Chapter 13

Absent from the Body, Present with the Lord—The Conscious Intermediate State

A. Introduction: The Heart of the Matter

We come now to what may be the most important chapter in this book.

I do not say that lightly. Every chapter matters. Every passage we have examined—from Genesis 2:7 to the spirit-departure narratives of the Old and New Testaments—has contributed a thread to the tapestry. But the passages we are about to explore are different. They do not merely hint at the soul’s existence. They do not merely describe the spirit’s departure at death in narrative form. These passages teach, directly and unmistakably, that human beings continue in conscious fellowship with Christ between death and resurrection. They tell us what happens after the spirit departs. They tell us where we go.

And that is exactly why the physicalist has so much trouble with them.

If you are a substance dualist, these passages make perfect sense. The soul is real. The soul survives the death of the body. The believer’s soul goes to be with Christ. The unbeliever’s soul enters a conscious state of waiting in Hades. The person is still there—stripped of the body, yes, but not stripped of consciousness, not stripped of identity, not stripped of the capacity for relationship with God.

But if you are a physicalist? If the soul is just another word for the “whole person” and cannot exist apart from the body? Then what happens at death? On the strict physicalist view, you simply cease to exist. You are gone. You will not be “present with the Lord” because there is no “you” left to be present. You will not be “absent from the body” in any meaningful sense because you are the body, and the body is in the ground.

Think about that for a moment.

Paul says he longs to “depart and be with Christ, which is far better” (Phil. 1:23). But if physicalism is true, departing means ceasing to exist. How is nonexistence “far better” than fruitful ministry? How is annihilation gain? The physicalist must perform exegetical gymnastics to avoid the plain force of these words. And the more you study these passages, the more strained those gymnastics become.

In this chapter we will walk through five of the most theologically concentrated passages on the intermediate state in all of Scripture. Each one, in its own way, teaches or assumes that the person—the conscious, experiencing self—continues to exist between death and resurrection. Together, they build a case that I believe no honest reader can ignore.

These are the five passages we will examine:

Luke 16:19–31 — The rich man and Lazarus
Luke 23:43 — “Today you will be with Me in Paradise”
Philippians 1:21–24 — “To depart and be with Christ”
2 Corinthians 5:1–8 — “Absent from the body, present with the Lord”
Hebrews 12:23 — “The spirits of just men made perfect”

Of these five, Fudge discussed two in The Fire That Consumes (Luke 16 and Philippians 1). He ignored the other three entirely—including what may be the single most important anthropological text in the Pauline corpus, 2 Corinthians 5:1–8. That silence speaks volumes.

Before we begin, a quick note about the NDE connection. In Chapter 30, we will explore how veridical near-death experiences provide corroborating evidence for the conscious intermediate state—evidence of consciousness persisting during clinical death, evidence of perception without a functioning brain. The conscious intermediate state taught in these passages is precisely the kind of phenomenon that NDE research has now begun to document empirically. Scripture taught it first. Science is catching up. But for now, our focus is on the text itself.

Let us begin where Jesus began—with a story about a rich man, a beggar, and what happens after death.

B. Passage Expositions

1. Luke 16:19–31 — The Rich Man and Lazarus

Text (NKJV):

“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’ Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”

Key Terms: The Greek word Hades (the realm of the dead) appears here rather than Gehenna (the place of final punishment). This distinction matters enormously. Hades in the New Testament, as Luke himself uses it, refers to an interim condition—a holding state for the dead before the final judgment. It is not hell. It is not the lake of fire. It is the place where the dead await their final destiny.¹ The term kolpos Abraam (“Abraham’s bosom”) draws on Jewish tradition in which Abraham and the other patriarchs welcome the righteous dead into comfort and fellowship.²

Exegetical Exposition:

Let me be honest right at the start: this passage is complicated, and I want to handle it fairly.

The first question everyone asks is whether this is a parable or a literal account. Fudge spends significant space on this question in The Fire That Consumes, and he is right that the passage functions as a parable within Luke’s narrative.³ Jesus had been teaching about covetousness and stewardship (Luke 16:1–13), and the Pharisees had sneered at His teaching. The story of the rich man and Lazarus is, at one level, a devastating rebuke of the Pharisees’ love of money and their failure to obey Moses and the prophets.⁴

Fudge is also right that the plot of the story was familiar in first-century Jewish culture. Hugo Gressmann identified at least seven versions of this kind of reversal-of-fortunes tale in Jewish literature, including a famous version involving a poor student of the Law and a rich publican named Bar Ma’jan.⁵ Jesus adapted a well-known folk tale to deliver His own message. The basic storyline was not new. What Jesus did with it was.

So far, so good. Fudge and I agree on much of the background. Where we part ways is on the question of what the passage tells us—or does not tell us—about the intermediate state.

Fudge argues that because the passage is a parable, and because its primary point is ethical (hear Moses and the prophets!), we should not draw any conclusions from it about the afterlife. He cites several scholars who urge caution in pressing the details of the narrative for doctrinal purposes.⁶ N. T. Wright takes a similar approach, arguing that the parable is not “a description of the afterlife” but a warning about the Pharisees’ failure to see that God’s kingdom was breaking in around them.⁷

Now, I want to be careful here, because some of these scholars make a valid point. You absolutely should not build an entire doctrine of the afterlife on the stage details of a single parable. Jesus is not giving us a floor plan of Hades. He is not teaching systematic eschatology. His primary purpose is ethical and urgent: listen to Moses and the prophets before it is too late.

