Resurrection

McGrew & McGrew make a solid statistical case for the historicity of the resurrection. This article fills two lacunae in the argument given there, and repairs a conceptual error (making the first lacuna irrelevant in the process).

Abstract: In the future, it will be possible to create advance simulations of ancestor in computers. Superintelligent AI could make these simulations very similar to the real past by creating a simulation of all of humanity. Such a simulation would use all available data about the past, including internet archives, DNA samples, advanced nanotech-based archeology, human memories, as well as text, photos and videos. This means that currently living people will be recreated in such a simulation, and in some sense, (...) “resurrected”. Such “resurrectional simulation” could be deliberately created just for this goal: to return to life all people who have ever lived. The main technical problem of such simulation will be uncertainty about the past, which increases exponentially for more remote times. Such problem could be partly addressed by “acausal trade” between different branches of the multiverse, which will create slightly different versions of the simulation using a quantum randomness generator. Such trade will result in resurrection of all possible people (including those who existed in other branches). Ethical problems of such a resurrectional simulation include: a) possible resurrection of some people against their will; b) such simulation may create additional suffering; с) such simulation could be used by hostile AI to return people to life and then torture them. In this work, I explore preliminary ideas about how to address these problems. (shrink)

Abstract. Death seems to be a permanent event, but there is no actual proof of its irreversibility. Here we list all known ways to resurrect the dead that do not contradict our current scientific understanding of the world. While no method is currently possible, many of those listed here may become feasible with future technological development, and it may even be possible to act now to increase their probability. The most well-known such approach to technological resurrection is cryonics. Another method (...) is indirect mind uploading, or digital immortality, namely the preservation of data about a person to allow for future reconstruction by powerful AI. More speculative ways to immortality include combinations of future superintelligence on a galactic scale, which could use simulation to resurrect all possible people, and new physical laws, which may include time-travel or obtaining information from the past. Acausal trade with parallel worlds could help combine random resurrection and reconstruction based on known data without loss of share of worlds where I exist (known as existence measure). Quantum immortality could help to increase the probability of success for cryonics and digital immortality. There many possible approaches to technological resurrection and thus if large-scale future technological development occurs, some form of resurrection is inevitable. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the idea of general resurrection of the dead at the end of times in the synoptic Gospels. We intend to clarify whether this concept can be interpreted as a transposition of the parallel belief contained in some intertestamental writings, or if the singularity of the religious experience expressed in the synoptic Gospels establishes an inexorable moment of discontinuity with the previous apocalyptic framework, making it impossible to understand this doctrine on the sole (...) basis of its Jewish precedents. In order to accomplish our goal, we shall first study the general resurrection of the dead in the Q source, the references to this notion in the gospel of Mark, and its meaning in both Matthew and Luke. We will exclude from our treatment all the topics related with the resurrection of Jesus, and we will be focused on the explicit mentions of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as such. Since implicit beliefs are always difficult to assess, especially in the context of eschatological ideas, in which vagueness and absence of a systematic effort of exposition often prevail, we will not allude to other synoptic passages which have been regarded as potential expressions of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead at the end of times. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to investigate the philosophical anthropology that underpins the anthropology of the Early Christians. It is curious to know why Christian anthropology is intellectually and practically inclined towards the philosophical anthropology of the Platonic tradition rather than the theological-philosophical tradition of the biblical Hebrew people in the Old Testament. Today the emphasis on Christian anthropology is that the human person is an integration of body and soul. Contrary to this position, the writer maintains that the (...) Christian anthropology, especially during the period of the early Christians (here understood as the period within the first five centuries C.E.), fundamentally conceives the human person as a composite of soul and body, which is a conscious employment of Platonic anthropology. This article observes that, as regards the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, there is a dichotomy between theological coherency and the actual Christian practice on the Christian conception of the human person. Hence, this work argues that the Platonic influence on the philosophical anthropology of the Early Christian was a deliberate act to give a more rational foundation to the theological problematic on the resurrection of the dead and on the resurrected body. It explains why Aquinas’s theological cum philosophical thinking, though overwhelmingly an Aristotelian ground, could not “Aristotelize” his philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

