Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 169:675 (Jul 2012)
Article: The Believer’s Intermediate State After Death
Author: Larry J. Waters

BSac 169:675 (July-September 2012) p. 283

The Believer’s Intermediate State After Death

Larry J. Waters

Larry J. Waters is Associate Professor of Bible Exposition, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

“Life after death, for many Christians, means existing only in the memory of their families and of God. Scientific, philosophical, and theological skepticism has nullified the modern heaven and replaced it with teachings that are minimalist, meager, and dry.”1 Is this true? When a Christian dies, is he then in an unconscious state awaiting the resurrection? Or does he have a conscious existence living in heaven in an intermediate state between death and the resurrection?

Some scholars have recently resurrected the concept of materialism, now labeled the materialist view. It assumes that each deceased person is in an unconscious, even nonexistent, state between death and the resurrection.2 The materialist also denies a division of the soul/spirit and the body. For example Howard states, “In terms of biblical psychology, man does not have a ‘soul,’ he is one. He is a living and vital whole.” The parts, he adds, “have no independent existence.”3 Green writes that “death must be understood

BSac 169:675 (July-September 2012) p. 284

not only in biological terms, as merely the cessation of one’s body, but as the conclusion of embodied life, the severance of all relationships, and the fading of personal narrative. It means that, at death, the person really dies. . . . There is no part of us, no aspect of our personhood, that survives death.”4 At death one’s body and soul/spirit cease to exist until the resurrection.

However, as Lewis states, “Throughout the centuries Christians have believed that each human person consists in a soul and body; that the soul survived the death of the body; and that its future life will be immortal.”5 Ryrie concludes, “For the believer the state after death is one of conscious bliss while awaiting the resurrection . . . . It could not be otherwise, for the believer at death is ushered into the presence of God immediately.”6

Defining Terms

The Intermediate State

The intermediate state refers to the existence of a believer between death and the resurrection. It is “the manner of existence of the

BSac 169:675 (July-September 2...