While reading something-or-other on logic, I came across this oft-used syllogism:
Major Premise: All men are mortal.
Minor Premise: Socrates is a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
It suddenly occurred to me that most Christians do not believe in the truth of the major premise: they believe that Jesus of Nazareth was non-mortal. I won’t say “immortal,” since they do believe that he gave up his Earthly body in the end. The Gospels, however, claim that he rose from the dead before ascending to Heaven — not in spirit form initially, but his Earthly body actually came back to life, if only temporarily. This is clearly something other than mortal, although not quite immortal; hence: “non-mortal.”
Of course, most Christians also believe that Jesus was something more than a man as well. Still, they would likely concede that he was born of a human mother, that he was flesh and blood, that he consumed food, water and air and presumably required them to survive while in his humanoid form, and that he was vulnerable to harm. This would place him squarely in the “man camp,” for all practical purposes, at least while he was here on Earth. As such, it is fair to call Jesus a man, albeit a non-mortal one, according to Christian doctrine.
If Jesus was a non-mortal man then the major premise of the example argument would not be true. In that case, it would be reasonable to presume that there are non-mortals living among us even today, and that there always have been. If we presume a worldwide population of about one million, circa 10,000 BCE, with even just one non-mortal among them, then simple arithmetic tells us that Jesus may have been, at best, only one of a couple-hundred non-mortals. This most conservative estimate suggests that there could be upwards of 6,000 of them alive today!
I would like to meet one of these non-mortals. I would also like to devise a test for non-mortality, to determine whether or not I am able to rise from the dead. Such knowledge would allow for a far more adventurous lifestyle!
Posted by DD 