you are going down quite concerning

 

[RamistThomist]

To be sure, Kodos has since realized what I was and was not saying so that comment doesn't apply. And generalized comments about "the path I'm taken" (which is pure Augustinianism--read City of God, Bks 2, 7-10) is irrelevant if someone doesn't specifically address my theses. Heidi and Kodos have since done this and have realized I am not saying anything out of bounds with the Christian Tradition (indeed, I've made the argument that I am maintaining it).

And also in line with C.S. Lewis (see last part of Screwtape Letters and the Entirety of the Space Trilogy)

 

[a mere housewife]

Dear Jacob, I am bowing out of the conversation for other reasons (I enjoy discussion, but not fruitless arguing) -- not because my position changed at all throughout. From my first response I have agreed that there *may* be elements of contact with spiritual reality in some near death experiences. But we cannot *know* what is happening in things that are not revealed, and we cannot even come to the sort of knowledge that is good enough for scientific purposes. These experiences are not a reliable source of information about the supernatural world -- any more than fiction books by a fallible human author (who was not claiming to teach theology. I cited Lewis as giving advice in Screwtape about day to day Christian life, experiences that do lie more in the realm of our observation).

Christ himself told a story where the angels carry a man to the bosom of Abraham. It was the one that ends with his pointed statement that if people will not believe Moses and the prophets, they will not believe if someone returns from the dead.

Of course I believe in angels and in the soul: even Psalm 131 tells me that I have a soul. I don't know how a confused testimony would tell me more. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that angels carry us to Christ when we die. But it's Christ we are told about, and Christ we should be focusing on. The unfallen angels wouldn't want us to focus on them, and we're warned against focusing too much on angels (Colossians 2).

I did not mean to be smarmy when I said that I thought you were right that it wasn't a good polemic. I thought you were serious in saying that you were wrong in thinking it could be used that way. I rarely do mean to be smarmy . I do mean not to argue further: I don't like to be at odds with my family in Christ. But I have to stand by what I said about some things being unprofitable, and I've learned that the hard way myself.

Psalm 131

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.