This paper was my last for my Philosophy and Christianity course with Dr. Christian Miller. Dr. Miller is known for giving extremely specific prompts for his assignments. This assignment was no different. Everything down to the section structuring was predetermined. These papers often felt as if I was answering a string of interconnected short answer questions rather than composing an essay. This piece was generally aimed at outlining a logical contradiction in Christian philosophy and remedying that contradiction with modern philosophical ideas. The target audience was to be thought of as those with a basic understanding of theological and philosophical terms. The final product was to be a minimum of five full pages and a maximum of seven (this, I learned, was a serious requirement). Akin to most of Dr. Miller’s assignments, the body of sources available for use in the paper was limited to those sources read for class.

I chose to investigate a puzzle dealing with the issues that a conventional Christian understanding of the resurrection of bodies presents for ideas of identity. The first part of this assignment carefully follows Dr. Miller’s instructions for laying out the puzzle. In reflection, I find it rather uncreative. I used the rest of the assignment to remedy this puzzle with a philosophy of identity created by Lynn Rudder Baker. I cringe in rereading this section because I believe that I wrote it without having a sufficient understanding of Baker’s argument. Baker’s definition of first-person perspectives is something that is still too metaphysically dense for me to talk about meaningfully. I would revise this paper with the addition of a section devoted to exploring just what exactly Baker means by this term. This assignment, and Dr. Miller’s assignments generally, curbed my appetite to write with a creative spin in philosophy classes. The rigid boundaries and wildly specific expectations forced me to write with a controlled register and tone.