Preface
The following is one of the first essays I wrote when studying for a Master’s degree in Philosophy and Religion at Heythrop College, University of London, in August 1998, in answer to the specific question ‘Can a human being have eternal life?’ Although it is not necessarily how I would deal with that question today, I think most of the points made in it are still valid and exclude some of the common assumptions about the afterlife made by Christians who have not reflected at length on the subject.
Aims and scope of this paper
The possibility that someone can live for ever has been interpreted in many widely differing ways, and it would take many pages to examine each of these interpretations in turn. I have limited the scope of this paper to the question whether a human being can have eternal life as a human being, an essential feature of which is having a body. This paper, therefore, considers whether we can form an intelligible and coherent proposition that a person can live life on earth as we know it, then die, and subsequently live eternally with a body. By ‘die‘ I mean undergo the physical death of a human being, which I take to be a sufficiently familiar phenomenon. Less obvious, and in need of some definition, is the concept of ‘living‘ subsequently. An essential element of the proposition is that the person who lives subsequently is the same person as died; I shall consider some of the criteria for this reidentification. To understand what we are talking about, in my view, we must have some idea of how life after death might work; I shall consider some of the practical issues of resurrection in the light of two or three models that have been proposed. The nature of the resurrected body is, clearly, open to debate, but the requirement for a body rules out some models of eternal life. Topics which are specifically excluded from consideration here are:
- survival without retaining personal identity, for example by becoming part of a ‘world consciousness’;
- survival as a disembodied spirit;
- eternal life lived before death;
- an endless series of reincarnations as different people linked by memories.
The limits of everyday language
An immediate problem of trying to attach meaning to ‘life after death’ is that it is an apparent contradiction in terms. The dictionary defines ‘person’ as ‘the living body of a human being’, ‘life’ as ‘the functional activity of the organised matter constituting the human animal’, and ‘to die’ as ‘to cease to live, to lose vital force, to decay, come to an end, cease to exist, be forgotten, fade away’. So, in the primary and normal signification of these words as we use them in our everyday language, dying is a permanent and irreversible end to living, which itself cannot be separated from the flesh, blood, bones and tissues of which we as animals are composed. Wittgenstein has warned that, if we ignore the way we actually use language, we are likely to talk nonsense – our concepts are essentially linked to the meanings of words in everyday use. Many philosophers would consider that reason enough to deny that any concept of life after death is intelligible.
I believe that established concepts and the words that express them can be extended as we meet new circumstances for which there are no existing concepts. We can therefore permit some change of meaning in words like ‘person’ or ‘live’ when applied to circumstances not encountered in everyday life. This in turn gives us some scope for imagining circumstances in which we would apply these words with extended meanings. But this is a dangerous path to go down, since, in trying to apply words to situations quite unlike those they are regularly used in, we risk emptying them of meaning so that they no longer convey any useful concept at all. The key question this paper addresses is whether there is enough content left in the concept of life after death for us to understand anything coherent by it.
Some models of life after death
(a) Thomas Aquinas
The first model I shall mention (but not examine in detail in this paper) is that given by Thomas Aquinas[1]. He painted a picture of people in heaven after the resurrection as having fully functioning mature human bodies, but he specifically denied them activities such as eating and sex, and he saw their only activity as the timeless contemplation of God. This raises two potential problems: since the beatific vision can be fully enjoyed by a disembodied soul in Aquinas’ view, these resurrected bodies seem useless and superfluous in Aquinas’ picture (at least for the saved – the damned may need them for their eternal punishment!); secondly, it may be thought that the concept of ‘living with a body’ which I shall outline below is incompatible with the condition of timelessness that Aquinas postulates.
(b) The traditional picture
The commonest interpretation of the Christian resurrection assumes that it will take place at some future date here on earth, and the traditional picture is of resurrected bodies similar to our current ones. As a hypothesis for examination, Terence Penelhum[2] describes the resurrection event in the following terms (designed to test in particular our criteria for identifying those who have been resurrected). At some future date a large number of persons will appear in bodies (somewhat) like our own here and now, each claiming to be some person long since dead, with putative memories that ‘fit’ his claim to be that person, and physically resembling that person. The number of resurrectees is assumed be the same as or fewer than the number of deceased. Each is in no doubt about who he claims to be, or whose past he makes first-person memory claims about; and no one claims to be a past person whom he does not resemble and of whose past he is not able to inform us with reasonable accuracy.
