We have spent the last three chapters building a case that has been moving steadily toward a single, decisive question. In Chapter 6, we examined the biblical evidence for substance dualism—the view that human beings consist of both a material body and an immaterial soul, and that the soul survives the body's death. In Chapter 7, we considered the philosophical arguments that support this view and responded to the major objections raised by physicalists. And in Chapter 8, we showed why the growing embrace of physicalism within the conditional immortality movement creates a devastating problem for anyone who wants to affirm both conditionalism and the hope of postmortem salvation. Now we arrive at the question that ties all of these threads together: If the soul does survive death, what is it doing between death and resurrection? And more importantly for our purposes—can it still make meaningful decisions?
This is not an abstract philosophical puzzle. It is a question with enormous theological and pastoral stakes. If the soul is unconscious after death—simply "asleep" until the resurrection—then there is no window for a postmortem encounter with God during the intermediate state. If the soul is conscious but somehow locked into the trajectory it had at the moment of death, unable to change or respond to new information, then the intermediate state becomes a kind of waiting room with no purpose beyond holding souls in storage until judgment day. But if the soul is conscious, aware, capable of reasoning, feeling, and choosing—if the dead can genuinely encounter God and respond to Him—then the intermediate state becomes something far more significant. It becomes the very place where God's relentless love continues to pursue those who died without knowing Christ.
The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: A conscious intermediate state—in which the soul survives bodily death and retains the capacity for cognition, volition, and moral decision-making—is both biblically supported and philosophically defensible, and it provides the metaphysical framework necessary for a postmortem encounter with God. I believe the evidence for this position is strong, and I want to walk through it carefully with you.
Chapter Thesis: The soul survives bodily death in a fully conscious state, retaining the capacities for thought, memory, emotion, communication, and moral choice. This conscious intermediate state provides the metaphysical foundation for a genuine postmortem encounter with God in which the unsaved can hear, understand, and respond to the gospel.
Before we go further, let me clarify what we mean by "the intermediate state." In Christian theology, the intermediate state refers to the period between a person's physical death and the future bodily resurrection. It is the "in-between time"—the span between the moment the body stops functioning and the day when God raises the dead and renders final judgment.
As James Beilby helpfully notes, there are at least four major views of what happens to people during this period: immediate judgment, in which people are resurrected, judged, and sent to heaven or hell right at death; soul sleep, in which the person ceases to be aware until the resurrection; a common intermediate state, where all the dead enter one shared realm to await resurrection; and separate intermediate states, in which believers go to paradise while unbelievers go to Hades.1 These views are not merely academic curiosities. As Beilby observes, the questions they raise touch on fundamental issues of theological anthropology—whether humans are essentially embodied (as materialists claim) or can exist as immaterial souls separated from the body (as dualists hold).2
I believe the biblical evidence points clearly toward separate intermediate states: the saved are with Christ in paradise (as Jesus promised the thief on the cross in Luke 23:43), while the unsaved dead are in Hades—a conscious waiting place that is not the same as Gehenna or the Lake of Fire. This distinction is critically important and will be developed more fully in Chapter 21, where we provide a detailed taxonomy of Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and the Lake of Fire. For our purposes here, the key point is that Hades is not the final destination of the wicked. It is a temporary holding place—and if the dead are conscious there, then the possibility of encountering God in that place remains open.
Beilby makes an important observation about the compatibility of postmortem opportunity with different views of personal eschatology. He notes that the theory of postmortem opportunity can be modified to fit any of the four views listed above—but it fits especially well with views that affirm a conscious intermediate state. On those views, the postmortem opportunity could occur either during the intermediate state or at the day of judgment—or, as I will argue, at multiple points along the way.3
In Chapter 6, we walked through the major biblical texts that establish the reality of substance dualism—passages like Matthew 10:28, Philippians 1:21–23, 2 Corinthians 5:1–8, Revelation 6:9–11, and many others. I will not repeat that exegesis here. Instead, I want to focus on a different question: What do these texts tell us about the experience of the dead? What are the departed doing in the intermediate state? What capacities do they display? The answer, as we will see, is remarkable. The dead in Scripture are not passive, unconscious, or frozen. They are vividly alive—thinking, feeling, remembering, communicating, and even making requests.
The most detailed biblical portrait of the intermediate state comes from Jesus' account of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31. Whether we classify this as a parable or a historical account, it reveals assumptions about what the intermediate state is like—assumptions that Jesus either shared with His audience or at least did not correct. Consider what the rich man does in Hades:
"In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.' But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.'" (Luke 16:23–25, ESV)
The cognitive and volitional activities displayed here are extraordinary. The rich man sees—he perceives Abraham and Lazarus at a distance. He recognizes people he knew in life. He feels physical distress. He remembers his earthly life and the circumstances that led to his current situation. He reasons about cause and effect—he understands the connection between his earthly behavior and his present condition. He communicates—he calls out to Abraham in coherent, articulate speech. He makes requests—he asks for mercy, for relief, and later for someone to warn his brothers. He even anticipates future events and shows concern for others, begging Abraham to send Lazarus to his father's house so his five brothers will not end up in the same place.4
Now, I want to be careful here. As we noted in Chapter 18 (where the parable is discussed in detail in its role as an objection to postmortem opportunity), many scholars rightly caution against building an entire eschatology from the details of a parable. Stephen Jonathan points out that the parable's purpose is primarily ethical, focused on the use of wealth rather than providing a systematic map of the afterlife.5 Thomas Talbott similarly argues that the parable has a clear moral point that has nothing to do with final judgment or the ultimate fate of the wicked.6 I agree with both of these scholars that we should not press every detail of the parable into a doctrinal statement.
But here is what I find significant: even if this is "only" a parable, it still reveals what Jesus and His audience assumed about the state of the dead. Parables work precisely because they draw on shared assumptions about how the world works. A parable about farming assumes that seeds grow when planted. A parable about kings assumes that kings have authority. And a parable set in Hades assumes that the dead are conscious, aware, and capable of thought and communication. If Jesus believed the dead were unconscious—if He held to "soul sleep"—this parable would make no sense. The very fact that He tells it in this way tells us something important about His view of the intermediate state.
