This runs the risk of going a little astray, but the question of the
resurrection of the body was a very hot one in nineteenth-century American
Protestantism. Catholics and Protestants alike shared a mythos of
life-after-death: after death, the soul leaves the body, goes to judgment,
and then to its heavenly or infernal fate (or purgatorial, if you're
Catholic). Then, on the Last Day, All bodies would be joined with their
souls (hence the Catholic prohibition of cremation) and all of humanity
would be judged (why the second judgment is never clear, and different
authors struggled with these problems in different ways). That would be
the eschaton, the end of history. In the nineteenth century, however,
various apocalypticisms shattered this more-or-less consensus. Pre- and
post-millennialism are a knotted subject, though if anyone wants I can
provide some basic bibliography. But out of that comes a return, among
some groups, to a simple Pauline notion of the resurrection of the dead:
that after death, we sleep, body and soul, in the grave, until the seventh
trumpet is sounded (or one of a number of possible other "untils" . . .).
At this point, the dead are raised (body and soul), and judged, at which
point each soul proceeds to its eternal destination. This position -- the
sleep of the dead followed by judgment -- is called conditionalism. It has
a variant, in which only the just are raised from the dead and granted
eternal life. The reprobate are simply dead for all eternity, not
published.
These positions are held most prominently by the descendants of the
"Millerites"--Seventh-Day Adventists, Advent Christians, Church of God
(Abrahamic Faith), as well as others. One source (a "primary source," as
it were) is Anthony Buzzard, "Our Fathers who Aren't in Heaven," published
by Atlanta Bible College.
Other bibliography on conditionalism on request.
Patrick Nugent
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Patrick J. Nugent
Earlham College
Richmond, Indiana 47374 USA
(765) 983-1413
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