Does the Body Keep the Score After the Game Is Over? Personal Identity and Perfection in the Resurrected Body

Abstract

In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk gives language to what has become a cross-disciplinary consensus—that our bodies and minds are profoundly, often surprisingly, involved with one another, and that traumatic events often mark people for life. In this article, I ask after the implications of this contemporary consensus for the resurrected body, in light of traditional claims about the body's perfection and persistence of identity in the resurrection. I widen the focus to include various ways in which the body might keep the score. In addition to trauma, I consider martyrdom, disfigurement, and disability. Whatever else it may mean, bodily resurrection must entail the completion of one's earthly life. In light of this, while there will be no debilitating signs of sin and death, it seems reasonable to suppose there may be salutary and doxologically oriented reminders of sin and death in the resurrected body.