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LIFE AFTER DEATH ( Page 1 )
The Oxford Dictionary defines death as the ‘irreversible ending of life’. If death is the end of life and if that process is irreversible, the very phrase ‘life after death’ is wrong in itself. But then, we use this expression to denote the immortal life, the life of the soul for which the death of the mortal body is just a change of phase.
Resurrection of the Dead
During question time at the end of a talk on ‘science and faith’, I was asked; “What is your view on resurrection? I said; “I have no personal views on the subject except what Jesus and Paul teach us through the New Testament.”
Jesus said that after resurrection we would be like angels in heaven (Mt. 22:30). That means we wont have physical bodies of flesh and blood that could be ugly or pretty, deformed or normal – only spiritual bodies. The beauty of the risen, spiritual body shall depend on the degree of sanctity achieved and not on the appearance of the earthly body before death. Paul affirms this in similar words; “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15: 42). And again; “..flesh and blood cannot inherit heaven” (1 Cor. 15: 50).
A friend of mine once tried to justify the term ‘resurrection of the body’ on the basis of the ‘sanctity of the body’ and the ‘unity of the body and soul’, as taught by the church fathers. In this context let me compare the body to the monstrance and the soul to the sacred host in it. The monstrance is sacred due to the presence of the Holy Eucharist in it. Even after the host had been removed we treat the monstrance with reverence, as it was the throne of our King. In the same way, we consider the human body as something sacred even after the soul has departed in death of the body. Thus I accept the concept of the sanctity of the body but the concept of the unity of the body and soul is still not clear to me. Such unity would mean that as the body is decaying and disintegrating in the grave, the soul is also disintegrating, that the soul is also dead.