Key Point: Even scholars who are cautious about drawing eschatological conclusions from Luke 16 acknowledge that the parable presupposes a conscious intermediate state. Jesus' audience clearly assumed that the dead were aware and capable of communication—and Jesus built His teaching on that assumption rather than correcting it.
What is especially noteworthy for our argument is this: the rich man in Hades shows concern for his brothers that he did not show for Lazarus during his earthly life. He has, in a real sense, changed. His awareness has expanded. His moral perspective has shifted. He now cares about the fate of others in a way he apparently did not before. As the universalist scholar David Burnfield perceptively observes, the rich man's punishment appears to be producing a positive moral effect—he is thinking of others instead of himself, which is precisely what the remedial view of punishment would predict.7 Whether or not this particular parable is teaching postmortem repentance, it at least demonstrates that the dead are capable of moral growth and changed perspective. And if moral growth is possible in the intermediate state, why not repentance?
The second major biblical text that reveals the nature of the intermediate state is Revelation 6:9–11:
"When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, 'O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?' Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been." (Revelation 6:9–11, ESV)
Several features of this passage deserve attention. First, these are called psychai (ψυχαί)—"souls"—not resurrected bodies. They are disembodied persons existing in the intermediate state. Second, they are conscious and aware—not asleep, not dormant, not in a state of unconscious suspension. Third, they have knowledge of earthly events. They know that they were martyred. They know that their persecutors have not yet been judged. They are aware that time is passing and that justice has not yet been rendered. Fourth, they are emotionally engaged—they cry out with a "loud voice," expressing urgency, frustration, and longing for justice. Fifth, they communicate with God—they make a request, and God responds by giving them white robes and telling them to wait. Sixth, they receive new information and are expected to respond appropriately to it—they are told to "rest a little longer," implying they can understand instructions and comply with them.8
What we have here is a portrait of the dead that could hardly be more vivid. These souls are cognitively active, emotionally engaged, relationally connected to God, aware of events beyond their immediate experience, and capable of both initiating and receiving communication. If the souls of the righteous dead display these capacities, there is no reason to think the souls of the unrighteous dead would lack them. Consciousness in the intermediate state is a feature of the soul's nature as an immaterial substance—not a reward granted only to the saved.
Some might object that Revelation is an apocalyptic vision and should not be pressed for literal details about the state of the dead. I take that point seriously. Apocalyptic literature uses vivid imagery, and not every detail should be read as a straightforward description of reality. But here again, the same principle applies as with the parable in Luke 16: the imagery presupposes that the dead are conscious. John's vision would make no sense if the dead were asleep. The souls cry out, God responds, and they are expected to wait patiently—all of which requires consciousness, understanding, and the capacity for obedience. Even allowing for apocalyptic imagery, the underlying assumption is that the dead are very much awake and very much engaged with God.
There is another important detail here that we should not miss. The souls are told to "rest a little longer"—a phrase that implies ongoing temporal experience in the intermediate state. These souls are experiencing the passage of time. They have been waiting, and they are told to continue waiting. This is not the language of unconscious suspension or timeless existence. It is the language of persons who are living through an extended period of conscious experience between their deaths and the final consummation. The intermediate state, for them, is a real duration—a stretch of time in which they think, feel, and interact with God.
At the Transfiguration, two figures from the distant past appear alongside Jesus on the mountain: Moses and Elijah. Luke tells us that they "appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9:31, ESV). Moses had been dead for over a thousand years. Yet here he is—visible, communicative, and discussing theological matters of the highest significance. He is not merely present as a ghostly image. He is actively engaged in a conversation about the most important event in redemptive history: Jesus' approaching death and resurrection.9
This passage tells us several things about the state of the departed. Moses is conscious. He has knowledge—he knows who Jesus is, and he understands the significance of what is about to happen in Jerusalem. He is capable of speech and meaningful dialogue. And—perhaps most remarkably—he appears to have gained knowledge that he could not have possessed during his earthly life, since the Incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection all occurred centuries after his death. The intermediate state, then, is not a place of frozen ignorance. It is a state in which the dead can learn, grow in understanding, and engage with realities beyond what they knew in life.
The case of Elijah is slightly different, since the Old Testament records that Elijah was taken up to heaven without dying (2 Kings 2:11). But Moses definitely died—Deuteronomy 34:5–6 is explicit about this. His presence at the Transfiguration, then, is a clear example of a dead person appearing in a conscious, communicative, knowledgeable state. And the fact that he is discussing the exodus (the Greek word Luke uses in 9:31) that Jesus is about to accomplish in Jerusalem suggests that Moses has not merely retained the knowledge he had in life but has acquired new theological understanding in the intermediate state. He knows things now that he could not have known when he was alive. This point is crucial for our argument. If the dead can acquire new knowledge—if they can learn and grow in understanding after death—then they certainly possess the cognitive capacity for the kind of encounter with God that postmortem salvation requires.
The account of King Saul's visit to the medium at Endor, where the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel appears, is admittedly controversial. Interpreters disagree about whether this was genuinely Samuel or a demonic impersonation. But the text itself identifies the figure as Samuel (1 Sam. 28:12, 15–16), and I believe the most natural reading is that God permitted Samuel to appear on this occasion.10
What is striking is the level of cognitive function Samuel displays. He is aware of current events—he knows about God's rejection of Saul and the coming Philistine threat. He is able to recall past prophecies and apply them to the present situation. He communicates clearly and forcefully. He even expresses irritation at being disturbed: "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" (1 Sam. 28:15). Samuel in death is every bit as articulate, informed, and opinionated as Samuel in life—perhaps more so.
What is particularly noteworthy for our argument is that Samuel displays not only awareness of past events but knowledge of future events. He tells Saul, "Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me" (1 Sam. 28:19)—a prediction that proves accurate. This suggests that the disembodied soul has access to knowledge that transcends what was available in earthly life. Whether this knowledge comes directly from God, from the soul's expanded spiritual perception, or from some other source, it clearly demonstrates that the intermediate state is not a place of cognitive stagnation. The dead can know more, not less, than they knew in life.
