Like @Garver, I agree that there is both a biblical and philosophical dimension that is not entirely satisfied. I think it can be if explored. The shift from the categories and vocabulary of an ancient world to that of our quickly changing, scientific world, creates a large communication gap. And given how fast this world changes (like a car flooring it at a green light, leaving behind the station wagon behind it) this gap will only grow greater. I wonder what this will do for a theologian’s ability to communicate. Of course, it is not necessarily just a make it up as you go kind of thing, but I’m thinking more about theological expression that speaks out of contexts, much like the discussions of Christian theology as done in the Global South versus traditional North American contexts. What does it do for causing us to re-engage a topic at new angles?

For that subject, I’ll be putting up a review of Polkinghorne’s Theology in the Context of Science soon.

My main sticking points are philosophical and biblical. It seems to me that Aquinas’ view actually takes up philosophical categories in a way that enables him to strike the biblical balance well: affirming an intermediate state apart from the body, but seeing this as a diminished state of existence, a naked seed of a person, better in some respects than the present life, but also falling far short of resurrected, embodied glory.

On the whole I find the difficulties remaining with such a Thomistic approach more palatable and less philosophically problematic than the new set of problems generated by Corcoran’s approach — though, I’d also suggest that Corcoran’s view is fundamentally Thomist in character, maintaining a distinction between a person and her body that amounts to a distinction between form and matter, recognizing “form” as dynamic, relational, and goal-directed.

Still, Corcoran provides a plausible alternative way of thinking about the contours of such a distinction, in connection with the human person. Whether or not one agrees with his account in the end, it’s an account that helpfully forces one sharpen one’s own viewpoint.