This week Jamie and Joe continue talking about life after death, focusing on the time after death, but before Jesus returns: the intermediate state.
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody, this is Jamie Dew.
Joe Fontenot: And this is Joe Fontenot.
Jamie Dew: Welcome back once again to our podcast, The Towel & Basin.
Joe Fontenot: That's right. And so last week we started this conversation about life after death. And specifically we've been looking at it, Jamie from your research and not just from a biblical point of view, but what does everything say about this? And you introduced two forms of this text, life after death, the intermediate state, then the bodily resurrection. So I have a question about the intermediate state. All right. There doesn't seem, at least to my knowledge, to be a ton of this in scripture references. How clear is this from a scriptural point of view?
Jamie Dew: Ah, yeah. So a good question. I do think that this is an idea that sort of progressing along if you will, in the scriptures, when you go from Old to New Testament, and then even in the New Testament, it's sort of an idea that accumulates and develops. There seem to be a good bit of debate even amongst the Jews throughout the Old Testament era and the intermediate period between, no pun intended on that. In between the Old and New Testament, where this was a debate amongst the Jews. And so by the time you get to Jesus, you have the Pharisees on the one side that are affirming the resurrection, and I know you didn't ask about that, and the Sadducees that denied. Jesus, of course, for all the places that he rejects the teachings of the Pharisees, he actually sides with the Pharisees on this, by affirming in John 11, the resurrection of the dead.
And so clearly you have this, by the time you get to Jesus, pretty firmly established camps on life after death and Jesus taking the side of one. And he does it with, in that case, specifically with reference to bodily resurrection. So that's not all that we say though, as we mentioned the last podcast, you have clearly this idea of a resurrection affirmed by Christianity, but you also do have this idea of an intermediate state. And to your question, indeed yeah, this is perhaps a little less obvious, but I would suggest that nevertheless, it's clear enough in the scriptures that most Christians throughout history have indeed affirmed the intermediate state. Now let me just be clear, this is not the only view. I mean, there are some people that don't think that there's an intermediate state. They think that we die and we wake up in an immediate resurrection. So we go simply straight from the life in this body now and wake up in the resurrection body in the eschaton.
And then there's other views that say is not quite the same thing, that some people might associate it with this. Some people affirm something called Soul Sleep that maybe the soul is just sleeping in some ways. And so it's not conscious or anything. And so it too, in our experience would wake up in the resurrection. Personally, I don't think that that's what the Bible's teaching on either one of those views. I think that the Bible and most of Christian history has indeed held up this idea that when we die, our bodies go back to the ground and our soul or spirit goes back into the presence of God. And it waits they're disembodied.
And we see this actually going all the way back into the Old Testament, with the book of Ecclesiastes. And Ecclesiastes 12, verse six and seven. This I idea, I think is taught, the Bible says they're about death, that the dust, it calls the body dust. The dust goes back to the ground where it comes from, and that the spirit goes back to God where it came from. And that's an illusion back to the creation of Genesis chapter two of Adam. And essentially saying in death, body goes back down there, spirit goes up.
I think you see this in Philippians 1 where Paul is debating whether or not it's better to be here with them in the body so that he can bear fruit for them in their ministry and then can grow closer to God, or if it's better to go, depart from the body and be in the presence of Christ and he's debating, which of those is better for him. And he basically, this is where he comes to the conclusion that we love to quote, "For me to live as Christ and to die is gain." He's basically saying it's a win-win either way, "I'm good, either way."
But that whole passage seems to assume here that there's a disembodied state. Jesus seems to talk this way on the cross with the thief, in support of the intermediate state, people often will point to this passage where the thief says, "Remember me, when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus says, "Today, you will be with me in paradise." And that clearly can't be their bodies, because their bodies are in the ground. You have Paul in second Corinthians five, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." And so we get these idea... And then in the book of revelation, there's this idea of the souls of the martyrs waiting for Christ and the resurrection.
So all that to say, I do think that the Bible teaches this idea of a disembodied existence that our souls will have after death, where our souls detach from our bodies and go to be in the presence of Christ. And they're in the presence of Christ, bask in his glory and await the bodily resurrection of the dead. And so I would simply say that essentially on this idea of the intermediate state, I think there's two big things that we've got to avoid and mistakes to avoid. Number one, I don't think you can just dismiss this idea, which is frankly, what a lot of Christians do. A lot of Christian materialists will do this. They will say, "Oh..." And this is in keeping with their view that we are just material objects. And if that's true, then disembodied existence, that's completely in conflict with their view. So they will dismiss it and say that this is not what the New Testament is teaching. Well, I would grant to them and I'll make this point just a second. I would grant to them that this isn't the focal point of the New Testament, but there's enough reference in the New Testament that you just can't dismiss this so easily. So to my materialist friends that want to dismiss the intermediate state, I simply say, "Nice try. I'm not buying it."