(c) John Hick
An alternative model has been suggested by John Hick[3]. In this picture, as each person dies, an exact ‘replica’ of the person appears simultaneously in a different world from this one, a world inhabited by resurrected ‘replicas’. The ‘replica’ is exactly similar to the deceased as to both bodily and mental characteristics, with ‘continuity of memory, complete similarity of bodily features, including fingerprints, hair and eye coloration and stomach contents, and also of beliefs, habits and mental propensities’. On this basis, Hick identifies the ‘replicas’ with the deceased as being the same persons. The other world, which Hick locates in temporal relationship with this world but not in spatial relationship, must have similar physical characteristics to our own, such as three-dimensional extension, gravity, atmosphere, and so on, to enable the ‘replica’ people to live.
Both of these last models (unlike that of Aquinas) seem to assume that the resurrected people lead lives rather like our present ones, moving around and talking to one another, in an environment where time passes, albeit endlessly.
Minimum definition of ‘living’
It is clear that, in seeking an intelligible concept of life after death, we cannot confine consideration to models of living which are the same as or very similar to life as we live it now. For example, if we consider that it is part of the definition of a human being to be an animal, we may have to include in our model of eternal life bodily processes such as gestation, birth, growth, ageing, cell replacement and essential maintenance activities such as eating and sleeping, and perhaps inevitably death and decomposition all over again. This would greatly restrict the forms of eternal life to be considered, locking us into patterns very like our present life. Let us consider therefore what might be the minimum to count as ‘living’.
A ‘process’ model
I wish to propose that for a human being ‘living’ involves as a minimum ‘functioning as a person’, and I offer a ‘process’ model of this definition. This, I suggest, includes three main types of activity. Firstly, there is the acquisition of experiences from outside oneself – that is, some sort of perception. Secondly, an essential aspect of a person is the ability to integrate those new experiences with existing experiences – this may involve conscious processes such as remembering, reasoning, empathising; unconscious processes affecting emotions, drives, appetites; and possibly physical processes affecting one’s body, such as muscle development and skills acquisition. Thirdly, I suggest that it is an essential characteristic of a person that one can act, that is, affect things outside oneself.
If we examine this model of a person, as someone who perceives, integrates and then acts upon external stimuli, one consequence is that, in a world containing other people, those other people would be amongst the prime candidates for such interaction. Amongst the criteria one could use to identify other persons would be evidence of their ability to experience, their consciousness and their ability to act.
Requirement for a body
These suggestions as to what would count as ‘functioning as a person’ are consistent with (or may even entail) the requirement that a person needs a body to live. In our everyday experience (which underlies our normal concepts) perceiving the external world and having an effect on it need organs or limbs. Despite fragmentary evidence of telepathic communication and telekinesis, which we cannot yet correlate with brain activity, we have no real reason to believe that these phenomena occur without any use of brains or other organs, or that they are generally available to us all. In a different environment from this, we might need different organs and hence bodies: for example, in a purely auditory world, where we had no locomotion or sight, we might need only some form of ears to recognise vibrations in the ambient medium and an organ to generate them ourselves.
There is a strong argument, put by John Searle, Ted Honderich, Richard Swinburne and others, that conscious integrating activities such as remembering or reasoning need a brain to take place. The relationship between the mind (or self or soul) and the brain has been variously described. Hick[4] outlines a materialist thesis that we are our bodies – that is, mental processes such as such as thoughts or decisions are the same as brain processes such as the firing of neurones – and the ‘epiphenomenalist’ thesis that we are in a sense the products of our bodies – that consciousness is different from but generated by the physical activity of the brain with no independent existence or causality. He himself opts for a modified dualism – that the mind and the body are interdependent, each causally affecting the other, but with the possibility that the individual can exercise free will.
