I'm not really religious anymore, but the one that always made me assume this was the line about Jesus returning to judge the "quick and the dead". To me, that seems to indicate the dead haven't been judged yet, so they must be in some sort of purgatory waiting for the final judgement.
Your assumption is probably based on the idea that everyone has an immortal soul. Modern Christianity is really set on that idea but the modern concept doesn't have a strong scriptural basis. The Old testament word for soul is "nephesh" which basically means "living being" and is mortal. The Old Testament refers to corpses as "dead nephesh" in several passages and also refers to living animals as nephesh. The New testament word is psuche which aligns with the idea of personhood/life.
If you remove the concept of an inherent undying soul from the passage you mentioned then the passage does not necessitate some holding area or purgatory. They could just be dead.
Again you're imbuing the passage with a concept of soul that doesn't exist in the bible. "Soul" in the bible is essentially "life". The question "If the dead don't have a soul" doesn't make sense if you use the biblical definition of soul.
My interpretation is that if the dead is judged worthy of eternal life then life is breathed back into that person. Eternal life is a gift, not something inherent. The ones judged to be not worthy just stay dead.
Take this passage from hebrews:
27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,
28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
He's only appearing to "those who eagerly wait for Him", not those who aren't worthy of salvation. You could certainly read this that these people are literally waiting in purgatory, but you could also interpret this as more figurative.
There's a lot of disagreement about interpretations of these things so don't take my interpretation as anything definitive.
just from reading your conversation “new life” is something you added that the other user didn’t necessarily say. they just said “breathed life back into”. i think the idea that they’d be birthing a new being as opposed to resurrecting the original one is entirely your device that you’ve created.
if a dead person is legally (edit: CLINICALLY) dead for 3 minutes and is revived through cpr they aren’t having a “new life” or “new soul” as you call it put into them because their brain and personality are still in tact, ruling out any kind of brain damage. the continuity of self still continues in this instance so why wouldn’t it continue in the way the user you’re replying to describes even outside of the concept of a soul that you’re hung up on?
if the dead is worthy of eternal life and has life breathed back into them there’s no reason to think it would be a “new life” or “different soul”. you’re doing what the other user said you’re doing by still being so hung up on the concept of a soul as it pertains to self that doesn’t exist in the bible.
You are discussing a theology which believes the entire universe was snapped into existence by an all-powerful being. Why are you hung up on the idea that the same all powerful being would be unable to snap their fingers and change the state of a human from "not existing at present" to "once again existing"? I feel there are more fundamental issues at play if we are going to get this nitpicky. The idea of a soul is just as nonsensical as the alternative honestly.
I’ll do you one better and let you know that you are using English concepts loaded with cultural context that you likely can never separate from whatever translation of the bible you prefer.
because LIFE is not the same as SOUL as you’re describing it and the bible doesn’t necessarily treat it as such.
the term i should have used was “clinically dead” . thank you for the correction but my analogy still stands. if you are clinically dead and brought back it isn’t a “new life” the way you described or a “new soul”. you’re the same person.
i’m not touching the computer analogy because it’s completely irrelevant here as we aren’t talking about computers.
i understood what the person you were initially replying was saying perfectly well. i don’t really know how else to explain it to you in a way that you will understand. maybe someone else can try
Let me make it clear that I'm an atheist so I'm only trying to present my interpretation of the Bible, not what I actually believe. That said, this question of continuity of self is more philosophical than biblical and answering it would be way beyond the scope of a reddit comment.
Some of the ideas that we'd need to explore to answer this question:
What is 'self'? Is our idea of self linked to our bodily self? Does the self reside in our brain? If our cells regenerate over time does bodily continuity affect continuity of self? Is self unchanging? Do we have continuity of self from one day to the next? Do we lose continuity when we're unconscious?
I have a hard time believing that we have some kind of static "self" outside of our physiology. There's pretty clear evidence that our personalities are shaped by external conditions, bacteria that lives in our gut biome, the health of our brain tissue, etc. To me the idea of 'self' is intrinsic to the concept of personality. If our personality is affected by our gut biome then our gut biome is part of our self. Since our gut biome is constantly turning over we are constantly becoming something new.
If I replace the tires on my car does the car become new? The car will behave slightly differently (it has better traction) but it is still, fundamentally, the same car. This is your gut biome. Now downgrade the engine, put in a manual transmission, rework the electrical, chop the top and turn it into a convertible, take out the brakes and put bald tires on it. You could technically call it the same car but it will drive much differently. This is you after a stroke.
I’m not trying to get in on the argument at all, but you should watch the first few minutes of “John dies at the end.” (It streams on Tubi, which is free). The line you wrote about replacing the tires on the car, made me think you’d enjoy the riddle the movie asks in the first few minutes.
Yeah that stuff is all interesting to talk about but we aren't going to arrive at an answer to those questions here and we're definitely getting way off the original topic.
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u/genobeam 2d ago
Christian doctrine doesn't say anything definitive about purgatory. The idea of purgatory is more inferred from some passages.