lously raise our bodies and reunite them with our souls.What is it, then, that guarantees personal identity in the resurrection? What is it that ensures that it will really be us in the kingdom of Sod and not, say, clever replicas of us ? Aquinas argues as follows: since human beings consist of bodies and souls, and since both souls and the matter of which our bodies consist survive death, personal identity is secured when God collects the scattered matter, miraculously reconstitutes it a human body, and reunites it with the soul. 15 And this surely seems a powerful argument. If God one day succeeds in doing these very things, personal identity will be secure. It will be us and not our replicas who will be the denizens of the kingdom of God.The third main claim of temporary disembodiment is that in the resurrection the old body will be transformed info a "glorified body " with certain quite new properties. This claim is based primarily on Paul's discuss ion of the resurrection in I Corinthians 15, and secondarily on the unusual properties the risen Jesus is depicted as having in some of the accounts of the resurrection appearances (e.g., the apparent ability of the risen Jesus in John 20 to appear in A r oom despite the doors being locked). In the Pauline test just mentioned, the Apostle notes that some ask, "E[o~~r are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" Fir, answer is an argument to the effect that the new "glorified" or "spiritual " body (sofa pneumatikon) is a transformation of the old body rather than a de novo creation (much as a stalk of grain is a transformation of a seed of grain, i.e., it exists because of changes that have occurred in the seed and can be considered a new stat e of the grain). Further. Paul argues, while the old or natural body is physical, perishable, mortal, and sown in weakness and dishonor, the glorified body is spiritual, imperishable, immortal, and sown in strength and honor. The first body is in the imag e of the man of dust; the second body is in the image of the man of heaven.The term "spiritual body " might be misleading; it should not be taken as a denial of corporeality or as a last-minute capitulation to some version of the immortality of the soul as opposed to bodily resurrection. By this term, Paul means not a body whose stuff or matter is spiritual (whatever that might mean) or an immaterial existence of some sort; rather he means a body that is fully obedient to and dominated by the Holy spirit. Paul cays: " Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of Sod " (I Cor. 15, 50). What enters the kingdom of heaven, then, is not this present weak and mortal body of flesh and blood but the new glorified body. This new body is a physical body (Paul's use of the word soma implies as much), l' and is materially related to the old body (taking seriously Paul's simile of the seed), but is a body transformed in such ways as make it fit to live in God's presence. If by the term "physical object" we mean an entity that has spatio temporal locatio n and is capable of being empirically measured, tested, or observed in some sense, then my argument is that the new body of which Paul speaks is a physical object.Temporary disembodiment, then, entails that human souls can animate both normal earthly bodies and glorified resurrection bodies. Continuity between the two bodies is provided by the presence of both the same soul an d the same matter in both bodies. Thus Augustine says: " Nor does the earthly material out of which men's mortal bodies are created ever perish; but though it may crumble into dust and ashes, or be dissolved into vapors and exhalations, though it may be t ransformed into the substance of other bodies, or dispersed into the elements, though it should become food for beasts or men, and be changed into their flesh, it returns in a moment of time to that human soul which animated it at the first and which caus ed it to become man, and to live and grow." " The matter of

Some topics in this essay:
Gretchen Weirob, Aquinas Fathers, Augustine AquinasIt, II Cor, Jones Jones, Survival Idea, God God, Sod' Furthermore, Augustine Nor, St Paul, personal identity, temporary disembodiment, survival death, purported jones, disembodied existence, qualitatively identical, op cit, memory criterion, survive death, body soul, multiple qualitatively identical, qualitatively identical persons, material bodies immaterial, souls survive death, bodies immaterial souls,