Gary Pollard
(A Continuing Modernization Of This Work Of An Early Church Father)
Here are some questions that people who believe intelligent beings may someday exist without any kind of body at all could ask. If it’s true that “this corruptible will put on incorruption, and this mortal will put on immortality,”and if it’s true that death will finally be swallowed up — what is death destroying? Death can only affect material bodies. Even brilliant minds locked in a physical body seem to be negatively affected by their bodies.
However, if those brilliant minds were able to exist without any physical body, they would be immune to the negative interference of a body. This couldn’t happen all at once, though. We should think of this transition as being in stages — each one more bright and refined than the former. These bodies are no longer vulnerable to death or the sting of decay. So, through the gradual dissolution of the basic material form, death is finally absorbed and destroyed. Its power to sting is blunted by the transcendent grace that every purified, expanded consciousness is finally able to receive. This is how a soul attains incorruption and immortality. Then, in the words of the scriptures, all will be able to say, “Death, where is your victory? Where is your power to hurt? The sting of sin is death.”
If any of these conclusions are sound, then it only makes sense that our destiny at the end is to be “bodiless”. And if everything is put under Christ’s control, then everyone under his control would also be bodiless. Everyone subject to Christ is also subject to the Father — and Christ will hand the kingdom to him. When this final order comes, there won’t be any need for a body, and material substances will return to nonexistence, as they were before creation.
Now let’s see if we can refute this thinking. If material bodies were actually to be dissolved into nothing, wouldn’t they have to be restored and created again by a special act of God? Intelligent beings always have free will — so wouldn’t they decide to do stuff and make choices? Otherwise that constant state of non-change might cause them to forget that their stable condition is because of God’s grace and not their own actions. Whenever they start moving again, they will necessarily bring a whole new variety of bodies. We see this diversity on earth already. The earth can’t be all one thing! There’s always variety and differences, and these can’t exist without some kind of material form. Because of this, I can’t understand the reasoning of people who argue that the new worlds will be exact copies of the ones before them.1
If the next world was identical this one in every way, then Adam and Eve would have to make the choice as before; the flood would come again; the same Moses would lead the same 600,000 out of Egypt; Judas would betray Jesus again; Paul would again hold the coats of those who stoned Stephen; in general, every event that’s ever happened would happen again. There’s no rational defense for this line of reasoning — unless we claim that souls don’t have free will, which is what they use to grow or decline based on their own decisions.
We know that consciousnesses aren’t forced onto a circular path that returns them to the same beginning and the same decisions for infinity. Instead, their own choices determine the outcome of their actions. To argue otherwise is as crazy as claiming that if a medimnus (12 gallons) of grain was poured onto the ground again and again, each kernel would fall exactly where it had fallen before. Then the whole heap would be in the same arrangement and pattern as the first pour. This is impossible, of course, due to the sheer number of grains! Even if we poured over and over again for innumerable ages, we couldn’t get every single grain to fall in the same order as the first pour.
Therefore, it seems impossible to me that any world should be identical to a previous one, with the same order, the same number of births and deaths, or the same actions. But that there should be a series of worlds — each fairly different from the other — seems perfectly reasonable. Maybe some would be better, others worse, and still others a mixed bag or happy medium. As to how many of those worlds there are, or what they look like, I freely admit that I have no clue. But if anyone can show it, I would gladly learn.
1 Stoics argued that the world was cyclically destroyed by fire (εκπυρωσις) and reborn exactly like the previous world. Origen emphasizes free will (αυτεξουσια), proving that no two worlds can be identical if the intelligences in them have the power to choose.
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