But here is where Fudge’s treatment goes wrong. He uses the parabolic genre to dismiss the passage’s anthropological implications entirely. And that move is not justified.

Consider what Cooper observes: even if the parable’s primary purpose is ethical, it still draws on a set of eschatological assumptions that Jesus and His audience shared. Jesus did not invent the imagery of Abraham’s bosom, the great gulf, or the conscious dead. He borrowed this imagery from popular Jewish eschatology—specifically, from the well-documented tradition of a conscious intermediate state in which the righteous and the wicked exist in separate compartments of the underworld.⁸ The striking parallels between this parable and the depiction of the intermediate state in 1 Enoch 22 have been noted repeatedly by scholars, including the great chasm and the thirst of the damned.⁹

The key question is this: would Jesus base a parable on imagery that He knew to be false? Would He tell a story that assumes conscious existence after death if He actually believed that the dead cease to exist entirely?

Cooper handles this question with characteristic honesty. He admits that, taken by itself, the parable does not provide a firm foundation for a doctrine of the intermediate state. It is possible—theoretically—that Jesus was merely using popular images without endorsing them.¹⁰ The parable alone does not settle the question.

But Cooper immediately adds the crucial qualifier: if we find firm evidence elsewhere in Luke that the intermediate state is part of his Christian proclamation, then a text like Luke 16 “certainly corroborates those findings and thus adds to the weight of evidence.”¹¹

And that is exactly what we find. As we will see in just a moment, Luke 23:43 provides precisely that firm evidence. Jesus promises the dying thief fellowship in paradise “today.” That is not a parable. That is not folklore. That is a direct, personal promise from the lips of Jesus Christ. Once we see that Luke does in fact affirm the conscious intermediate state in 23:43, the eschatological imagery of 16:19–31 takes on new significance. Jesus was not using arbitrary stage props. He was drawing on beliefs that He Himself endorsed.

There is a further point that deserves attention. Several indicators within the parable itself point toward the intermediate state rather than the final state. The rich man’s brothers are still alive on earth, which means the final resurrection has not yet occurred.¹² Luke himself uses Hades elsewhere (Acts 2:27, 31) to describe an interim condition that does not permanently hold the dead—Christ Himself was not left in Hades. The rich man is in Hades, not Gehenna. All of these details, as I. Howard Marshall and A. J. Mattill have argued, point toward an intermediate state rather than the final destination of the damned.¹³

What This Means for the Body-Soul Question:

If the parable reflects genuine Jewish and Christian belief about the afterlife—and I believe it does, once we read it alongside Luke 23:43—then it assumes that the dead continue to exist consciously between death and resurrection. The rich man is aware of his surroundings. He speaks. He feels. He remembers his brothers. Lazarus is comforted. Both are persons in the fullest sense, even though their bodies are in the ground.

This is exactly what substance dualism predicts. It is exactly what physicalism cannot account for.

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge discussed this passage at length in The Fire That Consumes (pp. 148–155), but his focus was almost entirely on demonstrating that the parable does not teach eternal conscious torment—a point on which I largely agree with him. What Fudge did not adequately address is what the parable assumes about the intermediate state. He used the parabolic genre to dismiss the eschatological imagery without asking whether that imagery reflects genuine belief. His treatment is thorough on the question of final punishment but thin on the question of anthropology—and anthropology is precisely what is at stake.¹⁴

2. Luke 23:43 — “Today You Will Be with Me in Paradise”

Text (NKJV):

“And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.’”

Key Terms: The Greek word paradeisos (paradise) has deep roots in both Jewish and early Christian thought. In intertestamental Judaism, it denoted the Edenic dwelling place of God’s faithful saints—both the future kingdom and the intermediate resting place of the righteous dead. It is sometimes located in heaven, sometimes in the blessed portion of Hades. In the New Testament, Paul treats it as a present reality located in “the third heaven” (2 Cor. 12:2–4), and Revelation 2:7 connects it to the tree of life in the kingdom of God.¹⁵ The word sēmeron (“today”) is emphatic in the Greek text, placed at the beginning of Jesus’ reply for emphasis and contrast: not in the distant future, but today.¹⁶

Exegetical Exposition:

If the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is the most debated passage on the intermediate state, Jesus’ promise to the dying thief may be the clearest. And Fudge ignored it entirely.

The setting is Calvary. Two criminals hang beside Jesus. One mocks Him. The other recognizes something the Pharisees, the priests, and even the disciples have failed to grasp: this man is the King. “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom,” the thief says (Luke 23:42). His request is framed in terms of standard Jewish eschatology. When the Messiah comes, He will set up His kingdom. The dead will be raised. The blessed will dwell on the renewed earth. The thief is asking for a place in that future resurrection kingdom.¹⁷

Jesus’ answer exceeds the man’s request beyond anything he could have imagined. The thief asked for a future remembrance. Jesus gave him a present promise: “Today you will be with Me in paradise.”

Not “someday.” Not “at the resurrection.” Today.

