Hey everybody! Lecture, what number are we on? Lecture 26. We're in, what are we on? Part 3 of the possibility of life after death.
Sorry, I've had a long day, lots of meetings. I don't quite know exactly where I'm at in the middle of things, but that's okay. We get to talk now about my favorite subject in the whole world, philosophically at least, and that is the possibility of life after death.
And we're going to get into some crazy stuff, some theories that make you go, this is crazy. But, What we're really going to do in this lecture is we are going to begin dealing with the possibilities of bodily resurrection. So in the last lecture, as you saw here, we dealt with the possibility of there being immaterial souls.
And now, because remember, I've said to you that there's really to have a Christian account, you've got to have two things. Number one, you've got to have an immaterial soul that can have an intermediate state. And then number two, you've got to have the possibility of bodily resurrection, right? So in the last lecture, we talked about the possibility of immaterial souls. Now in this lecture, we're talking about part two of that, which is this part three of the lecture series on this, but it's the possibility of bodily resurrection.
All right, so that's what we're going to do right now. Here's the question. What would we need as we talk about bodily resurrection? I'm coming right back to the slide. But as we talk about bodily resurrection, what exactly would we need to accomplish this thing called bodily resurrection?
When I talk about what would we need, I'm talking about the kind of body. that gets raised in the resurrection, what kind of body does that body have to be like? Or what kind of body does that body have to be in order to pull off bodily resurrection? So that's what I mean by that when I say, what would we need? And in short, it all depends on what you say a human person is.
And so, coming right back to the slide, in short, how you answer the question of what's got to be raised really just depends on your anthropology. What do you say a human person is? do you say a person is the body?
Do you say a person is the soul? Do you say the person is the body and the soul? Depending on how you answer that question, what you say a person is, is going to dictate what's got to be raised. Okay.
So let's walk through the options here for just a second. I think as I do this, you'll be able to see why I make that statement that what you say a person is going to dictate what's got to be raised from the dead. So for example, what if you were to say that you are your soul? I'm coming right back to the slide. At the funerals that you and I have been to, the preacher gets up and says, here lies granny's body.
That's not granny. Granny is up there. Okay, so granny's not the body. Granny is up there.
And what is it that's up there? It's the soul. So on this account, this is called substance dualism, on this account, you're basically identifying the person with the soul. The person just is the soul.
So if you say you are a soul, well, here's what that would mean. It means that this is substance dualism, and that's fine. I don't mean that as a critique.
I'm just, that's the view you end up holding. And it affirms that the body and soul are different kinds of things, and that you are the soul. So the body is a physical thing, and the soul is a spiritual thing, and that you are that spiritual thing. You are not that physical thing. So that's what this view is going to say.
And if you say that, then guess what? Resurrection is super duper easy for God. And there's really...
Not a problem here at all, okay? Because if you say this, then all you have to have to survive death is your soul. The resurrection body can be a duplicate body. So in other words, the body that you, your soul, ends up in in the resurrection, it can be a carbon copy, it can be a duplicate, it can be some other body.
It looks like this one, seems like this one, but it's a different one, an actual new body that's there in that place. So if you say that you are your soul, then all God's got to give you back in the resurrection is a duplicate body. So that's what you'd need if substance dualism is true.
What if materialism is true? What if you said opposite of that? You said, no, you are not your soul.
You are your body. Well, here's what that would mean. This is materialism, the view that says you are just a material body. Or sometimes it's called physicalism. This view says you're just your body.
And if so, if that view is right, than to survive death, you have to not just have a body, but you have to have the specific body that you are now in. So on this view, and all that to say, substance dualism is right, this body right here doesn't have to come back, a copy does. If materialism or physicalism is right, then this very same body has to come back, a duplicate body. This is the big thing I need you to see here, a duplicate body will not work, because a duplicate body... Would be on this view, if you just are the body you're in, then a duplicate body would actually be a different person.
In the same way that two identical... twins. They have duplicate bodies, but they are distinct human beings.
And so if materialism is true, then duplicate bodies would mean different person, in which case you don't survive, but some replica of you does. And I bet you, you are not interested in that. I bet you want to survive, not just somebody that looks like you in the resurrection.
So if materialism is right, you got to have something different. All right. Okay. Well, here's another one. What if you say that you are the composite of your body and your soul?
And I'll just go ahead and tell you right here, this is my view. This is the view I think that's right. What if you said that you are your body and your soul composite in one union?
Well, then I would say this is various perspectives will actually say this, but the most common is something called hylomorphism. This comes from Aristotle and then gets adopted and adapted by Thomas Aquinas. And Aquinas holds this view.