Searle[5] has argued that ‘all mental phenomena whether conscious or unconscious, visual or auditory, pains, tickles, itches, thoughts, indeed all of our mental life, are caused by processes going on in the brain’ and at the same time ‘mental phenomena just are features of the brain (and perhaps the rest of the central nervous system)’. Honderich[6] has developed at length a theory of ‘psycho-neural nomic correlation’ which postulates that ‘for each mental event of a given type there exists some simultaneous neural event [that is, one occurring in brain-cells] of one of a certain set of types’, and ‘the existence of the neural event necessitates the existence of the mental event.’ Swinburne[7] argues that the soul cannot function, that is have conscious episodes including sensations, thoughts or purposes, without a functioning brain to which it is connected. He leaves open the possibility that, after the death of the brain to which the soul was connected in life, the soul could be reactivated by being connected to another brain, provided that God (using means which human beings have not yet discovered) could retain the brain patterns of the person who died and then imprint them on the new brain.
If any of these arguments are valid, the loss of one’s brain at death could be an absolute obstacle to further life. If we assume that our resurrected bodies have brains just like our present ones, they will be very fragile flesh and blood organisms which grow, develop, mature and decay as time passes. If we assume they have differently structured mechanisms, designed to be incorruptible, in place of brains, there seems to be the likelihood that that will profoundly change the ways we perceive, think and act – our whole personalities. Secondly, we cannot conceive of any natural mechanism by which those personalities could be captured, stored and then imprinted on the new brains. We can only assume that Swinburne’s God is regularly intervening in his creation in ways quite beyond our scientific explanation, leaving us with no real understanding of what this set of assumptions amounts to.
Criteria of re-identification
I have already stated that it is a minimum requirement for bodily resurrection that we can identify the post-mortem or resurrected person with a person who died. Various criteria have been proposed by philosophers as involved in this re-identification:
- that there should be some form of spatio-temporal continuity between the two persons;
- that temporal continuity without spatial continuity is sufficient;
- that at any point in time there should be only one entity identical with the original;
- that the resurrected person should have a body made wholly or partly of identical matter to the pre-mortem body;
- that the resurrected person should look exactly like the pre-mortem person;
- that the resurrected person should have memories of experiences acquired by the pre-mortem person, and possibly the same character traits, attitudes, and so on, as that person.
I shall now examine each of these in turn.
(a) Spatio-temporal continuity
It has been argued persuasively (not least by Bernard Williams in a paper of 1956[8]) that the normal and fundamental criterion for reidentifying a person is spatio-temporal continuity of their body. That is to say, in this world at least, bodily identity is always a necessary condition of personal identity, and the criterion of bodily identity requires the ability in principle to observe the body at every moment of its history either located in a place or moving to a contiguous place in space. This criterion clearly does not apply to any of our models of life after death. Each assumes that when a person dies his body is destroyed and its components dispersed (whether by natural decomposition or, for example, by cremation), and that there is some gap (in time or space) before he begins to live again with the same or a different body. This makes it impossible to establish spatio-temporal continuity of the pre-mortem and the post-mortem bodies.
(b) Temporal continuity between unrelated spaces
In his model outlined above, Hick saw temporal continuity as important – the requirement that the ‘replica’ person comes into existence at the same moment as the original person dies. Hick chose to have no spatial relationship between his resurrection world and this one, possibly because he wanted to avoid evident conflicts with the laws of science which claim to apply throughout the physical universe, in explaining how the ‘replicas’ arise. His model has been challenged, however, on the grounds that a temporal relationship between the two worlds without any spatial relationship is equally at variance with our scientific concepts which postulate a single space-time continuum. This basis of continuity seems illusory.
Since I am ignoring in this paper the possibility that a person might exist (even temporarily) as a disembodied soul, we seem to be forced to accept Penelhum’s suggestion that, as no continuity through time can be discerned, our concept of a person must be extended to regard persons as gap-inclusive entities who disappear into nothing and reappear full-bodiedly at the resurrection.