Some scholars have attempted to soften this by arguing that “today” does not refer to the calendar day of the crucifixion but to the “eschatological age of salvation” or the “epoch of God’s saving work.” On this reading, Jesus is not promising fellowship in paradise later that day but simply assuring the thief of his future inclusion in the age to come.¹⁸

This reading is strained and unconvincing. As Marshall demonstrates, the grammar and semantics of sēmeron strongly favor the natural reading: Jesus meant Friday, the day of the crucifixion.¹⁹ The word appears at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis and contrast: not the future, but today. Grammatically, semantically, and in terms of Luke’s broader theology, “today” means exactly what it sounds like.

And here is the critical point: it is a false dilemma to oppose “today as Friday” and “today as the age of salvation.” For Luke, the crucifixion and resurrection are eschatological events. The literal and the theological meanings reinforce each other. When Jesus told Zacchaeus, “today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:5), He meant both a calendar date and something epochal. The same is true here.²⁰

Notice what this promise requires. Both Jesus and the thief will die that Friday. Their bodies will not be immediately raised—Jesus’ resurrection does not happen until Sunday morning. Yet Jesus promises the thief fellowship in paradise today. That means both of them will exist somewhere between death and resurrection. Both of them will be in paradise. Both of them will be together. Neither of them will be nonexistent.

The implications for anthropology are massive.

Cooper puts it precisely: this is not a parable intended to teach an ethical point, not just a highly imaginative piece of apocalyptic literature, but a straightforward teaching text.²¹ It is one of Jesus’ “truly” sayings—“Amen, I say to you.” Luke clearly means for his readers to hear the same promise: if you confess Jesus as Lord, paradise is yours immediately upon your death. This is not reportage. It is proclamation. And it assumes that persons survive the death of their bodies.

As Cooper notes in his chapter in Christian Physicalism, this is a case where Jewish eschatology, with its anthropological implications, is directly appropriated as part of the Christian message.²² Jesus was not simply accommodating popular belief. He was endorsing it. He was teaching it. He was staking His own experience on it—for He Himself would be in paradise that very day, between His death and His resurrection.

What about the physicalist response? The physicalist has essentially three options, none of them satisfying. First, some appeal to an “alternate temporality” view: the dead do not experience the passage of time, so from the thief’s subjective perspective, the next thing he knows after dying is the resurrection—which feels like “today” even if millions of years pass.²³ Joel Green, who rejects the intermediate state, admits that Luke 16:19–31 supports the existence of an intermediate state at least “insofar as ‘intermediate’ refers to the linear marking of time from the perspective of the rich man’s brothers still alive in this world.”²⁴ But whether the dead themselves experience time as “intermediate” is a different question, Green argues.

This is clever, but it amounts to saying that Jesus told the thief something that sounded like a promise of immediate fellowship but actually meant something quite different. That is not exegesis. That is evasion. And it ignores the fact that Jesus Himself was raised on the third day, which means He personally experienced the interval between death and resurrection. If Jesus existed during that interval, the thief existed during that interval. If they were “together” in paradise on Friday, both of them were conscious. Physicalism cannot account for that without abandoning its core commitment.

Second, some physicalists suggest an “immediate resurrection” at death. But this contradicts the entire New Testament witness to a future, general resurrection at the return of Christ (1 Thess. 4:16; 1 Cor. 15; Phil. 3:20–21). Jesus was not immediately resurrected when He died—His body was in the tomb from Friday until Sunday. Immediate resurrection at death is a theory invented to solve a problem that only physicalism creates.²⁵

Third, the physicalist can simply avoid the passage. That is what Fudge did.

What This Means for the Body-Soul Question:

Luke 23:43 is perhaps the single strongest text in the Gospels for the conscious intermediate state. It teaches, on the authority of Jesus Himself, that a person will be consciously present with Christ on the very day of his death, before any resurrection has occurred. This requires that something survives the death of the body. Substance dualism says that something is the soul. Physicalism has no credible explanation.

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge completely ignored Luke 23:43 in The Fire That Consumes. He devoted an entire chapter to the rich man and Lazarus but said nothing about Jesus’ promise to the thief. Given that this is one of the most important intermediate-state texts in the Gospels, and given that it occurs in the same Gospel that contains the parable Fudge did discuss, the silence is remarkable. If Fudge’s primary concern was the final fate of the wicked, the omission is at least understandable—Luke 23:43 is not about final punishment. But if we are asking what Fudge’s treatment reveals about his anthropology, the omission is highly significant. Luke 23:43 is exactly the kind of text that a physicalist would need to explain away—and Fudge chose not to engage it at all.²⁶

3. Philippians 1:21–24 — “To Depart and Be with Christ”

Text (NKJV):

“For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you.”

Key Terms: The Greek word analyein (“to depart”) literally means to loose, to untie, to release. It was used of ships being loosed from their moorings and of soldiers breaking camp.²⁷ Paul uses it as a euphemism for death—but it carries the connotation of setting out on a journey, not of ceasing to exist. The phrase syn Christō einai (“to be with Christ”) expresses personal, relational fellowship. It is not abstract. It is not metaphorical. Paul is talking about being with a Person.²⁸

Exegetical Exposition:

This passage is one of the clearest windows into Paul’s personal eschatology. He is writing from prison. He does not know whether he will live or die. And as he weighs the two options, he reveals something profound about what he believes will happen when he dies.