Hylo. from matter, literally it means wood in the Greek, so you got material stuff and morphe. This is where the word form comes from. So there you have it.
Form and matter. The person is the form and the matter. So Jamie-Do is the form, which in this case is the soul, and this matter, the union of both of those, that's Jamie-Do.
Okay, so on this view, if you say that you are your body and your soul as a composite, well then if that's true, then the body and the soul have to survive. And to clarify a bit further, the body in the resurrection must be numerically identical with the body that we currently possess. And I'm going to define what we mean in just a minute by numerically identical. But if this view is right, then the body in the resurrection has to be numerically identical with the body we're in right now.
That is to say it has to be this very same body, not a duplicate body. That's what's got to get raised. And so all that to say, if substance dualism is right...
The resurrection body simply has to be a duplicate body that works. And I'll just go ahead and say right now, that's super easy for God to do. I would say, therefore, substance dualists have the easiest time solving this problem. In fact, if substance dualism is true, well, then we just end the lecture right now. There's nothing left for us to do.
God just gives us back duplicate bodies. I do like that. Unfortunately, I don't think that's right.
If the materialist is true, then you've got to get this body back. And also, if hylomorphism or any composite view is right, then here also, I have to get this very same body back. You have to get that very same body back in the resurrection. And now it gets a lot more difficult and a lot more complicated.
Because what do you do about resurrection and other things like, or cannibalism and some other things like that? So let's flesh that out. Let me help us to see the problem of why that's a significant thing.
And then in just a minute, I'm going to define what we mean by that numerical identity stuff. Okay? All right.
So again, if substance dualism is true, then you are your soul that has a body, and then the body in resurrection is easy. God just goes and gives you a duplicate body, and your soul inhabits that duplicate body. Substance dualism is easy.
But what if that view is wrong? If materialism, and it should be what if, not what is, what if materialists or the hylomorphists are right that the specific bodies we are in have to be raised? If that's the case, that's harder to bring about.
And yet, at the same time, I'm going to argue that it is possible nonetheless. I'm going to show you how Christianity historically does it. I'm going to raise problems with that historical way. I'm going to give you some other possibilities of how that could be done. And then I'll give you the way I think it could be done.
And that's what we're going to do over the next couple lectures. Okay, now before I get into those other possibilities and all those things, let's define very quickly what exactly we mean by same or identical, right? Now, I'm coming right back to the slide. That may sound strange to say, what do you mean, what do we mean by same or what do we mean by identical? It always means the same thing.
No it doesn't. So for example, when you're driving down the road and you say, ooh look at that car, it's that red Porsche over there, it's that red Corvette over there. My uncle has that same car, right?
What do you, when you say for someone who walks in a room and they have a blouse on or a shirt that you have too, you say, ooh I have that same shirt, right? Well here sameness means I have a shirt as well that looks exactly like that one. It has all the same features, colors, shapes, cuts, all those things, right?
So sameness in this sense refers to the same qualities or the same phenomenology. It appears to me the same way, okay? Sameness when you talk about, ooh, that's the same tree I sat under when I was in college and prayed, right?
Well now wait a minute sameness means something different here sameness in this case means actually the very same one Okay, so Same can mean two different things and it's important we get straight on this. Identical can mean two different things and same thing it's important we get straight on this. Alright, so words like numerical and phenomenological or qualitative these can be used to sort of differentiate those two concepts. Just so that you know phenomenological sameness and qualitative sameness we're referring to the same thing here. But when we refer to either of these two phenomenological or qualitative that's different from saying numerical sameness.
Numerical sameness is the very same identical object over time. So, for example, when you say, that's the same tree I prayed under, right there. What that means is it's this actual one, and this actual one has persisted across time, and it's here now, okay?
But it's the same identical object. So we call that numerical identity. To help you wrap your mind around that, think of two F-150 pickup trucks. that come off the assembly line.
Both of them are white. Both of them have brown leather seats. Both of them have a sunroof.
Both of them have extended cab. Both of them are four-wheel drive. They have all the exact same features, but the first one has the serial number F1501 for F151, and the second one has the serial number F1502 for F152.
They have different serial numbers, so we call that numerical distinctness. One and two are distinct from each other. numerically, they're identical to each other phenomenologically or qualitatively. So phenomenological or qualitative sameness refers to two distinct objects, the two shirts that I talked about earlier, or the two Corvettes, two distinct objects that share all and exactly the same qualities with each other.
Okay, so voila, I'm going to use those two terms or those two categories, two concepts as we talk about this. Sameness and identical. What do we mean? It can be numerical or qualitative. Okay?
