Why a Body in a Resurrection? | Episode 1407 | Closer To Truth

I'd like to live forever. Who wouldn't? Science says ridiculous. When your brain dies, you die. Religion claims to offer hope, conjures up schemes to survive death. Most religions offer some kind of non-physical hereafter. Eastern religions have ethereal glories in cosmic consciousness The Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, have the resurrection of the body, the same person brought back to life. But isn't a body out of place in a non-physical hereafter? Why a body in a resurrection? I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn, and Closer to Truth is my journey to find out. The resurrection of the body is a fantastical vision. And even if one doesn't believe it possible, no God, no life after death, the fact that major religions feature a resurrection raises questions about human yearnings and about how seemingly bizarre thoughts can be justified by very smart thinkers. What can be learned from religious reasonings about a resurrection? I have two questions. First, why have a body in a resurrection? What is the reason for a body? Second, how can a body be resurrected? What are possible mechanisms to bring back a dead body? Regarding why a body, I start with a Christian philosopher, a past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, Eleanor Stump. Eleanor, the hope of the Western Abrahamic monotheistic religions really is the resurrection. How can we begin to at least get some feel for what that promise may be like? I think before we think about what the resurrection would be like, we ought to think about why there should be a resurrection of the body. Why should there be bodies at all? So think about it like this. God is sitting around in heaven and he's thinking about what to make. And he says to the angels, you know, I got an idea. I think I'll make minds out of matter. And they say to him, out of matter? Oh, what a bad idea. I mean, think about all the things that can happen to a mind if you make it out of matter. Just stay with us, okay? We're immaterial, it works out really, really well. He says, no, I think I'll try it like this. He'll make a mind out of matter. Okay, now what have you got? Well, you've got minds that are embodied particulars. That means unlike angels who are not made out of matter, you look out at the world from a particular perspective. And by you, everything is particular. So there's the particular people you love, the particular place you were born, the particular home that is your own. That's what it is to be an embodied particular. And there is something really nice about particularity. And in the resurrection, you've got particularity again. If you were just an immaterial thing floating around somewhere or other, you'd lose the blessings of particularity. Once you've got resurrected body, you've got particularity, locality, get all those things back again, and there can again be particulars that you love particularly. I think that's a lovely idea. To Eleanor, embodiment is the way to experience particularity, the specific individual personal things we think, feel, and do as human beings. Perpetual personal particularity, now and forever, characterizes the Abrahamic religions, and thus differs sharply from most Eastern religions where individuality is subsumed by the collective. Now, it's beyond my pay grade to adjudicate between individuality and the collective in the hereafter, if there is a hereafter. But here's what is clear. Humanity has posited these two distinct and opposing ways of envisioning ultimate purpose. And even if there is no ultimate purpose, this radical dichotomy is still true. So, even if there is no hereafter, imagining the hereafter reflects human conceptual diversity. In exploring the particularity of a resurrected body, what are the supposed benefits? I asked Rutgers' Dean Zimmerman, Dean, why do we need a body in a resurrection? We need to be able to interact with one another somehow. If we're going to be in communication with one another, fellowship with one another, have responsibility for helping one another, there's got to be an independent world and we've got to be part of it. And we've got to be able to control some parts of it. And that's going to be our body, the part that we directly control. So, I think it makes sense for us to have something that's just a part of the world, which is special, special to us. Some religions, of course, would discard the body, and the Plato, you're free from the prison of the body. Certain Eastern religions would do away with the body. And Christianity itself became influenced by that. And you talk to students who were raised religious and you ask them, you know, what happens after you die? They just say, well, your soul goes to heaven. No, that's not really what Christianity says. It says that there's the resurrection. And that's a very crucial part of the doctrine. So, I think we have to, from a Christian perspective, regard body and soul as both crucial to my existence. Connection, being tightly tied with the body, is my natural state. If that stops, I'm in an unnatural state. And that's why the resurrection has to occur. Now, assuming a body is essential in a resurrection, what's the next step? How a body, how on earth can a body be resurrected? To appreciate the extent of the problem, even if one believes in God, I asked philosopher Peter van Inwagen. The problem