The idea that physical death may not mark the end of an individual's existence has long been a source of fascination. It is perhaps unsurprising that we are apt to wonder what it is that happens to us when we die. Is death the end of me and all the experiences that count as mine? Or might I exist, and indeed have experiences, beyond the time of my death? And yet, deep metaphysical puzzles arise at the very suggestion that persons (...) might continue to exist following physical death. Indeed, whether, and how, one can exist post-mortem will depend in no small part on what sorts of things we are and on what it takes for things like us to persist across temporal durations and other changes. These topics and their application to the growing collection of materialist accounts of resurrection are the focus of this Element. (shrink)

This article collects and examines data relating to the authors of English-language texts written and published during the past 500 years on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection and then compares this data to Gary R. Habermas’ 2005 and 2012 publication on the subject. To date, there has been no such inquiry. This present article identifies 735 texts spanning five centuries. The data reveals 680 Pro-Resurrection books by 601 authors. This article also reveals that a remarkably high proportion of the English-language (...) books written about Jesus’ resurrection were by members of the clergy or people linked to seminaries, which means any so-called scholarly consensus on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection is wildly inflated due to a biased sample of authors who have a professional and personal interest in the subject matter. Pro-Resurrection authors outnumber Contra-Resurrection authors by a factor of about twelve-to-one. In contrast, the 55 Contra-Resurrection books, representing 7.48% of the total 735 books, were by 42 authors. The 42 contra authors represent only 6.99% of all authors writing on the subject. (shrink)

In response to Stephen Davis’s criticism of our previous essay, we revisit and defend our arguments that the Resurrection hypothesis is logically incompatible with the Standard Model of particle physics—and thus is maximally implausible—and that it cannot explain the sensory experiences of the Risen Jesus attributed to various witnesses in the New Testament—and thus has low explanatory power. We also review Davis’s reply, noting that he evades our arguments, misstates their conclusions, and distracts the reader with irrelevancies regarding, e.g., what (...) natural laws are, what a miracle is, and how “naturalism” and “supernaturalism” differ as worldviews. Contrary to what Davis claims, we do not argue that “if the Standard Model of particle physics is true, then the resurrection of Jesus did not occur and physical things can only causally interact with other physical things.” Davis distorts our claims and criticizes straw men of his own creation. (shrink)

This book seeks to show how Karl Marx’s vision of communism was a continuation of Aristotle’s classical humanist philosophy. Challenging the Engelsian distortion of Marx, it presents a negation of previous interpretations of Marx which present him in materialist terms. Engels proposed a picture of the highest stage of communist society as an economic egalitarianism, a vision which became an axiom of Leninist-Stalinist-Soviet Communism. By contrast, here it is shown that Marx embraced the Aristotelian concept of “distributive justice”, of proportionate (...) equality. Spanning the works of Marx, from his university education and doctoral dissertation on the differences between the Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of the atom, to the study of his Rheinische Zeitung period and the persistence of classical humanism in Marx’s defense of the freedom of the press, Levine skillfully reveals the gravitational pull between Marx and Aristotle. Showing how classical humanism is the dominant ethos in the communism of Marx, the book includes chapters on: Hegel as a transition point between Aristotle and Marx The links between Marx’s theory of labor and Aristotle’s idea of the constitutive subject located in The Politics How the local methodologies of Aristotle and Hegel provided Marx with the social methodologies by which to interpret the functioning of capitalism Marx's Resurrection of Aristotle is the culmination of Norman Levine's life-long work to establish the correct placement of Marx and Marx’s communism within the classical humanist tradition. (shrink)

Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three Cappadocian Fathers, introduces the creation of human beings on the basis of Genesis 1:26–27 and interprets these two biblical verses as a ‘double creation’—the first of which is ‘in the image of God’ and secondly as male or female. His concept of ‘double creation’ is obviously inspired by Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish philosopher, but Gregory points out the condition of human beings before and after committing the sin, in contrast to Philo’s (...) conception. While Philo distinguishes between the first and the second creation of the entirety of nature, Gregory only relates the double creation to humans. Thus plants as nourishment for humans, according to Genesis, must be matched with the second creation of humans. In the resurrection, when the ‘first creation’ of human nature will be reached, human beings with their restored bodies will only feed on immaterial, spiritual food—the Word of God. (shrink)