All right. So now that we got that out of the way, what I'm saying to you is regarding materialism and hylomorphism, the body in the resurrection has to be numerically identical to this one. It has to be this very same one. Now, this very same one can indeed experience qualitative changes or phenomenological changes. For example, this body is numerically identical to the body I was born in.
The body I was born in weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces. It was 21 inches long. It's 5'11 and a half now, or probably more 5'11 because I shrunk a little bit.
And I'm not telling you how much I weigh because I'm a big fatty, all right? So, all that to say, my body is numerically identical over time, but it's qualitatively distinct. It's changed its quality. So, one numerical object can change its qualitative features as it goes. In the same way, like a Ford F-151, F-1501, that truck can repaint itself or scratch the fender or change out the seats or change the tires or get a lift.
Those are qualitative changes, not numerical changes. All right? All right.
Those two concepts are at play throughout all of this. Okay. Now, here's the way Christianity's done it for most of history. When I say done it, what I mean is that for most of Christian history, and this is all of the patristic era, This is the medieval era.
This is up until about the mid-1300s, 1400s, somewhere in there. Overwhelmingly, and I would say really even up past that, but you certainly find a very strong trail of this idea throughout all the literature up to that point. The predominant way that the church thought about the resurrection body was in terms of what we call reassembly.
And so we call it the reassembly model. And the reassembly model of resurrection is perhaps the oldest. It argues that numerical identity is possible, so in the resurrection, the body raised there is numerically identical to the body raised or that lived back here, okay? This view says that in the resurrection, God goes out and he gets all the parts that once composed your body, and he simply reassembles them. And by reassemble, I mean he gets the exact same parts, he re-relates them, and reconstitutes them in exactly the same relationships each other they used to be, okay?
So in short... How is the body going to come back? Even if cremation has happened or something else or decomposition?
No worries. God goes out throughout space and gets all the little bits that used to compose your body and he puts them all back together again and voila, numerically identical bodies. Far and away, that is how, believe it or not, how Christianity answered the question of numerically identical bodies.
There's a lot of literature on this. It goes all the way up through some of the councils of the church. The Medieval's talked about this quite a lot.
The Patristic's talked about this quite a lot. And so it's an interesting theory. Now, there is a problem with this theory.
What would happen in cases of cannibalism, decomposition, or in our day and age, cremation? What would happen if those bodies got cremated or let's say just put in a pine box and they decomposed or maybe even a graphic a cannibal ate your body or something like that. What would happen in those cases?
Now here's the thing. That cannibal objection, which I'll talk about in the next slide, goes back all the way to the time of Athenagoras. And Athenagoras actually talks about this objection.
I don't like his answer to it at all, but he talks about this objection. Modern philosophers will typically reject the reassembly model on the basis of what we call a cannibal objection. Now we're going to talk about cannibals. Cannibal objection.
Just, I want to assure you, I'm not a creepy dude that's into cannibals. I've done several professional papers at conferences on the cannibal objection, or cannibalism and bodily resurrection. And boy, did I get a weird reputation for a while.
I can remember a couple of my colleagues throughout evangelicalism like, dude, what are you talking about? It's a provocative way of raising an objection to reassembly models, okay? And so that's how I got into this. And I have lots of funny stories about talking about cannibals in various places, but we'll leave it alone. All right, the cannibal objection.
Again, just a provocative way of raising the question. It states that in certain cases, such as cannibalism, or in other such cases as well, like even certain decomposition cases and such, that situations arise that would make it impossible for God to resurrect via reassembly. How so? Well, something like this.
They'd say, what if, the objection asks, My body is composed of little parts or little bits X, Y, and Z. Obviously, it'd have lots and lots more than those three, but let's just work with those three for right now. Little bits, little parts, X, Y, and Z. That's what my body's composed by, and it's composed by X, Y, and Z at the last moment of its life when it is eaten by a cannibal. The question is, what would happen here?
Well, parts X, Y, and Z, let's imagine further. Let's imagine that parts X, Y, and Z get metabolized by the cannibal's body, regular metabolic process, such that they come to compose part of his body, and now he dies with parts X, Y, and Z. Let's imagine that he ate my right arm, okay?
And X, Y, and Z are right here in this part of my arm, and he eats that, yum, yum, yum, jerk, and he metabolizes that tissue and that muscle because it's so buff and ripped, right? He metabolizes this, and little x, y, and z are in there, and they get metabolized, and in his system, when they get metabolized, they now swim downstream and deposit in his right arm as well. So here you have it. At the last instant of my life, my body was composed of parts x, y, and z, and at the last instant of his life, his body was composed of parts x, y, and z as well.