On the flip side, I think what happens far more often, and this is where those criticisms of the intermediate state maybe are valuable for us. What happens far more often for the person in the pew and even for the preacher. And for most of us within our circles is we have made what happens next for granny, this disembodied existence, we have made it the sum in-all be-all of our hope. So, in other words, grannies, they're now fully basking, it's done, it's yay, she's fully completely in heaven. And I don't know that that's quite right either. Certainly, when our souls detach and go bask in the presence of Christ, that's glorious and that's wonderful, but even then, there's still more to come. And that is the resurrection of the dead. And that is what the New Testament seems to be pointing to. Is that the ultimate hope of the Christian is that our bodies will be raised and will live again in the eschaton.
Joe Fontenot: Is it really important that we have a position on this? And in my question is, it seems that yes, the passages that you put forward seems to be, that's what they're saying, right? That sounds right. But I think other people are going to say, "Well maybe I like the idea of granny basking..." Like you said, what's the problem with us dismissing it, or these kinds of things? And in other words, what's the implication of this?
Jamie Dew: Well, I think so just number one, if I'm right, that there's enough, I would grant to someone wanting to emphasize the resurrection of the dead as being the hope of the Christian tradition. I would grant to such a person that indeed the resurrection of the dead is the hope that Christianity seems to be pointing to and enticing us with. I would grant that to him, but I would also say simply, "Look, but if I'm right, there's enough said about this intermediate state from the Bible, that if you deny it, then you have denied a fairly clear teaching of Christianity." And so, as a matter of doctrinal fidelity, as a matter of our belief in biblical, and errancy, if it is taught then as a Christian, we have to affirm it. And I'm of the persuasion that indeed it is taught, granted. Maybe it's not the key emphasis, but it is taught.
And so I think the Christian doesn't really have a choice here. We've got to go... People hear me say this a lot. We've got to go where the Bible tells us to go. We've got to say what the Bible tells us to say, we've got to affirm it. And so I think just as a matter of doctrinal fidelity, we have to say something about this and account for such passages. Now, again, some views that denied this, like an immediate resurrection view. They have ways of explaining all those passages that are consistent with their view. I don't particularly think that those explanations... Or I'm not persuaded by them, but certainly one could try to do that. I just think you have to account for these passages and these types of teachings if you're going to have a Christian view.
Joe Fontenot: That makes sense. So let me ask you this question. What are the arguments, not necessarily biblical, but just sort of a holistic kind of thing? Do we see evidence of this in any other part of life? I'm not discounting the biblical, but I'm just saying, do we see this reflected anywhere else?
Jamie Dew: So in other words, apologetically speaking men, how [crosstalk 00:10:19] in this idea? Yeah. Actually, this was one of the major questions that's driven my entire academic career. I can remember the weeks before I took the entrance exam for the PhD program at Southeastern first time around doing PhD, this was a question. I was teaching an apologetics class at our church, and I had done my research on all these different questions and arguments for God's existence and proof of the Bible. And the last night of class had this really sharp high school student that went on to study apologetics and things like that in college and stuff. This is like 15 years ago. And I remember him asking me the question, what proof is there of the soul? And I thought, "Oh, that's a good question." We all just assumed it. And at the time I really had no idea how to answer that question apologetically. Because he was asking the question you're asking, aside from the Bible teaching this, what arguments are there for the soul?
And I thought about that a lot over the years, the second time around doing doctoral work, this was the question that drove me. I was obsessed with this question of defending the existence of the soul. Essentially, if we were trying to do that, if we were going to try to defend this notion of an immaterial soul that could detach from a body and live in the intermediate state, by the way we call that technically in totemistic literature subsistence, that the soul is subsistent. That's what that means. So if we were going to defend that, I think I would offer three lines of argumentation.
And the first one is an argument that very unashamedly depends on the truth of Christianity. So I'd say it this way, that there's a very real sense in which our belief in the soul is a system dependent view. Meaning we hold this view of an immaterial soul precisely because we believe Christianity is true and we believe Christianity teaches it. So we can say it this way, we believe that Christianity is true. Therefore, anything it teaches is also true. Second, Christianity teaches that we have an immaterial soul. So therefore or thirdly, we have souls that can detach and live. And so I would say given the fact that I think Christianity broadly construed is actually true. Then I think that that would necessitate us saying some of the things that we do. So I could make an argument for the existence of a soul, it can detach based off of the larger truth claim of Christianity.
