ABSTRACT
The topic of the conference from which this volume arises was: “How do we survive our death? Personal identity and resurrection.” The phrasing of the topic in this way reflects what I understand to be a sharp divide between analytic philosophers and Christian theologians as to the hermeneutical context within which this topic should best be located. From one viewpoint the context of the topic is an analysis of the meaning of “personal identity” within the ordinary world of human experience. Here the topic leads to questions such as these: am “I” the same person today as I was yesterday, or waking after sleeping, or coming out of a coma after a profound illness, or even moment by moment? Indeed is there an “enduring self” or merely a fragmentary series of events each of which somehow remembers events in its past? Questions like these fall naturally within the context of analytic philosophy. From another viewpoint the context of the topic should be an analysis of the meaning of “resurrection” within the relation between ordinary human experience and eternal life in God’s New Creation. Here, along with the previous sorts of questions, additional, much wider issues relating generally to Christian eschatology must be attended to, such as the following one: what is the theological relation between the resurrection of Jesus some 2,000 years ago and the general resurrection in the eschatological future in which our own resurrection will take place (see, for example, 1Cor. 15)? In this case the context is Christian theology.