I realize this passage raises complex questions about necromancy, the ethics of consulting the dead, and the precise mechanism by which Samuel appeared. These are important questions, but they are tangential to our main point. Whatever we make of the circumstances surrounding Samuel's appearance, the text presents him as a conscious, informed, communicative person—and that is what matters for our argument about the nature of the intermediate state.
When we step back and look at the cumulative picture, a clear and consistent pattern emerges. Across multiple genres of Scripture—parable, apocalyptic vision, historical narrative, and transfiguration account—the dead are portrayed as conscious, cognitively active, emotionally engaged, communicative, and aware of events beyond their immediate situation. They remember their earthly lives. They reason about cause and effect. They make requests and respond to information. They engage in theological conversation. They display moral concern for others.
This is not the portrait of "soul sleep." It is not the portrait of souls frozen in the last state they occupied before death. It is the portrait of persons who are fully alive in every sense that matters—persons who think, feel, choose, and relate. As I argued in Chapter 6, the biblical case for the soul's survival after death is overwhelming. What this chapter adds is the further point that the surviving soul is not diminished or dormant. It is alert, active, and capable of the very things that a postmortem encounter with God would require.
It is worth noting briefly that the early church overwhelmingly affirmed a conscious intermediate state. The earliest post-apostolic writings—from Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp—assume that the dead are conscious and aware. The Apostles' Creed's affirmation that Christ "descended into hell" (or more accurately, "descended to the dead") presupposes a realm of conscious dead persons to whom Christ could go and preach. As Beilby notes, the earliest understanding was that all the dead resided in Hades awaiting the day of judgment, and that Hades was a place of conscious existence, not unconscious suspension.33 The "soul sleep" position was a minority view in the early church, held by a few figures but rejected by the mainstream of patristic theology. We will examine the early church's eschatological views in much greater detail in Chapters 24 and 25; here, I simply want to note that the conscious intermediate state is not a novel invention. It is the historic Christian position, rooted in Scripture and affirmed by the church from its earliest days.
Summary of Biblical Evidence: In Luke 16, the rich man reasons, remembers, communicates, feels, and shows moral concern. In Revelation 6, the martyred souls are aware of earthly events, emotionally engaged, and communicating with God. At the Transfiguration, Moses converses about events centuries after his death. At Endor, Samuel displays full cognitive function. The biblical dead are not asleep. They are vividly, actively conscious.
The biblical evidence shows us that the dead are conscious and cognitively active. But can we go further? Can the disembodied soul not merely think and feel, but also make genuine moral decisions? Can a person who has never accepted Christ in this life come to a genuine, free decision to embrace Him after death? This is the crucial question for our purposes. If the answer is no—if the soul can think but not truly choose, or can feel but not genuinely repent—then the intermediate state may be a conscious experience, but it is not one in which salvation is possible.
I believe the answer is emphatically yes, and the case rests on three converging lines of evidence: the biblical data we have just surveyed, the philosophical implications of substance dualism, and the empirical evidence from near-death experiences.
Let us begin with what the Bible itself shows us. As we just observed, the rich man in Hades does not merely think and feel—he makes requests. He exercises his will. He chooses to cry out to Abraham. He formulates a plan (send Lazarus to my brothers) and advocates for it. These are not the reflexive reactions of a stimulus-response machine. They are the deliberate, reasoned actions of a person exercising volition.
Similarly, the souls under the altar in Revelation 6 are not passive recipients of their experience. They cry out to God—an act of will. They ask a question—an act of reasoning and initiative. They are then given white robes and told to wait—and presumably they comply, which is itself an act of obedient choice. God's instruction to them presupposes that they are capable of understanding and responding to a command.
Now, none of these passages specifically describes a person repenting and turning to Christ in the intermediate state. That is not their purpose. But they do establish something essential: the dead retain the capacity for cognitive reasoning, emotional response, and volitional choice. These are the very capacities that repentance requires. To repent is to change one's mind (the Greek metanoia, μετάνοια, literally means "a change of mind"), to redirect one's will toward God, and to embrace what one had previously rejected. If the dead can reason, choose, and respond to new information—and the biblical evidence clearly shows they can—then there is no anthropological barrier to repentance after death.11
The philosophical case builds directly on the arguments we made in Chapters 6 and 7 for substance dualism. If the soul is a genuine substance—an immaterial entity with its own inherent properties and capacities—then its ability to think, reason, and choose does not depend on the body for its existence. The body is necessary for the soul's interaction with the physical world: we need eyes to see trees, ears to hear music, hands to write letters. But the capacities of thought, reasoning, memory, and volition belong to the soul itself. They are among the soul's essential properties—the very things that make it the kind of substance it is.12
Consider an analogy. A pilot needs an airplane to fly through the sky. Without the airplane, the pilot cannot achieve altitude, cannot navigate by instruments, cannot transport passengers. But if the pilot steps out of the airplane, she does not lose her knowledge of aviation, her ability to make decisions, or her desire to fly. She has lost her instrument for a particular kind of activity, but she has not lost her capacities as a thinking, choosing person. In a similar way, when the soul separates from the body at death, it loses its instrument for interacting with the physical world. But it does not lose the mental capacities that belong to its nature as an immaterial substance.
The great medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas acknowledged this point, even though he believed the disembodied state was in some respects diminished compared to the embodied state. Aquinas argued that the separated soul retains its intellectual capacities—indeed, in some ways, the soul's intellectual activity is enhanced after death, since it is no longer weighed down by the limitations and distractions of the body. The soul can know itself more directly and can receive knowledge from higher spiritual realities (such as angels and God) without the mediation of the senses.13
Modern dualist philosophers have developed this argument in more detail. J.P. Moreland has argued extensively that mental properties—consciousness, intentionality, rationality, and free will—are properties of the soul, not of the brain. The brain serves as a kind of receiving instrument that allows the soul's capacities to be expressed in the physical world, but the capacities themselves are immaterial. When the brain ceases to function at death, the soul's capacities are not destroyed; they are simply no longer channeled through a physical instrument.14 Richard Swinburne reaches a similar conclusion, arguing that the soul is the fundamental bearer of personal identity and mental life, and that its continued existence after the body's destruction is both coherent and well-supported by the evidence.15
If these philosophers are right—and I believe they are, for the reasons laid out in Chapter 7—then the disembodied soul retains everything it needs for genuine moral decision-making: the capacity to reason, to evaluate, to choose between alternatives, and to direct the will toward or away from God.
