immortality

immortality
   Immortality is the property of not being subject to death. Traditionally, Christian philosophers have not hesitated to attribute this property to God. Nevertheless, there is a problem with so doing: Christians believe that Jesus was divine and was yet subject to death. One can claim that he gave up his immortality, or that he was immortal in his divine nature but not in his human nature, but perhaps the most satisfactory answer is to say that God cannot die in the sense of 'go out of existence altogether', but that God can die in the sense of 'take a body to himself only for that body to stop functioning at some later time'. Immortality, in a certain sense, has also been attributed to humans. Christian philosophers have not, of course, thought that humans would never die, but have insisted that there is life after the death of the body and that humans (or those in Heaven, at least) will never go out of existence. One task here for Christian philosophers is to respond to Bernard Williams's objection that such a life would be boring.
   See incarnation
   Further reading: Penelhum 1970 and 1973; Williams, Bernard A. O. 1973

Christian Philosophy . . 2015.

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