Theology 4 – Challenging Conditional Immortality

In our last episode we looked at what the scriptures teach about humanity, including creation, death, and resurrection.  I laid out a case for conditional immortality from several important texts.  This time, we will consider a number of challenges to this understanding including:

1. Philippians 1.23 “depart and be with Christ”
2. 1 Corinthians 5.8 “absent from the body…present with the Lord”
3. Luke 23.43 “Today you will be with me in paradise”
4. Revelation 6.9-10 “under the altar the souls…cried out”
5. Luke 16.19ff Rich man and Lazarus
6. 1 Samuel 28.7ff the witch of Endor

—— Notes ——

State the Doctrine Simply

The dead are asleep—unconscious—until the resurrection when they are brought back to life at the return of Christ.

Texts that Support This Teaching

Gen 2.7; 1 Kings 2.10; 11.43; 14.20; Job 3.11-14; Ecc 9.5-10; Ps 6.4-5; 13.3; 115.17; 146.3-4; Dan 12.2; Jn 11.11-14;5.28-29; 6.39-40, 44, 54; Acts 2.29, 34; 7.60; 1 Cor 15.6, 21-23, 51-55; 1 Thes 4.13-17

Logical Arguments

• comfort to know loved one is just resting in peace (RIP)
• would be weird if they watched everything you do
• don’t need to pray for them a million times hoping to change God’s mind
• immortality of the soul opens the door for spiritualism
  • Lev 20.6 people whoring after mediums and necromancers will be cut off
  • Lev 20.27 any medium/necromancer will be put to death
  • Deut 18.9-13 abominable practice, a reason why Canaanites were expelled
• derives from pagan sources
  • Plato, Egyptians, Norse, Hindu, etc.
• creepy to think deceased loved ones are watching everything we do
• has led to church abuse, i.e. sale of indulgences

Difficult Texts

Hand out article by Matt Perman at Desiring God:

The “intermediate state” is the time between the death and the resurrection. Some have held that during this time we are unconscious or possibly even go out of existence. We do not think that this is biblical.

The biblical evidence is that our soul continues on after death and that we remain conscious in the intermediate state while awaiting our final destiny of resurrected existence in the new heavens and new earth.

First, Paul spoke of having the desire “to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better” (Philippians 1:23). Notice first of all that Paul speaks of death as a departure (from the body) not into temporary nothingness or unconsciousness but to be with Christ. If we are with Christ once we have died, then we continue existing. Second, notice that Paul speaks of this state as “very much better” than the present state. It would be hard to say such a thing of a state of complete unconsciousness. Particularly when we consider that Paul’s passion was to know Christ, it would seem that the reason the state beyond death is better than this present life is because we are with Christ and know it. If we were suddenly unconscious at death until the resurrection, wouldn’t it be better to remain in this life because at least then we would have conscious fellowship with Christ?

Second, Paul also said that “while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord” and that therefore he would “prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord” (

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