And now here's the problem. In the resurrection, God cannot give us both back parts x, y, and z. And thus resurrection cannot happen via reassembling. That is what we call the cannibal objection. Now, by and large, philosophers, Christian philosophers, have moved away from reassembly models because of objections like this.
I want to be real clear, as crazy and far-fetched as that objection may sound, you may be thinking, sure, it happens every now and then, but that's far-fetched, and how many cases would this come up? Understand it would only have to happen one time for it to be a problem for the reassembly model. So to their credit, they don't have to imagine what normally happens.
They just simply have to pose one case that wouldn't work, and now we've got a problem. So furthermore, I want to be very clear in their defense. As kooky and crazy as the cannibal objection may be, you need to understand that it's just one provocative way of making the general point about bodily decomposition.
There are other ways that this very same problem could indeed come about. So, for example, let me talk about this just very quickly. What about the situations I mentioned in the first lecture where a dude is buried in a pine box? And by the way, these are lots and millions of people that this has happened to.
Buried in a pine box, their body decomposes in the ground. The ground sucks up the nutrients from their rotting, decomposing body. Those nutrients, which are really just little bits and parts that used to be in our bodies. They get sucked up into the nutrients of the ground, they're absorbed into the grass, into the trees, a cow comes along and eats that grass, which is composed of parts X, Y, and Z that used to be in the dude, now they're in the grass, then they end up in the cow, and some other guy ends up eating the cow, or drinking its milk, or eating ice cream.
And parts X, Y, and Z that used to be in this guy named Ted, now end up in this guy named Bill, or something like that, okay? Look, it's the exact same problem. I mean... What do we do in these cases here?
There's lots of different ways to sort of paint the problem. The cannibal objection is just a provocative way of doing it. Now, what these philosophers are going to offer in response are not necessarily practical ways that resurrection could happen. In other words, as the... They sort of shoot down reassembly models.
They've got to figure out other ways that it can happen. As they do that, they're not trying to give us the actual way that God will do it. Instead, they are simply offering logically possible ways it could happen. So not necessarily the real way it's going to happen. All they try to figure out is one logical possibility of the way it could happen.
That sounds crazy because, trust me, when you hear these next little theories of how this could happen, You're going to think, my goodness gracious, this is crazy. But here's the idea, that while the examples we're about to look, brain snatching models and fission event models, what they're going to say is that, look, this isn't how it happens. They don't really believe that the brain snatching and the fission events, which is what I'm about to talk about, they're not suggesting that this is how it actually will happen, but they're simply arguing that it's at least logically possible. And the idea is this. That if you and I, if we can identify one or two logically possible ways that resurrection could happen, then it is safe to say that it is possible for it to happen, and therefore God can find a good way to do it.
So in other words, the idea is this. Look, if you and I can figure out a way to do it, surely an omnipotent, omniscient God can figure out the better way to do it, right? All they feel the burden to try to answer is the logical possibility of it, and here's why.
They're doing that because the accusation had been made for several decades in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. When Peter Van Inwagen writes his article about brain snatching, which we'll talk about next, he's answering the accusation that it is logically impossible. And if that's the case, then you and I would not live after we die.
Period. If the atheist had been right that it was logically impossible, then folks, it's over. We can't live after we die. So therefore, he doesn't have to show us how it does happen. All he's got to do is show us one logically possible way that it could happen.
And again, we can figure that out, then surely God can do it. Alright, so here's two possible ways that are logically possible. Philosophers like Peter Van Inwagen put forward this idea. that's logically possible and it would secure numerically identical bodies in the resurrection.
He says this. It's called the brain snatching model. He says this, perhaps in the moments just prior to death, what if God were to reach down and snatch the brain out of the skull of the dying person and replace it with a duplicate?
The word he actually uses is a simulacrum, a physical phenomenological duplicate. And oh, by the way, God is going to... do this so fast and so quick that nobody, even cameras going really slow speeds, nobody will be able to detect that it's ever happened.
God just reaches down, snatches the brain out, and the idea is here that where the brain goes, the person goes. And so he snatches the brain out before it dies, sustains its life, and therefore the person goes with the brain. And God replaces it with a phenomenological duplicate of it. Now, the autopsy, you'd say, well, we could disprove this theory by simply doing autopsies.
You'd open up the dude's skull and say, see, there's his brain. God didn't steal it. Well, to which Van Inwagen and others would say, you knucklehead. It's an autopsy, and so the brain that's there is simply a duplicate.
Of course you found a brain. It's just not the original brain. The person will ride with the brain and survives via the brain-snatching event.