Let me press this point a bit further, because it has direct implications for postmortem opportunity. On the dualist view, the soul is the seat of personhood. It is where "you" truly reside—your consciousness, your identity, your memories, your moral character, your capacity for love, your ability to know God. The body is a wonderful gift, and it will be restored at the resurrection. But in the interim, the soul carries everything that makes you you. It carries your capacity for faith, for trust, for surrender. It carries your capacity for stubbornness, for rebellion, for self-deception. In short, the disembodied soul is not some ghostly fragment of a person. It is the person—stripped of the body's vehicle, yes, but retaining everything necessary for a genuine relationship with God.
This is why the physicalist view, which we critiqued in Chapter 8, is so devastating for postmortem hope. If there is no soul—if "you" are nothing more than a complex arrangement of physical matter—then when the body dies, you cease to exist. There is no "you" to encounter God. There is no intermediate state. There is nothing between death and resurrection but a void. And at the resurrection, what is raised is not the continuation of the person who died but a reconstruction—a replica, as it were, built from God's memory of the original. This raises severe problems for personal identity, as we discussed in Chapter 8. But for our purposes here, the point is simpler: physicalism eliminates the very possibility of postmortem cognition and decision-making. Only substance dualism preserves it.
The third line of evidence comes from near-death experience research, which we discussed in detail in Chapter 5. What makes this evidence especially relevant to our present question is a remarkable and consistent finding: people who have NDEs almost universally report that their cognitive function during the experience was clearer and more vivid than normal waking consciousness—not diminished.
NDE researchers have documented this finding extensively. Raymond Moody's pioneering work recorded experiencers describing thought processes that were faster, more comprehensive, and more lucid than anything they had experienced in life. Pim van Lommel's landmark prospective study of cardiac arrest patients in the Netherlands found that patients reported enhanced awareness, vivid perception, and unusually clear thinking during periods when their brains showed no measurable activity. Jeffrey Long's analysis of thousands of NDE accounts found that the vast majority of experiencers described their mental functioning during the NDE as "clearer than usual," with many using words like "crystal clear," "hyperreal," and "more real than real life."16
Bruce Greyson, one of the most respected NDE researchers in the field, has documented cases in which patients with significant cognitive impairment—including dementia—experienced fully lucid, coherent NDEs during cardiac arrest. This is especially significant because it suggests that the clarity of consciousness during NDEs is not dependent on brain function. If anything, the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction: the less brain activity, the more lucid the experience.17
As I argued in my Th.D. dissertation research, veridical NDEs—those in which patients accurately report information they could not have known through normal sensory means—provide empirical evidence that consciousness can function independently of the brain. If this is correct, then the soul's cognitive capacities are not merely preserved after death; they may actually be enhanced. The separation from the body does not fog the mind. It clears it. And a soul with clearer, more vivid cognitive function than it possessed in life is certainly capable of making the kind of informed, free decision that genuine repentance requires.18
Converging Evidence for Postmortem Decision-Making: (1) The Bible portrays the dead as reasoning, communicating, and exercising volition. (2) Substance dualism holds that mental capacities belong to the soul, not the brain, and survive bodily death. (3) NDE research shows that consciousness during out-of-body states is typically clearer than normal waking awareness. Together, these three lines of evidence strongly support the conclusion that the disembodied soul can make genuine moral decisions—including the decision to turn to God.
Perhaps the most common objection to the possibility of postmortem repentance is the claim that a person's moral character becomes permanently fixed at the moment of death. On this view, whatever direction a person was heading at the instant they died becomes their permanent orientation. The soul is locked into its trajectory. The unsaved cannot become saved, and (presumably) the saved cannot become unsaved. Death is an irrevocable moral boundary.
This objection deserves a careful and respectful response, because it has a long history in Christian thought and many godly theologians have held it. But I am convinced it does not withstand scrutiny. Let me explain why.
The first and most important point is this: Scripture nowhere explicitly teaches that moral character is fixed at the moment of death. Search the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single verse that says, "At the moment of death, a person's character becomes unchangeable" or "The soul loses its capacity for repentance when the body dies." This is a theological inference, not a biblical datum.19
The doctrine of character fixity at death was developed primarily by Augustine of Hippo in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Augustine was responding to the universalism of Origen and others, and he formulated the position that the soul's eternal destiny is sealed at death as part of his broader anti-universalist theology. His arguments were influential, and they shaped Western Christian thought for centuries. But the fact that a doctrine was formulated by an important theologian does not make it biblical. Augustine also formulated doctrines of predestination and original sin that many Christians, including many evangelicals, have questioned or modified. The question is not whether Augustine taught it, but whether Scripture teaches it.20
Proponents of character fixity sometimes appeal to Hebrews 9:27: "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (ESV). But as we demonstrate in detail in Chapter 18, this verse says nothing about character being fixed at death. It says that death is followed by judgment—which is precisely what we affirm. The question is what happens during that judgment, and whether the judgment itself can include an encounter with God that makes repentance possible. Hebrews 9:27 does not address this question one way or the other.
