Embodied Afterlife: The Hope of an Immediate Resurrection

By Robert Falconer

For many Christians, one of the most important aspects of their faith is the sure and certain knowledge that they will be reborn after death, resurrected to live on forever, free from suffering and pain. Most of us imagine that this is a distant future event. We have conflicting information about heaven being an eternal disembodied spiritual state or a temporal disembodied state, where one waits for the general resurrection. But what if there was an alternative?

This book, Embodied Afterlife: The Hope of an Immediate Resurrection, explores the possibility of another option, in chapters that examine:

 

• The resurrection of Christ
• The problem of an intermediate state in heaven
• Near death experiences (NDE's)
• The makeup of the body, soul and spirit
• Concepts of time in the afterlife
• Hope for the future
• And more…

 

The idea that there is the possibility of an immediate resurrection provides a promising alternative to the traditional beliefs and concept of the afterlife held by most Christians.

 

Embodied Afterlife is intended to shape that thinking and bring that expectation into sharper focus so that we may all follow in Jesus's footsteps in resurrected life as he has conquered death, with the knowledge that the physical resurrection we seek is not in some distant future but immediate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stockbridge Books
• Release date: Jul 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9780639791845

Robert Falconer

Robert Falconer was born and raised in South Africa and is a theologian who holds degrees in architecture and theology. Following periods of practicing architecture in Scotland and South Africa, he and his wife spent time working as missionaries in Kenya before returning to make their home back in South Africa. Robert is the Head of Student Research at the South African Theological Seminary and has a wide range of research interests and ideas, which he shares with laypeople through his blogs, sermons, and books, in addition to publishing academic papers. Robert lives in St Francis Bay, South Africa, with his wife Catherine and their sons Ezekiel and Gabriel.

Book preview

Introduction

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veryone is curious about the afterlife. And yet the Christian Scriptures tell us little about heaven. Still, church and culture have no qualm offering tidbit clichés of what heaven might be like. My interest in the pages that follow is not so much about heaven, as much as it is about our personhood in the afterlife and its relation to our hope in the resurrection.

Many Christians and theologians alike understand heaven as an unending disembodied spiritual existence, or as a temporal disembodied state where one waits for the general resurrection. Yet, this makes little biblical sense. A careful study of Scripture, near-death experiences (NDEs), the body-soul distinction, and the concept of time provide a promising alternative—an immediate resurrection. By this, I mean that once a person dies, they transition to their bodily resurrection almost instantly. To help us, we need to understand that time in the afterlife is very different from the way we experience it in this world. While one might experience the resurrection immediately after they die, they may also participate in the future general resurrection with all believers. Think of it as one resurrection manifested in two distinct time dimensions.

I hope that this book will give you, the reader, a very real sense that Jesus Christ has truly and utterly defeated death. The physical resurrection of which Scripture speaks is not in an indefinite future sometime after an intermediate state—it’s immediate. I argue that this view on the believer’s resurrection is more logical and more faithful to biblical teaching. One might expect that the view of an immediate resurrection has practical implications, and indeed it does. Hope in the immediate resurrection may transform the way we imagine death, suffering, and the afterlife. Furthermore, it may transform the way we live and hope, despite everyday challenges in the present.

Salvation is not merely about saving souls for heaven. It’s so much more! I want to encourage you to have an integrated and holistic view of salvation, a salvation that saves our bodies as well as our souls, and ultimately redeems all of creation and the entire cosmos. In Scripture, God promises a glorious resurrection together with the new heaven and a new earth. The end goal of salvation is more glorious than you could imagine. As important as the new heaven and a new earth are, and I have written about that elsewhere, my focus here is on the immediacy of our bodily resurrection in the afterlife. You may have wondered why there is a peacock in the poem on the opening pages. The peacock was used in Christian symbolism from the early Middle Ages and is associated with spiritual renewal, immortality, resurrection, eternal life, and the promise of the afterlife through Jesus Christ.

