The Society's position is designed to harmonize their belief that a person perishes at death (= Sadducee eschatology) with the biblical teaching of the resurrection (= Pharisee / early Christian eschatology), which ends up being an unworkable hybrid of the two. The Society gives far greater weight to Ecclesiastes (which is a proto-Sadducee work) than to all the other NT texts that could be elicited to either attest belief in an afterlife or the nature of the resurrrection (hence Luke 16 is downplayed and allegorized in favor of Ecclesiastes). That's all fine and well, except that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection (Matthew 22:23, Mark 12:18, Luke 20:27, Acts 23:8). So the Society redefines resurrection in a way that must accommodate the whole NT emphasis on resurrection. Hence, the unbiblical claim that a person's "personality pattern" is remembered by God and would be restored in a newly created body in the resurrection. That way, there would be some semblance of continuity between the two distinct persons.
The concept is not only unbiblical but has no parallel in wide body of early Jewish and Christian literature on the resurrection, much of which points to a post-mortem intermediate state of the spirit or soul (see Revelation 6:9-10 for an example which uses the word "soul" with reference to the afterlife). A particularly weak attempt to ground this teaching biblically is to point to the use of the word mnémeion "tomb" (overtranslated in the NWT as "memorial tomb," since the word is etymologically derived from the word meaning "remember") as indicating that the dead would be resurrected out of God's memory:
*** w58 3/1 p. 159 Questions From Readers ***
[T]he principal thing is to be remembered not by humans but by Almighty God, to be retained in his memory as deserving of another life by the resurrection from the dead. Evidently when the Lord Jesus said: "The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment," he was referring to God’s memory, to the dead being retained in God’s mind. Our being retained in his memory is most important, because he is the only one who has power to raise the dead by means of Jesus Christ during his thousand-year reign over mankind. Because the Greek word used here by Jesus, mnemei´on, includes the thought of memory, we may have hope for those who are dead in the memorial tombs that they will be remembered by God with a resurrection.
But mnémeion is simply the word for "tomb," as opposed to "grave". It should be abundantly obvious such a word was coined by ancient Greeks (who had no concept of resurrection) because tombs were places where the deceased is remembered and eulogized by other people (cf. our English expressions "memorial park," "memorial service"). This word was not invented by Jesus; it had a long history in Greek as a word for "tomb". The whole concept of "God's memory" is entirely external to the text and is quite plainly being read into it here.
But regardless of whether this concept is biblical or not, it does not supply the needed continuity between the "resurrected" person and the one that had died. Such continuity could be posited by construing the spirit that returns to God as some internal "essence" of the person that transfers his individuality to God, who would later restore that individual "spirit" -- tho unconscious -- to a new body. In fact, that was what I really privately believed in my years as a JW, for I could never make much sense of the official doctrine. But this too is denied by the Society. The spirit is merely an impersonal animating life force, like electricity. In the article I quoted on the previous page of this thread (1 September 1955 Watchtower, p. 538-539), the Society says that "when the dead body returns to the earth as it was, that spirit or active force that animated that body returns to its source, it quits operating in that body," and "the spirit that then returns to God is not an invisible, immortal counterpart of that mortal body, having all its characteristics". If the spirit does not transfer a person's individuality to God to be kept for safekeeping, and if the body perishes to dust, then the original person has been fully destroyed. Thus the Society says:
*** w50 5/15 p. 149 par. 19 Living Up to the Name ***
Man is a living, sentient creature and, like all other animals, ceases to exist when he dies. (Ezek. 18:4, 20; Eccl. 3:19)
*** w65 12/1 p. 708 Is Your Life Affected by Angels? ***
Humans who have died could not be included among these angels, because at death a man’s personality does not continue to exist. "The living are conscious that they will die," the Bible says; "but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all." And of the death of man, the Scriptures say: "His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish." No part of man continues alive.
*** vi p. 13 par. 21 [1986] Victory Over Death—Is It Possible for You? ***
When the body dies, the soul is dead, it ceases to exist. Neither do you become a disembodied spirit, or atma. Why not? Because the atma is the impersonal life-force, or spirit, which animates the living soul, and which empowers the soul to think, move, and live. When the life-force, or atma, is extinguished within the living soul, the effect is similar to what happens when electricity is withdrawn from a light bulb. The light is extinguished. Where does the light go? It simply becomes nonexistent.
