Abstract

This work is about what the Christian believer may expect in the afterlife. The reader is invited to consider the reasonableness of a new theological construct of the resurrected body and its implications. The author advances and argues cogently that the believer shall assume a twin-mode resurrected body capable of both transformed, glorified, Spirit-ruled, physical manifestations incorporating personal identity and continuity, operative in spatiotemporal dimensions of Heaven and alternative transphysical expressions in ultradimensional reality of glory and splendor. The arguments are supported by exegetical studies of the Biblical account of Christ's resurrection body as our prototype. The thesis is also grounded in the imago Dei and Christian anthropology. ;The author stresses the important distinction between Jesus' twin-mode resurrection body and that of the believer on the basis of ontological Creatorhood versus human creatureliness. The difference is that the dominant mode of Christ's post-resurrection body is transphysical with a subsidiary, adaptational mode for corporeal, human-temporospatial reality; whereas the dominant mode of the believer's resurrected body is glorified-transformed-physical with an alternative mode of transphysical expressions for transcending time, space, and other human limitations. ;In this treatise, it is argued that our existential longing for perfection, our human search for happiness and ultimate fulfillment, and humanity's eternal quest for the good and the right, all point to a resurrected body capable of twin-mode expressions. In addition to Biblical evidences and Christian anthropology, the author draws from philosophical insights and current scientific knowledge in his arguments. Included in the discussion is also a study of Christian ethics with its conceptual linkage with, relevance to, and practical implications for the believer's resurrected body. The entire discussion is conducted within the parameters of five presuppositions. ;In conclusion, the author expresses the hope that a new contribution to theological thought will have been made regarding the resurrected body. He invites the reader to join him in promoting further exploration of that foundational Christian hope and affirmation climaxing in the resurrected body. It is the author's fondest expectation that the discussion might prove to be a corrective for the modern-day de-emphasis or denial, even in many theological enclaves, of Jesus' bodily resurrection and its implication for the Christian believers