Divine Bodies
By Candida Moss
Yale, 195pp, £35/$45
Most Christians would agree that heaven is a place that can’t be conceptualised from our feeble earthly perspective. But it has always been tempting to make the imaginative leap and the issue of bodily resurrection has been a tricky topic. Many thinkers have assumed that some continuity of identity will prevail on the other side and, here in the vale of tears, what we look like is crucial to our sense of “me-ness”.
As Candida Moss explains in her excellent new book, this raises many puzzling questions. Suppose you lost an arm and now have a prosthetic replacement. Which version will turn up in heaven? Will bodily attributes that denote gender or ethnicity make it through the pearly gates? Will you be in your youthful prime or as you were at the moment of death?