of the resurrection of the body is the problem of the resurrection of the body of a particular person. And the problem looks very different depending on what you think a person is, and what you think a human person is. It's really no problem for someone like Descartes, for example, because Descartes thinks that what he is is an immaterial substance. What any of us is is an immaterial substance. God could ensure that this immaterial substance continues to exist after the body that it was associated falls apart at some point in the future. He can create another body and hook it up with that immaterial substance. However, it got hooked up before. And voila, that body is that person's body because your body just is the body with which you're in causal interaction. Maybe it won't be the same body that you had before, but it will be your body. So it doesn't have to have the same atoms or anything that you had. No, your body in this life isn't always made of the same atoms. Descartes would be delighted to point out. Now, St. Thomas Aquinas took a different view from Descartes. He thought that you were essentially a union of soul and body, and that the soul was the form of the body, and that therefore when your body ceases to exist, you do too. But he said God could keep your soul in existence, and it wouldn't be you, you understand. It would just be your soul, but it would certainly bear your identity, even if it didn't have that identity. What God could do in the future then is create a new body, hook the soul up to it, and voila, you come back into existence because your soul is the form of your body. This would even be numerically the same body that you had before because what makes a body the body it is is which form it has, which individual form it has, and that is you. But suppose that you're neither a Cartesian nor a Thomist about what a person is. Suppose you think a person is just a biological organism with no immaterial part or constituent or anything like that. A view that you hold. That is the view that I hold, and that is the view that seems to permeate the presuppositions of the New Testament. But in any case, here's a problem. So, I die. Let's say that my body, let's say it's burned. Let's say that I'm cremated. The ashes are scattered, and within a few years, they're spread throughout the terrestrial biosphere. Well, God can, of course, create a perfect duplicate of me as I was at the age of, say, 70 when I was still in good health, or then maybe he will even rejuvenate it, or he could go straight to the way I was at 21, though a perfect reconstruction that is going to produce my mental states at 21 and lose the experience of the rest of my life. So, maybe he'd prefer to recreate me as I was right at the end of my life and then do some rejuvenation or something. Okay, but, you know, if he did that, he could do that twice. And then which one would be I? Well, not both, because there can't be two people that are the same people, so if not both, then neither. So, I don't exist. How can even omnipotence bring back? Is it like he'd bring back the snows of yesteryear? Is that within the power of omnipotence? I don't think so, you know. I think there would have to be some kind of continuity. And, indeed, if you look at the one thing the New Testament says about the metaphysics of resurrection in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he says that somehow the body gets sowed like a seed and then grows again from that seed. It gets clothed. There's a gymnos caucas, a bare kernel, which then gets clothed in flesh again. I'm sure that that bare kernel is not a Cartesian ego or a Thomistic form of the body. It seems quite plain that Paul is talking about something that's physical in the modern sense of the word physical, though what it might be would be a mystery. Peter shows how even God might have a problem resurrecting a body, a surprising result for a believer in an all-powerful supreme being. It's a problem, however, that arises only if one believes that the person is all material without anything non-physical. To Peter, the resurrected body, though certainly mysterious, is indeed physical. Dean Zimmerman, also a believer, also recognizes the complexity of resurrecting a body. But why is he not bothered? When you think about how the body changes its stuff all the time, this body is not really one thing. There's a whole bunch of different bodies. What's just important is that I have one. If that's the relationship between me and my body, then I'm an immaterial thing that simply has a body. The resurrection is my getting one again. And that's not so hard to understand. God takes a matter, maybe the matter that was in my body when I died, maybe not, and generates something which is appropriate, which is the natural continuation of the one that I had, even though, strictly speaking, it's not the very same one. Now, some Christians, and certainly there's a strand of Jewish thinking on the nature of persons, which says we're not immaterial substances. We are physical objects. I just am this body. Now, on that conception of things, the resurrection's extremely important because when this body dies and I'm just a physical body, where did I go? God's gotta bring this body back. Some people think that the natural thing would be to suppose God collects all the bits of matter that were in my body when I died. He knows where they went, after all, and he reassembles