Looking Ahead to the Resurrection Body:
Putting on the Imperishable
Julie DeJager
for Dr. Steven Hunt, BI491
March 30, 2007
Eternal Questions and Pastel Indifference
If Christians are to take seriously
the witness of the New Testament and the promises of Jesus that those who
believe in him shall have eternal life,[1]
then hope and faith in this witness and these promises ought to shape the way
in which believers live this life.
Yet rarely do Christians today seriously consider what eternal life looks like. The phrase “eternal life” has
become victim to the Christianeese[2]
dictionary, which has swallowed up all sorts of beautiful and helpful words and
turned them into Easter-egg-colored clichés. Christians consider “eternal life”
to be perhaps analogous to the color lilac and not an eschatological hope or
motivation for life.
Eternal life in Judeo-Christian
thought is intrinsically tied to bodily resurrection. True belief in
resurrection, it will be argued, is tied to living morally as embodied persons
in this life. Three primary
questions, then, drive this examination of eternal life and the resurrected
body. The inquiry begins by asking, “What sort of existence do we have in
eternal life? Is it bodily or spiritual? How are we to understand the biblical
promise of eternal life?” Only after this issue is addressed will it be asked,
“What do our resurrected bodies look
like? (And how much can we even know about what they will look like?)” Lastly,
the hermeneutical question will be raised: “What difference does all of this
make to us now?”
What sort of existence do we have in eternal life?
Before the
question of the nature of the resurrection body can be addressed, the concept
of eternal life and its theological roots must be examined. It will be helpful
to break the question, “What sort of existence do we have in eternal life?”
into three sub-queries: First, how is eternal life different from the Platonic
concept of immortality of the soul? Why is eternal life so radical in
Judeo-Christian thought? Second, why does Judeo-Christian theology come to
value eternal life so highly? Finally, why is eternal life necessarily
connected to bodily resurrection? What is it about life which implies
embodiment, even in an eschatological context?
How is eternal life different from
immortality of the soul?
The basis
for most popular conceptions of eternal life is the presupposition that the
human soul is inherently immortal. This idea has its roots in Platonic
philosophical reasoning. Plato and his followers held that the soul is eternal:
that it both pre-existed the body and cannot be killed or destroyed after the
body dies. Their belief sprung from a dualistic understanding of the cosmos.
Matter – including the human body – is evil and temporary. Spirit (including
the soul) exists in the realm of Eternal Ideals, which are perfect and
timeless.[3]
The question
of what eternal life looks like, then, is for Plato and the Neo-Platonists,
“Where does the soul go once it is ‘freed’ from the body?” Some philosophers supposed
that the soul is simply recycled into another body, reincarnated in Hindu-like
fashion. Most assumed that the soul goes to the higher realm of the spiritual,
a heaven of sorts which is glorious because it is free of evil matter. The
Gnostic writers picked up on this idea and ran with it.[4]
So, in more recent times, did Jonathan Edwards.
The basis
for Edwards’s theology of eternal life or damnation was his assumption that the
human soul is immortal – it must therefore spend eternity in either heaven or
hell.[5] It
is not death which is an enemy; death is only a natural and even good
transition from this base and “evil” physical life to the “real” spiritual life
of the immortal soul. The enemy, in some sense, is rather Edwards’s “angry
God”. The fear of death is the fear of judgment.
The Hebraic understanding of death is rather different. Death is not a
dualistic separation of the good soul from the corrupt material body or a
natural transition from one type of life to another. Death is a person’s ultimate
enemy, “and only God himself is more powerful.”[6]
Death is the enemy because it is truly death,
truly the end of life – life understood as both bodily and spiritual.[7]
The “overwhelming biblical view” in the Old Testament is that death is final
and complete.[8]
For a
first-century Jew to speak of eternal life, then, was for him to say something
radical. It was not assumed by the Hebraic mind that the soul would live beyond
the body’s death. As will be expounded later, a person is understood to be a
single unit – and it is as a unit
that he falls under the curse of sin.[9]
Eternal life is not the natural state of the soul. It comes about only because
God is stronger and more sovereign even than death and because being in
communion with him is to be in communion with Life. Moreover, it was not clear
that eternal life would be given. From what we can tell from the Old Testament,
early Judaism was a religion largely focused on this life, on living “attached to life” [10]
and to the covenant with
Why did Judeo-Christian theology come
to value eternal life so highly?
