Wyatt Graham

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anthropology

What Happens Immediately after We Die?

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Note: I offer these reflections as thoughts-in-process. They represent my thinking-in-process and may in fact miss the mark. I ask readers to read this article accordingly. 

While all of us hope in the resurrection and await in our heavenly inheritance, we have to admit a major gap in our knowledge. What happens immediately after we die? Heaven, as we understand it, lies deep in the future (Rev 21–22). The resurrection does too. So if our resurrection body and the new heavens and earth lie in the future, where do we go when we die and in what form will we exist? What assurance do we give those who die in the Lord now about their afterlife?  [Read more…] about What Happens Immediately after We Die?

The Coming Crises over Christology (Our Anthropology Contradicts Our Christology)

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I want to argue a simple point. Since we don’t have a theological anthropology, our current Christology has little theological foundation; and, therefore, Christology will be the next theological battle that we have (and it already is).

How do we prevent this?  [Read more…] about The Coming Crises over Christology (Our Anthropology Contradicts Our Christology)

Do We Have a Sinful Nature? Better to Say, We Have Passions And Desires of the Flesh.

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We sometimes speak about our sinful nature. Which of course we have. The law of sin uses our flesh to further its aims (Rom 7:25). Yet one possible liability with using the phrase “sinful nature” entails what Paul Dirks recently described as a competition of opposing natures. 

I would add that the phrase sinful nature implies that sin has a substantial nature. In other words, it would mean that sinful natures have a created existence because the only things that exist are those created by God. God did not create sin, and therefore it is impossible for sin to have substantial existence. Rather, sin only corrupts God’s good creation like rust on metal. It is not a thing but a corrosion of things. 

A better way to speak of the power of sin comes directly out of Paul. He speaks of the flesh* and its passions and desires. By using such language, we can speak accurately about sin and also discover concrete ways to defeat sin since we will know what it is. 

Speaking of a sinful nature as such can often obscure sin’s real power by making it sound like a dualistic force that we have to fight in a battle like in the ancient teaching of Manichaeism. 

That is not the case. And here is why.  [Read more…] about Do We Have a Sinful Nature? Better to Say, We Have Passions And Desires of the Flesh.

What Will Our Resurrection Body Be Like?

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After we die, our bodies will (likely) be buried and then slowly decay. After many years, no distinguishable feature of our corpse will be left in the ground. Then we will resurrect from the dead. How? Will the biological material, dispersed through the ground, adapted into the flora, and consumed by the fauna now be torn from these sources? 

And then what will our body be like? Will it be like we have now but with what we might call super powers? Will a disabled body from birth have an abled body that, in many ways, will look and act quite different in the resurrection (as in the case with cerebral palsy)? And if someone has a disability of cognition in this life but not in the next, then in what sense will this person’s consciousness remain between the first life and the next? 

We can ask a great deal many more questions. Suffice it to say, our resurrection bodies and the experience of our resurrection life lies under a cloud of mystery. Yet Scripture does provide certain key rails for our train of thought on the resurrection. They are: [Read more…] about What Will Our Resurrection Body Be Like?