The Resurrection of Immortality by McLeod-Harrison Mark S

Author:McLeod-Harrison, Mark S. [McLeod-Harrison, Mark S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781498243483
Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
Published: 2017-08-08T07:00:00+00:00

34. Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit.

35. This point was raised by a reviewer of the earlier draft of the chapter.

36. Phil Smith commented here the following way: “Can a person in hell wish to not be in hell and not be lovingly related to God? Yes, in the sense that he could wish for round squares. Not even God can take you out of hell if hell is in you.”

Chapter 5

An Argument for Immutable Immortality

Are humans immortal and if so, when do we gain that property? Annihilationists reject immortality simpliciter for humans, opting for conditional immortality for the redeemed. If we have immortality from natality forward, whether natural or immutable, we don’t have conditional immortality and annihilationism fails as eschatologically in its claim to truth.

Section I lays out some details of this last claim. Section II presents the argument for immutable immortality.

I

As I noted in the previous chapter, in contemporary discussions of hell, some defend eternal conscious punishment and others annihilationism. Those who believe in eternal conscious punishment believe the unredeemed human person continues forever in a state of punishment. Annihilationists believe that the unredeemed human person simply ceases to be at some point, usually the final judgment or after some time in punishment. A key issue in this debate is whether immortality attends humans.

By saying humans are immortal it should now be clear that I mean to claim that humans exist forever, once created by God. Now humans might, as I suggested in chapter 2, have immortality as an essential property and as such immortality would true be of humans inherently, not something coming to us from the “outside” as an addition to one’s being, but part and parcel of what it is to be a human. I call this “natural immortality.” I will not argue for natural immortality. The reason is not too far to seek, for the idea that humans are essentially immortal requires that God could not have made humans without immortality, that is, that there is no possible world in which humans are mortal. I believe that is too strong a notion of immortality.

Instead, I argue for enduring immortality in the sense that immortality is a property such that once one has it, one cannot lose it. In fact, I argue that humans have strongly enduring immortality. Weakly enduring properties, one will recall, are properties that once one has them one cannot lose them so long as one exists. Strongly enduring properties are such that once one has them, there is no time one doesn’t have them. Immortality, I suggest, is a property humans have in a strongly enduring manner. As it turns out, however, the argument also supports immortality as a weak immemorial property. So humans have immutable immortality.

Natural immortality contrasts with conditional immortality where humans are understood as created mortal but with the potential for immortality, an immortality not natural to us (essential to us) but granted (or not) at the final judgment. In either case—natural or conditional immortality—humans remain contingent. Humans are not necessary, but created beings.

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