(c) Identity as a one-to-one relationship
One of the objections to Hick’s ‘replica’ theory, which has been raised by several critics and to which he has attempted a defence, is that, if God could create one ‘replica’ of (say) John Hick deceased, he could equally well create multiple identical copies. In this model, it would not be logically possible to identify all the ‘replicas’ (nor any particular one, since they are identical) with the late John Hick. Hence, the objection runs, even if there were only one ‘replica’ of Hick in fact, the mere possibility that further ‘replicas’ could exist prevents us from safely identifying the one actual ‘replica’ with John Hick.
Hick concedes that, if his model were extended to permit multiple replication of this kind, he could no longer claim identity between a ‘replica’ and the person who died. In these circumstances, ‘our present concept of “person” would utterly break down under the strain’ and ‘we should simply not know what to say.’ This is similar in some ways to a situation discussed by Bernard Williams[9] (and, in more facetious tone, by Richard Taylor[10]) in relation to applying the spatio-temporal continuity criterion of identity to material objects: when a cell such as an amoeba divides, we cannot safely identify either of the resultant amoebae with the original, which we therefore have to speak of as ceasing to exist when the two new amoebae start to exist. Hick claims (rightly, I believe) that if the universe operated consistently and reliably as his model described, whereby one and only one ‘replica’ was created as each person died, we could extend our present concept of person to treat the ‘replica’ as the same person. (He does not, of course, claim that his model is a true picture of the universe we live in, or that it is supported by a shred of factual evidence.)
(d) Identity of matter
Aquinas and the mediaeval theologians proposed identity (which we could interpret as spatio-temporal continuity) of the individual particles making up the pre-mortem body and the resurrected body, with some rather tortuous explanations of the cases where the same particles are included in more than one body. In the context of modern science, we do not have a clear concept of the identity of individual atoms and molecules, and the fact that the basic particles of matter can readily be reconstituted into different organisms undermines their use as a criterion of identity.
(e) Resemblance
Both Penelhum’s and Hick’s models use as a supporting criterion of identity the physical resemblance of the resurrected body to that of the person before death. Even in this life, however, physical resemblance is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of reidentification. The changes in a person’s appearance from new-born infancy to old age are enormous. The fact that the changes are gradual, so that a healthy adult looks very similar from one week to the next, and the experienced eye can recognise distinctive facial features over a gap of many years (in the absence of plastic surgery), is a special case of spatio-temporal continuity of the body. It is a convenient aspect of the processes of growth in this life, but not a sure criterion for reidentifying a person in the afterlife.
(f) Identity of memories, attitudes, and so on
A major feature of all the models (and of other models of life after death which are outside the scope of this paper, such as disembodied survival and reincarnation) is that the resurrected person claims to remember his or her life before death. She or he recalls experiences and events from the point of view of the one experiencing them at first hand and participating in them directly. Such recollections will include some that no one else could be aware of. If this feature of the models were to obtain, it might seem to provide strong evidence that the person remembering was the same as the person who first had the experiences. Penelhum concludes however that, though this may be a reasonable description of the situation, it is by no means entailed by our current use of the term ‘person’. It would be equally reasonable to say that each of the resurrectees is a new person, resembling someone dead both physically and in character, attitudes, mannerisms, and so on, and with unique retrocognitive access to the past of that person. This is a linguistic decision we might collectively decide to make when faced with the situation, involving a degree of arbitrariness.
I believe that the ‘process’ model of a person which I offered above gives us stronger grounds for adopting this criterion of identification. I have suggested that a defining feature of a person is the ability to integrate consciously and unconsciously different experiences and to reflect that integration in their subsequent actions. In other words, the particular life history of a person, acquired through his perceptions, forms his beliefs, outlook and attitudes as well as his conscious memories, in a way that is unique to that person. This personality is then expressed in his interactions with the outside world – his words, his behaviour and his impact on others. If this whole package of beliefs, attitudes and memories, formed by experiences acquired before death, were retained intact in the resurrected person, and if then new experiences after resurrection were integrated with this existing life history to exhibit further personal development, expressed in action, then this would seem to me to provide a sufficient criterion of identity of the resurrected person with the one who died. In such circumstances, despite the time-gap and any differences in appearance between the body before death and the resurrected body, the continuity of personality would be sufficient evidence of personal identity.