them in the proper way. And this is met with a lot of puzzles involving cannibalism and other colorful events, events that lead to one person dying, all that matter being recycled, getting in someone else's body, and then they die, and then what's God gonna do when the general resurrection of the dead is supposed to occur? Well, really, it feels like the very matter that's in my body when I die shouldn't be all that important. One way to secure survival is to suppose that as I die, my body somehow is allowed to generate a duplicate of itself elsewhere. If it does so, then it's causally connected with a body that appears later, and that kind of causal connection is enough to make it this very same physical object. A universe like that wouldn't look absurd to you? Well, it does seem a little surprising that our bodies are doing this sort of jumping that we don't see. But I don't worry about it too much because I believe I'm an immaterial soul. To Gene, the body may be less unique than we'd like to think. He's fine with multiple bodies, because the essence of the person, in his belief, is something not material. Okay, but even if I'd assume that the person is something not material, still, how could God resurrect the body? I go back to Eleanor Stumpf. By what mechanism is it even conceivable that God can resurrect the real me, not just something that looks like me, not a duplicate, not a twin, but something truly that is me that has the continuity, the totality? Well, see, the guys who are worried about this think that what God's job is is reassembly. As if we broke the string on the pearl necklace. We got to go rush around looking for the pearls under the sofa, get it all reassembled again. But that's a particular kind of metaphysics underlying that view. And it's not the metaphysics of the old Jewish and Christian tradition, but the way the Christian tradition conceives of it is that you never actually go out of existence. So the old metaphysics went like this. You've got integral parts. An integral part is a part that is itself an embodied particular. You've got hands, that's an embodied particular. But you've also got metaphysical parts, form and matter, configuration and matter. And here's the idea about configuration. On the old metaphysics, it's possible to have a subsistent configuration. That's what angels are. They are configured immaterial substances. Well, you, you're a funny amphibian. So you're like the angels in having a part of you that is just the configuration, but you're not like coffee cups or rocks because the configuration that is a metaphysical part of you, it can subsist like the configuration that's angelic. So here's the thing about your integral parts. We can remove some of them and you'll still say. So if, sad to say, sad to think about, we cut off your hands, cut off your feet, cut off your arms, cut off your legs, reduced you down to brain and kept that going somehow, well, your mother would be sad, but she would know it was you, see? So you can keep going in a very non-natural condition as far as your integral parts go. It's not you, you're not identical to your brain, but your brain can keep you going even if that's the only integral part of you left if we take good care of your brain in certain ways. The idea is we can keep you going with less than your normal number of metaphysical parts. So we can remove all the matter. As long as we keep that configuration going, we still have you. You're not identical to the soul, but the soul is enough to constitute you and keep you going in this non-natural condition. So in order to resurrect you, we don't have to get you back again. We haven't lost you. You've just been here in this non-natural condition. And in order to get you resurrected, God doesn't have to reassemble you. He just has to reconstitute you. Any matter doesn't have to start with elementary particle physics. He just has to start with materiality. The configuration is what brings you back. We configure matter, you leave. So we don't have to wonder how is this identical to that. We never lost you. You're always here. So you're differentiating between reconstituting and reassembling. That's exactly right. To Eleanor, God reconstitutes the body, a term that incorporates the deep essence of the real person, but not the specific atoms of the original body. Because to Eleanor, the real person, though dead, was never lost. But the Christian resurrection is not the only kind of afterlife. There are other kinds, some radically different, and I should know them. I pursue a philosopher who brags, tongue in cheek, that he believes in the existence of more things than you do, Eric Steinhardt. I like John Hick's resurrection theory. It's a multiverse theory. There are many universes, and we are resurrected from universe to universe. So, in a sense, Hick says when you die, something like a replica of you is created in another universe. It will go on to live its life there, and when it dies, a replica is created in the next universe, and so forth. It's a multiverse theory of resurrection. It's very physicalistic, saying that what's really important about you is your body, and if things are going to be improved about either one of us, it will be our bodies. I subscribe to that. Yeah, I believe in the resurrection. I'm hopeful that I'll be resurrected without the allergies that I have. That would be a great improvement. You believe in a