Yet even in
the Old Testament there are hints at the sovereignty of God over death. Daniel
12.2-3 is one of the clearest examples of a passage pointing toward postmortem
eternal life, explaining that “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt.” It may be that the book of Daniel was written late into the Second
Temple period, but it nevertheless reflects a line of thinking which was –
however foreign– still consistent with the theological seeds planted in earlier
Jewish writings.
Isaiah
25.7-8 exemplifies this earlier formulation of theology.[11]
Here, death is “swallow[ed] up forever”; life is safeguarded for eternity. As
one scholar writes, “there is no place for death anymore.”[12]
These verses come in the midst of the author portraying God as a conqueror and
victor. God’s triumph over death is the culmination of his power over all forms
of destruction and all enemies of his people. It follows from the idea earlier
in the same chapter that God “has been a stronghold to the poor” (Isaiah 25.4).
As God has helped the weak, so will he do so regarding humanity’s mortality.
The third Old Testament text which
stands in opposition to the idea that the death of a human is final[13]
is Psalm 16.9-11. Here David[14]
expresses that God “will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see
corruption.” While not a direct expression of belief in resurrection, it does
seem that the psalmist is expressing a faith which conquers fear of death.[15]
The statement is reminiscent of the stories of Enoch and Elijah, those Old
Testament characters who were “taken” (Genesis 5.24; 2 Kings 2.11) rather than
experiencing death, rather than being “abandoned to Sheol.” Death and eternal
life are contrasted by the way in which the person relates to his Creator:
abandonment by or “walking with”
(Genesis 5.23) God.
Jewish
theologian Neil Gillman has expressed that the monotheistic Yahwistic faith of
the Old Testament “demands the death of death”, even though the concept is so
rarely explicitly stated in the Hebrew Scriptures. As in Isaiah, God is
understood as the victor of all, conquering all fallenness and brokenness in
the world.
“If
God is truly God, if God’s will and power are absolute, then God must triumph
over death as well. The death of death marks the final step in the triumph of
the monotheistic God.”[16]
The theology of eternal life, of God’s triumph over death, is
not incompatible with Old Testament revelation – in fact, it naturally springs
from the ancient writings. It is “based on Yhwh’s
power, on his justice, and on his love.”[17]
It should
not be surprising, then, that a vibrant theology of postmortem existence was colorfully
developed in the Second Temple Period writings. By the second century bc, Judaism generally asserted that
death represented only one event in the “framework of human life” – but not
necessarily the final one.[18]
By the first century ad, the
central Jewish prayer, the Amidah,
mentions the resurrection of the dead six times.[19]
As noted above, the Jewish eschatology which led to a development of a theology
of eternal life and resurrection was founded on a traditional, Scriptural
understanding of
But theodicy
raised questions. The righteous suffered; the wicked prospered; God’s justice
did not appear evident in this world. A theology of resurrection affirmed God’s
justice and all the characteristics of Yhwh
that the Old Testament revealed.[21]
The resurrection was less an innovation of theology than it was a natural
continuation of it. God has created and he can re-create.[22]
The world is not a failed experiment; God can restore even humanity’s failures.
By the time the Mishnah was spoken and recorded, denial of the resurrection was
understood as excluding one from the age to come (Sanh. 10.1a).[23]
It is in this Jewish atmosphere that Jesus speaks and God reveals his power
over death. In the resurrection of Jesus, “an action of God is shown that faith
has already believed him to be doing.”[24]
The New
Testament presents the resurrection of Jesus as the fulfillment of the history
of God with
Why is eternal life necessarily
connected to bodily resurrection?
To
understand eternal life, it is necessary to take something of a step back and
look simply at life. What is life?
Does life require simply a sort of spirit or consciousness – or are our bodies
necessary to our state of living?
As noted
above, the Greek understanding of man was shaped by ontological dualism. The
body was considered evil because it was matter.[29]
Additionally, the material body was only a hindrance to the real life of the
person, which was the soul. The idea of immortality was accepted and understood
by Platonic philosophers; the concept of resurrection was absurd. Why put a
soul back into the prison of a body (cf. Acts 17)?
