Christ is Risen!
(in the Catholic timezone, at least; I presently operate on an Orthodox schedule)
Owing to the second major theological/worldview upheaval I’m going through (my first was in 2012-2013), this space is for working through the intellectual side of my multi-faceted conundrum. I will post intuitions that apparently contradict each other and then construct convoluted epicycles and frameworks that attempt to explain these intuitions. This is speculation, not teaching!
My first upheaval benefited from being merely a conversion to Christianity with some odd features, causing a problem of discernment regarding what I should do about it. The sort of shamanic inter-denominational Christianity de facto practiced by the Inklings was an excellent fit for my situation, and in the end I benefitted from very good and level-headed advice from ‘Romantic Christian’ bloggers including Bruce Charlton and Francis Berger.
My second upheaval this March-April 2023 involved a recovered-past-life intuition that takes me outside any known philosophical framework. On the one hand, I have a convincing intuition of a vast parallel-multiverse structure including multiple Earths and Earthlike worlds which apparently have a Christian Church. On the other hand, I have an equally convincing intuition that there is a singular Earth on which one Jesus Christ was incarnated, crucified, and rose from the dead, and this single ordeal was sufficient for the redemption of the entire multiverse of humanity. There are some intense logical tensions to resolve here!
It is worth noting that this is consonant with face-value Fourth Gospel Christianity (‘Gospel of John’), since the sacramental Church is a cumbersome way to spread salvation across a multiverse, but if hearing the Name of Christ and trusting in His victory over death is sufficient, then both Christ’s Name and the Holy Spirit apparently transmit themselves miraculously across endless universes. The sacramental Church would have naturally arisen on many of the recipient universes, perhaps, as a way to make sense of this miracle in the categories of olden-day philosophy and to ritually relive aspects of Christ’s ministry in gratitude for his gift of salvation.
Topics that will be touched on include Mandela Effect memetic cross-talk between universes, Mormon revelations and speculations (through a non-sacramental ‘Theoretical Mormon’ lens), any other religions that admit the possibility of a multiverse (likely Buddhism, for contrast and as a noble example of the self-help systems multiverse-residents tend to naturally come up with in the absence of the Gospel), and probably other mind-bending things.
Fair warning: if I don’t manage to build a framework I’m satisfied with, I reserve the right to unpublish this blog at any time. The comments would then go away with it. As a less-extreme option, I may expunge paragraphs with particular details if I find I wasn’t able to keep things impersonal in hindsight. This will be clearly-marked in the updated posts.
I’ve previously authored in this ‘speculative religion’ genre:
- https://nonapologia.tumblr.com/
- ‘Arakawa’ and ‘Serhei’ comments on Bruce Charlton’s blog https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com (can be found with an appropriately-phrased web search e.g. 'site:charltonteaching.blogspot.com Arakawa')
- This guest-post on Bruce Charlton’s blog https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-if-absence-of-christian-slaves.htm summing up my main Lesson learned from spiritual resistance to the 'birdemic' regime circa 2020-2022.