Notice the structure of Paul’s reasoning. He presents two options, and only two. Either he continues “living in the flesh” (that is, remaining alive in his physical body), or he “departs” (that is, dies). If he lives, the result is fruitful labor for Christ. If he departs, the result is “being with Christ, which is far better.”

On the face of it, the contrast could not be simpler. Living in the body means ministry on earth. Departing the body means being with Christ. There is no third option mentioned—no gap of nonexistence, no period of unconsciousness, no waiting room where the lights go out. The two options are embodied life and disembodied fellowship with Christ.²⁹

Cooper highlights the logical structure of the passage in Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting. Paul is not speculating about a distant eschatological event. He is wrestling with a real, present dilemma: should he hope to live or hope to die? The answer only makes sense if dying means immediate fellowship with Christ. If dying meant nonexistence followed by future resurrection, then dying would not be “gain”—it would be loss. It would mean the end of fruitful ministry with no immediate compensation. And it would not be “far better” than continuing to serve the Philippians. Nonexistence is not “far better” than anything.³⁰

Paul clearly expects to go somewhere when he dies. He expects to be with someone. And the someone is Christ.

Now, how does the physicalist read this? The extinction-re-creation view—the idea that the dead simply cease to exist and are then re-created at the resurrection—is ruled out here. Paul does not say, “To die is to wait unconsciously for the resurrection.” He says, “To die is gain.” He does not say, “I desire to cease to exist and be re-created later.” He says, “I desire to depart and be with Christ.” The language is active, personal, and relational. It assumes continuity of the self through the event of death.³¹

Some have attempted to argue for an “immediate resurrection” reading. On this view, Paul expects to receive a resurrection body the instant he dies. But Cooper shows that this reading faces serious problems when set against Paul’s own broader teaching. In Philippians 3:20–21, just two chapters later, Paul writes that we “eagerly await a Savior from heaven” who “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.” That transformation is linked to the future coming of Christ, not to the moment of individual death. Paul consistently connects the resurrection with the parousia—in 1 Thessalonians 4, in 1 Corinthians 15, and here in Philippians 3.³² If Paul expected immediate resurrection at death, why does he keep linking the resurrection to the return of Christ?

There is also an interesting detail in Paul’s use of sarx (flesh) rather than sōma (body) in verses 22 and 24. Paul contrasts “being with Christ” with “living in the flesh.” The immediate resurrectionist might try to argue that Paul is contrasting fleshly existence with a non-fleshly but still embodied existence—that is, a spiritual resurrection body. But as Cooper points out, this is special pleading. Sarx and sōma often function as synonyms in Paul, and there is no mention of a resurrection body anywhere in Philippians 1. The only argument for a resurrection body here is an argument from silence—and that is not enough.³³

The simplest and most natural reading is the one the church has always held: Paul expected that at death he would leave his body and be with Christ in a conscious, personal, intermediate state. He would not yet have a resurrection body—that would come at the parousia. But he would be with Christ, and that was enough.

What This Means for the Body-Soul Question:

Philippians 1:21–24 assumes that the “I”—the core person, the self—can exist apart from the flesh. Paul does not use the words “soul” or “spirit” here. He uses personal pronouns. “I desire to depart.” “I am hard-pressed between the two.” As Cooper puts it, Paul is strictly speaking an ego-body or self-body dualist here, not a soul-body dualist. But the substance of his position is the same: the person is separable from the body and can exist in fellowship with Christ after death.³⁴ This is textbook substance dualism, expressed in the grammar of personal experience.

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge discussed Philippians 1:28 and 3:19 in The Fire That Consumes (pp. 212–213), focusing on Paul’s language of “destruction” for the wicked. But he did not engage Philippians 1:21–24 as an anthropological text. His focus was entirely on what happens to the lost, not on what Paul’s language reveals about the nature of the human person. Once again, the anthropological implications of the text were left unexplored.³⁵

4. 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 — “Absent from the Body, Present with the Lord”

Text (NKJV):

“For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.”

Key Terms: Paul’s metaphors here are vivid. The skēnos (“tent”) is the earthly body—temporary, portable, fragile. The oikodome (“building from God”) is the resurrection body or the fullness of eternal life with God. The key metaphor that has generated the most debate is the image of being gymnos (“naked”) or ekdysasthai (“unclothed”). Scholars widely acknowledge that “nakedness” in this context refers to disembodied existence—the state of being without a body.³⁶ The verb ependysasthai (“to be further clothed” or “clothed upon”) has generated significant debate about whether Paul envisions the resurrection body being put on over the earthly body at the moment of death.³⁷

Exegetical Exposition:

This is the passage. If there is a single text in the New Testament that most directly teaches the conscious intermediate state while simultaneously demolishing physicalism, this is it. And Fudge did not discuss it in The Fire That Consumes.

Let me say that again. Second Corinthians 5:1–8 is arguably the most important anthropological text in the Pauline corpus—the passage that most explicitly addresses what happens to the person at death—and Fudge ignored it.

