Inside “Redemption” by Michael Kientzler
by Floris Books • 26 January 2023 • Extract, Religion • 0 Comments
Our human consciousness and individuality – and our potential for freedom of choice – is possible because we have a physical body, separate from the spiritual realm. But for human beings to continue to develop, we need to reconnect to the divine world. The incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ is what makes this reconnection possible.
In Redemption: Christ’s Resurrection and the Future of Humanity Michael Kientzler discusses this central mystery of Christianity. He explores the nature of resurrection, and how it ultimately leads to human redemption or salvation. In this extract Kienztler explores the theory of knowledge.
The essential and the accidental
Now we have to make a little excursion into epistemology or the theory of knowledge.
A more simple example than a living being is a material object, like a chair or a lectern. They appear in certain colours, thereby pointing us to their materials like wood or painted metal. The seat of the chair is covered with a fabric of a certain colour. Depending on the angle of our vision we see two legs or three or four. Everything we perceive with our senses is accidental and not essential. A lectern does not have to be yellow, it does not have to be made from wood, it does not have to have four legs. These attributes are non-essential. It could look totally different and be made from a different material. The same applies to the chair: it doesn’t have to be wooden and doesn’t have to be covered in fabric, and so on and so forth. In relation to these objects every single impression of the senses is non-essential.
What is the essence of the chair?
It is the concept or idea of a chair as a raised platform on which one can sit and which has a backrest against which one can lean one’s upper body; without the backrest it would be a stool. The essence is not something that can be perceived with our senses. We will never understand or even find the essence of a chair by dissecting it and looking at the parts under an electron microscope or analysing it chemically.
If we go into the realm of molecules and atoms, or even the subatomic realm, we move further and further away from the essence of a thing or being. The carbon atoms in the wood are the same as they are in a rabbit or in a piece of charcoal or a human being. But modern science goes ever more deeply into the molecular and subatomic realms to try to find the essence. Modern science proposes that we will find the essence of an object if we take it apart, dissect it and look at it through an electron microscope. With the example of the chair, it is self-evident and obvious that matter does not contain the essence of the chair. It is not so obvious with a living object like a plant, for instance. In the plant, the matter right down to the molecules bears the imprint of its essence, which is the species as a formative force and is as characteristic as colour and form. But ultimately it is the same: the matter points to the essence of the plant but does not contain it.
If I wanted to get to know a person and I took a magnifying glass, coming very close their face to look at them, perhaps even taking a skin sample and analysing it in my quest to find out who they really are, I would be bound to fail. We should do the opposite. To gain an impression of the essence of a living being – whether human, animal or plant – we need to step back and look at the whole and consider how they behave in their environment.
We are not the product of our DNA and our ancestors. Many people take a DNA ancestry test these days and when they get the results with the percentage of various ancestry, say, ‘Now I really know who I am.’ One young woman quite rightly asked, ‘What does that have to do with me?’
This epistemological approach is important for our theme because it is essential to see the difference between the material body and the physical body. Our physical body is, strictly speaking, invisible. It is the matter it contains that makes it visible.
Read on in Redemption: Christ’s Resurrection and the Future of Humanity by Michael Kientzler. Discover more of our books on Religion and Spirituality here.