Current theological thought across various fields emphasizes the synthetic and holistic nature of Christ’s saving work. For example, consider the use of the term “Paschal Mystery” by the second Vatican Council1 and the language of “the Christ event” in Biblical studies.2 Even Heideggarian theologians who use the language of “symbolic recognition” see the sacraments as moments when Christians recognize and affirm their connectedness to the whole mystery of Christ.3 Conversely, ulta-traditionalist authors combat the idea of Paschal mystery, charging that the (...) connection of the resurrection to the sacraments undercuts Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice.4 While Albert the Great does not, of course, speak directly to... (shrink)

In his philosophical project of a “deconstruction of monotheism,” Jean-Luc Nancy explores the hypothesis that the historical roots of secularization should be traced back to the beginnings of the monotheistic traditions. The secular is not exclusively a feature of modern culture. The complex connections and tensions between secularity and religion in recent decades can only be analyzed effectively if one rethinks the notion of the secular along these historical lines. The author offers a brief introduction into Nancy’s project, before focusing (...) on a theme that is central to one of the monotheistic traditions, Christianity: that of the resurrection. He reads and comments on parts of Nancy’s essay Noli me tangere, an innovative interpretation of John 20.11–18. In dialogue with Nancy he then develops a new view on the resurrection, in which paradoxically death is given a central meaning. This also involves a new insight in the immanence of transcendence. In the resurrection, it is death itself that resurrects. The idea is criticized that death would be vanquished into a life after death – as dominant approach in Christian doctrine has it, thereby expanding the modest little epilogue that the tale of the “empty tomb” actually is in the gospels, to a massive foundation of Christian redemption. Resurrection is affirmed as a life in death as well as a death in life. The resurrection of the mortal, earthly and vulnerable God that Christ is, invites an affirmation of the here and now, of humanity and of the human body: a “yes” to the world, not to an afterworld. Parallel to this analysis, the author takes up Nancy’s suggestion that the resurrection, and in fact the entire gospel, is a parable, and that its “truth” is a parabolic truth: playing with the impossible and the miraculous, in which truth and falsehood become entangled with each other. (shrink)

We respond to Stephen T. Davis’ criticism of our earlier essay, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis.” We argue that the Standard Model of physics is relevant and decisive in establishing the implausibility and low explanatory power of the Resurrection hypothesis. We also argue that the laws of physics have entailments regarding God and the supernatural and, against Alvin Plantinga, that these same laws lack the proviso “no agent supernaturally interferes.” Finally, we offer Bayesian arguments for the Legend hypothesis and against the (...) Resurrection hypothesis. (shrink)

Many critics of religion insist that believing in a future life makes us less able to value our present activities and distracts us from accomplishing good in this world. In Augustine's case, this gets things backwards. It is while Augustine seeks to achieve happiness in this life that he is detached from suffering and dismissive of the body. Once Augustine comes to believe happiness is only attainable once the whole city of God is triumphant, he is able to compassionately engage (...) with present suffering and see material and social goods as part of our ultimate good. (shrink)

This article is a rebuttal to Robert G. Cavin and Carlos A. Colombetti’s article, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis: Problems with Craig’s Inference to the Best Explanation,” which argues that the Standard Model of current particle physics entails that non-physical things (like a supernatural God or a supernaturally resurrected body) can have no causal contact with the physical universe. As such, they argue that William Lane Craig’s resurrection hypothesis is not only incompatible with the notion of Jesus physically appearing to the (...) disciples, but the resurrection hypothesis is significantly limited in both its explanatory scope and explanatory power. This article seeks to demonstrate why their use of the Standard Model does not logically entail a rejection of the physical resurrection of Jesus when considering the scope and limitations of science itself. (shrink)

The hypothesis that God supernaturally raised Jesus from the dead is argued by William Lane Craig to be the best explanation for the empty tomb and postmortem appearances of Jesus because it satisfies seven criteria of adequacy better than rival naturalistic hypotheses. We identify problems with Craig’s criteria-based approach and show, most significantly, that the Resurrection hypothesis fails to fulfill any but the first of his criteria—especially explanatory scope and plausibility.

