I'll tell you right off the bat that I believe that the Apostolic teaching on the matter is that when a person dies, they rest in the earth until the return of Christ and the resurrection.
@Joshua It seems to me from the Scriptures that the eternal abode of the elect is not a place that can be experienced by the dead but by the living. In the same way the second death can only be experienced by those who have been resurrected.
Since the first resurrection has not yet occurred, and the old heavens and earth have not yet passed away, the new heavens and earth and the eternal dwelling of the righteous cannot yet be. Then those who have fallen asleep await the return of Messiah, just as we the living do. This is what has been passed down to us.
If you would like, I think it would be beneficial to herein lay bare and examine those passages which are used by those parties that detract from or hold to this teaching.
@Andrew I basically agree. Also, I think people miss the implication of Christ's resurrection on our own. He had a physical body and did not ascend to heaven until later.
@Joshua I've always joked to myself that he will arrive at the Jerusalem airport on an unknown flight. You know, riding on the clouds.
@Joshua I agree. I was always taught in church that when you die, you go to heaven or hell. It seems to be the primary soteriological statement in the church today. When I began rationally and carefully reading and studying on my own in my early twenties, I noticed the incongruence.
I remember speaking to a young pastor i was involved with doing campus ministry about resting in the earth until the resurrection, he had never considered it, and his response was basically that I had better not speak about anything of the sort to the students because it was heretical. A few days later he came to me and apologized after doing some research. He said he didn't realize how many passages in the scriptures actually support that teaching.
When I say young, I mean a new pastor- we're about the same age.
Yes, it is quite frustrating to listen to someone who is quite knowledgeable and intelligent get to the topics of the constitution of man, death, "heaven" and resurrection and hear them twist and turn and equivocate and rationalize.
@Andrew I was listening to an entire walk through systematic theology by Wayne Grudem, and each time he started to touch on such things it was like he almost caught himself in it, toes over the edge, but would always quickly move in a different direction. The logical and linguistic inconsistencies are boggling.
To be honest, I'm not sure I full agree with soul sleep OR the..."location" of the intermediate state (IS). But I do think it is less than fully conscious and it is not heaven, or at least not a heaven that is for us. Our immaterial nature may welll "be with Christ" as it awaits the resurrection. But neither Luther's soul sleep nor Calvin's opposed view saw this as a glorified existence.
@Joshua I don't mean the question to be combative, though I know it may come off that way- If I say, "When I am at home in the body, I am absent from the Lord," that in no way implies that "When I am at absent from the body, I am at home in the Lord."
I will be trying to answer it to be sure. I believe the answer is somewhere along the lines of: Until the final line, there are only two options given: 1) Mortal clothing/body or 2) Heavenly/Spiritual clothing/body. So when we get to the "absent from the Lord" part that is the mortal body. Logically the next part "present with the Lord" is in the spiritual body. So this shouldn't be a debate about IS, but about resurrection.
@Andrew Which is why I'd almost like it to be on BHSE so I can just write it up :P but I will need to find my sources in the attic for a Christianity SE answer, to back it up as an established interpretation
@Andrew They both came out of the same Adventist movement at the turn of the 20th century (later 1800s, early 1900s) it was reactionary against the prevalent post-millenialism of the time. The World Wars kind of rooted post-millennialism out and then we got dispensational pre-millennialism. yay...
@Andrew Born of Spirit and water I think speaks to our regeneration. But in the context of Paul, the spiritual body is our future body like that of Christ now, post resurrection. I don't even think those who believe in going straight to heaven would disagree. I know for a fact Grudem at least would agree.
It is a body, spiritual is its description of its quality, not of its substance (its not ethereal)
That which is perishable will be raised, imperishable, and so on.
@Joshua Yes, I don't spiritual things are physically substantial, which is why abhor the term "co-substantial"
@Joshua To me, the redemptive narrative is telescopic, or self-similar- yes, there is a death and second life of the body, but this is symmetric to a death and second life of the person in the process of conversion.
@Joshua And so I think people like Lee are right about the spiritual aspect of things, in a way, but that they will see the Living One in his Glory with imperishable and corporeal eyes and shrink in terror or erupt in praise
Intermediate State
Intermediate State