Yet biblical
anthropology runs completely contrary to this dualistic vision of the person.[30]
Everything about the creation accounts in Scripture suggest that being men and
women of flesh was part of the divine plan – it was, in fact, “very good.”[31]
Jewish literature repeatedly extols the body as a marvelous work of God.[32]
The Jews rejoiced in the material world rather than endorsing asceticism. As
Augustine wrote, humans are terra animata,
“animated earth,”[33]
and both the “animated” as well as the “earthly” parts of persons are to be
understood as good creation. In the biblical accounts of the ascensions of
Enoch and Elijah, nothing is written to suggest that they were escaping from a
physical prison or that they ceased to be men of flesh.[34]
Why would eternal life not be bodily
life? The physical world, including embodied life, was never understood in
orthodox Judaism or Christianity to be created as flawed, inherently needing to
be destroyed.
This is seen
in the way in which the terms “body” and “flesh” are understood in the ancient
Jewish and Christian literature. Traditional Judaism used the term “body” to
refer to the entire person – the “heart-soul-might”
person (Deuteronomy 6.5) – not just the physicality of a man.[35] A
person’s body is synonymous with his or her self.
Yet the
Scriptural passages speaking of man’s flesh, the “physical substance of the
body” (basar in Hebrew or sarx in Greek), are sometimes
misinterpreted through dualistic lenses.[36]
“Flesh” is used several times before the fall and is typically found in neutral
contexts.[37]
Nevertheless, sometimes, such as in Genesis 6.12-13, connecting flesh and
corruption are taken to point toward the inherent
corruption of flesh. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, also, there seems to be a close
connection between flesh and sin (as in the phrase “flesh of sin”[38]).
Many scholars, however, point out that the reason “flesh” is ever connected to
sinfulness is because man’s flesh is the instrument by which he commits either
sin or righteousness.[39]
This is true also of the Christian understanding of the connection between
flesh and sin or righteousness. As one scholar notes, “The Christian in his physical soma, his body-of-flesh, is
declared to be a member of Christ, a temple which is so holy that committing
fornication means to sin against it.”[40]
The fleshly body can literally embody either corruption or righteousness.
It is true
that the fleshly and embodied in Judeo-Christian thought is sometimes set up in
a dichotomy. It is not, however, a dichotomy between evil flesh and pure
spirit. Rather, the distinction lies between the perishable and mortal totality
of man versus the holy and immortal nature of God. There is an emphasis on man
as frail creature in contrast to the eternal and almighty God.[41]
In the New Testament passages of Matthew 16.17, Galatians 1.16, Ephesians 6.12,
and Hebrews 2.14, the phrase “flesh and blood” is used to contrast the human
with the divine or supernatural – not to contrast good and evil. For Paul and
other early church leaders, body and spirit are viewed Hebraically – as a whole
– and any corruption of flesh comes from its being used as a sinful instrument
– despite its inherent goodness as creation.[42]
Interestingly,
current philosophy supports the Hebraic understanding of man’s identity as
being overwhelmingly connected to his body, which is exactly what the doctrine
of the resurrection affirms. The fact that neuroscience increasingly points to
the connectedness of intellectual, emotional, and possibly even moral traits
with the physical or genetic makeup of a person should not surprise the
Christian.[43]
The spiritual and the physical are
far more connected than the Gnostics would like to admit.
Humans are terra animata. Humans are embodied. And if humans are to be humans
in eternal life,[44]
Judeo-Christian theologians and twenty-first century philosophers alike tell
us, they will still be embodied.
