What kind of body will the damned have?
Will they be raised with glorious incorruptible bodies like our risen king’s?
Will they be raised with another perishable body?
It is frustrating enough that we know so little of the future fate of the redeemed, but the future fate of the damned is even more obscure.
Given that none but God is immortal and he is the creator and sustainer of all things, whatever form the dead have will be sustained by God. Given that there is no division between body and soul in man it is not enough to say that the redeemed will be given glorious incorruptible bodies and the dead won’t.
If one holds that the dead will exist conscious yet without bodies until the resurrection will the damned just stay as disembodied spirits capable of suffering? Revelation, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and other teachings on hell don’t paint a picture of ghosts suffering, but physical pain.
And per Luke 12.47-48 suffering will be proportional to knowledge of God’s expectations and degree of violations. Is this a difference in duration of punishment (fewer blows as Jesus says) or intensity of punishment (equal number of but less forceful blows)? And what about John’s apocalyptic imagery which seems to lump all the damned together?
If eternal death is in fact eternal dying and the dead will live forever (just a horrific eternal life) then how will there be a difference in punishment? Will those who could not have converted receive a rational infinity set of blows and those who rejected the gospel receive a real infinity set of blows?1 Or is eternal death actually death without end preceded by proportional punishment-and not painfully dying without end2-as proposed by annihilationists?