The passage divides naturally into two sections, and the relationship between them is crucial. Verses 1–5 are highly figurative, filled with images of tents and buildings, clothing and nakedness. Verses 6–8 are far more straightforward, contrasting two conditions: being “at home in the body” and “absent from the Lord” versus being “absent from the body” and “present with the Lord.”³⁸

The debate around verses 1–5 has generated enormous scholarly literature, and I want to be fair to all sides. There are essentially two interpretive camps. The first holds that Paul contrasts life in the earthly body (the “tent”) with the immediate acquisition of the resurrection body (the “building from God”) at the moment of death. On this reading, there is no intermediate state. The believer goes directly from an earthly body to a resurrection body. The second option holds that Paul acknowledges the possibility of an interval of “nakedness”—disembodied existence—between the loss of the earthly body and the reception of the resurrection body, but views it as temporary and less desirable than being fully embodied.³⁹

Both of these readings are compatible with some form of dualism. Neither is compatible with the extinction-re-creation view, which holds that the dead simply cease to exist. As Cooper notes, “nonexistence between embodiments is out of the question.”⁴⁰

The immediate resurrection reading depends heavily on the verb ependysasthai in verses 2 and 4. Murray Harris, its most prominent defender, argues that this word does not mean simply “to put on” but “to put on over,” as when someone pulls a sweater over a shirt. On this reading, the resurrection body is received over the earthly body the instant one dies. No interval of nakedness occurs.⁴¹

Cooper provides a devastating critique of this argument, and it is worth walking through carefully. First, the alleged distinction between endyein (“to put on”) and ependysasthai (“to put on over”) may not exist. The words may simply be synonyms. Second, even if ependysasthai does mean “to put on over,” it could mean “to put on over the naked self” rather than “over the earthly body.” Third, Paul himself says the earthly tent is “destroyed”—which hardly suggests that it is retained while a heavenly dwelling is built around it. Fourth, the idea that the resurrection body is instantly put on over the earthly body at death contradicts the plain evidence of experience: when people die, their bodies decay. They are not immediately clothed with resurrection bodies.⁴²

The metaphors in verses 1–5 are genuinely difficult, and I do not want to overstate the certainty of any single reading. But even if the immediate resurrection interpretation were correct, it would still involve dualism of some kind—the self persists through the transition from one body to another. And if the intermediate state reading is correct, we have exactly what substance dualism predicts: a period of disembodied existence between death and resurrection.

But it is verses 6–8 that settle the matter for our purposes. Here Paul drops the figurative language and speaks plainly. He repeatedly contrasts two conditions:

Being “at home in the body” = being “absent from the Lord”
Being “absent from the body” = being “present with the Lord”

No third option is mentioned. There is no “being nonexistent and waiting for re-creation.” There is no “being asleep without awareness.” Paul presents only two states: embodied life on earth and disembodied fellowship with Christ. And he says he would prefer the second.⁴³

The clear meaning is that being “away from the body” is the condition of being “with the Lord.” As even Bultmann admits, Paul comes “very close to” dualism here, speaking of the body as “a shell for the self.”⁴⁴ Cooper adds that the duality Paul describes is not Gnostic but Hebraic and holistic—there is no polemic here against bodiliness as such. The “heavenly dwelling” may very well be a resurrection body. But in the interim, the self exists with Christ apart from any body at all.⁴⁵

The immediate resurrectionist has one last move. Harris argues that “the body” in verse 8 is not the definite article in the normal sense but an anaphoric article, meaning “this body”—thereby implying a new resurrection body after all. So what appears to be a reference to disembodiment is actually a concealed reference to being newly embodied with the Lord.⁴⁶

Cooper rightly calls this “a bit strained.” Even if it is defensible, it is far from decisive. It is equally responsible to read Paul as envisioning a sequence: death, immediate disembodied fellowship with Christ, and future bodily resurrection at the parousia.⁴⁷ That reading accounts for every element in the passage without distortion. And it coheres with Paul’s consistent teaching elsewhere that the resurrection occurs at the return of Christ, not at the moment of individual death.

The passage from The Creation of Self by Joshua Farris in The Soul of Theological Anthropology adds an important theological dimension. The traditional reading of 2 Corinthians 5 is not merely about the soul surviving death; it is about the soul experiencing God during the intermediate state. Thomas Aquinas argued that this passage teaches the beatific vision—that the saints see God’s essence immediately after death. Aquinas identified the “house not made with hands” not with the resurrection body but with “heavenly glory,” even “God Himself,” which the saints obtain immediately upon death.⁴⁸ Whether or not one follows Aquinas in every detail, the theological point is powerful: this passage requires not only that something exists beyond the body, but that this entity experiences the presence of God in a way that transcends bodily life.⁴⁹

As Matthew Levering argues, when Jesus warns about caring for one’s soul and when Paul envisions a period of disembodied life with Christ after death, these passages uphold the place of the soul within a biblically guided eschatology. The doctrine of the soul is not redundant. It is necessary for making sense of the New Testament’s rich account of graced participation in the divine life, both now and in the life to come.⁵⁰

What This Means for the Body-Soul Question:

Second Corinthians 5:1–8 teaches, at minimum, that the self can exist apart from the earthly body and that this existence involves conscious, personal fellowship with Christ. This is incompatible with any form of physicalism that denies the existence of an immaterial self. Whether one reads the passage as teaching an immediate resurrection or a temporary intermediate state, the result is the same: the person survives the death of the body. Physicalism loses on every interpretation.

