Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Editors’ Abstract₁

• The last word on the end times goes to Peter van Inwagen (Chapter 32). He begins by noting that our popular culture encourages unbiblical ideas of the afterlife, and questions whether dualism is required to make sense of the Resurrection. Certainly, the biblical perspective is not the Platonic one that the body is a prison-house and that disembodied existence is ideal. On the other hand, van Inwagen concedes that there are serious difficulties in the idea that God can simply reassemble a person who was made of different particles at different times. Van Inwagen does not claim to offer a definitive justification of a materialist resurrection – the equivalent of a theodicy for the problem of evil – but instead offers a defense to show that materialism is consistent with the Resurrection. While admitting that his “simulacrum” model has won few adherents, he defends it against objections as a “just-so-story” that shows that a materialist resurrection is conceivable, and argues that it is less problematic than the alternatives proposed by Baker and Zimmerman.