If parts of this package of personality were missing at resurrection, to that extent the reidentification would be on shakier ground. It may not be possible to specify the minimum requirements for continuity of the personality which would justify reidentification, in the absence of spatio-temporal continuity of the body. No doubt we might accept some changes in attitude or some memory lapses on resurrection while still recognising the resurrected person as an individual who had lived and died. But if the behaviour of the resurrected person was totally unlike that of the person he claimed to have been, and apparently grounded on experiences that person had never had before death, we would feel unable to recognise him as the same as the one who died, and would have to reject his claim to identity as insufficiently evidenced.
Some practical issues
Boundaries: Who and what can have eternal life?
To give content to our understanding of eternal life, we need to have a picture of a possible after-life which is internally coherent. The naive view of heaven populates it with not only our nearest and dearest, but also our great-aunt Aggie looking just as we remember her in old age, raffish young Fred not known for his sanctity who was killed in a car crash, baby Daisy who was still-born, and our beloved dog Fido. As Paul and Linda Badham point out[11], some Christian writers have claimed that God treasures and will preserve practically everything for ever: Karl Rahner speaks of ‘the history of the world as a whole’ entering eternal life; John Macquarrie explicitly mentions ‘long extinct animals’, and Berdyaev insists ‘every blade of grass’ is to be included. Paul Badham adds: ‘At this point I feel the argument collapses under the weight of its own rhetoric. It is so all-embracing as to be without any real meaning.’
Even if one confines oneself to human beings, questions arise about the boundaries of ‘person’. There are strong advocates of the view that human beings with the capacity for eternal life come into existence at the moment of conception, or in the next three or four days when the individual’s unique DNA code is formed. Yet 70% of zygotes develop no further than this initial stage and are expelled from the mother’s body as foetal wastage in what she may experience as a late menstrual period[12]. Modern contraceptive devices preventing implantation of fertilised ova greatly increase this percentage. It seems unintelligible to suppose that 70 to 90 per cent of the future population of ‘heaven’ should be unformed zygotes, or alternatively that these zygotes should be resurrected as mature adults with a life history formed of experiences they never acquired here before their death. Similar, if not so pressing, problems arise in relation to the tens of millions of aborted or unborn foetuses each year and even, arguably, infants who have not developed faculties of self-awareness, conscious thought and purposive action before dying. We may feel that a few babies in heaven would be a pleasant addition: but there could be rather a lot of them – there are still a number of third world countries in which 50 per cent of children die before they are five years old.
Similar boundary issues arise around the definition of human beings. Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens are merely convenient labels for stages on the evolutionary continuum: the decision that a particular primitive man qualifies for eternal life while his mother is excluded as an ape will always seem arbitrary. Wherever one draws the boundary, there are claimants outside it (possibly higher sentient animals, extra-terrestrials?) for whom a case can be made that they are only marginally different from those inside it. Yet our models of eternal life seem to be all or nothing: either one is resurrected or one is not.
Continuity in practice: In what condition does one rise again?
A not unrelated issue is: at what stage in his previous life is a person resurrected? Mediaeval theologians thought 32 years and 3 months was a good age (the assumed age of Christ at his death), whether one had died at one year old or at 90. If everyone starts the after-life with the memories, life experience and attitudes they had on (say) their thirtieth birthday, not only is there the disadvantage for the ninety-year-old of losing sixty years of possibly very valuable life history, there is the major problem of supplying the infant with experiences it never had. Indeed, it may be felt that that solution is unintelligible: the only way for a person to acquire a life history is to live it.
The obvious alternative, very explicitly proposed by Hick in his replica theory, is to commence the after-life as one was at death. This may be satisfactory for adults who die in their beds with all their faculties intact. It means that the experience of heaven for infants, foetuses or embryos will be very limited, unless they can develop their potential in the after-life – but this begins to make the after-life duplicate our present life. It leads to problems for those who were not at their best at the moment of death. More serious than the inconvenience of the car crash victim, resurrected with a horribly mangled body, is the situation of the person suffering mental degeneration or personality disorder at the end of life.