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge completely ignored 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 in The Fire That Consumes. This omission is extraordinary. Whatever one thinks of the passage’s interpretation, its anthropological implications are undeniable. It is one of the most discussed texts in the entire body-soul debate. For Fudge to write an extensive treatment of final punishment—a topic that necessarily intersects with the question of what happens to persons at death—and to say nothing about this passage is a gap that cannot be explained by mere oversight. It can only be explained by the fact that 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 is deeply problematic for physicalism. The passage screams dualism. And Fudge, building his case on a physicalist foundation, had no interest in engaging it.⁵¹

5. Hebrews 12:23 — “The Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect”

Text (NKJV):

“...to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect...”

Key Terms: The Greek pneumata dikaiōn teteleimōmenōn (“spirits of righteous ones who have been made perfect”) is the crucial phrase. The word pneumata (spirits, plural) here unambiguously refers to human beings. These are not angels—they are distinguished from the angels mentioned separately in verse 22. They are “just men”—human persons who have been made righteous.⁵²

Exegetical Exposition:

This verse appears within a magnificent panoramic vision of the heavenly Jerusalem in Hebrews 12:22–24. The author lists the inhabitants of Mount Zion, the city of the living God: innumerable angels, the general assembly and church of the firstborn, God the Judge of all, the spirits of just men made perfect, and Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.

Our concern is with one item on this list: the pneumata of righteous persons who have been perfected.

Are these merely impersonal “life-principles”—the Old Testament ruach understood as the breath of life that returns to God? Cooper argues persuasively that this interpretation is almost certainly wrong, for two reasons. First, when ruach separated from the body at death in the Old Testament, it did not remain an individuated entity. But Hebrews mentions a plural number of individuals. These are not undifferentiated life-forces floating in the divine atmosphere. They are specific persons—“righteous men”—who have been “made perfect.” Second, righteousness and perfection are qualities that can be predicated of persons, not of impersonal energy. You cannot “perfect” a life-force. You can only perfect a self, a moral agent, a being capable of relationship with God.⁵³

The context makes this even clearer. God and the angels are mentioned alongside these spirits, and neither God nor the angels are intended metaphorically in this passage. This is a real description of the heavenly assembly. The spirits of the righteous dead are part of that assembly. They are there—present, identified, perfected.

The question of whether these spirits are in the intermediate or final state is interesting but ultimately secondary for our purposes. If they are in the intermediate state—awaiting the “better resurrection” mentioned in Hebrews 11:35—then we have a clear case of pneuma being used to describe human beings during the disembodied intermediate state. If they are in the final state, then the author of Hebrews envisions the saints as perpetually spiritual beings, which is also a form of dualism. Either way, the text teaches that human persons can exist as “spirits”—that is, without their physical bodies.⁵⁴

Cooper notes that the phrase “the spirits of righteous men made perfect” virtually paraphrases Wisdom of Solomon 3:1 and 1 Enoch 22:9.⁵⁵ This is yet another case where the New Testament draws on the anthropological vocabulary of Second Temple Judaism, in which the terms psyche and pneuma were routinely used to describe the disembodied dead. The author of Hebrews is not inventing new categories. He is writing within a well-established tradition that understood human persons as surviving death as conscious spirits.

What This Means for the Body-Soul Question:

Hebrews 12:23 uses pneuma to refer to deceased human persons who exist in the presence of God apart from their physical bodies. This is substance dualism stated in the language of worship and eschatological hope. The text assumes that the righteous dead are real persons, identified by their moral status, dwelling in the heavenly Jerusalem alongside God and the angels. Physicalism has no category for such beings.

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge completely ignored Hebrews 12:23 in The Fire That Consumes. The author of Hebrews explicitly describes deceased human beings as “spirits” who have been “made perfect” and who dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem. If physicalism were true, there would be no such spirits. There would be nothing to “make perfect.” There would be no one in the heavenly city between death and resurrection. Fudge’s silence on this passage is another brick in the wall of evidence that his anthropology cannot accommodate the full witness of Scripture.⁵⁶

C. Synthesis: The Cumulative Testimony

Stand back for a moment and consider what we have just seen.

Five passages. Three different authors (Luke, Paul, and the author of Hebrews). Multiple literary genres (parable, historical narrative, epistolary teaching, liturgical vision). And every single one of them teaches or assumes the same thing: human persons continue to exist consciously between death and resurrection.

The rich man and Lazarus are conscious in Hades and Abraham’s bosom. The thief is with Jesus in paradise on the day of the crucifixion. Paul longs to depart and be with Christ. The self can be “absent from the body” and “present with the Lord.” The spirits of the righteous dead have been perfected and dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem.

This is not one isolated prooftext. This is a pattern. It is a consistent, cross-canonical witness to the reality of the conscious intermediate state.

And it is exactly what substance dualism predicts.

If human beings are composed of both a material body and an immaterial soul, then the soul can survive the death of the body and maintain conscious fellowship with God. The intermediate state is not a problem to be solved—it is a natural consequence of our composite nature. Death separates what God joined together in creation, but it does not annihilate the person. The soul persists. The self endures. Relationship with Christ continues.

