One of the most basic and important Christian theological beliefs is the doctrine of the resurrection. Christians believe that when Jesus comes again to fully inaugurate God’s Kingdom and to make all things new, every human being who has ever lived and died will be raised from the dead. Then, we will all experience God’s judgment. The wicked will experience eternal death, while the righteous will experience eternal life in immortal, resurrected bodies in God’s renewed creation.
This idea of a future bodily resurrection of the dead has received a number of criticisms from antiChristian skeptics.
Objection #1: Dead bodies decompose. The atoms that make up these bodies then get spread around, some of them eventually becoming part of other people’s bodies (this happens in a very direct manner in cases of cannibalism). So, it is impossible that the dead bodies of every single human being who has ever lived could be put back together again and made whole.
Response: The resurrection of a person’s body does not require that all the exact same atoms that made up their body at the time of their death get put back together again. The fact is, the matter that makes up our bodies is continuously in flux during the course of our lives. Our bodies are constantly taking in new atoms from breathing, eating, and drinking, while constantly expelling old atoms in a variety of ways. As a result, the vast majority of the atoms in our bodies are completely replaced with new atoms in just one year of living. Yet, our bodies remain the same bodies, even though the atoms making up our bodies get completely replaced numerous times. Thus, there is no problem with God resurrecting the bodies of all individuals who have ever lived, even if a significant portion of the matter making up some of those bodies was not part of those bodies prior to their deaths.
Objection #2: Our bodies change a great deal in form and size during the course of our earthly lives. What form will our resurrected bodies take? Will people who die of old age get resurrected as elderly people, or will the age of their bodies get reversed? If so, to what age? Will babies who die get resurrected as babies, or will they suddenly have adult bodies? If so, how could their bodies and minds instantly mature into those of an adult?
Response: We do not know for sure what age our bodies will be when we are resurrected, but Christians generally assume that our resurrected bodies will be those of adults in the prime of their life. There is no reason to doubt that God’s power to reverse death can also reverse the decay of aging and bring a body which died of old age back to youthfulness and vigor.
The question of how the resurrection of deceased infants will work out is a bit more tricky. Perhaps deceased infants will be resurrected as babies, and then gradually mature until they reach full adulthood, after which their bodies will stop aging. This is just speculation, of course. Perhaps God will handle the resurrection of deceased infants in some other manner. In any case, there is no good reason to think that God will not be able to somehow handle the resurrection of deceased infants.
Objection #3: Supposedly, the righteous will be resurrected with perfect, immortal bodies. But, since who we are is directly tied to our physical bodies and our brain chemistry, how can we be the same people if we are resurrected with perfect bodies? And, if we all become perfect, won’t that mean that everyone will be exactly the same?
Response: Our resurrected bodies will be perfect in certain ways, but not perfect in every conceivable way. They will be perfect in that they will be free of sin, suffering, decay, and aging. However, not everyone will be perfectly beautiful, perfectly intelligent, or perfectly skilled at every conceivable task. There will be variations in beauty, intelligence, skill, and other human qualities, and every individual will still be unique. So, we will still be the same people. In fact, when freed from evil and decay, we will all be more fully ourselves.
Objection #4: There is no way our bodies can completely cease to exist, and then be resurrected as the same bodies. If resurrected bodies are just replicas of us with the same memories, these would just be clones of us; they would not actually be us.
Response: If human beings were merely physical bodies, this objection would have some merit. But we are not merely physical bodies. We are made up of physical bodies and immaterial souls. After we die, our souls exist in a disembodied state until the resurrection. The soul is the “form” of the body, and our resurrected bodies will be able to reform in union with our souls, bringing us back to full, embodied life and existence. So, even though our original bodies may completely disintegrate, our souls will maintain the continuity of our personal identity from our original bodies to our resurrected bodies.