Paul Edwards[13] describes the last years of an elderly acquaintance, who developed Alzheimer’s disease. As her illness progressed, not only could she no longer recognise her daughter, but she became increasingly violent towards the nurses and other residents of the nursing home. Edwards cites evidence from autopsies that Alzheimer’s disease produces a dramatic loss of neurones from the nucleus basalis and the growth of abnormal neurites in the brain. He concludes that the irreversible brain damage, personality changes, loss of memory, inability to read, write or speak coherently, and indifference to one’s environment, all of which characterise sufferers from this disease, reflect permanent damage to the mind rather than just temporary difficulties in communicating with the outside world. Clearly, it would be better for such a person to commence the after-life as they were before the onset of the disease. In other cases of people with mental diseases contracted at a much earlier stage in life, or those born with severe mental handicaps, it is even harder to decide at which point in their previous lives or in what condition they should be resurrected. Such decisions, whether made by the individuals concerned or by God in his infinite wisdom, seem to introduce a note of arbitrariness into the notion of resurrection.
Eternity: Does time go on for ever?
It was inherent in our minimum concept of a person that eternal life would include new experiences and interactions with the environment (including other people): this implies change, in ourselves and in the outside world. Change seems to imply some sort of temporal movement and direction – time passing. Can time keep on passing, for ever? It may be, that with a finite number of other people and indeed objects in the outside world, an infinite series of different interactions is impossible: in due course, cycles of activity must begin to repeat themselves. At the very least, like the main character in Karel Capek’s play The Makropulos Case[14] or the Cumaean Sibyl in Petronius’ Satyricon[15], we would begin to find eternal life insupportably tedious.
Summary
I believe it is possible to give a minimal definition of living as a person which would enable us to identify a person in the after-life with one who had died. As a description of what an after-life would be like in practice, none of the models proposed so far and examined here is adequate. We cannot conceive of a body so different from our own as to be incorruptible, and yet sufficiently similar to sustain recognisable life.
There are immense practical difficulties in defining the boundary of those qualified to be resurrected and the relationship between their condition at death and their condition at resurrection, in a rational non-arbitrary way. Even if we could envisage the after-life starting, there are further problems in seeing how it could continue for ever.
Conclusion
There are many gaps in our understanding of what a coherent model of the after-life could be, and filling them requires arbitrary choices (whether by God or by us), which cast doubt on its validity. Given the dangers of using well-defined terms such as ‘living’ and ‘person’ in contexts for which they have no current application, I believe we have not developed an intelligible concept of resurrection of the body, and therefore we can say nothing very useful about it.
Notes
[1]Summa contra Gentiles, chh.82-97.
[2]Survival and Disembodied Existence, ch.9.
[3]Death and Eternal Life, ch 15, reprinted in Peterson et al (edd) Philosophy of Religion – Selected Readings, pp.452-463.
[4] Death and Eternal Life, ch 6
[5] Minds, Brains and Science – the 1984 Reith Lectures, pp.18-19
[6] Mind and Brain – a Theory of Determinism Vol. 1, p.107
[7] ‘The Soul Needs a Brain to Continue to Function’ in Peterson et al (edd) Philosophy of Religion Selected Readings, pp.432-442
[8]‘Personal Identity and Individuation’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LVII (1956-7) reprinted in Problems of the Self.
[9] ‘Personal Identity and Bodily Continuity – a Reply’ in Analysis XXI (1960) reprinted in Problems of the Self, p.24
[10] ‘De Anima’ in Donnelly, J., Language, Metaphysics and Death, 2nd edn, pp.131-136
[11] Immortality or Extinction?, p. 34.
[12]The Lancet 26 January 1980, quoted by P.B.M. and L.F.Badham, Immortality or Extinction?, p.42.
[13]P. Edwards, Reincarnation: A Critical Examination, Amherst NY, Prometheus Books, 1996.
[14] cf B Williams: Problems of the Self, Cambridge, CUP 1973, pp 82-100.
[15]cf the introductory quotation to T S Eliot’s The Waste Land
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Goodness Gracious 