Conditional Immortality (3)
Conditional Immortality & Resurrection
A final response on James’ questions. I think the scriptures are plain on this matter: God created humans as embodied beings and meant and means them to enjoy life and fellowship with him as embodied beings. If that’s true then "death" is more than biological breakdown, it is something that thwarts God’s creative purpose—it leaves humans bodiless. This would (in part) explain why 1 Corinthians 15 calls death an "enemy" that needs to be destroyed. You see this in the book of Revelation also where God is said to destroy Death and Hades. (Of course death has more than one face—it is also God’s righteous judgement against sin—Romans 1:32 and Genesis 3, closing verses.)
As I understand scripture, a human isn’t "a spirit or soul that inhabits a discardable body for a while." Nor is a human "a reasoning, self-reflecting piece of animal matter that becomes extinct at death." The body is not the human—end of story. The soul is not the human—end of story. A ghost is not a human. A corpse is not a human. A human is an embodied being that is not fully human unless embodied.
Death short-circuits that fully human experience and if humans remain permanently disembodied then death has triumphed because it has successfully deprived humans of fullness of life, of the life God purposed for them. This is one of the reasons why death had to be abolished and it is abolished in Christ by his resurrection to immortality (2 Timothy 1:10). Of course if God created us embodied but fully intended to jettison bodily existence then we have an entirely different picture. But that’s not the picture we get from reading scripture. Whatever this or that one in the OT believed back in the days before light came in the person of Jesus Christ—whatever they believed it was always God’s intention to live with gloriously embodied humans.
Those who are embraced in Christ’s redeeming work are destined for a glorious resurrection. The resurrection and glory of Jesus Christ is the basis for and guarantee of all the rest (he is "the firstfruits"—1 Corinthians 15). Those alive when Christ makes his "final" appearance will be transformed in body and those who have experienced the rupture (not rapture) of death will be resurrected. In both cases the mortality (susceptibility to death) will have been destroyed so that they will be beyond the reach of death—they’ll be immortal.
But who will be immortal? It won’t be a brand new creation. It isn’t the case that "Wilma" dies and someone like Wilma is resurrected. There’s only one Wilma, she experienced death and she is redeemed from it. She sinned against God, was graciously forgiven; it is that one that is gloriously redeemed. Whatever fine-tuning might be involved that Wilma might live anew in the better world—Wilma’s back. Wilma, like everyone else, is more than what she’s "made of". She is history, memories and relationships. Her experiences in life (sinful and sacred) are the experiences of a specific and irreplaceable embodied being. The idea that she became utterly extinct and was replaced by someone else is, I think, what conditional immortality logically requires since "the first" Wilma ceased to exist and the "second" Wilma is a numerically different "Wilma". If it's an entirely new Wilma then it isn't Wilma--she no longer exists.
If that’s the case, death is eternally the victor over Wilma. For conditional immortality there is no Wilma. Clearly God could (so to speak) "clone" her. He could create a new being with all Wilma’s memories and experiences built in but it could not be identified as the Wilma who was brought to Christ by loving parents, who suffered for the Christ and died trusting him. Though I have a host of unanswered questions (and I’m sure there’s a host of questions I don’t know to ask) I think all the "Wilmas" are coming back. They are the resurrected originals. As original as the transformed ones who never died. In light of how I see scripture and reflect on it conditional immortality doesn’t work for me.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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