This paper examines Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie with the aim of shedding light on its messianic-eschatological approach. Firstly, I take into account the formal structure of history through a reference to Aristotle’s grasp of κίνησις and its principles. I then try to connect this structure to the complex epochal movement of Universal History, as it emerges from Heidegger’s works in the ‘30s. Lastly, I deal with the concept of the last-God’s realm in order to stress the messianic dimension of Heidegger’s (...) projects for the new humankind known as the Futurians. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose to analyse two objections raised by Turner Jr in his paper “On Two Reasons Christian Theologians Should Reject The Intermediate State” in order to show that the intermediate state is an incoherent theory. As we shall see, the two untoward consequences that he mentions do not imply a metaphysical or logical contradiction. Consequently, I shall defend an Intermediate State and I shall propose briefly one metaphysical conception of the human being able to reply to Turner (...) Jr’s objections. (shrink)

The Scriptures suggest that Christians are to grow up into the “mind of Christ” or, as Craig Keener calls it, the “mind of the Spirit.” While there have been a few recent works that discuss how mental sharing between the human person and the divine person might contribute to sanctification, there are not any that discuss a mereological account of how the mental union works with reference to the bodily resurrection. Since I understand the human’s eschatological union with the divine (...) to be the occasion of theosis, I offer in this paper a metaphysical model of at least one aspect of theosis: a part/whole relationship between the mind of a human and the mind of the Spirit, with reference to the eschatological bodily resurrection. I call the union “mental saturation.”. (shrink)

This research outlines the concept of resurrection from the ancient Hebrew Torah to Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity according to authoritative and linguistically accurate scriptures accompanied by English translations. Although some contemporary scholars are of the opinion that resurrection is vaguely portrayed in the Hebrew Torah, our research into the ancient texts offers quotes and provides proofs to the contrary. With the passing time, the concept of the resurrection grew even stronger and became one of the most important doctrines of Judaism, (...) enjoined as one of the thirteen articles of faith by Maimonides in the Mishnah. Imitative of the Jewish concept of God reaching out to save Israelites from gehenna, Jesus’ crucifixion and death for the sins of the world, resurrection on the third day, descend into the hells and subsequent rise into heavens became the essential foundation of Christianity, with Christ's resurrection as the impetus for the resurrection of those who believe in him. According to this Pauline theology, Christian faith is based upon the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for a life after death. (shrink)

I have argued that the central Christian doctrine of general resurrection (with particular reference to the Pauline corpus) can and should be understood in a scientifically and philosophically informed context, and have proposed a personalist-phenomenological model of general resurrection as a personally continuous transformative re-embodiment by the grace of God within an interpretative framework that respects the methods and findings of science while rejecting scientism and associated physicalist metaphysical claims. I have considered and rejected the re-assembly model of resurrection on (...) theological, philosophical and scientific grounds. (shrink)

This piece raises a new challenge for Christian materialist accounts of human persons. Revisiting one of the perennial challenges for Christian materialism, explaining the metaphysical compatibility of resurrection and the life everlasting with materialist metaphysics, I argue that resuscitation phenomena reported in scripture undermine van Inwagen’s and Zimmerman’s attempts to reconcile resurrection and materialism. Although this challenge to Christian materialism is not insurmountable, it provides good reason to reject several of the most serious Christian materialist projects and offers a reason (...) for Christians to consider alternatives to materialism. (shrink)

It is widely held that the classic reassembly model of resurrection faces intractable problems. What happens to someone if God assembles two individuals at the resurrection which are equally good candidates for being the original person? If two or more people, such as a cannibal and the cannibal’s victim, were composed of the same particles at their respective deaths, can they both be resurrected? If they can, who gets the shared particles? And would an attempt to reassemble a long-gone individual (...) result in a genuine resurrection, or merely an intrinsic duplicate of the original person? In this paper, I argue that the first of these problems has, in effect, been solved by defenders of a rival view; I propose a novel solution to the second problem; and I show that the third can be solved by upgrading the naïve reassembly model to a novel variety of reassembly model. (shrink)