And frankly, while I'm very interested in these other two kinds of ideas, I'll talk about in just a minute, I'm very interested in them intellectually and philosophically as a Christian, I start here very unashamedly. So look men, when I'm talking with my friends in the larger philosophical world that are not Christians, I don't make any bones about the fact that, "Yeah, I believe this because I'm a Christian and Christianity teaches this. I think Christianity is true. So there we go. Let's just start right there." And I think that that's a legitimate way for Christians to start. I know as apologists, we're always looking for that non-Christian way of getting at something, but hey, we are Christians first. And so I start there.
Joe Fontenot: Sure [crosstalk 00:00:13:39].
Jamie Dew: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.
Joe Fontenot: Well, I was just going to ask, this sounds a lot to me is sort of like an argument from the greater to the lesser, right? If I believe in all of this stuff over here, the greater, which, all the things that encompass Christianity, and if I'm firm on that, then this "lesser" should follow. Is that accurate?
Jamie Dew: Kind of. So actually in the logic, this is going to be where we essentially argue, it's called a modus ponens argument. Where we argue from one idea to another that if this is true, if P then Q, P therefore Q, it's that kind of move that we're making there. So there's a sense in which it's kind of like an argument from lesser to greater or greater to lesser. We do believe Christianity is true and Christianity entails this, ah, therefore we wouldn't affirm that. So I get what you're saying and that's not necessarily wrong, but there's a technical way we sort of described that.
Joe Fontenot: Gotcha.
Jamie Dew: So I think that one, we could make this argument system dependent and make no bones about that, and be straight up about that. And I think we've talked about this in some of the previous podcasts. I do think arguments from near-death experience are at least interesting. I am certainly not going to hitch my wagon apologetically or theologically to these outer body experience stories. I would simply say, however, and I've made this case in a different podcast. I would simply say that, man, if that stuff is real and some of these situations are happening, seem to be hard to dispute. But if that stuff's real, then the debate, this philosophical debate between materialists and dualists, materialists are again, people that think we are just material bodies and dualists are people that think that no, there's a body and a soul. I think that near-death experiences are happening. And if those things are real, then the debate is over. The materialists are wrong and the duelists are correct.
And there are indeed some people that make these kinds of arguments, J.P. Moreland has made these arguments. Gary Habermas has made these arguments and a variety of other philosophers and apologists have done that. I think they're very interesting and certainly consistent with this idea that there's an immaterial soul. I think the bigger arguments today, though, for an immaterial soul, which by the way, that's actually what you have to defend if you're going to defend the possibility of the soul existing, apart from a body, you got to defend the existence of such a soul that it really doesn't exist. But the arguments in defense of the salt today, philosophically are arguments from phenomenal consciousness. And phenomenal consciousness, probably actually this would be a very interesting set of podcasts for us to do, to talk about phenomenal consciousness and what we're talking about here. But when I talk about phenomenal consciousness, consciousness here is not like some Eastern yin and yang humming sitting Indian style type of thing.
What we're talking about by phenomenal is the experience of things. It's the experience that you have when you taste coffee, it's the experience you have when you give your spouse or your child, a hug, it's the, what it's likes, so to speak. And while that's probably harder to get into and make clear to the listener in this particular podcast today, I will simply say that the experiences of things, the taste of coffee, the taste of sugar, the feel of the wind blowing through your hair, those experiences are notoriously difficult for materialistic views to explain. And those kinds of experiences have caused a massive shift in recent philosophical history back towards the belief that no, there really is more to us than just our brain and our body, there's a soul.
And I would say it this way, whereas maybe 40 years ago, if you'd have walked around in the major marketplace of the philosophical world and said that you believed in an immaterial soul, you'd have been laughed at and mocked and scorned, but nowadays, you can hold your head high and strut around like a peacock saying that stuff, if you want to in the philosophical world and people, they may differ with you, but you're taking seriously today in a way that you would not have them before. And it's because of the phenomenal consciousness, it's the taste of these things, the feels of these things, and materialism has no way of accounting for that stuff [crosstalk 00:00:18:24].
Joe Fontenot: Okay. Okay. So is this the same idea is like, what is a thought, is this kind of getting into the same area or is that something different?
