Chapter 2 – Between Death and Resurrection

I recently revised my book on hell and I’ve decided to post the updated chapters on this site. This is much more than a tour through the underworld. The Christian doctrine of hell drives us to take a closer look at Scripture, church history, and the character of God.

If you downloaded a previous Kindle version, you can get the updated version by following these steps.

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Chapter 2 – Between Death and Resurrection

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary is one of the major evangelical seminaries in the U.S. and I had the privilege of studying there from 1999–2001. My professors were members of various Protestant denominations and several were distinguished authors. I remember feeling awe-inspired at meeting scholars who had written books I had read.

A Professor

During my first year of studies, I heard that one of the professors was from the Advent Christian Church, which affirmed the literal destruction or annihilation of the wicked. Although I didn’t take a class with this professor or even have a discussion with him, the fact that he taught at my seminary left me puzzled: How could anyone who believes the Bible hold to that idea? And how could he teach at a major evangelical seminary?

A Guest Speaker

A few months later, I heard a guest speaker named N. T. Wright deliver a message in chapel. During his talk he said something about hell. He was talking about Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 and explaining that it was a parable. In the story, the rich man dies and finds himself in agony in flames.

Wright’s comments must have provoked me deeply. Although I rarely spoke up even in a small classroom, during the Q and A time I lifted my hand and asked something like, “So what do you think happens to unbelievers when they die?” I had assumed that as soon as the unrighteous die they begin to experience eternal conscious torment.

I don’t remember Wright’s exact answer, but it was basically that we can’t be sure. I was startled. His answer challenged my assumption and left me wondering: Why am I so sure that eternal punishment begins at the moment of death for unbelievers?

The Intermediate State

If I had known what Martin Luther (1483–1546) taught, my assumption would have been challenged by the founder of Protestantism. Luther taught what some have called soul sleep.[i] Soul sleep is the idea that at death everyone enters an unconscious state only to be awakened at Christ’s return. Proponents of soul sleep reason that if we go to heaven or hell immediately when we die, there would be no point to the astonishing events still to come—Christ’s return and the resurrection of the dead. Only after Christ’s return, the resurrection of the dead, and final judgment will people be assigned to their eternal destinations.

I also didn’t know that John Calvin (1509–1564) disagreed with Luther on this doctrine. Calvin’s first major theological work, written in 1534, called Psychopannychia (essentially meaning “soul sleep”) was a refutation of soul sleep. The book opens with a rejection of both soul sleep and soul death (thnetopsychism):

Some, while admitting it [the soul] to have a real existence, imagine that it sleeps in a state of insensibility from Death to The Judgment-day, when it will awake from its sleep; while others will sooner admit anything than its real existence, maintaining that it is merely a vital power which is derived from arterial spirit on the action of the lungs, and being unable to exist without body, perishes along with the body, and vanishes away and becomes evanescent till the period when the whole man shall be raised again. We, on the other hand, maintain both that it is a substance, and after the death of the body truly lives, being endued both with sense and understanding.[ii]

Why did Luther and Calvin arrive at different conclusions? (Stay with me. Things are about to get complicated.) The biblical evidence for the nature of the intermediate state—the time after death and before the resurrection of the dead—is varied. On the one hand, it sounds like at death we immediately enter a conscious and pleasurable experience with Christ. Jesus told the thief on the cross, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43), and Paul says, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Phil 1:23), and “we . . . would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8). “In paradise,” “with Christ,” and “with the Lord” do not sound like terms describing an unconscious state.

On the other hand, certain passages appear to affirm an unconscious or slumber-like postmortem existence. Jesus said the young girl who died was “asleep” (Mk 5:39), and Paul refers to the dead as “those who sleep in death” (1 Thess 4:13), and “those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20). Granted “sleep” may be a euphemism for death. For example, when Stephen was stoned to death, it also says “he fell asleep” (Acts 7:60). However, the doctrine of soul sleep does not rely solely on references to dead people “sleeping.” Jesus says, “a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out” (Jn 5:28–29). How does this resurrection make sense if, at death, we are instantly transported to our final destination? Do we, as disembodied spirits, leave heaven to re-enter our resurrected bodies then return to be with Christ? Do our bodies begin to rise without us in them? For soul sleep advocates, the resurrection makes more sense if we simply ascend from the grave.