Modal Arguments in the philosophy of mind purport to show that the body is not necessary for a human person’s existence. The key premise in these arguments are generally supported with thought experiments. I argue that Christians endorsing the Doctrine of the Resurrection have good reason to deny this key premise. Traditional Christianity affirms that eschatological human existence is an embodied existence in the very bodies we inhabited while alive. The raises the Resurrection Question: why would God go through the (...) trouble of resurrecting those bodies? I argue that adequately answering this question requires give up on Modal Arguments within the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Comment un homme pourrait-il changer qualitativement (voire perdre tous ses composants) et demeurer numériquement identique après la résurrection ? L’ADN étant l’identité de l’homme, serait-ce la solution ? Nous essayons d’y apporter une réponse à partir de l’essentialisme sérieux d’E. J. Lowe et l’hylémorphisme de Thomas d’Aquin. On propose d’établir la résurrection corporelle et le principe d’Inwagen comme deux étapes fondamentales pour la réflexion d’une ontologie de la résurrection. Cela nous conduit à penser une ontologie de l’âme, la thèse la (...) plus plausible pour une continuité numérique après la mort. (shrink)

According to the Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection, human persons will have an embodied existence in eternity. Many Christian materialists, especially Lynne Rudder Baker, Trenton Merricks, and Kevin Corcoran, argue that the doctrine of bodily resurrection creates serious problems for substance dualism (dualism). These critiques argued that bodily resurrection is made trivial by dualism, that dualism makes it difficult if not impossible to explain why we need to be embodied, or that dualism should be rejected as bodily resurrection is better (...) accounted for by a materialist view. As of yet, there has been no systematic analysis of these arguments in the literature. This paper fills that gap and argues that each of these objections to dualism fail. In making these arguments I make use of neo-Aristotelian metaphysics to provide a theory of embodiment for substance dualism. Accordingly, the body is a complex structural mode of the soul. The essence of the soul is the internal efficient cause and teleological guide of the functions and structure of the body. As such, the body is an ensouled physical structure, not a mere physical machine, but has both physical and non-physical aspects. (shrink)

At a 2011 meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, N. T. Wright offered four reasons for rejecting the existence of soul. This was surprising, as many Christian philosophers had previously taken Wright's defense of a disembodied intermediate state as a defense of a substance dualist view of the soul. In this paper, I offer responses to each of Wright's objections, demonstrating that Wright's arguments fail to undermine substance dualism. In so doing, I expose how popular arguments against dualism fail, (...) such as dualism is merely an unwarranted influence of Greek culture on Christianity, and substance dualism is merely a soul-of-the-gaps hypothesis. Moreover, I demonstrate that Wright himself has offered a powerful reason for adopting substance dualism in his previous works. In conclusion I offer a view that explains why the human soul needs a resurrected body. (shrink)

This paper continues as the second part of my study of the relationship of Fr. Lawrence Dewan OP and Etienne Gilson. My first paper explored their metaphysical differences, while this second paper explores their common commitment to Christian philosophy and to St. Thomas Aquinas’ seminal work on the interrelationship of faith and reason as manifest most clearly in the interrelationship of revealed theology and philosophy. This leads us into a closer examination of Gilson's sustained treatment of this topic. However, we (...) must acknowledge that this topic is often susceptible to unproductive philosophical and metaphysical abstraction. In order to avoid this, we depart from the standard method of treatment through an interdisciplinary appeal to the theological, philosophical, and historical implications of the bodily resurrection of Christ. (shrink)

A collection of seventeen philosophical essays that systematically investigate heaven, or paradise, as conceived within theistic religious traditions.

The doctrine of the resurrection says that God will resurrect the body that lived and died on earth—that the post-mortem body will be numerically identical to the pre-mortem body. After exegetically supporting this claim, and defending it from a recent objection, we ask: supposing that the doctrine of the resurrection is true, what are the implications for the mind-body relation? Why would God resurrect the body that lived and died on earth? We compare three accounts of the mind-body relation that (...) have been applied to the doctrine of the resurrection: substance dualism, constitutionalism, and animalism. We argue that animalism offers a superior explanation for the necessity of the resurrection: since human persons just are their bodies, life after death requires resurrection of one’s body. We conclude that those endorsing the doctrine of the resurrection should be animalists. (shrink)

I am the way and the truth and the life. John 14:6.

