Abstract

The concept of the resurrection of the body (or of the dead) is most easily explained by laying out the ways in which it differs from the most important competing picture of the survival of death, the Platonic picture. It can be plausibly argued that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead presupposes some form of dualism. The resurrection life, as the post‐resurrection stories of Jesus show, is a physical life, the life of an organism. A belief in a general resurrection of the dead is one of many Judeo‐Christian elements that have been incorporated into Islam. Some who accept the doctrine of resurrection deny the existence of a separable, immaterial soul. Those human beings who refuse salvation will, after the general resurrection, be thrust into a condition that the New Testament describes by a mixture of three images: exclusion, pain, and refuse.