Another text sometimes cited is Luke 16:26, where Abraham tells the rich man that "a great chasm has been fixed" between the blessed and the damned in Hades. But as Beilby rightly observes, the most this passage shows is that during the intermediate state, the inhabitants of different regions of Hades cannot cross over to each other. It says nothing about whether the inhabitants can change their moral orientation. And it certainly says nothing about whether God Himself—who holds "the keys of death and Hades" (Rev. 1:18)—can bridge that chasm.21 Thomas Talbott makes the compelling point that even if we take the chasm literally, the story tells us nothing about how long it will remain in place. It is set before the final judgment, and the chasm may well be a feature of the pre-judgment intermediate state that is not permanent.22
Here is the philosophical heart of the matter. If the soul retains the capacity for cognition and volition in the intermediate state—and the biblical evidence clearly shows that it does—then it retains the capacity for change. You cannot have genuine cognition and genuine volition without the genuine possibility of choosing differently. To say that a person can think, reason, and exercise their will, but cannot change their mind about the most important question in the universe, is a contradiction.
Consider what it means to say that a soul is conscious and rational but incapable of change. This would mean that the rich man in Hades can reason clearly enough to formulate a plan for warning his brothers, but somehow lacks the ability to reconsider his own relationship with God. It would mean that the souls under the altar can cry out to God with emotional intensity, but could never experience the kind of broken-hearted turning that Scripture calls repentance. It would mean that Moses can discuss the redemptive significance of Jesus' death at the Transfiguration, but a soul in Hades could not comprehend that same gospel if it were presented to them. These are not merely unlikely claims. They are incoherent ones.23
The theologian Jerry Walls has argued persuasively that the intermediate state may involve a process of purgatorial purification or preparation—not as punishment for unforgiven sins, but as preparation for standing before a holy God. Beilby notes that this view has more in common with the Eastern Orthodox understanding of postmortem purification than with the medieval Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.24 If even the saved may continue to grow and be perfected in the intermediate state (as the author of Hebrews seems to suggest when he speaks of "the spirits of the righteous made perfect" in Hebrews 12:23), then we have all the more reason to think the unsaved can experience genuine moral and spiritual change there too.
A final consideration strengthens the case against character fixity. The doctrine of character fixity implicitly assumes that death is a moment of diminishment—a closing down of the person's capacities, a narrowing of their awareness, a kind of spiritual rigor mortis. But as we have seen, both Ladislaus Boros's philosophical analysis (which we will explore in depth in Chapter 10) and the NDE evidence from Chapter 5 point in the exact opposite direction.
Boros argued that the moment of death is not a moment of diminishment but of awakening—"the moment above all others for the awakening of consciousness, for freedom, for the encounter with God, for the final decision about one's eternal destiny." In death, Boros proposed, the soul is freed from the limitations of bodily existence and comes to full self-possession for the first time. It experiences what he called a "total self-encounter" in which it sees itself—and God—with unprecedented clarity.25
NDE research provides striking empirical support for Boros's philosophical hypothesis. As we noted above, NDErs consistently report enhanced cognition, expanded awareness, and a clarity of thought that far surpasses their normal experience. Many also report encountering a being of overwhelming love—an experience that is deeply consistent with the kind of divine encounter that could prompt genuine repentance. If death brings heightened awareness rather than diminished awareness, then the claim that character is "fixed" at death—as if the soul somehow freezes in its final earthly state—becomes even harder to maintain.26
Against Character Fixity: (1) No biblical text explicitly teaches that character is fixed at death. (2) The doctrine was developed by Augustine as a theological inference, not derived directly from Scripture. (3) The common proof-texts (Heb. 9:27, Luke 16:26) do not actually support the claim. (4) If the soul retains cognitive and volitional capacities after death, it logically retains the capacity for change. (5) Both Boros's philosophy and NDE evidence suggest that death heightens awareness rather than diminishing it.
A second objection is sometimes raised by those who accept that the soul survives death and may even be conscious, but who deny that disembodied repentance is possible. The argument goes something like this: repentance is a holistic act of the whole person—body and soul together. Since the disembodied soul lacks a body, it is an incomplete person and therefore cannot perform the complete act of repentance. On this view, true repentance requires tears, sighs, prostration, the physical acts of turning and kneeling—things a disembodied soul cannot do.
I understand the concern behind this objection. Christian theology has always affirmed the importance of the body, and the hope of bodily resurrection underscores the point that our ultimate destiny is not to be disembodied spirits but embodied persons in a renewed creation. The body matters. I want to affirm that wholeheartedly.
But the objection confuses the expression of repentance with the essence of repentance. What is repentance at its core? It is metanoia—a change of mind, a reorientation of the will, a turning of the heart toward God. These are fundamentally mental and volitional acts. They happen in the soul, not in the body. A paralyzed person who cannot kneel, who cannot weep visible tears, who cannot physically prostrate themselves before God—can that person repent? Of course they can. Repentance is an inner turning, not an outer physical performance. The body may express repentance through outward signs, but it does not constitute repentance.27
Jesus Himself located repentance in the heart, not the body. "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me" (Matt. 15:8, ESV). What God desires is a broken and contrite heart (Ps. 51:17)—and the heart, in biblical anthropology, is the seat of the will and the deepest self. It is precisely the kind of thing that belongs to the soul, not to the body. If anything, the disembodied soul may be in a better position for genuine repentance than the embodied person, because all the physical distractions, addictions, chemical imbalances, and neurological barriers that cloud our thinking in this life are stripped away. The soul stands naked before God—exposed, vulnerable, and for the first time truly free to choose without hindrance.
Boros made this point with particular force. He argued that the limitations of embodied existence—our instincts, our passions, our physical compulsions—actually prevent us from making a fully free decision during life. It is only in death, when these constraints are removed, that the soul can exercise its freedom in its fullness for the first time.28 Whether or not we agree with every detail of Boros's hypothesis, his fundamental insight here is important: the body can be a barrier to genuine freedom as much as it can be a vehicle for it. A disembodied soul is not a diminished soul. In some significant respects, it may be a liberated one.
Think about the addictions, compulsions, and neurological disorders that cloud human decision-making in this life. Think about the person raised in a cult, whose brain has been wired from childhood to fear and distrust the God of the Bible. Think about the person suffering from clinical depression, whose neurochemistry makes it almost impossible to experience hope or to believe that God loves them. Think about the person with severe trauma, whose body goes into fight-or-flight mode at the mere mention of religious authority. In all of these cases, the body is not helping the person make a free, clear-headed decision about God. It is hindering that decision. When the soul separates from the body at death, these neurological and physiological barriers fall away. The person can, for the first time, encounter God without the distortions imposed by a broken body in a broken world.