If physicalism is true, by contrast, none of this should exist. There should be no conscious intermediate state because there is no soul to sustain it. There should be no “departing and being with Christ” because the person is the body, and the body is in the ground. There should be no “spirits of just men made perfect” because on physicalism, spirits do not exist as substances—they are, at best, a way of talking about the whole person in a certain aspect.

The physicalist is forced to explain away passage after passage. Luke 16? Just a parable—ignore the eschatological framework. Luke 23:43? Jesus was speaking in subjective, not objective time. Philippians 1? Paul was speaking loosely, not ontologically. 2 Corinthians 5? Immediate resurrection, not disembodiment. Hebrews 12:23? Avoid it altogether.

At some point, the accumulation of special pleading becomes its own argument. When every passage that teaches the intermediate state must be deflected, reinterpreted, or ignored, perhaps the problem is not with the passages. Perhaps the problem is with the interpretive framework that cannot accommodate them.

Cooper makes this point with characteristic precision. He argues that even if no single text can conclusively prove the intermediate state in isolation, the doctrine can be established by deduction from two well-established Pauline teachings: (1) that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and (2) that the resurrection occurs at the second coming of Christ. Together, these two affirmations entail that persons exist with Christ between physical death and resurrection.⁵⁷ That conclusion holds even if it was not worked out in every detail in Paul’s own mind.

Furthermore, as Cooper observes in his chapter in Christian Physicalism, the New Testament consistently presents an anthropology and eschatology similar to that of the Pharisees, reoriented by the proclamation that Jesus is the Messiah. Bodily resurrection is the central hope because it completes the salvation of human nature that God created. But continuing personal existence until the resurrection is an integral phase of salvation history, even though it is less prominent in the New Testament. Paul does not use the terms soul or spirit in contrast to the body and flesh, but he uses personal pronouns: “I” live in the body, or “I” am with Christ. This is a person-body distinction. And it is completely consistent across the entire New Testament witness.⁵⁸

I want to engage one further dualist voice here. The Thomistic tradition, as represented by scholars like Matthew Levering and as recovered by Hentschel in his reading of Aquinas, offers a particularly robust theological account of the intermediate state. For Aquinas, the intermediate state is not a hazy, ambiguous waiting room. It is the context in which the saints see God—the beatific vision. The “house not made with hands” in 2 Corinthians 5:1 is not the resurrection body (though that too will come) but “heavenly glory”—even “God Himself”—which the saints obtain immediately upon death.⁵⁹ This interpretation requires an immaterial soul capable of transcending physical existence and knowing God directly. And it provides a vision of the intermediate state that is not a concession to Greek philosophy but a deeply biblical account of what it means to be “present with the Lord.”

Levering puts it well: the doctrine of the soul allows for the New Testament’s rich account of our participation in the divine life, both now and in the life to come. To abandon the soul is not a move toward a more biblical anthropology. It is a move that impoverishes both our eschatology and our experience of God.⁶⁰

D. Cross-References and Connections

The five passages we have examined in this chapter do not stand alone. They are part of a much larger biblical tapestry, and the threads connect in every direction.

Consider the Old Testament soul-departure narratives we explored in Chapter 6. Rachel’s soul departed as she died (Gen. 35:18). The child’s soul returned to his body when Elijah prayed (1 Kings 17:21–22). The spirit returns to God who gave it at death (Eccl. 12:7). These narratives presuppose that the soul or spirit is a separable entity that can leave the body and return to it. What we find in the New Testament passages of this chapter is the completion of that picture: the soul departs at death and enters into conscious fellowship with God. The Old Testament told us the soul goes. The New Testament tells us where it goes—and what it experiences when it gets there.

The spirit-departure narratives in Chapter 12 provide the immediate New Testament context. Jesus yielded up His spirit (Matt. 27:50). Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). Jairus’s daughter’s spirit returned and she arose immediately (Luke 8:55). In every case, the spirit is treated as a real entity that separates from the body at death. The passages in this chapter take the next step: they describe what happens to that spirit after it departs.

Looking ahead to Chapter 14, the book of Revelation picks up this very theme. The “souls under the altar” in Revelation 6:9–11 are conscious, speaking, crying out for justice—disembodied persons awaiting the completion of God’s plan. The “souls of those who had been beheaded” in Revelation 20:4 are likewise conscious entities existing apart from their bodies. And 1 Peter 3:18–20 describes Christ preaching to “the spirits in prison”—further evidence that deceased human beings are real, conscious spirits who can be addressed and ministered to.

The Pauline anthropological framework of Chapter 15 will provide additional support. James 2:26 states flatly that “the body without the spirit is dead”—a definition of death that assumes the spirit is a separable component of the person. First Thessalonians 5:23 distinguishes “spirit, soul, and body.” These passages fill out the anthropological picture that the intermediate-state passages in this chapter presuppose.

And in Chapter 16, we will see Paul’s language of the “inner man” and the “outer man” (2 Cor. 4:16), which provides the immediate literary context for our passage in 2 Corinthians 5. The “outward man” is perishing, Paul says, but the “inward man” is being renewed day by day. That inner-outer distinction flows directly into the tent-building metaphor of chapter 5 and the body-absence language of verses 6–8. The whole section is drenched in anthropological duality.

