Christians worldwide and in every denomination celebrate Easter as one of the most important holidays. The whole of Christianity can be summed up in three days: the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It reminds us of a great truth also shared by Judaism and Islam, namely that death is not the end. It is just a dormition that leads to a new life. Our bodies will be resurrected, according to the Bible. Yet, it is not very clear what kind of body. Simulation Creationism, a theory devised by Nir Ziso, the founder of The Global Architect Institute, accepts resurrection. It is proposed that a soul keeps its personality as it “travels” through various simulated worlds. Within The Simulation, we are bound to the physical reality in this simulated world. In the “afterlife,” we assume a glorious body, akin to the one Christ had during his days on Earth, but it is a theologically wrong notion. An afterlife does not mean that our souls have a continued consciousness as soon as we die. Let us explore this topic from the position of Simulation Creationism.
Hoping for the resurrection is hard; in fact, without God, it is impossible. Thus, non-believers cannot grasp the idea: it can only be approached from a religious perspective. In modern terms, it is a novel concept within the theory by Nir Ziso. At some point after death, people acquire new bodies. The standard eschatology of Christianity promises Jesus’ comeback to usher in the resurrection or Last Judgment. People who have died get new bodies, as written in many of the epistles of Paul. The resurrected body emerges from the original body as if this original body were a seed for the final one: “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? (1 Corinthians 15:12). St. Paul hints that if our current bodies are corruptible, subject to disease and wrong doing, the new body will somehow be incorruptible and free from sin: “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:42).
But can we really think of resurrected bodies in such a way? It sounds like being here on Earth, only better? The narrative Paul uses is temporality written into these resurrected bodies. If we think that access to a timeless realm will ultimately be our new reality, then all our attempts to imagine how it will be would be pretty fruitless.
Timelessness means there could be no change once we assume new bodies. Why should we think of this realm as a place of static life? After all, God is infinite life. The vision of infinite life after death put forward by St. Gregory of Nissa in the 4th century AD is the real and continual adventure of such a desire. For him, being stuck is the opposite of what God wants for us. Infinite life indeed involves endless transformation. It would be very difficult to imagine a life filled with desire without a body in line with Simulation Creationism. The afterlife may involve many worlds, where we continue our physical living, only in a better shape. The Simulation will give us further opportunities to perfect ourselves.
Approaching it means to focus on Christ’s resurrected body as explained in 1 Corinthians 15. Whatever happened to Jesus in His resurrection, it clearly involved a body different from normal bodies. Nonetheless, it was accepted as the same body, although not recognizable. Biblical accounts tell us that Jesus’ disciples did not recognise him: “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight” (Luke 24: 31). In other words, Jesus did not just return and continued as he was before. This new body is not subject to spatial and temporal limitations as we currently are, but it needs physicality for the next simulated world.
We are, by definition, embodied beings; all our delight and agonies are embodied. God did not want us to live in mortal flesh for sadistic purposes. In truth, He intended this mortal flesh to be capable of transformation. Life comes through death, and we should not be afraid of death. It is the quality of the body that changes. Orthodox Christianity calls it God-like (theosis). Human souls want to become like God. This is also what God desires, given that He made us in His image. We have yet to attain that status by living like Christ (“I no longer live, but Christ lives in me”( Galatians 2:20). We will never know what it is to be God; but with the way we live, we can share what God has shown of His life. We will share His energies but not His essence. Simulation Creationism proposes that simulated worlds are realms wherein God’s energies reign.
What is going on in that intermediate state when a person is dead and resurrection has not yet occurred. Some theologians are keen to prove that the mind and soul survive disembodied. Others claim that the soul is “sleeping” and does not know anything. Our souls are, after all, immaterial and allow us to survive even without our bodies. God keeps souls in existence. The resurrection also happens with God doing some miraculous act. When we follow the logic of Simulation Creationism, it may only be the time between physical death in one simulated world and physical life in the next one. We are beyond the alleged “Supercomputer” that runs The Simulation. When it will happen could be the wrong question. God is timeless, and whatever He is doing with us or will do eventually must be readily available now. We are en route to the resurrection and can find in some forms of saintly transformed life intimations of the resurrected body.