Jamie Dew: No, it's something different. When you talk about what is a thought, so there's, in the philosophy of mind, we talk a lot about the difference between what we would call mental states though, which would be similar to a thought, mental states and brain states. And again, this would be a great set of podcasts for us to talk about at some point, but so take, for example, the taste of coffee, all right. Literally, as we're doing this conversation today, every time you talk, I'm sipping coffee, like 30 seconds ago, I took a nice big sip. So when I take that sip of coffee, there's two corresponding events that seem to be happening.
One is a brain event and it's completely physical, right? So I put the coffee in my mouth and there are sensors and nerve endings on my tongue. Receptors, so to speak, that pick up on the heat, the temperature, but they also pick up on the chemical structures in the coffee and respond to it with an electrical chemical response. It starts on the tongue, it fires throughout the nerve endings on my tongue, which travel through neuropathways from my tongue all the way back into my brain. And in my brain, there is a particular part of my brain that lights up like a Christmas tree when I put the coffee on my tongue and it's electrical, it's chemical, it happens almost instantaneous, and it's completely physical. Everything about that event, the brain event is a physical event. If you're watching it in an MRI machine, you'd be able to watch it and see that exact spot of the brain where that electrochemical storm takes place. Well, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, the brain just lights up like that in a moment, that's in the taste of coffee, that's a brain event.
Now here's the thing, that brain event, which is completely physical, is very, very different from another event that's happening simultaneously concurrently with it and seems to be conjoined with it. And that is the actual taste of coffee that you have. And that taste of coffee, that's not a physical event, right? The brain event is one thing, the mental event is a completely different thing. And where materialism just seems to fall flat on its face is in trying to explain the mental event, which is where I'm talking about the, what it's likes for you. The taste itself of coffee, you can watch in the MRI machine. And while you may be able to track the brain event with great precision, you would never actually discover the mental event of taste of coffee.
And materialism just goes, "Ah, don't know what to do with that." And what I'm saying in this part of the podcast today is, that kind of stuff, philosophically speaking, it's the experiences of things that are causing philosophers to come back and with deep consideration and taking seriously, the idea that maybe there really is more to us than just our brains, because we're not able to account for, not just something that's like something we have like experience, something that's fundamental to us, and that is experience.
One of the most fundamental things about our existence is that we experience things that materialism can account for. So then maybe there really is more to us than just our physical body. And if that's the case, so you put it all together, look, this idea that there is a soul that's independent of the body, such that it could detach and go off to be in the presence of Christ. I think it's a system dependent belief. This is clearly what Christianity teaches and Christianity I take to be true. Not everybody does. I understand that's an apologetic issue to be discussed with the non-believer, but we could argue it from the system itself. We could argue it if we needed to, from the possibility of out-of-body experiences or near death experiences. And I certainly think you can argue it from conscious experiences that we have.
Joe Fontenot: This is very interesting. All of this is very interesting to me because what I hear is it's like everything's coming together, right? And I guess the word, I mean is it's very satisfying because you can start with a belief, your belief in God and trust the Bible fully and all these things, but to see the world around it begin to conform, it's a very exciting thing to me.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. On any number of issues, I'm often reminded of that point you just made, that at the end of the day, reality itself is on our side. And that makes sense to us because the very God who's revealed these things to us in the word, the scriptures is this very same God that actually spoke and brought the furniture of reality into existence. He hardwired this whole thing together. So it should be the case. We should expect that what we see in the word and what we find in the world will eventually line up. Which is to some of our earlier podcasts we've done on natural theology, which is part of the reason that I do think that there is the possibility for the Christian here to take insights from the world around us. The world around us can give us insights into some of these things because it's God's world. And it has as its author, the same being that authors or gives us the scriptures.
So, anyway, on any issue, whether it's an ethical issue of transgenderism or abortion or anything, at the end of the day, people may kick against it. And people may make decisions within it to try to fight against it or go against the grain. But at the end of the day, this world is made by our God. And it's going to turn out to be [inaudible 00:24:35] precisely the way the scriptures say it is.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah. That's a very encouraging viewpoint. I love what you said, at the end of the day, reality is on our side. I think that's a great thing. Well, this has been super helpful. Thanks for walking through this. And I'm looking forward to getting back with you and talking about this third part [crosstalk 00:24:51].
Jamie Dew: This is fun stuff.
Joe Fontenot: All right. Thanks Jamie.
Jamie Dew: See you. Bye.
Hey everybody. This is Jamie and Joe again. If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts? That helps other people find it. And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way. And we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.