Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

• Many theists are committed to the view that a vast number of macroscopic material objects which have completely decomposed will one day populate the world again. Some are committed to this view in virtue of holding that human persons are identical to such objects, and yet those persons will one day be resurrected. But even some theists who deny that human persons are identical to material objects think that, when human persons are resurrected, their original bodies are also raised. For simplicity, I will assume the materialist view.
• The commitment generates a dilemma. Either human persons do not really go out of existence, or they can be brought back into existence after they have completely decomposed₁. Since both of these claims are prima facie false, the theist has some explaining to do.
• This puzzle has resulted in a range of creative and often exotic materialist- friendly models of resurrection₂. But the oldest of these is the naïve reassembly model, which embraces the second horn of the dilemma, claiming that persons who ceased to exist long ago can be brought back into being by reassembling them from the particles that composed them when they perished. The story goes something like this: St Paul dies and is buried. His corpse decays. The particles that once composed him are gradually scattered across the face of the earth, perhaps even being incorporated into other organisms. Then Resurrection Day₃ arrives, and a booming voice from heaven commands ‘Paul! Arise!’ From around the world, those scattered particles obediently converge on a Paul-shaped region and reassemble into a Paul- shaped object. But it is not just a Paul-shaped object. This newly assembled object is in fact St Paul himself: the very man who traveled around the first century Mediterranean and penned several of the New Testament epistles.
• This naïve reassembly model of resurrection has fallen into disfavor. Davis and Yang (2017) observe that, while materialist accounts of resurrection are diverse, ‘What is common among contemporary philosophers of religion is the outright dismissal of the possibility of resurrection by reassembly…’ (213). This ‘outright dismissal’ is due in large part to the following three problems.
  1. Suppose that God not only reassembles the particles that composed Paul when he died, but also a different collection of particles that composed him when he was 10 years old. Now we have two newly-assembled Pauline objects composed of exactly the particles that once composed St Paul. And it seems that, if the reassembly model of resurrection is true, then both of these Pauline objects will be St Paul. But nothing can be identical to two distinct objects. Let’s call this the double resurrection problem₄.
  2. Suppose St Paul’s body was eaten by a cannibal, who then died while the particles that composed St Paul at the moment of Paul’s death were parts of the cannibal’s body. Then, on Resurrection Day, where will the shared particles go? To the body of the resurrected Paul, or to the body of the resurrected cannibal? Let’s call this the cannibal problem.
  3. Finally, there is a serious question about whether a Pauline object assembled from the particles that once composed St Paul would be St Paul himself, or whether he would instead be a mere intrinsic duplicate of the original. Unfortunately for reassembly theorists, Peter van Inwagen (1978) has argued persuasively that he would be a mere duplicate₅. While it’s plausible that some objects, like watches, can survive certain kinds of disassembly and reassembly, it is not plausible that a person can survive reassembly following total decomposition. If van Inwagen and other authors who have defended this point are right, then reassembly does not solve the fundamental problem about resurrection: the problem of how people who have apparently ceased to exist manage to show up again on Resurrection Day, thus apparently surviving a long gap in their existence. Let’s call this the gap problem.
• I believe that these problems for resurrection by reassembly are not nearly so intractable as has often been supposed. In the section titled ‘‘The double resurrection problem’’ I argue that viable solutions to the double resurrection problem have, in effect, already been developed by advocates of fission models of resurrection. Then, in the section titled ‘‘The cannibal problem’’, I defend a novel solution to the cannibal problem. Finally, in the section titled ‘‘The gap problem’’, I argue that the gap problem can be avoided by upgrading the naïve reassembly model to a novel variation on the theme of resurrection by reassembly.

• I have considered the three most influential objections to the idea of resurrection by reassembly:
  → The duplicate resurrection problem,
  → The cannibal problem, and
  → The gap problem.
• I’ve argued that reasonable solutions to the duplicate resurrection problem already appear in the literature, though they have usually been used in the service of fission models.
• Then I presented a novel solution to the cannibal problem that appeals to multilocation.
• Finally, I argued that reassembly theorists can solve the gap problem by upgrading from the naïve reassembly model to a reassembly model featuring a backtracking decree.
• I conclude that these standard objections to the possibility of resurrection by reassembly are not nearly so powerful as has often been supposed.

• Olson (2015) dubs these alternatives preservation and radical resurrection, respectively.

• These include reassembly models (e.g. Hershenov 2002; Davis 2010; Davis and Yang 2017) a body- snatching model (van Inwagen 1978) an anti-criterialist model (Merricks 2001, 2009), constitution models (Baker 2005, 2007; Corcoran 1998) fission models (Corcoran 1998, 2001; Dougherty 2014; Hudson 2001; O’Connor and Jacobs 2010; Zimmerman 1999, 2010), multi- and scattered location models (Hudson 2010), a hyper-time model (Hudson 2017), and Thomistic models (e.g. Stump 2003, ch. 6).

• I borrow this term from Hudson (2001).

• Thanks to Mark Murphy for pressing me to consider this objection.

• See also Olson (2010, 2015)

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