Dualism and Monism

Notice that both soul sleep and a conscious state assume a dualist conception of humans, which means we are two things: soul (mind) and body. In particular, we are corporeal and non-corporeal and during the intermediate state, while our body is decaying, our non-corporeal component is doing something else, either sleeping (unconscious) or awake (conscious). In addition to many biblical references to soul or spirit, Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 12 seem to support dualism:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. (vv. 2–4)

According to Paul, this man may have separated from his body—Paul says he doesn’t know, but he is open to the possibility—thus revealing the man’s two-part nature. Also consider the story of Jesus raising the dead girl. When Jesus told her to get up, “Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up” (Lk 8:55).[iii] So her body was motionless until her spirit returned causing her to reanimate. This corresponds with Jesus’ words on the cross, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” then he breathed his last breath (Lk 23:46). Similarly before he died, Stephen said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). The idea of our spirit returning to God at death is found in the Old Testament:

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (Eccl 12:6-7)

For me, a key passage in the dualism-monism debate is one we have already encountered: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43). Jesus made this statement to the criminal on the cross beside him before they died. After they died, their bodies were removed from the crosses and buried, but if Jesus was right, their personal identity was no longer connected to their physical bodies. They were not located in their respective graves; they were located somewhere else—in paradise.

The evidence, then, favors dualism. Dale Allison writes,

Matthew, Mark, the author of Luke-Acts, John, and Paul as well as the author of Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and Revelation all believed that the self or some part of it could leave the body and even survive without it.

When Jesus, in Matthew and Mark, walks on water, his disciples fear that he may be a phantasma, a ghost; and when, risen from the dead, he appears to his own in Luke, he denies that he is a pneuma, a spirit. The concept of a disembodied spirit wasn’t foreign to first-century Jews.[iv]

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all Jews affirmed the existence of spirits. Sadducees, for example, were political leaders who rejected the existence of angels and spirits (Acts 23:6). But it does show that this was a mainstream idea in first-century Judaism. Regarding the resurrection, angels, and spirits, Luke, the author of Acts, says, “the Pharisees believe all these things” (Acts 23:8).

However, for a variety of reasons “many modern scholars have moved on from dualist conceptions of the human person . . . opting instead for monism.”[v] This monism is essentially physicalism, which limits human beings to matter and brainwaves. Although there are significant detractors to this materialistic view, since it is a standard perspective today, let us consider this possibility. If humans are not two distinct things but unified and inseparable mind-body beings, we can’t go anywhere as mere souls. So what happens when we die?

Immediate Resurrection

One possibility is immediate resurrection: at death, we are raised in our new bodies instantly.[vi] A primary text used to support this idea is found in 2 Corinthians 5.

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (vv. 1–4)

This statement indicates that when our “earthly tent” or body is destroyed, we will be clothed with our “heavenly dwelling” or new body, which is immortal. And since “we will not be found naked,” meaning without our “heavenly dwelling” or new bodies, the intermediate state as disembodied spirits is eliminated. What about those who do not belong to Christ? If resurrection life is reserved for Christ’s people, what will happen to others? We will explore different answers to that question throughout this book.

But didn’t Paul say that the resurrection will only happen at the end when Christ returns? He writes:

According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thess 4:15–17)

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Cor 15:51–52)

Proponents of immediate resurrection can respond in one of two ways. Either Paul’s view of the resurrection developed from these earlier statements or he was thinking with a pre-modern conception of time. Since development in thought is difficult to prove from ancient and occasional letters, we will focus on Paul’s conception of time.

Time

Although we commonly perceive of time as an unbending straight line, Einstein’s theory of relativity has shown that as part of the space-time field, time is contingent and flexible. In other words, time has a beginning, end, and it can be manipulated or warped. Moreover, since God is the Creator of all, God is the Creator of time. Theology and science, then, arrive at the same conclusion: time is not eternal, universal, or constant.

So how should we think of time? Douglas Campbell says we should imagine space and time as

a great beach ball of existence floating in the presence of God, space-time being the surface of the ball. We experience this as the past, present, and future, but from the point of view of God, there is no past, present, and future. All of space-time is “present” to God all of the time.[vii]

And what can God do with this “great beach ball?” Whatever he wants, including raising his people at any moment. Since God transcends space and time, God does not need to wait for the clock to tick before accomplishing certain things. Every moment is already present to him.

A monist view of humans, a modern view of time, and the idea that nothing, including death, can separate us from God’s love, leads Campbell to conclude,

After death the person experiences a complete resurrection immediately, so to speak, in God’s time, and this realization solves our problem. There is no dualism and no waiting period.[viii]

Although this view concedes that Paul was technically wrong in some of his statements regarding the timing of our resurrection, he can’t be faulted because everyone was wrong before Einstein.

Immediate resurrection is an intriguing proposal, but what about the corpses in the ground? We can see that dead bodies are not instantly raised so how does this make sense? After all, wasn’t Jesus’ body no longer in his tomb?

First, although parallels exist between Christ and us, we are not guaranteed to have the same experience he had. He was raised on the third day without decay; our bodies will remain in the grave and deteriorate.[ix]

Second, keep in mind that the New Testament applies resurrection to the whole person and not merely bodies. Murray J. Harris states,

What is raised and transformed is not some impersonal corpse but dead persons. The New Testament nowhere explicitly refers to “the resurrection of the body” or “the resurrection of the flesh”, only to the “resurrection of the dead” or to “resurrection from the dead.”[x]

This point is easily overlooked amid all of our talk of raised bodies. The primary thing that will be raised is a person—a human being with a distinct personality, memory, and life story. It is the resurrection of the person. Could God raise the whole person with a new body while keeping their previous body in the ground? Proponents of immediate resurrection say yes.

