Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory by Jerry L. Walls

Author:Jerry L. Walls [Walls, Jerry L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL067000, REL012000, Future life—Christianity, Heaven—Christianity, Hell—Christianity, Purgatory
ISBN: 9781441222572
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2014-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

Physicalism and Identity after Death

Let us turn now to consider the physicalist position on human nature. How can personal identity be maintained between death and resurrection if we are identical with our bodies?

Well, one option is to say that God will give us a body in the intermediate stage between death and resurrection. In order to maintain continuity with our body in this life, God might even split a cell from our body and use that to generate a new body for us. This would not be the same as our resurrection body, which will not be given until the end of the world. But it would be a body that would allow us to remain alive and retain our personal identity in “intermediate heaven” as we await the resurrection. Indeed, continuity would be maintained by the fact that this body was generated from a cell of the previous body.

Randy Alcorn, who is not a physicalist, notes that some texts in the New Testament may suggest that Christians will have bodies in the intermediate heaven. He points first to Paul’s words in which he anticipates life after death: “Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:2–4).

Paul’s anticipation that we will “be clothed with our heavenly dwelling” could be taken to mean that he expects to have a body. Alcorn also mentions the fact that the martyrs in heaven are depicted as wearing robes (Rev. 6:9–11). While this language could well be symbolic, it could indicate that the saints in intermediate heaven have bodies.

In any case, Alcorn takes the view that if there are such bodies, they are only temporary and are not our real bodies. They would not have any sort of continuity with our bodies in this life or with our resurrection bodies. Our resurrection bodies will have continuity with our bodies in this life, our real bodies. Intermediate bodies would just be placeholders, as it were, in the time between death and resurrection.3

Even with this qualification, the notion that we receive bodies immediately after death seems to lessen the force of death and, accordingly, the future resurrection. The dualist view that we are without our bodies during the intermediate period is arguably more true to the reality that death is the last enemy yet to be overcome (1 Cor. 15:26). Identity is sustained for the dualist, but in a form that is less than fully human since we are not embodied during the intermediate period.

But there is another option as well for physicalists. They can “bite the bullet” and simply insist that the gap in conscious existence between death and resurrection is not a problem for personal identity. They can point to the fact that some things are “gappy” or “gap inclusive” by nature.

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