The Nine Lives of DET, pt. 1
Modern theology has demythologized the old yarn that cats enjoy nine literal lives, New Age philosophy notwithstanding. Carpe diem! You only live once. The particularly modern emphasis would treat the "nine lives" trope as metaphor: Instead of deferring their deepest hopes for eight lines yet to come -- recall the old quip about "catnip in the sky, by and by" -- our feline friends should reinterpret the myth, existentially, to focus on the multiple possibilities for authentic existence in this life . (I will not engage here -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- the perennial debate about whether and how the scope of the general resurrection might encompass our animal companions.) In his amazing book, Death, the Riddle and the Mystery , Eberhard Jüngel argues that, somehow, our temporal existences as a whole will be resurrected into eternity. Or we might frame the matter as some process theologians do: God subjectively remembers the life events and experien