E. Counter-Objections

Before we close this chapter, we need to face the strongest objections that a physicalist might raise against the readings I have offered. I want to be fair. These objections deserve honest engagement.

This is a common move in physicalist exegesis. The idea is that Paul speaks as if the dead are with Christ, but he does not mean to make a metaphysical claim about the existence of a disembodied self. He is speaking from the perspective of the dying person’s experience, not from the perspective of ontological reality.

The problem with this objection is that it proves too much. If we allow that Paul’s statements about being “absent from the body and present with the Lord” are merely phenomenological, then what prevents us from saying the same about any statement Paul makes? “Christ died for our sins”—is that merely phenomenological? “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”—is that just how things appear? At some point, we have to take an author at his word. Paul presents two real options: life in the body or fellowship with Christ apart from the body. He treats both as real, not as appearances. The phenomenological dodge is a way of domesticating a text that does not cooperate with the interpreter’s preferred framework.⁶¹

We have already addressed this objection in some detail above, but let me summarize the problems. First, the immediate resurrection view conflicts with Paul’s consistent teaching elsewhere that the resurrection occurs at the return of Christ (1 Thess. 4:16; 1 Cor. 15:23, 52; Phil. 3:20–21). Second, it requires the unlikely assumption that Paul changed his mind between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians and then changed it back again in Philippians and Romans, where the resurrection is once more linked to the parousia.⁶² As Ridderbos observes, “it would surely be very strange were Paul in the time between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians to have come to this ‘development,’ and then to have returned, e.g. in Romans, to his original idea.”⁶³

Third, the immediate resurrection view faces the embarrassing fact that when people die, their bodies are still here. A corpse is left in the ground. The earthly body does not disappear. If a resurrection body is immediately received, where is the continuity between the earthly body (the “seed” of 1 Cor. 15:37) and the resurrection body? The intermediate state view, by contrast, preserves that continuity: the soul maintains personal identity between death and resurrection, and the body is raised and transformed at the parousia.⁶⁴

This is a popular argument in some circles, particularly among groups that deny the intermediate state. On this reading, Jesus is simply saying, “I’m telling you right now: at some future time, you will be with Me in paradise.”

The problems with this repunctuation are serious. First, it is grammatically awkward. Placing “today” with “I say to you” adds nothing to the meaning—of course Jesus is saying it “today.” When else would He be saying it? The emphasis on “today” only makes sense if it is modifying when the thief will be in paradise. Second, every other occurrence of “Truly I say to you” (Amēn soi legō) in the Gospels is followed immediately by the content of the promise, with no temporal qualifier inserted. Third, the thief’s request was for future remembrance. Jesus’ response upgrades the promise: not just future inclusion but today. That contrast is lost entirely on the repunctuated reading.⁶⁵ Marshall is right: the grammar, the semantics, and the historical-theological context all favor the natural reading.⁶⁶

This is an important objection, and it gets to the heart of why some CI advocates have embraced physicalism in the first place. The fear is that if you affirm the soul, you are locked into affirming ECT—because an immaterial soul, once created, cannot be destroyed.

But this fear is based on a confusion between substance dualism and Platonic dualism. Platonic dualism holds that the soul is inherently immortal—it cannot be destroyed by anything, including God. Substance dualism, as I have defined it throughout this book, makes no such claim. The soul is real, immaterial, and created by God. And what God creates, God can un-create. Jesus Himself says, “Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Matt. 10:28). The soul’s continued existence depends entirely on God’s sustaining will, not on any inherent indestructibility.

CI and substance dualism fit together beautifully. The soul survives death and enters the intermediate state—either with Christ (for believers) or in Hades (for unbelievers). At the final judgment, the body is raised and reunited with the soul. Those who are in Christ receive immortality as a gift. Those who have finally rejected God are destroyed, body and soul, in the second death. The intermediate state is real and conscious. But it is not permanent for the wicked. CI affirms the soul and its potential destruction. Physicalism is not required.⁶⁷

Conclusion

We have walked through five of the most theologically concentrated passages on the intermediate state in the New Testament. Each one, in its own way, teaches that the person survives the death of the body and enters a conscious state of fellowship or judgment. Luke tells us about the rich man and Lazarus in the afterlife. Jesus promises the dying thief immediate paradise. Paul longs to depart and be with Christ. He prefers to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. The author of Hebrews envisions the spirits of the righteous dead, perfected and dwelling in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Of these five passages, Fudge discussed two and ignored three. The three he ignored include the two most anthropologically significant texts in the entire New Testament: 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 and Hebrews 12:23. His treatment of the passages he did discuss focused on final punishment rather than anthropology, leaving the body-soul question unaddressed.

The pattern is now unmistakable. Fudge did not simply overlook these passages. He built his case on a physicalist framework that cannot accommodate them. And the result is a theology of final punishment that, for all its strengths, rests on an inadequate understanding of what a human being is.

We are more than bodies. We are more than organized dust. We are body and soul—created for relationship with God, sustained by His power, destined for resurrection. And between death and that great day, we are with Him. Present. Conscious. Known.

That is what Scripture teaches. That is what substance dualism affirms. And that is what physicalism, for all its good intentions, cannot give us.