In this book, I will avoid the theological nuances between heaven, the new heaven and new earth, and paradise. I will refer to heaven, the afterlife, and paradise in general as meaning the same thing, that place where believers go after they die. Although, if you follow the logic of the argument in this book you may also conclude that this also includes the new heaven and new earth. In other words, there is a degree of fluidity between the terms, paradise, heaven, and the renewed creation. As Scripture offers diverse expressions for the afterlife, you will notice that I do similarly.

I am convinced that the immediate resurrection is the most correct view of the resurrection, however, my argument is not watertight, and neither is it without anomalies. I have tried to address as many of these conflicting issues as I am able. There might be others that you pick up, but which may have escaped me. I contend that whatever anomalies there may be, they are not enough to discount an immediate resurrection. Think of the anomaly when a plane is in flight appearing to contradict gravity. Gravity doesn’t cease to exist once an airplane takes off, because lift supersedes the power of gravity—remember Newton’s third law? Similarly, while there are anomalies for an immediate resurrection, I believe that there is significant lift that makes my argument more than just a speculative contribution. Think of the chapters of this book as creating lift for the immediate resurrection.

There are some phenomenal books on the resurrection, namely: Gary R. Habermas’s, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (2004); N. T. (Tom) Wright’s, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003), one of several of Wright’s Magnus Opus works, his popular version, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (2010) is also well worth a read. His work is what got me interested in the resurrection in the first place; Lee Strobel’s, The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Resurrection (2009); Sam Allberry’s little book, A Better Hope: Enjoying the Resurrection Life (2010); a father and son project by the apologists, Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence for the Resurrection: What It Means for Your Relationship with God (2010); Michael R. Licona’s, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (2010); Eugene H. Peterson’s, Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life (2014); and Andrew Loke’s, Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A New Transdisciplinary Approach (2020).

Although the following books are more about heaven than the resurrection, they are important works too: Randy Alcorn’s, Heaven: A Comprehensive Guide to Everything the Bible Says About Our Eternal Home (2011); J. Richard Middleton’s, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (2014); and Scot McKnight’s, The Heaven Promise: What the Bible Says about the Life to Come (2015).

These books focus on biblical theology, apologetics, or Christian living. No doubt there are other good books about the resurrection, heaven, and the afterlife. The book you are holding in your hands will offer you something quite different.

Many of these authors, if not all, advocate an intermediate state between death and the future general resurrection, except for one work I have not yet mentioned: James T. Turner Jr.’s book, On the Resurrection of the Dead: A New Metaphysics of Afterlife for Christian Thought (2019). The thesis of his book is conceptually the most similar to my book, Embodied Afterlife: The Hope of an Immediate Resurrection. Turner’s excellent work is in analytical theology and is inaccessible to most readers. Neither does he offer a rigorous biblical exposition on the resurrection, consider near-death experiences, or offer any application. Instead, it reads like a PhD dissertation in Christian analytical philosophical theology. I use Turner’s book as the philosophical groundwork for my work; however, the difference is that I offer the concept of an immediate resurrection in easy-to-understand language for the everyday reader and provide biblical exposition, discussions on near-death experiences, life application, and much more.

Naturally, my discussion begins in chapter 1 with the resurrection of Christ. To give you a sense of the glory of Jesus’s resurrection, I offer a synopsis of the movie, Risen (2016) which was profoundly formational for my spirituality as a devoted follower of Jesus. I then give a narrative retelling of Jesus’s appearing to his disciples after his resurrection from John 20:19–31. Other passages from the Old and New Testaments also feature the resurrection in this chapter. From here I discuss proposed theories that seek to discredit Jesus’s resurrection, namely, the swoon theory; the impersonation theory; the wrong tomb theory; the stolen body theory; the hallucination theory; the copy of a pagan myth theory; the gospel contradictions theory; and the spiritual resurrection theory. Logically, this brings us to a discussion on the evidence for Jesus’s resurrection, specifically, the eyewitness accounts; the courage of the Apostles; Paul’s conversion; the martyrdom of the Apostles; and evidence of changed lives 2000 years later. Finally, I explore the relationship between the resurrection and the new creation.