Embodiment is a gift. It is necessary
for social life; it constitutes “the very possibility of engagement with one
another in this world or any other.”[45]
Through the body, man is connected to the rest of creation, with nature and
history and society.[46]
The body is the means by which man experiences sensations and community, the
way he experiences life. If there is life
after death, then, it is contingent upon bodily resurrection – the resurrection
of the whole person, body and soul,
from death.[47] If a
person is to participate in the eternal Kingdom, he or she will be the same
person before and after resurrection. Eternally-living persons must be embodied persons, with a means of
relating to other members of the Kingdom and the restored creation.[48]
That eternal life is embodied life
was the view of the Jews who first expressed hope in life after death.[49]
Eschatological Jewish hope was material.[50]
Josephus attests to this when he describes the three prominent sects of
first-century Judaism: the Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. According to
Josephus, the Essenes believed in a sort of dualistic immortality of the soul,
the Sadducees denied any postmortem life whatsoever, and the Pharisees held to
the resurrection of the body.[51]
It is the Pharisees, though, Josephus tells his readers, who are most
representative of the Jewish community and who are the truly pious.[52]
It is generally assumed that the Pharisees later became the leaders of the
rabbinic movement after the fall of the
The biblical witness, understood in
its totality, leaves no room for the dualistic perspective of Origen, who
declared that “it is absurd”[53]
to suppose that any form of “passion” (linked with “flesh and blood”, in his
mind) would exist in a perfect world.[54]
It was less absurd, according to Origen, to understand postmortem persons as
having a sort of spiritual, “spherical life”, according to the Platonic idea
that the sphere is the perfect shape.[55]
If Yhwh
is truly all-powerful and able to overcome death, if the promises of Jesus
about “eternal” or “everlasting” life are to be believed, then the Hebraic, biblical
understanding of life must be connected to postmortem existence. One scholar
sums this up, explaining,
“For
The totality of the person – body and soul – is mortal; the
totality of the person – body and soul – will be saved from death.[57]
Any discussion of eternal life in the New Testament presupposes Jesus’s
resurrection as the model for all believers[58]
and there is no legitimate usage of the word “resurrection” without the bodily
aspect,[59]
as will be further elaborated below.[60]
What do our resurrected bodies look like?
Asking what
our resurrected bodies look like or how they operate might in some respects be
getting oneself into shadier territory. Though Scripture makes it clear that
resurrection is not “simply the resuscitation of a corpse”, the characteristics
of that resurrected body are quite undefined.[61]
Three primary sources of information will be explored below to try to
understand the resurrected body: the Scriptural accounts of Jesus’s resurrected
body, Paul’s writings on the resurrection (focusing particularly on 1
Corinthians 15), and an examination of
What can we know about the
resurrected body from the resurrection of Jesus?
All
discussion of resurrection in the New Testament centers on the death and
resurrection of Christ and on sharing in this new life of Christ. The
Christian’s hope for resurrection is completely Christocentric.[62]
The resurrection of the dead is an eschatological event, defining the history
of the people of God,[63]
and is inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Eternal
life has begun even now. It is patterned after the resurrected life of Christ, described
in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 as the New Adam.
Romans 6.3-11
explains that Christians share in the crucifixion of Christ, putting to death
an “old self”, and will likewise share in Christ’s resurrection.[64]
Sin and death no longer have dominion over the one who has participated in
Christ’s death. Likewise, 2 Corinthians 5.14-21 portrays Christ in his death
and resurrection as representative of humanity and as the model for the human
race.[65]
All hope of resurrection in Paul’s writings hinges on the fact that Jesus is
the forerunner and example of the resurrected life. In Paul’s understanding, insofar
as Christians participate in the life and death of Jesus, they will also
participate in the resurrection of the Messiah, who is the New Adam.
This is seen clearly in Philippians
3.10-11, where Paul connects knowing Christ with knowing “the power of his
resurrection.” Paul expresses hope that he may become like Christ “in his
death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead”.
Jesus is the exemplar of the resurrected person. By his resurrection, Christians
may fully trust that they too may share in bodily eternal life for it has come
to earth in the person of Jesus. As Karl Barth writes in his commentary on 1
Corinthians 15, this fully human life is not
“behind
us… like a Platonic idea… a truth which is only in heaven… No, it becomes our truth, not by our undertaking the
hopeless task of going to heaven, but by
its coming to us from heaven.”[66]
One way to view the resurrected body,
then, is to examine the biblical accounts of the resurrected Jesus. Unfortunately,
readers are left with a variety of somewhat contrasting verbal pictures in this
regard.[67]
In all the Gospel accounts, Jesus is seen bodily. But sometimes he is
recognized (Matthew 28.9; John 20.20; John 21.7, 12), while other times the
witnesses to his resurrected body are initially oblivious to his identity (Luke
24.13-24; John 20.15). Jesus eats (Luke 24.41-43; John 21.13-15), as he did
before his death and resurrection (Matthew 9.11, 11.19, 26.21; Mark 2.16, 14.22;
Luke 7.34, 7.36, 14.1). Yet he also vanishes (Luke 24.31) and appears
miraculously behind locked doors (John 20.19, 26), moving in manners not normal
for “regular” bodies.
