Well, nothing’s happened for awhile on this board, so I thought I’d try to seed a discussion.
In my Sunday School we’ve begun discussing the intermediate state, and I was presented with a view that I hadn’t heard before — which surprised me. After awhile you think you’ve heard everything. What suprised me more is it made a bit of sense.
The idea was, there is no such thing as a disembodied soul. Nearly doing away with the traditional (Greek?) dualism that we often read into Pauline anthropology. When we die we go to be with the Lord in a “heavenly body.” Whatever that is, but definitely physical. Based partially on 1 Cor 15:
All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.
I think Paul is referring to stars and such when he says “heavenly bodies” but there were other reasons for the previously mentioned interpretation that I cannot immediately recall.
Anybody have more information on this, or comments?
Soul Survivor
Not too sure about this. Scripture definitely supports the fact of disembodied souls, not least 1 Peter 3:19, which refers to the spirits of those who perished in the Flood. Jesus himself said that a spirit didn’t have any kind of body when his disciples mistook him for a ghost after the resurrection. In fact, the whole idea of no intermediate state makes something of a mockery of the need for Resurrection of the dead at the end of time.
Resurrection from the dead
I am increasingly inclined to think that there is no such thing as an intermediate state. It may well be that the Bible is not entirely consistent on these matters and may reflect a range of viewpoints - or perhaps more to the point may use different types of language to speak about what happens beyond death. But I would suggest that the default condition following death is simply death: we die, we are dead, we will eventually be raised from the dead to face judgment. There are minor exceptions to this and one major departure from the default pattern, which is that Christ died and was raised well in advance of the final resurrection of all the dead. I would add to this the somewhat contentious opinion that the New Testament envisages an exceptional group of ‘martyrs’, in effect, who suffer with Christ, are raised, and now reign with him as part of the eschatological crisis at the end of the age of second temple Judaism (there is an outline of this view here) - this is why Paul can talk about departing to be with Christ. But the basic anthropology remains the same: death followed by a state of being dead (the corruption of the body) followed by a resurrection from the dead and a new creation in which there is no more death.
In response to Ivan’s points:
1) ‘Jesus himself said that a spirit didn’t have any kind of body when his disciples mistook him for a ghost after the resurrection.’ What passage do you have in mind?
2) It’s not at all clear that the ‘spirits’ of 1 Pet.3:19 are human spirits. This has to be read against the background of 1 Enoch, there is at least a strong case to be made (though one that is too complex to summarize here: see J. Ramsay Michaels, 1 Peter, 206-211) that Peter is basically thinking of Jesus’ proclamation of judgment upon the evil spirits which originated from the ‘sons of God’ of Gen.6:1-4.
3) ‘In fact, the whole idea of no intermediate state makes something of a mockery of the need for Resurrection of the dead at the end of time.’ Is this true? I would have thought that it is the whole idea of being dead that makes a resurrection at the end of time so necessary. It is a resurrection from the dead, from the grave, from Hades, not from an intermediate state or from a condition of disembodiment.
You could also have a look at this discussion.
My only problem
with the jettisonning of the intermediate state is the passage from Revelation where the saints in heaven are crying out, “How long, O Lord.” I don’t see how I could understand them as either living, earthly saints, or post-parousia saints.
The doctrine I heard taught was not dismissing the notion of an intermediate state, but suggesting an intermediate body for the intermediate state. One wonders, however, why we would get an intermediate body and not the final resurrection body. Perhaps we will get a body that is suited to live in a very different environment than earth, and then we get our final earth-suited bodies.
There’s also the Lazarus parable, but that’s a little harder to build a theology on.
However, I must agree that Luther’s soul-sleep is getting renewed attention from me.
How long, O Lord?
I would have thought that the visionary setting of that verse in Revelation (6:10) makes it an equally unstable surface on which to build the house of cards which is the doctrine of an intermediate state. I would put these ‘souls of those who had been slain for the word of God’ in that group of saints who bear the brunt of the wrath of God against Israel and the world, who suffer as Christ suffered and who come to be raised (prematurely) with him. They are (I think) to be equated with the ‘souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God’ in 20:4, who experience the first resurrection and reign with Christ for 1000 years.