HUGH ROSS’S EXTRA-DIMENSIONAL DEITY

FOUND: http://ldolphin.org/craig/index.html

Extra-dimensionality leads Dr. Ross into even more bizarre speculations about the atonement in answer to the question of how one man’s death could pay for all people’s sins. Instead of answering that question in terms of the dignity of Christ’s person, he hypothesizes that perpendicular to our time dimension is another dimension composed of billions of separate time lines on each of which Christ suffers death and subsequent isolation from God for infinite time (p. 112). 1 find this speculation profoundly unacceptable. It requires, in effect, billions of Christs, thus destroying Christ’s personal identity. For it is a distinct person who dies on the cross in each of these time lines. Moreover, each of these Christs suffers separation from God endlessly with no hope of resurrection and victory at the end. That Christ rises in our temporal dimension is the exception to the rule; the other Christs remain separated from God forever, which makes a mockery of Jesus’s triumph over death.

Dr. Ross also makes a curious suggestion concerning Jesus’ resurrection appearances: in disappearing from view, Jesus “rotated” each of his three spatial dimensions into a fourth, fifth, and sixth spatial dimension respectively (pp. 46-47). Jesus’ resurrection body thus literally came apart and became three one-dimensional lines-not a very robust conception of a body!