The gospel writers wrote about the
resurrection appearances of Jesus not to give a treatise on exactly what a
resurrection body was like, but rather “so that you may believe that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his
name” (John 20.31). It was enough for Luke to note that Jesus “presented
himself alive after his suffering by many proofs” (Acts 1.3), while not
precisely explaining these “proofs”. The passage which is most pertinent to
this discussion is Luke 24.39, where Jesus says, “See my hands and my feet,
that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and
bones as you see I have.” The resurrection body of Jesus is he himself and is
made of flesh and bones. He ascends to heaven in this very form. Likewise,
Christians can hope for heavenly bodies which are themselves and made of physical “stuff”.[68]
What can we know about the
resurrection body from Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 15?
The longest
chapter in the Pauline corpus, 1 Corinthians 15, is devoted completely to
elucidating the resurrection and the resurrection body.[69]
Barth writes that this chapter “forms not only the close and crown of the whole
Epistle, but also provides the clue to its meaning.”[70]
Throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul’s argumentation is based on the presupposition
that the dead will be resurrected.[71]
When he addresses the members of the Corinthian church who say that there is no
resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15.12), Paul is addressing the fact
that they cannot understand any of his teaching unless they receive the
resurrection as truth. These Corinthians thought, “Here, on this crazy business
of resurrection, we cannot agree with you,” and they did not even suppose that
they consequently failed to agree with Paul on any subject.[72]
The
beginning of the chapter discusses what has already been expressed here: the
relatedness of the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the faithful.
Paul explains that the message of “first importance” (v. 3) is that Christ has
died, he was buried, and “that he was raised on the third day in accordance
with the Scriptures” (v. 4). “So we preach,” Paul emphasizes, “and so you
believed” (v. 11). The resurrection of Christ is a “meta-historical”[73]
event. It is the focus of the gospel message; it is the hope of Christians;
through it – and it alone – is offered the gift of eternal life.
If the
resurrection of Christ – if the gospel itself, for that matter – is to be
believed, argues Paul, the resurrection of the human dead cannot be denied. “If
there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And
if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is
in vain” (vss. 13-14). How can the resurrection of the dead be denied? God has
proven that he is able to accomplish this act through the resurrection of the
Christians’ Lord, Jesus.
Paul passionately
explains that the gospel message is an eschatological one. The hope of the
Christian reaches beyond this life: “If in this life only we have hoped in
Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (v. 19). It is not that the
Corinthians are wrong to hope in Christ in this life, for they are rightly
grasping the present transformative
power of God. However, they are missing out on the eternal implications of Christ’s work. They are living Christian
lives without any understanding of the permanence of God’s blessing and favor. Paul
further explains the theological reasons for sharing in Christ’s resurrection.
Christ is the New Adam (v. 22); he conquers all enemies, even death (v. 26);
faith in him allows for freedom from fear of death and oppressive empire (v.
32). The
From verse
35 onward, Paul discusses the nature of the resurrection body. It must be noted
that Paul was not trying to give an exact picture or thorough examination of
the resurrection body. The main point of this chapter is simply to affirm the
resurrection, to show the Corinthians that faith in the resurrection is
necessary and understandable – even if not as logical as they might have liked.
In answering the question, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body…?”
(v. 35), Paul replies not with a systematic explanation but with an outburst:
“You foolish person!” (v. 36)
“Don’t you get it?” he asks,
exasperated. “Your objections are meaningless! Of course we’ll have bodies; of
course they’ll be different from the ones we have now. But the point is the
resurrection, folks, not the details!”
When this section in 1 Corinthians is
used (or attempted to be used) to draw up conclusions about the precise nature
of the resurrection body, it must be kept in mind that this was not Paul’s
purpose in writing. It should not be expected that this chapter will answer all
questions about the resurrection body.
The
controlling image in Paul’s explanation is the metaphor of the seed. Just as
one sows a seed, it “dies”, and it is then raised into a completely new and
glorious plant, so too with human bodies. The bodies which are “sown” are “not
the bod[ies] that [are] to be, but a bare kernel” (v. 37). There is continuity
between the seed and the wheat plant – continuity even in the physical aspects.
