Our Bodies are not Shells

A question was posed:

If the dead are already in Heaven or Hell , what is the point in the Resurrection??
Why be dragged down from Heaven, stuck in a body, judged and then sent right back?

Interesting question.

My crack at an answer is that our bodies are an integral part of who we are--so if "I" am apart from my body, in an important sense "I" am not really there--"I" am incomplete. God saves persons, not just souls.

I have heard a lot of Christians refer to the body as a sort of shell. That is more of a Greek, and possibly Gnostic (Gnostics are the "knowing ones" who have access to hidden "knowledge" which is not apparent to the fleshly), way of looking at person hood.

We can see the idea of the body as a shell or incidental in the idea of two or more people who want to be spiritually united--two "soul mates", whether man-woman, man-man, woman-woman, or possibly man-man-woman-dog etc. All that matters is that the individual realizes his potential, his divine spark within, and can share that with another enlightened Gnostic. The concentration on "spiritual" union apart from the physical is, unfortunately, a characteristic of our age. The idea is we should not get hung up on the physical equipment because those don't define the person, it is as if we defined a person according to the socks he wares. This strikes me as very similar to the way Gnostics looked at the body as accidental to the divine "spark", which is awakened by the esoteric gnosis imparted to the individual through various means, such as aestheticism or libertinism. This knowledge is esoteric because it has little to nothing to do with what any words actually say--words are mere vehicles for the individual to awaken the spark inside.

Such ways of thinking are antithetical to the doctrine of the resurrection, because for Christians, the body does indeed define the person, along with the soul. Revelation is not esoteric, it is a matter of history--"suffered under Pontius Pilate", the Scriptures, a Church composed of actual people, flesh, bones and souls. So even someone with little or no "knowledge" can be a Christian when his body and soul are washed together in the waters of Baptism, because in the waters of Baptism we are washed with God's Word, made his own, justified and born as a new creature, one who obeys God out of love and not fear as we did before.