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r3trohack3rtoday at 5:37 PM2 repliesview on HN

Christianity (Catholicism) derived this as well. John Scotus Eriugena in the 800s.

Apocatastasis

The thesis goes something like: God is timeless. Time is necessary for change. In order to experience change, God creates universes that have time and descends into these lower states of existence. This gives rise to conscious beings - they’re literally small disconnected slices of God that descended to our state of existence. When you die, you “roll up” back into God taking your lived experience with you.

He was posthumously condemned in 1225 with an order for his books to be burned.


Replies

mightyhamtoday at 6:03 PM

I'm no theologian but I don't really think this coheres with standard Catholic doctrine. Typically, we say that God is being itself, pure and uncaused. All things maintain their very existence through God. We know that God has intellect because the world we reside in is intelligible. God has no need to experience change or time because he actualizes their very existence, and in order to do so, must already have perfect knowledge of it. Humans, even our souls, are created beings and are not any more a part of God than anything else that exists. Jesus was unique in that he was a hypostatic union of human nature and divine nature, and even though he was an indivisible union, these natures nevertheless remained distinct.

Edit: I wrote this response before you added that this was specific to the theology of John Scotus Eriugena.

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edgyquanttoday at 5:50 PM

I think most mysticism from all various religions eventually arise at a similar conclusion, this leads me to believe it must be the truth.