One seed becomes a wheat plant; another seed becomes “some other grain.” The identity of the seed does not change
when it is transformed, but it is
transformed. It becomes more fully itself.[74]
The image of
the seed dying and rising anew may have conjured up associations in the
Corinthians’ minds which are quite foreign to the twenty-first century
Christian. The cult of Demeter and Persephone was immensely popular in the
Greco-Roman world, and its religious myths and rituals revolved around the
agrarian cycles – around seeds, growth, and harvest. The way in which the pious
Greco-Roman would have understood seeds to operate was closely tied to the
cycle of death and life lived out by Demeter and Persephone. Seeds did in fact die when they were buried. Whatever
happened between sowing and harvest was a complete miracle, a mystery. The
reason that the seeds lived out this cycle was that they modeled, in some
sense, the life of Persephone. She, the vibrant and lifeful goddess, daughter
of the goddess of grain, yearly went into Hades, the place of the dead, and
returned. She went from life to death to life in a cyclical annual pattern –
and, likewise, so too do seeds.
Although
Paul is not trying to endorse a Greco-Roman cult, he may be drawing on the
understanding of “seeds” that the Corinthians might have held.[75]
He is evoking language of death and resurrection, of divine miracle and
mystery.
Regardless
of whether or not Paul meant to allude to the religious conception of “seed”
the Corinthians may have held, the agrarian image is an excellent one, and
vibrant even today. The post-resurrection body transcends the earthly body,
though continuous with it in identity.[76]
Two key events happen at the death of both person and seed: “the dying of the seed and an act of creation by God.”[77]
Being sown and rising again applies to the body.
The death and resurrection of a man is like the growth of a seed into a plant.
It is not simply some conversion to a non-bodily existence.[78]
Paul then
goes on to discuss the dichotomy between the pre- and post-resurrection body,
setting up a series of contrasts for his readers: perishable and imperishable;
dishonor and glory; weakness and power. This list of contrasts culminates in
his description of the body itself: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a
spiritual body” (v. 44). This verse has at times been understood to mean that
the “sown” body is the physical one while the “raised” body is pure spirit,
Gnostically freed from matter.
Yet a simple
study of the language and context in which Paul wrote debunks this
understanding of the text. Paul’s pairing of the psychikon (translated “natural” by the ESV) with pneumatikon (translated “spiritual”) is,
as one Greek scholar has noted, “jolting.”[79]
On the cosmological scale which Paul has introduced in his other pairs of
opposites, the most natural counterpart to pneumatikon
(in a Greek/dualist worldview) would be sarx
(“flesh”), not psychikon (simply meaning
“pertaining to life”). Paul has refused to introduce sarx-related words into his collection of antitheses, suggesting
that the difference between the pre- and post-resurrection existences is not
that one is fleshly while the other is not.[80]
If the difference
between the psychikon soma (“body”) and the pneumatikon soma does not lie in the material makeup
of these bodies, what does Paul mean by contrasting psychikon and pneumatikon?
It may be helpful to understand what kind
of adjectives these words are. Adjectives or qualifiers ending in –ikon typically do not refer to the makeup of the qualified noun, but rather
to its function. Paul is not
contrasting a body made up of natural life with a body made up of spirit, but
rather a body dominated by this life
with a body empowered by the Spirit.[81]
They are opposites, but not with regard to their material makeup. Their
contrast has more to do with the presence or absence of this-lifely concerns or
the Spirit.[82]
When Paul
writes in verse 50 that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God,” he
is likely using the phrase “flesh and blood” as he does elsewhere, as in
Galatians 1.16 and Ephesians 6.12, where “flesh and blood” is used to represent
the mortal and perishable as opposed to the divine and immortal. If the passage
is interpreted in this manner, it is not that material bodies cannot exist in
the
“For this
perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on
immortality” (v. 53). Death will indeed be “swallowed up.” As Paul explains in
2 Corinthians, we groan in this body because we long “to put on our heavenly
dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked” (2 Corinthians
5.2-3). In this section, Paul emphasizes that this event will not be like being
unclothed, but rather being “further clothed, so that what is mortal may be
swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5.4).
The
discussion of the body which Paul presents in 1 Corinthians 15.35-58 emphasizes
that elements of both continuity and discontinuity exist between the pre- and
post-resurrection body.[84]
The identity of a person remains the same, as the identity of a seed is in some
ways the same as the identity of the grain into which it grows. Yet the nature
and expression of this identity is vastly different, with new possibilities and
potential.[85] The
eschatological hope is of something which transcends the body as we know it now[86] –
but not something which destroys our understanding of body. This is something bigger, more powerful than “mere
resuscitation.”[87]
Passages
like 1 Corinthians 15, emphasizing the radical transformation of the body in
the eschaton, can help with questions such as, “How would it be possible for a
human body to survive immortally?” and “Are natural laws different in the
Paul writes
in Romans 8 that “the creation was subjected to futility… in hope that the
creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay” (vss. 20-21). Not
our bodies only, but the “whole creation” will be “set free” in the eschaton.