Chapter 2 is a summary and rewording of James T. Turner, Jr.’s (2019) book. As I mentioned, Turner’s book forms the philosophical groundwork for my project. This chapter makes his ideas easy to understand in simpler and more concise language for the everyday reader. I begin by highlighting the problem of the intermediate state, that is, a disembodied heaven or paradise before the general resurrection. From here I explore the problem of disembodied souls, using Thomas Aquinas’s hylomorphism idea promoted by Turner. I call this, Thomas’s bicycle, to help explain the concept in accessible terms. We then get to the heart of the discussion, Flung into the future: Immediate resurrection, where Turner’s concept of time is discussed, opening the possibility for an immediate resurrection. Before my concluding thoughts, Turner’s final thoughts on the resurrection of the dead are featured in summary.

In chapter 3 we look at what I call Beyond Death’s Veil. This tackles various concerns of the afterlife, including the immediate state. While Turner sought to disprove the intermediate state using analytical theology and philosophy, I turn to the Scriptures to demonstrate that it is biblically unsustainable. Another important section is a hopeful discussion on what happens to fetuses, infants, little children, and people with serious mental disabilities after they die. Next, purgatory is explored, and here I demonstrate that it is biblically and theologically untenable. Lastly, the difficult question of hell and its various nuances are dealt with, without undermining its existence.

As the title of chapter 4, Embodied Afterlife: Is it Biblical? suggests, the focus is on biblical exposition. Although the chapter does show that an embodied afterlife is indeed biblical, there are no emphatic answers to the question of an immediate resurrection in the afterlife, even so, it shows that it is biblically plausible, offering a more biblically sound proposal than an intermediate state. Here we look at Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:27–31); Jesus’s words to the thief on the cross, Today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43); Jesus’s proclamation, I am the resurrection and the life when he brings Lazarus to life (John 11:1–44); Jesus’s harrowing of hell (1 Pet 3:18–20; 4:6b; Col 2:15; Rev 1:18); Jesus’s words when he says, I go to prepare a place for you (John 14:1–4); the resurrection of the saints from the tombs after Jesus’s resurrection (Matt 27:51–52a); Jesus’s victory over death (Acts 2:24; 1 Cor 15:20; Rev 1:18b; 2 Tim 1:10); the present and future language of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15; the idea that we are seated in heavenly places (Eph 2:4–6); a discussion on 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 and whether Paul has in mind a rapture or a resurrection; and difficult passages in Revelation on bodies and souls (Rev 2:10b; 6:9; 20:4–6, 12–15; 21:8).

Chapter 5 is arguably the most controversial; however, I make it clear that any findings are tentative. Here we explore NDEs. I begin by describing what NDEs are and highlighting scholarly and scientific research on NDEs. Two generic examples also give the reader a sense of what an NDE is like. I then discuss the common characteristics of NDEs and the explanatory models. Here I offer logical, yet even-handed responses to those models that seek to explain away NDEs. This leads to a discussion on how we can know that NDEs are real. Finally, NDEs and the embodied afterlife are discussed by identifying physical or transphysical characteristics in the afterlife that indicate the possibility of an embodied afterlife and an immediate resurrection.

This brings us to chapter 6 which is all about the body-soul distinction. There have been vibrant discussions on the human makeup of body, soul, and spirit. This chapter begins with answering the question about where souls come from. Next, I highlight the body-soul problem which leads to a discussion on the body-soul distinction models. This supplies the formwork for us to explore various options for personhood in the afterlife, namely, disembodied spirits in the afterlife; physicalism and the embodied afterlife; and the perspective that I will be arguing for, holistic dualism and the immediate resurrection.

One of the chapters I found most fascinating to write was chapter 7. The concept of time is an important idea for the immediate resurrection, so here I discuss the different perspectives: presentism, the growing block theory, eternalism, and eternalism with a special present. Then there is a discussion on gravity and speed that make time dynamic and inconsistent. Following this, I explore what Scripture says about God’s relationship to time and then look at three primary theological contributions from other theologians, which in turn leads to my conclusion about God and time, and the possibility of an immediate resurrection in what I call truncated time. As you might imagine, this is a theological-philosophical chapter, yet I continue to use accessible language. The chapter does not settle on one specific theory of time; however, it seeks to open possibilities to demonstrate that an immediate resurrection is conceivable and even likely if we consider that the working of time is different in the afterlife.