In his 1998 postscript to ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ Peter van Inwagen argues that the scenario he describes by which God might resurrect a human organism, even though probably not true, is still conceivable and, consequently, ‘serves to establish a possibility’, namely, the metaphysical possibility of the resurrection of material beings. Van Inwagen, however, has also argued in favour of ‘modal scepticism’ [van Inwagen in, God, knowledge and mystery: essays in philosophical theology, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1995b, pp. 11–12; van (...) Inwagen in, Philos Stud 92:67–84, 1998a]. That is, he thinks that we should limit all our claims about what is possible to ‘ordinary propositions about everyday matters’, 1998a). In this paper I argue that van Inwagen’s modal argument as found in ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ is inconsistent with his modal scepticism as found in ‘Modal Epistemology’. In consequence, I argue that, given his modal scepticism, the task van Inwagen set himself in ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ has not been achieved. (shrink)

The article deals with the doctrines of Orpheus and Pythagoras about the immortality of the soul in the context of the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece. Orpheus demonstrated the closeness of heavenly (divine) and earthly (human) worlds, and Pythagoras mathematically proved their fundamental identity. Greek philosophy was “an investment in the afterlife future”, being the product of the mystical (Orpheus) and rationalist (Pythagoras) theology.

N.T. Wright has offered Christian philosophers a proposal where it is apparently possible to hold the belief in the intermediate state-resurrection of the body and an ontological holism in the same sense at the same time. I argue that this not only creates a basic contradiction in Wright’s ontological paradigm, but also it is not a coherent and tenable proposal despite the fact one might eventually find a potential solution to such a quandary.

Contemporary interpreters have entered a new debate over Aquinas’s view on the status of human beings or persons between death and resurrection. Everyone agrees that, for Aquinas, separated souls exist in the interim. The disagreement concerns what happens to human beings—Peter, Paul, and so on. According to corruptionists, Aquinas thought human beings cease to exist at death and only begin to exist again at the resurrection. According to survivalists, however, Aquinas thought human beings continue to exist in the interim, constituted (...) by their separated souls alone. In this paper I offer a new argument in favor of corruptionism based upon Aquinas’s repeated discussions of a central though so far neglected topic: the death of Christ. To the question, “Was Christ a human being during the three days of his death?” Aquinas always answered, “No.” Examining his reasons proves that corruptionism, and not survivalism, is the right interpretation of Aquinas. (shrink)

Aquinas often defends the possibility of the resurrection of the dead by appealing to the survival of the human soul between death and resurrection. Contemporary interpreters suppose that Aquinas does so because he thinks the continued existence of the human soul is metaphysically necessary for the identity of human beings over time. If the human soul perished at death along with the human body, then not even God could bring the same human being back to life—so Aquinas is supposed to (...) think. In this paper I argue that this widely held supposition is false. First I present the evidence from a neglected quodlibet question in which Aquinas argues that God can annihilate material substances, which include human beings, and then re-create them numerically the same. This question makes it clear that Aquinas thinks that continuity of nothing other than God’s power is metaphysically necessary for the identity of human beings over time. But this interpretation of Aquinas faces a number of objections. I answer two, one based on Aquinas’s supposed endorsement of the principle of non-repeatability, and another based on his account of the difference between eternal, aeviternal, and temporal existence. (shrink)

Most contemporary interpreters of Aquinas think that he rejects the possibility of intermittent or “gappy” existence. Thus they think that the soul’s natural survival after death is a necessary part of Aquinas’s defense of the possibility of the resurrection. Yet this contemporary consensus rests on shaky foundations. For on the basis of a widely neglected quodlibet question, earlier interpreters of Aquinas as eminent as John Capreolus and Francis Sylvester Ferrara recognized that Aquinas reserves to God the power to annihilate material (...) substances, including human beings, and then re-create them numerically the same. If these earlier interpreters are right, then the contemporary consensus is wrong. But Adam Wood argues that they are not right. He attempts to vindicate the contemporary consensus by offering an alternative reading of Aquinas’s quodlibet on annihilation and re-creation, providing textual evidence of Aquinas’s rejection of the possibility of “gappy” existence, criticizing the reading given to this evidence by Aquinas’s earlier interpreters, and mounting a philosophical case against the possibility of “gappy” existence based on his preferred interpretation of Aquinas’s theory of the principle of individuation. In this paper I come to the defense of Aquinas’s earlier interpreters. Wood’s alternative reading of Aquinas’s quodlibet is impossible to square with the text itself. Close inspection of Wood’s textual evidence shows that some of the readings of Aquinas’s earlier interpreters are much more plausible than Wood allows, making his textual case much weaker than he admits. And his philosophical case against the possibility of “gappy” existence begs the question. (shrink)