But if we are raised instantly, what happens when Christ returns? That depends. According to Stephen Yates, there are two main variations of immediate resurrection: atemporal and nonatemporal.[xi] The atemporal view asserts that at death believers immediately enter a timeless state so there is no such thing as future events. “Death, in other words, leads into the Parousia and the last day.”[xii] (The Parousia refers to Christ’s presence or his return.) The nonatemporal view asserts that while resurrection occurs instantly at death, there is still an interim phase for those who have been raised. Hence, the return of Christ is still an event on their horizon. I believe the picture of dead people rising when Christ returns fits the nonatemporal view better, but it is important to add that when we die we leave the grip of time so we will acquire a new perspective on what is future.

Two Perspectives

Rather than opting for immediate resurrection, Anthony Thiselton argues for a simpler solution—different perspectives in Scripture. Some are looking at the intermediate state through the eyes of a participant, while others are looking at it through the eyes of a spectator. Hence, we must stand outside of ourselves and reflect on which perspective we are bringing to this topic.

Quite simply we propose that (1) “to depart and to be with Christ,” i.e., immediately, is a participant or existential perspective; (2) “to wait until the Coming of Christ” and the general resurrection constitutes a spectator or ontological perspective. Both are valid and true within the context that gives them meaning and currency.[xiii]

He continues:

The person who dies will know nothing of the intermediate state. Admittedly the believer is “in Christ,” and his or her “sleep” cannot be interrupted. But it conveys an idea that is not very helpful. The best way is to talk about “the next thing we know,” which is to be conscious of Christ.[xiv]

So an observer can see the intermediate state as part of “the continuing acts of God,” but that will not be the experience of a participant. To a participant, it will seem like they have been raised and transferred into Christ’s presence instantly. I believe Thiselton is saying that soul sleep is real, but by its very nature it will not be experienced. Thiselton believes this proposal reconciles the biblical data related to the intermediate state. What do you think?

Summary

I’ve taken you down the rabbit hole of the intermediate state and its division into three paths—soul sleep, disembodied conscious existence, and immediate resurrection—to show that it’s a complex topic based on limited and varied New Testament data. Thus, no one can claim with certainty exactly what will happen immediately after we die and how that fits with subsequent events. Most importantly, I wanted to show that this particular phase in human existence is not the focus of Christian teaching or the primary hope of believers. From ancient times, the “blessed hope” of Christ’s followers has been an event that far surpasses any individual experience. It is an event of cosmic significance: the return of Christ and his raising of the dead.

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[i] See Martin Luther, Luther’s Works 28: Commentary on 1 Corinthians 7 and 15 and 1 Timothy, ed. Hilton Oswald (St. Louis: Concordia, 1973), 110, 200. Cited in Matthew Y. Emerson, “He Descended to the Dead:” An Evangelical Theology of Holy Saturday (Downers Grove: IVP, 2019). According to Emerson, Luther made other comments which qualify his position on soul sleep, 252.

[ii] John Calvin, Psychopannychia, trans. Henry Beveridge, 1851.

[iii] This sounds similar to the re-entry into the body described in near-death experiences (NDEs). The literature on NDEs is vast. The groundbreaking book in the field is Raymond A. Moody Jr., Life After Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2015).

[iv] Dale C. Allison Jr., Night Comes: Death, Imagination, and the Last Things (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 33. This recognition, however, doesn’t resolve the debate for Allison because he makes a distinction between acknowledging what the New Testament affirms and determining what we should believe today. He says it is naïve to think the Bible was written to address modern scientific questions.

[v] Emerson, 144.

[vi] Some argue that the resurrection applies to the righteous only (e.g., Phil 3:11; 1 Cor 15:50–58), while others affirm a universal resurrection followed by final judgment (Dan 12:2–3; Jn 5:28–29; Acts 24:15; Rev 20:11–15).

[vii] Douglas A. Campbell, Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), Kindle, 14258.

[viii] Campbell, 710.

[ix] This point is highlighted in Allison, Night Comes, 40.

[x] Murray J. Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality: Eight Theses,” Themelios: vol. 1, issue 2, accessed March 5, 2020. www.themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/article/resurrection-and-immortality-eight-theses.

[xi] See Stephen Yates, Between Death and Resurrection: A Critical Response to Recent Catholic Debate Concerning the Intermediate State (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 8.

[xii] Yates, 8.

[xiii] Anthony C. Thiselton. Life after Death: A New Approach to the Last Things (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 74.

[xiv] Thiselton, 78.