Possibility or Impossibility of the Bodily Resurrection and its Relationship with the Structure of the Language of Religion in Ibn Sīnā's View

As a religious doctrine and principle, the resurrection has always been a concern for thinkers. As a Muslim philosopher, Ibn Sīnā takes the bodily resurrection to be a transmitted and accepted religious doctrine, but the problem in his philosophical analyses is the possibility or impossibility of the bodily resurrection. Ibn Sīnā’s views in this regard seem prima facie self-contradictory. In this paper, we seek to show that Ibn Sīnā’s final view is that the bodily resurrection is philosophically impossible, but since religions have to guide all people to happiness and the spiritual resurrection and most people fail to understand the truth of the spiritual resurrection, the prophets had to cash out the spiritual resurrection in an analogical way in terms of bodily resurrection. The analogical language of the religion about the bodily resurrection does not mean that there is no truth in it; rather it involves a secret known by wise people.