This does not mean the body is evil or unimportant. Far from it—the Christian hope is for bodily resurrection, and the body is good. But it does mean that the disembodied state is not the impoverished, diminished condition that some theologians have assumed. For many people, the intermediate state may represent the first moment in their existence when they can truly think clearly about God—unencumbered by addiction, trauma, mental illness, cultural conditioning, or simple ignorance. And a soul that can think clearly is a soul that can repent.
We have now established that the soul survives death in a conscious state, that it retains its cognitive and volitional capacities, and that there is no good biblical or philosophical reason to think those capacities are frozen at the moment of death. The question that naturally follows is this: What does God do with this? If the unsaved dead are conscious and capable of responding to Him, does God simply ignore them? Does He withdraw His love and His pursuit of the lost at the moment of physical death?
I believe the answer is clearly no—and this is where everything we have argued in this book comes together. In Chapter 2, we demonstrated that God's love is universal, relentless, and initiative-taking. He is the Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to seek the one lost sheep. He is the Father who runs to embrace the prodigal son. He is the God who declares, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezek. 33:11, ESV). In Chapter 3, we showed that Christ's atonement is universal in scope—He died for all people without exception. In Chapter 4, we examined God's universal salvific will and the devastating problem of the unevangelized.
Now consider the implications. If God loves all people and desires all to be saved; if Christ died for all; if billions of people have died without ever hearing the gospel through no fault of their own; and if those people are conscious and capable of responding to God in the intermediate state—then what kind of God would simply abandon them? What kind of Father, having pursued the lost relentlessly throughout their earthly lives, would suddenly cease His pursuit the instant their hearts stopped beating?
R. Zachary Manis, whose "divine presence model" of hell we will explore in depth in Chapters 23 and 23A, makes a fascinating observation that is directly relevant here. Manis suggests that the intermediate state between death and the Day of Judgment may be "a state of partial divine hiddenness, in which the soul-making process may continue—or even, in some cases, begin." He explicitly acknowledges that "various forms of inclusivism, including those that allow for the possibility of postmortem conversions up to the Day of Judgment" are compatible with his model.29 This is a remarkable concession from a philosopher who himself tends toward the traditional view of eternal conscious torment. Even Manis sees that a conscious intermediate state opens the door to continued spiritual development—and potentially to conversion.
Beilby similarly acknowledges that postmortem opportunity fits especially well with views that affirm a conscious intermediate state. He notes that C. S. Lewis may have had something like this in mind when he wrote: "Make no mistake, if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. . . . Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect."30 Lewis saw death not as the end of God's transforming work but as one more transition through which God's love accompanies us.
What I am proposing, then, is this: the intermediate state is not a warehouse. It is not a holding cell where souls sit passively until judgment day. It is the place—or rather, the state of being—in which God's love continues to pursue the unsaved dead with the same relentless grace He showed them during their earthly lives. The soul is conscious. The soul can reason and choose. God is present and active. And the gospel of Jesus Christ is not limited by the boundary of physical death.
I want to be clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying that everyone in the intermediate state will be saved. I am not saying that God forces anyone to accept Him. I am not saying that the intermediate state is some kind of guaranteed second chance that makes earthly evangelism unnecessary (we will address that objection directly in Chapter 26). What I am saying is that the intermediate state provides the context in which God's love can reach those whom it could not reach during their earthly lives—the unevangelized, the pseudoevangelized, the cognitively incapable, the deeply traumatized. God does not give up on these people. He pursues them with the same passionate, self-giving love that sent His Son to the cross. And the conscious intermediate state is the arena in which that pursuit continues.
This point is worth lingering over, because it addresses one of the deepest pastoral agonies that Christians face. Every believer who has lost an unsaved loved one knows the crushing weight of the traditional teaching that death permanently seals one's fate. The mother whose adult son died in a car accident without professing faith. The missionary who spent years building relationships in a remote village, only to learn that the village was destroyed by a natural disaster before the gospel could be clearly proclaimed. The child who grew up in an abusive religious environment and rejected Christianity—understandably—because all they ever saw was hypocrisy and cruelty. Are all of these people simply lost? Is there no hope for them at all?
I believe there is hope—real, biblical, theologically grounded hope. Not the vague hope of wishful thinking, but the hope that flows from the character of God Himself, from the universal scope of Christ's atonement, from the conscious survival of the soul, and from the loving persistence of a God who never stops seeking the lost. The intermediate state is the space in which that hope has room to breathe.
Let me briefly sketch how the conscious intermediate state fits into the broader timeline of postmortem opportunity that I am proposing in this book. This timeline will be developed more fully in later chapters (especially Chapters 10, 32, and 33), but it is important to see the big picture here.
I believe that God offers the unsaved a genuine encounter with Himself at multiple points after physical death:
First, during the dying process itself. As Boros argued (and as NDE research supports), the moment of death may be a moment of unprecedented spiritual clarity—a moment when the soul comes to full self-awareness and encounters God in a way it never could during life. This is the "final decision" hypothesis that we will explore in Chapter 10. For some, this first encounter may be sufficient. They may embrace God's love in the moment of death and be received into paradise.
Second, during the intermediate state. For those who do not accept God's love at the moment of death, the intermediate state provides an extended opportunity. The soul is in Hades—conscious, aware, capable of thought and choice. And God does not give up. He continues to draw the unsaved with His love, to reveal Himself to them, to give them every opportunity to respond. Time may function very differently in the spiritual realm than it does in the physical world—what may appear instantaneous from an earthly perspective could be experienced as months, years, or even longer by the disembodied soul. God is patient. He gives each person as much time and grace as is needed.31
Third, at the final judgment. The Great White Throne Judgment described in Revelation 20 is the last and most definitive encounter. Every person will stand before God in His full, unshielded glory. For those who have already accepted Christ—whether in life, at death, or during the intermediate state—this is a moment of joyful vindication. For those who have not yet responded, it is the final opportunity. As we will argue in Chapter 33, the final judgment is not merely a sentencing hearing. It is the climactic moment when every person sees God face to face and must render a final, irrevocable decision.
