152 Apokatastasis: Four Meditations
have been stripped away- it is the living form, rather than its
mere material instantiation, that has been obliterated. So why
would we even speak about salvation at that point, rather than
about the total replacement of one thing by another? Who is it,
after all, who remains to be saved? A spark, a spiritual essence
detached from all identity, rather like the Western caricature
of advaita Vedanta's eternal Atman detached from the condi-
tional relations of the jiva? Is the bliss of the beatific union
with God so transfiguring and consuming and complete as
to reduce all subsidiary relations to nothing, and thereby in a
single stroke to reduce each personhood to nothing, so that all
that remains is an anonymous act of intellection immersed in
perpetual, unpitying delight? This is an obvious thing, really:
This blessedly "oblivious" account of the afterlife of the elect
is incoherent simply because, for salvation to be the salvation
of persons - as opposed to the final liberation of something
anonymous and "transcendent" of personality, something
that must be rescued from its defiling entanglement in per-
sonality's pathetic need for others-there must be some sort
of continuity of identity between the soul as it exists during
its wanderings in this vale of tears and the soul as it shall be
when it is raised up into God. And such continuity is impos-
sible apart from those we love, because we are, as persons, the
creatures of our loves.
At this point, I have to admit, I find myself irresistibly
calling to mind what I feel fairly certain is a cliche of crime fic-
tion or melodrama or even comedy (at least, I seem to remem-
ber a William Powell and Myrna Loy film based on the prem-
ise): that of the long-term amnesiac who has made a good life
for himself, and even raised a family, but who then discovers
he may have committed crimes in his previous life, and now
must determine whether in fact he did, and whether, should