The Resurrection

[Paleophyte]

So, an abstract concept like happiness and a concrete concept like male, stop making sense to you the moment a single entity possess both?

Yeah, I don't understand the problem with this. We can say that a person is a good man. "Good" being an attribute, a thing knowable through judgment and the mind. And "man" being a material object. They can go together.

OK, I can forgive John not seeing this but you have a philosophy background. I know that you know the difference between a concrete and an abstract and the difference between a qualifier and an essential.

If we say that "Bob is a good man." we aren't claiming that Bob is made out of pure goodness. Bob can wake up on the wrong side of the bed, have a bad hair day, and still be Bob. If Bob wakes up no longer a (hu)man then he's probably not Bob anymore.

There are concretes like bricks, people, dogs, flowers, air, etc. and then there are abstracts like kindness, honesty, and numbers. I can bonk you on the noggin with a brick, but will never manage to smack you with pi. Trying to be both is a logical contradiction.

It might be better in the long run, instead of using "abstract" and "concrete," to use the traditional terms "intelligible" and "sensible." (Intelligible meaning of course "known only through the mind" and sensible meaning "known through the senses.")

Because both of those terms have been given other meanings that muddy the conversation. The definition's a good one though as it exposes the contradiction. How can something simultaneously be known only through the mind and known through the senses as well?

It's all a product of a long history of theology produced by making shit up and running with it and only thinking about the consequences after it's become canon. You'd expect that from the very organic processes that produce religions but not so much of a Divine Creator. It gets us a whole slew of contradictory absurdities typically bundled as "mysteries" including Three-in-One God trinitarian doctrine and the whole 'rent yourself to yourself cheap for the weekend to appease your own wrath' silliness that gets mistaken for a sacrifice. Pretty much on par for a pack of squabbling mortals but falling seriously short of anything divine.