The conscious intermediate state is the crucial middle link in this chain. Without it, the timeline collapses. If the soul is unconscious between death and resurrection, then there is no ongoing encounter with God, no continued opportunity for repentance, no extended experience of divine love. There is only the moment of death (Boros) and the moment of final judgment. The intermediate state, understood as a conscious state in which the soul can encounter God and respond to Him, fills this gap and provides the sustained context within which God's relentless love can do its patient, transforming work.32
The Timeline of Postmortem Opportunity: (1) At or during the dying process—a Boros-type encounter of heightened spiritual awareness (Chapter 10). (2) During the intermediate state—conscious existence in Hades where God's love continues to pursue the unsaved (this chapter; expanded in Chapter 32). (3) At the final judgment—the climactic face-to-face encounter with God in His full glory (Chapter 33). At any point along this timeline, the unsaved person can respond to God in faith and be saved.
I want to close this chapter by returning to the pastoral heart of this question—because theology that does not touch real lives is not worth doing.
Think about the billions of human beings who have lived and died throughout history without ever hearing the name of Jesus. Think about the remote tribes who had no contact with Christianity for centuries. Think about the children who died before they could understand the gospel. Think about the mentally disabled who lacked the cognitive capacity to grasp the truths of salvation. Think about those who heard a distorted version of the gospel—a version so mangled by hypocrisy, cruelty, or theological error that it actually pushed them further from God rather than drawing them closer.
What happens to these people?
On the view I am defending, here is what happens: they die. Their souls separate from their bodies. They enter the intermediate state—conscious, aware, capable of thought and choice. And there, for the first time in their existence, they encounter the living God. Not a distorted caricature of God filtered through human failure. Not a distant, impersonal force. But God Himself—the God who is love (1 John 4:8), the God who desires all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), the God who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 33:11). They encounter Him personally, directly, and in a way they were never able to during their earthly lives.
And they are given a choice. Not a cold, mechanical, take-it-or-leave-it choice. A relational encounter. A face-to-face meeting with the One who made them, loves them, and gave His Son for them. An encounter suffused with grace, saturated with love, and conducted with infinite patience. God gives them as much time and understanding as they need. He does not rush them. He does not force them. He draws them with cords of love, as Hosea 11:4 says—and He does not cut those cords at the moment of death.
Some will say yes. They will embrace the God they never had the chance to know in life, and they will be welcomed into His family with the same joy the Father showed when the prodigal son came home. Others—tragically—may say no. Even in the full light of God's love, some may turn away. We know this is possible because the demons "believe and shudder" but do not repent (James 2:19). Full knowledge of God does not guarantee acceptance. But the point is that every person will have the opportunity. No one will be condemned for never having heard. No one will be destroyed for lack of access to the gospel. God is more loving, more persistent, more creative, and more determined than that.
And the conscious intermediate state is what makes all of this possible. Without it, the unevangelized dead have no hope between death and resurrection. With it, they have exactly what God's character would lead us to expect—an ongoing encounter with a God who never stops seeking the lost.
In this chapter, we have argued that the intermediate state is a conscious state in which the soul retains its full capacities for thought, emotion, communication, and moral decision-making. The biblical evidence for this is compelling: the rich man in Hades reasons, remembers, and shows moral concern; the souls under the altar are aware of earthly events and communicate with God; Moses at the Transfiguration discusses theological realities centuries after his death; Samuel at Endor is cognitively sharp and well-informed. The philosophical case, grounded in substance dualism, tells us that the soul's mental capacities do not depend on the body for their existence. And the NDE evidence suggests that consciousness after bodily death is not diminished but enhanced.
We have also answered the two major objections to postmortem decision-making. The claim that "character is fixed at death" is not a biblical teaching but a theological inference developed by Augustine and unsupported by any explicit scriptural text. And the claim that "repentance requires the body" confuses the outward expression of repentance with its inner essence, which is a change of mind and will—capacities that belong to the soul.
The implications are profound. If the soul is conscious, capable, and free in the intermediate state—and if God is the relentlessly loving, never-giving-up God that Scripture reveals Him to be—then the intermediate state is not a place of hopeless waiting. It is the very arena in which God's love continues its patient, persistent pursuit of the lost. And that changes everything.
In the next chapter, we will examine Ladislaus Boros's "final decision" hypothesis—the remarkable proposal that the moment of death itself is the supreme moment of spiritual awakening and the occasion of a fully conscious, fully informed encounter with God. Boros takes us into the heart of the mystery of death and shows us that, far from being the end of opportunity, death may be its most decisive beginning.
