Recently I’ve been reading through the prophets, specifically Isaiah. In Isaiah 35:5-6 it says, “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the dead unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” Isaiah here is very clearly depicting the final eschaton, the final state and what it will be like. This of course begs the question, will there be a resurrection in which we have babies and old people or will we be resurrected at the same age we died?
Answering this question does require a bit of sanctified speculation. First of all, when God created Adam and Eve in Eden, He created them with apparent age. Also, Jesus apparently died and resurrected at the prime of His physical development.
Furthermore, our DNA is programmed in such a way that, at a particular point, we reach optimal development from a functional perspective. For the most part, it appears that we reach this stage somewhere in our twenties or thirties. Prior to that stage, the development of our bodies exceeds the devolution of our bodies. From this point on, the rate of breakdown exceeds the rate of buildup, which eventually leads to physical death. With age, our muscles get shorter, our connective tissues degenerate, our hormone levels decline, our neurological functions break down. All of this is to say that if the blueprints for our gloried bodies are in the DNA, then it would stand to reason that our bodies will be resurrected at the optimal stage of development determined by our DNA. So it stands to reason that when a person dies in faith as an infant or in old age that they will be resurrected physically mature as God originally intended them to be.
Finally, one thing can be stated with complete certainty: In the resurrection, there will be no deformities. You will be the perfect you, and I will be the perfect me. Peter Kreeft provides a poignant portrayal of how the body, tarnished by the Fall into a life of constant sin terminated by death, will be utterly transformed in the resurrection:
The fall turned things upside down between soul and body. Before the Fall, the body was a transparent window, a totally malleable instrument, a perfectly obedient servant of the soul. The Resurrection restores this relationship. Once the perfected soul is perfectly subject to God, the perfected body can be perfectly subjected to the soul, for the soul’s authority over the body is a delegated and dependent authority…Soul will no longer be frustrated by a semi-independent, recalcitrant body…and body will be a bright ray of light from soul, not an opaque object; it will be more subject, less object, more truly mine, truly me. No more will I crave ecstatic out-of-the-body experiences, for the higher flights of mystic ecstasy will be in this new body.[1]
We will then have a new body-soul unity for which we long. If we say we want to go to heaven, I think it is incumbent upon on us to know just what heaven will be like.