Now what Van Inwagen is saying, what he's not saying, is I think this is how it really happens. Actually, in 1980 when he wrote this article called On the Possibility of Resurrection, he actually seemed to indicate that he thought this would happen this way. In a set of articles that he later published as a book in 1995, he sort of retracted that a bit and said, no, I don't really think that's what happens.
I just think it's logically possible and that's all I've got to prove that could happen. Now again, look, I'd say this, I think he's right. That sure, that's logically possible God could do that. But I certainly would be with Van Enwagen and say, that clearly can't be what happens. I mean, surely not, right?
But again, the idea is here, look, God can do that. You couldn't prove that God didn't do it. So, possible, sure.
Logically possible, sure. And so as such, we've sort of defeated the atheist's argument that this is an impossibility. Well, that's one model. That's called the brain-snatching model.
Here's another model. It's called the body fission model. So here are philosophers like Dean Zimmerman, who, oh, by the way, is a substance dualist.
And so he doesn't actually have to defend a materialist perspective at all. He's actually an emergent dualist, which is something a little bit different, but it's still close to substance dualism. Most people think of it as substance dualism. Anyway, Zimmerman doesn't actually have to defend materialism.
But as a good philosopher, he just says, look, I think materialists could. actually defend bodily resurrection if they had to. Here, if I were a materialist, is how I'd do it. And so he calls it the falling elevator model, actually, but it's better to speak of it as the body fission model. Kevin Corcoran, who is a materialist, actually argues this as well in a number of articles and then in his book Rethinking Human Nature.
Essentially what this body fission event suggests is well exactly what the title says. suggest that maybe at the moment just prior to death, right there in that moment, that the body experiences a fission event, and you know about fission and fusion, right? Fusion is when two separate things come together into one, and fission is when one thing splits apart into two. So maybe at the moment just prior to death, the body will experience a fission event where it splits into two sets of physically identical parts or bodies.
One of those bodies... becomes the dead corpse in the casket and the other person becomes the person alive in heaven. So it splits and the person goes with one of them and lives on in heaven.
I've actually written and published some articles critiquing this model and saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, it won't work. It won't work. So I actually questioned the logical possibility of this one, but hey, let's work with it for right now.
Sure. Something like that, the event so described, of a body splitting, that's logically possible. I'm skeptical as to whether or not it would actually result in the sustaining of a numerical person over time.
That's for another time, though, if we were to get into some philosophy of mind or some other things like that. So, those are two different models. Now, here's the question. What should we think about all of these possibilities?
Well, I'd say with Van Inwagon, Zimmerman, and Corcoran, I agree that their accounts are indeed logically possible. The reason this is important is because atheists suggest that bodily resurrection is impossible. That's what they've been saying, and so therefore what we have to prove is that it's not impossible. Again, the idea there is if we can figure out an impossible way, God can figure out a better.
And so, if this is true, then there really aren't any circumstances we could identify where something like this is possible, and such bodily resurrection would be impossible. And so in short, if we couldn't even figure out one way that it could happen, then the atheist's accusation would indeed be correct. Nevertheless, while I think that their accounts do indeed give us some logically possible ways, I tend to think that this is not satisfying. And I give two reasons here.
Number one, what they offer is not technically accounts of resurrection, right? What Christianity describes is a body that dies, goes down, and decomposes. Remember Ecclesiastes 12? The body goes back to the dust from where it came, and the spirit goes back up in the presence of God from where it comes, right?
And then the New Testament describes a bodily resurrection of the dead body, right? What neither of these accounts have given us is an actual resurrection account. What they've given us is a way that the body and pretty much the person therefore never stops living, and so it's a continuation. In fact, if that's the case, if the person continues via this pathway, then the resurrection is superfluous. Resurrection doesn't need to happen.
The resurrection is kind of pointless, right? So I think that's a problem. Second, I suggest that given the importance of life after death to us, right, this matters a lot to us, right? We should want more than just logical possibilities.
We should want to know how it might indeed actually happen. And so because of that, in the next lecture, I'm going to return back to the possibility of resurrection via reassembly. And I'm going to explore and tinker around as to whether or not the cannibal objection really is a defeater for this view.
There's a lot of people today that think it is. I'll just go ahead and tell you right now. I say hogwash.
It absolutely is not a defeater for this reassembly model. As I'll argue in just a little bit in the next lecture, I think it's premised on a faulty set of persistence conditions. I think there are easy ways to modify their notion of reassembly and dodge cannibal objections and some other things like that.
So that's what we're going to do in the next lecture. It's going to be super weird and super crazy, but I think at the end of the day, it's plausible. So that's what Hope that helps. We'll see you next time.