*** bh chap. 6 p. 58 par. 5 [2005] Where Are the Dead? ***
What happens at death is no mystery to Jehovah, the Creator of the brain. He knows the truth, and in his Word, the Bible, he explains the condition of the dead. Its clear teaching is this: When a person dies, he ceases to exist. Death is the opposite of life. The dead do not see or hear or think. Not even one part of us survives the death of the body.
That is why "reincarnation" is imho a wholly inappropriate term because the Society is explicit that "not even one part of us survives the death of the body," for the person becomes non-existent at death. Nothing is being incarnated again. With the destruction of the original anything else has to be a copy. One could say that God's memory could preserve a most perfect record of a person's personality and characteristics, but that record is just that ... a record, a copy of a now-destroyed original. What proves that it is a copy is the fact that nothing would logically prevent God from "resurrecting" two Leolaias, rather than just one. How about 144,000 Leolaias? God could conceivably place that record of the "life pattern" in any number of bodies. So which one of the 144,000 Leolaias is the real one? Or are they all the same person who died many years earlier? Would that mean I can expect to live 144,000 lives simultaneously in the resurrection? Or would each Leolaia be a clone that would only be implanted with my own memories, and would believe that she is me, but really is a new individual while my prior existance remains terminated?
Those are questions I have never seen addressed in the literature. Rather, the Society only has a facile equation between copy and original, leading to some pretty terrible metaphors of the process. I first encountered this teaching at the age of 8 at the book study. The book was Life Does Have a Purpose (published in 1977) and we were considering it at the book study. And we came to pp. 116-117 which introduced the "God's memory" concept:
Note especially what they say: "In order to resurrect a person, God has to know everything about him. Only with this information can God bring back the same person with the same personality, so that the individual will be himself and recognize himself". This implies continuity of existence...the individual will be the "same person". Okay, I could understand if my existence has been preserved in God's memory and that he will "restore" this in a new body. But to illustrate this, they have a picture of a film recording that quite clearly is a copy of the original voice and appearance of a person. This confounded me a great deal. I just knew instinctively that a tape-recording was not the same thing as the original, so how could a resurrected person be the same person that had died? Then a few weeks later, the book study covered the same concept again:
*** lp chap. 15 p. 175 par. 16 The End of Sickness and Death ***
As to the resurrected ones, God will accurately "re-create" each individual with his entire life pattern, personality and memory just as it was. The one resurrected will be able to identify himself as the same person. Also, his former associates will know him by his appearance and characteristics. He can then resume life after the interruption caused by his death, possessing the same motivations, leanings and traits that he displayed beforehand. However, his past sins and mistakes will not be brought up as charges against him. Why not? Because God’s purpose in bringing him back to earth is to provide opportunity for him to take advantage of Christ’s sacrifice and be freed of sin. Yet, what the individual did in the past, if bad, would have its effect on his personality, and the resulting bad traits would have to be overcome. The more unrighteous his past course was, the more he will have to change. Some may not take advantage of the opportunity to change.—Isaiah 26:10.
To the person who is resurrected, the time period that he was dead would be, to him, only an instant, since death is a nonexistence. It is likened in the Bible to a deep sleep. (John 11:11-14; 1 Thessalonians 4:13, 14; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10) Thousands of years, or a day, would seem like only a moment of time. To the one resurrected, the experience would be like walking through a doorway out of the present wicked system of things into the righteous, orderly new system of things.
This only intensified my confusion. Here the book is saying that death brings "nonexistence" and that the resurrection involves God "recreating" person, not bringing back the original. So, again, how can the resurrected person be the same person who died if that person became nonexistent? The statement "the one resurrection will be able to identify himself as the same person" rang hollow. She may think she is the same person, but is she really the same person? So little 8-year-old me raised my hand to ask this question. I don't remember very many comments I made at the meetings, but I do remember this one. I turned their attention to the picture on p. 117 and pointed out that a tape-recording makes a copy of the original voice, so if that is a copy, wouldn't the resurrected person be a copy too? In what way is it the same person? I really wanted to know, because both of my grandmothers had just died and I wanted to know if I would see them again. But the elder presiding over the book study didn't give my a satisfactory answer, he just assured me that I would understand when I grow up. But I think I hit upon the very paradox of the Watchtower resurrection belief.