Finally, we get to the application in chapter 8. It is a hope-filled chapter! With a theology of an immediate embodied afterlife, how then should we live in light of a resurrection hope? Here we consider our purpose to love and serve one another; to face the inevitable, our death and the afterlife; to live in the hope of an immediate resurrection, to hope in suffering, and to counsel others to do the same, especially those who are terminally ill; and to hope in resurrection glory, that is, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is where the book started, and that is where it ought to end, looking to the glorified Christ, our hope of redemption.

Whether you ultimately agree with the arguments set out in this book and its conclusions or not, may you nevertheless find this a fascinating and enriching read, one that fills you with hope in the resurrection and anticipation for the afterlife.

CHAPTER ONE

Resurrection Glory

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hat if the good news is far more than Jesus dying for our sins? All of us have heard, Jesus died for you, but what exactly does that mean? I am convinced that Jesus did die for each of our sins, though more importantly, he defeated the power of sin by dying and taking away the sin of the world (John 1:29). His death on the cross is ineffective until Jesus overcomes death and is raised in resurrected life—it makes little sense to understand the death of Christ on a Roman cross apart from his glorious resurrection. After all, Good Friday would be hopeless if it were not for Easter Sunday where we celebrate the resurrection. We celebrate that Jesus is life and that he overcame death. This is the focus, but we tend to forget that Jesus’s victory over death is also his victory over our death. Jesus died so that he might conquer death and give us eternal life, so that we too may experience resurrected glory. So perhaps we ought to say, "Jesus died and rose from the dead for you."

My argument in this book is that although we die in this life, we experience immediate resurrection in the next. Jesus made this clear when he said, I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die (John 11:25b–26a). Our resurrection is not some distant future hope sometime in the afterlife. Instead, it seems that the resurrection is immediate at the point of death in this life. Later chapters will explore how this is, without undermining the physical nature of the resurrection.

Our resurrection is grounded in Jesus’s resurrection, without which there is no life after death. The Apostle Paul famously said, And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor 15:17–19). In other words, we have no hope if Jesus was not raised from the dead—it’s as simple as that! Therefore, we need to be sure that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. People in ancient times as well as in our secular age have tried to discredit Jesus’s resurrection. So, after introducing you to the resurrected Christ, I will highlight the main theories that seek to cast doubt on the resurrection and offer a counterargument for each theory. After this, we will explore the evidence for Jesus’s resurrection. We also need to keep in mind that the resurrection is not only about resurrected bodies, which of course are very important, but it’s also about the redemption, or resurrection if you will, of all creation. The resurrection of Jesus and the expectation of a renewed creation give us the hope of an embodied afterlife.

The Resurrected Christ

Many people have seen the movie The Passion of Christ, but few have seen the 2016 biblical drama, Risen, sometimes considered the unofficial sequel to Mel Gibson’s masterpiece. It’s a work of historical fiction that gives a unique narration of the resurrection event in a way that is still consistent with the gospel narratives despite Hollywood’s poetic license. The movie isn’t perfect, but it’s still very moving. One might describe it as a biblical detective story. The images of the movie remained with me every day for over a year—I could not shake off the power and joy of Jesus’s resurrection, and neither did I want to.

If you have not already seen it, here’s a synopsis:

The Roman Tribune, Clavius, played by Joseph Fiennes, is summoned by Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth) and justifies why he had Jesus (Cliff Curtis) crucified. Clavius finds his way to the crucifixion scene where there are several Roman soldiers, and a handful of Nazarenes mourning the death of Jesus. He finds Jesus suspended on a crucifixion cross along with two others who had been crucified. The Tribune orders a soldier to put an end to their suffering. The soldier breaks the legs of those crucified (which they used to lift themselves up for breath). But Jesus was already dead, so with a striking gesture, Clavius orders that Jesus be pierced in the side with a Roman spear. With that, the earthquakes begin, and the temple façade cracks. The earth settles, and Clavius takes a moment to gaze at the crucified Jesus.

Jesus’s disciples place his corpse in a tomb. Two Roman soldiers are sent to guard the site but begin to drink wine on the second evening. On the third day, the