In his paper ‘Mind, Mortality and Material Being’ Paul Anders attempts to show that Peter van Inwagen’s materialist metaphysics of the human person, combined with the belief that human persons survive death, faces a dilemma. Either, on the one hand, van Inwagen has to accept an account of the survival of human persons across death that cannot escape the duplication objection, or, on the other hand, van Inwagen has to accept an account of the survival of human persons across death (...) that entails the possibility of that which is logically impossible and, in consequence, renders his metaphysics necessarily false. This paper is concerned with the second horn of the dilemma. In this paper, I will attempt to do two things. First, I will attempt to show that Anders’ description of van Inwagen’s ‘naked kernel’ account of the survival of human persons across death is, at times, unclear, before, second, attempting to demonstrate that there is a response that van Inwagen could give to Anders’ argument regardless of these unclarities. Consequently, I think that, at least until Anders’ description is made clearer, and until Anders tells us why van Inwagen can’t opt for the solution I propose, we should consider van Inwagen’s inclination that God can preserve a kernel that is sufficient for the survival of human persons across death to be unharmed by Anders’ argument. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends that an afterlife in which a person receives a new body after his or her old body is destroyed (as it is on some notions of bodily resurrection) is conceptually impossible. The main idea behind this argument is that such an afterlife would conceptually require that a person be a kind of thing that could be rendered plural. But since persons are not that type of thing, such an afterlife is not conceptually possible.

This chapter is about bodily resurrection. More specifically, it is about whether bodily resurrection is feasible according to a physicalist account of human beings. I argue that bodily resurrection is less plausible given mainstream physicalism, but it is not less plausible given the constitution account. In the first section, I criticize different options mainstream physicalism can take to make sense of bodily resurrection. All these options seem less than plausible. I spend more space on the first option, reassembly, because it (...) seems to be prima facie the most natural option for mainstream physicalism. Then, in the second section, I show that the constitution account does not fall prey to the problems that infect mainstream physicalism. (shrink)

Belief in Heaven is an essential part of the great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Famous theologians have written about it, and ordinary theists hope to go there after death. However, the concept of Heaven is neither clear nor unproblematic. There are three serious problems with the notion of Heaven. First, the concept of Heaven lacks coherence. Second, it is doubtful that theists can reconcile the heavenly character of Heaven with standard defenses against the argument from evil, such (...) as the free will defense. Finally, Heaven is unfair and thus in conflict with the goodness of God. -/- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Traditional Doctrine -- 3. The Coherence of Heaven -- 4. The Problem of the Heavenly Character of Heaven -- 5. The Unfairness of Heaven -- 6. Objections - 6.1 Objection 1 - 6.2 Objection 2 - 6.3 Objection 3 - 6.4 Objection 4 -- 7. Conclusion. (shrink)

This paper—written for nonspecialist readers—asks whether life after death is in any sense possible given the apparent fact that after we die our remains decay to the point where only randomly scattered atoms remain. The paper argues that this is possible only if our remains are not in fact dispersed in this way, and discusses how that might be the case. -/- 1. Life After Death -- 2. Total Destruction -- 3. The Soul -- 4. Body-Snatching -- 5. Radical Resurrection (...) -- 6. Irreversibility -- 7. Atomic Reassembly -- 8. The Transporter -- 9. Replicas and Originals -- 10. Survival and Causal Connections. (shrink)

We respond to Swinburne’s reply to our critique of his argument for the Resurrection by defending the relevance of our counterexamples to his claim that God does not permit grand deception. We reaffirm and clarify our charge that Swinburne ignores two crucial items of Negative Natural Theology (NNT)—that God has an exceptionally weak tendency to raise the dead and that even people with exemplary public records sometimes sin. We show, accordingly, that our total evidence makes it highly probable that Jesus (...) was not sinless, incarnate, or resurrected and that God has permitted massive deception regarding these defining Christian dogmas. (shrink)