Race in the Afterlife: An Eastern Christian Approach

Abstract

In a previous paper, I addressed the question: Will there be races in heaven? (Placencia, 2021 ). 1 There I argued that the answer to that question depends on one's view of heaven and one's account of race. After sorting out these concepts, I defended the conclusion that racial identity, but not race, is compatible with the mainstream Christian account of the afterlife in which persons are psychologically continuous from this life to the next. However, I left open the question of whether deflationary realist races (what I will refer to as minimalist races in this chapter) are compatible with the Christian view of the afterlife. The primary reason this question went unanswered was because it required further theological description of what bodies in the afterlife might be like. In this chapter, I revisit this question from an Eastern Christian perspective. This tradition has a robust theology of bodies in the afterlife (often referred to as the "age to come" in Eastern theology) that can guide us toward a more substantive answer. To that end, the chapter proceeds in four stages.First, it surveys four accounts of race-the racialist, skeptical, socialrace, and minimalist. Second, it shows that the racialist, skeptical, and socialrace accounts of race are incompatible with the Eastern Christian view of the age to come. Third, it offers reasons to think that the minimalist account of race is compatible with a strong current of Eastern Christian thought that emphasizes the embodied character of the afterlife. St. Theodore the Studite's theology exemplifies this theological current. In St. Theodore's iconophilic writings, one finds a theology of resurrected bodies that emphasizes continuity with pre-resurrected bodies. This theology of resurrected bodies taken with a minimalist account of race implies that the resurrected Christ is a member of a race and that resurrected people will maintain their race in the afterlife as well. Fourth and finally, the chapter looks at several implications of this conclusion: the existence of race in the afterlife avoids the racial homogeneity found in alternate accounts of heaven, it presents a moral challenge to those who seek racial reconciliation in this life or the next, and it gives us a perspective from which we can consider what minimalist races might offer humanity in a world without racism.Before I get started, allow me to address some of the parameters of this current chapter. First, the arguments offered here draw from one stream of Eastern Christian thought. However, the broader tradition is not monolithic, especially on more speculative matters regarding the age to come. For example, it's a matter of dogma enshrined in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed that there will be a final resurrection of those who have fallen asleep. 2 But what our resurrected bodies might be like is, to some degree, a matter of rational speculation. That is, we are in the realm of theologoumenon, which is why I indicated in the title that what is offered here is "an" not "The" Eastern Christian ap...