It is not known now what aspects of natural laws are parts of the creation’s
“groaning” (v. 22), but it seems that these laws will be transformed. Nature,
however it exists in a resurrected world, will permit the fullness of life
intended originally by God.[88]
Questions about resurrected life which assume the scientific presupposition of ceteris paribus (“all else being equal”
– a phrase necessary for the validity of the scientific method) with the
current world cannot be answered.[89]
God will transform the world. All
else is not equal.
What can we know about the
resurrected body by examining
Methodius of Olympus, a
fourth-century church father, described the resurrection in his work Aglaophon
he peri tes anastaseos (On the
Resurrection) through a metaphor. An artist cast a sculpture in gold. It
was a perfect and beautiful sculpture, but at some point, it was defaced. The
artist so loved his work and wanted it to be perfect that he melted it back
into molten metal and re-molded it in an act of re-creation. The new creation
was a restoration of the old, using the same material and mold, for these things
were not what was wrong. Likewise, argued Methodius,[90]
God restores his creation through the resurrection, for “such was his love for humanity that
he could not allow it to continue in this condition, remaining faulty and
deficient to eternity.”[91]
Methodius’s metaphor properly understands the resurrection as redemptive, as a
return to the original and ideal (“very good”) state of affairs.[92]
The first creation was ex nihilo; the
new creation will be ex vetere. The
new creation is the restoration of the broken.[93]
God made no
mistakes in creation.
This is the
message of Genesis 1, which, one Jewish theologian has noted, “
Thurneysen
vibrantly explains the belief that it is
this world – this originally-good world – which will be transformed. It is
therefore possible, to a certain extent, to understand the new earth by looking
at the current one.
“The
world into which we shall enter in the Parousia of Jesus Christ is therefore
not another world; it is this world, this heaven, this earth; both, however,
passed away and renewed. It is these forests, these fields, these cities, these
streets, these people, that will be the scene of redemption. At present they
are battlefields, full of the strife and sorrow of the not yet accomplished
consummation; then they will be fields of victory, fields of harvest, where out
of seed that was sown with tears the everlasting sheaves will be reaped and
brought home.”[96]
Everything that God made was “very
good”. Interestingly, restoration of the world does not necessitate the
destruction of mankind’s good creation. The Bible begins with a garden and ends
with a city. In gardens and cities, humans will have bodies to gather, to
enjoy, to work.
Judaism is a
religion which structures time.[97]
As Abraham Joshua Heschel notes, “Jewish ritual may be characterized as the art
of significant forms in time, as architecture
of time.”[98] This is
portrayed even in the manner in which the Sabbath is understood as pointing to
both the beginning and end. It is a reminder of God’s act of creation and a
foretaste of the age to come; it “recalls the cosmos that was and anticipates
the cosmos that will be.”[99]
History is understood as being framed by these worlds, moving from creation to
eschaton.[100] The
opening chapters of Genesis are the opening parenthesis;[101]
the eschaton closes the brief interlude of fallen human history. Whatever the
metaphor, there is a certain “symmetrical elegance” to understanding the Age to
Come as paralleling
To
begin to envisage what the resurrected body (and the cosmos it inhabits, with
other resurrected bodies) “looks” like, then, involves simply imagining
What
does seem clear from Genesis is that
The
curse of sin which plunged humanity and the cosmos into chaos and disruption
was a curse of broken relationships between person and person, between humanity
and nature, and between humanity and God. The new earth is one of restored
relationships. There will be no warfare or social injustice, no toil in work or
physical brokenness, and no separation from the source of Life himself. This is
the Old Testament vision of the Age to Come and, interestingly, it is precisely
the age which Jesus inaugurated in his ministry of teaching, healing, and
reconciling.
Resurrection
bodies, therefore, are physical bodies but restored
physical bodies. It should not be ruled out that the resurrected person may
even operate much like the pre-resurrected person in terms of bodily functions,
for God gave Adam and Eve food, sleep, and sex. Unlike in this life, though, no
aspect of the body would ever be working against the person. Even relationships
within the body will be restored.