resurrection? Yes, I do. Absolutely. I like John Hick's theory, where there are multiple universes. Now, Hick says all these universes somehow exist in the consciousness of God. They're created by God. You have a sequence of gods, of progenitor gods, little gods, not big omni-gods, but progenitor gods, and there, each one has a universe that exists within it in some way. Like, if a little god created our universe, there'll be a little bit bigger little god that'll have a new universe. We'll get the pattern from this universe, and if I've already died in this universe, it'll get that historical pattern and it could resurrect me in the next one. Is that kind of the idea? Yeah, you got it pretty good, you know? You're a part of the universe, right? And the next god, you know, and he looks at the plan of the universe that his progenitor has made, says, you know, I can do better. So, as each god improves its universe, it looks at the morally worthy parts of the universe and it makes each one of them better. Now, this is a kind of resurrection theory. There'll be a better version of you in the next universe. But is that me? Is it me? Will I have my first-person consciousness? Will I wake up or whatever happens and know that I've had this feeling? I certainly don't remember anything in the past. I mean, this sounds like a very Eastern cycle-of-life reincarnation kind of approach where you don't have these memories. There's no personal continuity. That's correct. No, you're not going to remember me. I presented this at a conference and they said, well, you're just some kind of a Buddhist. And I said, you know, that's fine with me. I've been told I should call it a theory of rebirth instead of resurrection in the Buddhist sense. And that's fine with me. I think it's actually more accurate. So, you won't have any consciousness of remembering this past life. Yeah, so what worth is it? What worth is it? Well, I'm sure there's, like, lots of things you might want to do. What worth is it to be resurrected or reborn in a better way? No, it's not like that happening to me. It's like somebody taking a pattern of my feet and then making some other shoes and somebody else is going to wear them. So what? Ha! Well, I like to think of you as a system of potentials. All right, and in fact, this is your soul. This is Aristotle. Your soul is the form of your body. Yeah, all right. So, some of my talents that can't be developed here are going to be developed in the resurrection universes, in the next better universes as I get improved. It's not you. It's just some new creation that uses some patterns of you. If I die and I'm cremated, all the molecules that compose my current body will go floating out into the ecosystem. A lot of them will be very usefully employed. That's just as good. Well, you know what? I'm going to agree with you. It's not you. It's one of your future counterparts. It's a thing that takes your pattern and actualizes more of its potentials. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. So I'm contributing to the great improvement of reality. Big deal. Well, it's your pattern. Yes. It's your pattern. It means nothing to me. Let's remember the Buddhist element to this. So if you're just attached to yourself as your stream of consciousness, as your desire and your attachment, you better wake up and realize that everything's impermanent and that's all going to pass away. That's not your true self. Now, I can't help you if you're attached to your stream of consciousness, except to say, well, you know, all this stuff, your achievements, consciousness, gone. So don't be attached to that stuff. That's not you. You are a pattern that can be passed on through an infinity of universes, improved again and again and again, so your own infinite potentials can be actualized. So don't be attached to yourself, man. Sorry, Eric, I am quite attached to myself, thank you. I shall be disappointed, annoyed actually, if your kind of resurrection is reality and I disappear forever. But kudos for considering resurrections. Irrespective of belief, God or no God, resurrections require coherent thought, not casual hope. So answers to my two questions, why have a body in a resurrection? A body seems archaic, a burden throughout eternity. It's the particularity of personhood. It's humanity defined by social interactions and community. How can a body be resurrected? If persons have immaterial parts, then it seems easier. Physical bodies can take various forms when uniting with non-physical essence. But if persons are all material, then it seems trickier, because whatever God can resurrect once, God can resurrect twice. So which is me? What will we do with a resurrected body? Eternity is a long time. I can't wait to ask Ellen or Stump. Let's be optimistic and say we meet in the resurrection. You know, what are we going to do? We're going to talk about what it was like before, in the way old-timers do. And we're going to say, and you know what? You were so mistaken in your views about all this stuff. Look at this, now you can see how it really works. Yeah, we'll be embodied particulars and we'll enjoy each other in that way. It's all there. It sounds fantastic, wonderful, and fanciful. I'd love to chat with Eleanor in the resurrection, learn how mistaken I was about all this stuff. I doubt, but hope, it's closer to truth. For complete interviews and for further information, please visit closertotruth.com.