1 James K. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), 52. ↩
2 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 52. ↩
3 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 53. Beilby notes that "the theory of Postmortem Opportunity is compatible with any of these understandings of personal eschatology" but fits especially well with views that affirm a conscious intermediate state. ↩
4 The cognitive activities displayed by the rich man have been widely noted by commentators. See, e.g., Robert H. Stein, Luke, New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman, 1992), 421–25; Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51–24:53, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 1361–77. ↩
5 Stephen Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave: Is Salvation Possible in the Afterlife? A Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Evaluation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), chap. 5, "Biblical Passages Used to Oppose Posthumous Salvation," under "Luke 16:19–31." Jonathan notes that Geldenhuys rightly asserts that Jesus "related this parable not in order to satisfy our curiosity about life after death but to emphasize vividly the tremendous seriousness of life on this side of the grave." ↩
6 Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), chap. 5, "Three Pictures of Divine Judgment." Talbott argues that the parable has a clear moral point that has nothing to do with final judgment or the ultimate fate of the wicked. ↩
7 David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: An Alternative to the Traditional View of Divine Judgment, 2nd ed. (2016), chap. 7, "Answering Objections," under "Luke 16:26." Burnfield observes that the rich man's concern for his brothers shows a positive moral change produced by his suffering—he is thinking of others instead of himself. ↩
8 G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 390–95; Grant R. Osborne, Revelation, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 285–89. ↩
9 Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 378–82; I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 381–86. ↩
10 For the view that this was genuinely Samuel, see Ralph W. Klein, 1 Samuel, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word, 1983), 271–73; Robert Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), 262–65. For the alternative view, see Bill T. Arnold, 1 & 2 Samuel, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 343–48. ↩
11 The Greek word metanoia (μετάνοια) is composed of meta (after, change) and nous (mind), literally meaning "a change of mind." See Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. "μετάνοια." ↩
12 J. P. Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters (Chicago: Moody, 2014), 129–54. Moreland argues that mental properties are "owned" by the soul, not by the brain, and that the brain functions as an instrument through which the soul interacts with the physical world. ↩
13 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 89, a. 1–8. Aquinas held that the separated soul knows itself directly (per se) and can receive knowledge from higher spiritual substances, though it lacks the sensory data that the body ordinarily provides. See also Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 191–216. ↩
14 Moreland, The Soul, 155–77; J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body & Soul: Human Nature & the Crisis in Ethics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 199–228. ↩
15 Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 145–99; Richard Swinburne, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 141–71. ↩
16 Raymond A. Moody Jr., Life After Life, rev. ed. (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 50–73; Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 18–40, 140–64; Jeffrey Long with Paul Perry, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 41–62. ↩
17 Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (New York: St. Martin's, 2021), 79–98. Greyson reports cases of patients with dementia or severe brain injury who had highly lucid NDEs, suggesting that cognitive clarity during NDEs is inversely correlated with brain function. ↩
18 For the full treatment of veridical NDEs and their implications for substance dualism, see Chapter 5 of this volume. On cases of the congenitally blind "seeing" during NDEs, see Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper, Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind (Palo Alto, CA: William James Center for Consciousness Studies, 1999), 73–120. ↩
19 William V. Crockett, ed., Four Views on Hell, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 19–22. Crockett notes the variety of views on whether destiny is fixed at death and observes that the Bible is less explicit on this point than many assume. ↩
20 William Harrison, Is Salvation Possible After Death?, chap. 8, "Augustine and the Development of the Traditional View." Harrison traces Augustine's influence on Western eschatology and notes how his anti-universalist polemics shaped the doctrine of character fixity at death. Harrison also observes that Augustine's limited knowledge of Greek may have contributed to his misreading of key eschatological texts. ↩
21 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 112–13. Beilby argues that even if Luke 16 is taken to describe the intermediate state, the statement about the chasm "most plausibly only applies to the intermediate state and the inability of persons to move from Hades to paradise." It says nothing about whether God can bridge that chasm. ↩
22 Talbott, Inescapable Love of God, chap. 5, "Three Pictures of Divine Judgment." Talbott argues that "not one word in the story implies that this great chasm will remain in place or remain unbridged forever." Robin Parry (Gregory MacDonald), The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012), chap. 3, "A Universalist Reading of the Synoptics," makes the similar point that the parable describes an intermediate state, and the chasm "may be fixed up to the Day of Judgment but not necessarily afterwards." ↩
23 This argument draws on the broader philosophical literature on the relationship between rationality and freedom. If a being is genuinely rational and possesses libertarian free will, it necessarily possesses the capacity to choose otherwise than it has chosen in the past. See Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 32–58. ↩
24 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 53–54. Beilby cites Jerry Walls's argument for purgatorial purification and notes C. S. Lewis's famous statement about God's determination to make us perfect "whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death." ↩
25 Ladislaus Boros, The Mystery of Death (New York: Herder & Herder, 1965), chap. 8, "Revised Definition of the Whole Concept of the Process of Death." Boros describes death as "the moment above all others for the awakening of consciousness, for freedom, for the encounter with God." His concept of "ontological indigence"—the soul's state of total exposure and self-encounter when the body falls away—is central to his argument. ↩
26 The convergence between Boros's philosophical hypothesis and the empirical findings of NDE research is one of the most striking features of this entire investigation. Boros, writing in 1959—years before modern NDE research began—predicted on philosophical grounds exactly what researchers would later document empirically: that the moment of death brings heightened, not diminished, consciousness. See the extended discussion in Chapter 5. ↩
27 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 3.3.5. Even Calvin, no friend of postmortem salvation, defined repentance primarily in terms of the soul's orientation toward God rather than outward bodily acts. ↩
28 Boros, Mystery of Death, chap. 7, "Accomplishment and Perfection of the Kenotic Actualization of Existence." Boros argues that during earthly life, "the conscious activity of the will remains far behind" the soul's deeper orientation, and that only in death can the two come into alignment for a fully free decision. ↩
29 R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 334. Manis suggests that the damned in the intermediate state may experience an "ever-increasing divine disclosure" leading up to the Day of Judgment, and acknowledges that the divine presence model is compatible with "various forms of inclusivism, including those that allow for the possibility of postmortem conversions up to the Day of Judgment." ↩
30 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 202–3. Quoted in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 53–54. ↩
31 The question of how time functions in the intermediate state is complex. Some theologians have suggested that the disembodied soul may experience time very differently from embodied persons—perhaps more intensely, perhaps with a different relationship between subjective experience and objective chronological time. See Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God Without Time, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 187–211; William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 120–44. ↩
32 For a more detailed discussion of the timeline of postmortem opportunity—including the intermediate state's role within it—see Chapter 32, "The Intermediate State, Hades, and the Timeline of Postmortem Opportunity." ↩
33 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 172. Beilby traces the shift in early Christian thought from the older view that "the wicked are not immediately punished after death, but held in detention awaiting punishment at the last judgment" to the later view that punishment begins already after death. On the earlier and more original view, the dead in Hades are conscious but awaiting the final judgment. See also John Feinberg's observation, cited by Beilby, that "the notion of an underworld [was] very firmly intrenched" in the centuries surrounding the time of Christ. ↩
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