What difference does all of this make to us now?
The way in
which afterlife is conceived affects not only a person’s philosophical thoughts
about some indefinite future, but, more significantly, how a person views this life.[104]
The nexus of the hermeneutics of the doctrine of bodily resurrection rests in
the fact that it is bodily
resurrection, that it is an affirmation of the original creation of God. The
resurrection of humanity (and the cosmos) is not a do-over. It is not that the
potter throws away the clay and uses new material when the sculpture is
distorted. No, the potter simply kneads the clay into a lump again and uses the
same clay, the same good artistic vision and creates anew.[105]
To hold the
view that God would completely scrap creation – human bodies included – compromises
the goodness of this (albeit fallen) cosmos. There is eschatological hope for
all that God has made, for all the good things which are a result of being
embodied persons. The body, for example, is what places a person into history
and society. To say that people will be embodied
people in the afterlife affirms the importance of even history and society.[106]
The concept
of resurrection is an affirmation of the value of the body. The body is cursed
by fallenness – the relationships within the body are broken – but the body is
crucial for personhood. It has such permanent worth in the eyes of God that he
will restore its brokenness.[107]
Human lives are tied to the body.[108]
The modern
world has fallen again into the heresy of dualism, denying the connectivity of
personhood to the human body. The scientific and medical community argues not
that the person is essentially soul,
as the Greeks did, but rather that the person is essentially mind – the capacity to make decisions
and be autonomous.[109]
The body does not matter. What is important is that the person can make
decisions about his or her body; that he or she has “higher human capacities
for reasoning and self-awareness.”[110]
Personhood has been divorced from bodily life.
From this
line of reasoning, the medical community can twist the Hippocratic Oath.
Although doctors since the fourth century bc
have sworn not to do harm or anything that might cause death, recently medical
practitioners have claimed that there is no harm
in doing anything that might cause the death of a “mere body” which no longer
(or not yet) has discernable mental capacities of reasoning. The statement in
the Oath against abortion is generally ignored, for it is assumed that any
collection of body parts is not a “person” unless it has language and the
ability to solve multivariable calculus equations.
Returning to
a biblical view of personhood means affirming the embodied individual living
out the history of the body, regardless of the person’s autonomy or lack
thereof. It means caring for embodied humanity; it means not going the route of Hitler and his Nazi doctors who utterly
devalued any beauty of the young, the elderly, the infirm, and the mentally
challenged. It means healing and supporting, as Jesus did in his ministry.
The
resurrection at the Parousia – the giving of the gift of eternal life in all
its bodily fullness – is the consummation of the
This hope,
though, has already been inaugurated. The Kingdom is at hand; the Spirit of God
already dwells in the Christian (Romans 8.9). Christian community ought to already be a vision of resurrected
reality. The Spirit dwelling in the believer brings life. Christians ought to
live according to the Spirit (Romans 8.12), to live as persons-in-community
according to ethical relations and a freedom from sin which characterizes life
in the Spirit.[111] This
Spirit-led life points toward the truth of coming resurrection. As Paul
explains,
“If
the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised
Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through
his Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8.11).
A Christian life points toward resurrected life. It
recognizes embodiment as a gift; it lives by the Spirit; it looks forward to
being clothed in immortality.
The hope of
resurrection, firmly rooted in a faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and
Jesus, centers on the resurrection of the Messiah and encourages the Christian
to live toward a Spirit-empowered life. The promise of resurrection is a guarantee
that sin and death have been and will be defeated. Paul fittingly ends his
discussion on resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 with a prayer of thanksgiving
and an exhortation to moral living:
“Thanks
be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore,
my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of
the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor [in the body] is not in vain” (1
Corinthians 15.57-58).
Bibliography
Scripture quotations are
from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
Barth, Karl. The Resurrection of the Dead. Trans. H.
J. Stenning.
Beasley-Murray, G. R.
“Dying and Rising with Christ.” Dictionary
of Paul and His Letters. Ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph P. Martin.
Conrade, Ernst M.
“Resurrection, Finitude, and Ecology.” Resurrection:
Theological and Scientific Assessments. Ed. Ted Peters, Robert J. Russell,
and Michael Welker.