jadeitedrake0,

You seem to be conflating two frames of reference-- pre-glorification and post-glorification--misapplying truths about one state to the other state.

So your reductio ad absurdum about the recycling of our physical elements into each other through the ages is indeed accurate in the pre-glorification state, due to the corruption and decay of nature. But its absurdity cannot be applied to our resurrected bodies, since even "the elements will melt with fervent heat" at the day of the Lord, and what is sown in corruption/dishonor/weakness/a natural body, is raised in incorruption/glory/power/a spiritual body (but a real body nonetheless). In your argument, however, you are attempting to apply the truths of the resurrection body (composed in an unimaginable, yet still recognizable, condition) to the natural body (whether in its casket or scattered to the winds, and continuing to decay however it has been disposed of). Since I was only trying to refute your original premise that the pre-glorified corpse has no identification whatever with the soul awaiting resurrection, the reductio is inapplicable.

Although I am in no way attributing their motives to you, your argument is similar to that of the Sadducees in Matthew 23:23-33, in which they assumed a natural continuity in all respects between this world and the next. Our bodies, when we die, and through all the dissolution that occurs to them, remain, in some peculiar way, "part of us", even when only God knows where, or into whom re-assigned, all the elements are! Although mere conjecture, I would not be surprised if one of the torments of death for the unredeemed is precisely this, that their precious bodies, beyond their control, are passing further into horrible corruption and dissolution. The redeemed, however, await "a better resurrection", not out of nothing, but in some gloriously incommunicable way, "with the self-same bodies, and none other (although with different qualities), which shall be united again to their souls for ever" (WCF 32:2).

In Christ,
Paul S