#906 Children in Heaven?

Dr. craig’s response

I’m so sorry to hear about your loss, Mat! I can only dimly imagine what such a loss must feel like. It’s a comfort, at least, to know that your nephew is with Christ awaiting his bodily resurrection (Philippians 1.23).

The question of what kind of resurrection body someone who has died in infancy or childhood will have someday is a question that, however interesting, God has not given us sufficient information to answer. True, Isaiah says that in God’s kingdom “The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, / and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den” (Isaiah 11.8); but that is an earthly and metaphorical description of God’s kingdom representing peace between nations. We shouldn’t infer that in the resurrection there will be snakes and children.

Jesus in his resurrection body was apparently the same age that he was when he died. Will that be so for us? I think we can presume that people who die in adulthood will have resurrection bodies that are not burdened with the symptoms of old age, but are in the prime of life. Is that also the case for those who die in childhood? Will they be raised as they would appear when grown to adulthood? That would seem to make sense, so that everyone would be apparently the same age. But perhaps children will be raised with bodies of the same apparent age as they were when they died in childhood, and therefore recognizable by their parents, to be nurtured and raised by them until they reach maturity, at which point the aging process will cease and they will be “forever young.” That is a charming idea, I think, but we have to admit that we do not know.