Not a bad analogy, I’d say. Instead of talking about a I-Thou/I-It or horizontal/vertical relationships, maybe we could talk about client-server/peer-to-peer relationships.
Sometimes, as in Wisdom of Solomon 3 or Revelation 6, to speak of the ‘soul’ can be a useful way of talking about personal continuity despite bodily dis-continuity. But there are other ways of making that point. I remember hearing the great Cambridge physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne offering a contemporary way of saying what needs to be said: God will download our software on to his hardware, until the day comes when he gives us new hardware on which to run our own software once more. I’m comfortable with this image. It leaves vague what the New Testament leaves vague, the question of what precisely ‘is’ between bodily death and bodily resurrection.
Bishop N.T. Wright For All the Saints?: Remembering the Christian Departed. New York: Morehouse, 2004. p.72.
Of course, this idea has been sketched out in science fiction enough already. It was even parodied in Space Quest IV as a plot point. However, it’s good to see a theologian taking note of a science fiction and computing concept and explaining as solemn a point as the resurrection with it.
