We Believe...In the Resurrection

We Believe…In the Resurrection

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, - John 11:25
“Thus also the body that was laid in the earth is that which shall rise again.” - Aphrahat, Demonstrations 8

 
Introduction

 
Our common profession of faith in the Divine Liturgy ends with, “we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”1  Therefore, belief in the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life, is central to our Christian faith, and to our understanding of the nature of being a human.  However, what is often baffling to believers is what of us actually resurrects? Especially when we take into consideration the resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples, and how they convey to us that their experience of him was not of a resuscitated corpse, or a disembodied soul, but of a resurrected person.  

Since antiquity we find terms such as body, soul, spirit, and flesh, used in Sacred Scripture, philosophy, and religious-theological thought.  Yet we find often sharp differences between how these terms are used: in the Old Testament, New Testament, the Greco-Roman philosophers, and the Fathers of the Church.  Despite the limitations of our earthly intellects to know the inscrutable power of God, our hearts resonate with the words of Job; “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and on the last day I will rise out of the earth. And I will be enveloped again with my skin, and in my flesh I will see my God.” (Job 19:25-26)

Sacred Scripture

While Judaism has no universal doctrinal statement about what all it’s adherents should believe as concerns death and immortality, the Old Testament has many references that support substantial, personal life beyond the grave.  For example 2 Maccabees 7:9 states, “But the King of the world will raise us up, in eternal life at the resurrection, for we die on behalf of his laws.”  Also, in Ecclesiastes 12:7 we see, “the dust returns to its earth, from which it was, and the spirit returns to God, who granted it.”  These and other verses, such as the already mentioned words of Job, show that within the history of Judaism there came to be other ideas beyond the original Israelite teaching of shoel - the shadowy place of the dead; to a greater understanding that one’s relationship with God was not just a matter of a long life and blessings on earth, but the gift of eternal life in the presence of God.  

In the New Testament the Resurrection of Christ, gives light and meaning to the totality of the Gospel, indeed the Good News is Our Lord’s Resurrection; he is the first-born, and our hope and promise of eternal life.  St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians addresses the question of the resurrection of the body:2 “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what body will they come?’ …The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable,…it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. …I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” (1Corinthians 15:35,42,44,50)

St. Paul is adamant that the resurrection of the dead involves the rising of a “spiritual body”.  He tells us that flesh and blood as we know them in our earthly lives cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, but we will be changed - our earthly body for a spiritual body.  There are a number of key elements in this teaching of the Apostle: first, there is an affirmation of the integrity of the person.  Unlike the idea of a disembodied spirit or soul being our ultimate end, as in the view of Plato and Neo-Platonism.  Paul is careful to remind us that we remain totally human and totally ourselves but clothed in immortality.  A second point is that Paul is not being a philosopher, he is being an Apostle of the Good News.3  He is drawing a direct correlation between the dying and rising to new life in baptism, and one’s entrance into the Body of Christ, the Church. This in turn is in direct comparison to mortal death, rising to immortality, and entrance into the Kingdom of God.  Paul witnessed that many who had formerly embraced pagan lives and beliefs, now embraced the Christian faith to the point of being baptized and were promising to live Christ-like lives; for them this was indeed a death and rebirth. It often cut a person off often from former family and friends, and ushered them into the embrace of their new family, the Church of believers in Christ.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

“The term ‘flesh’ refers to man in his state of weakness and mortality.  The ‘resurrection of the flesh’ (the literal formulation of the Apostles’ Creed) means not only  that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our ‘mortal body’ will come to life again” (Catechism, 990). The philosophical importance of this statement is that it rejects the Platonic idea of the soul being the “true person,” who merely inhabits a body on earth, and immortality is the freeing of the soul from the body. It also negates the idea of Aristotle, that a “true person” is one who has body and soul united, and when the body dies, so does the soul, therefore making immortality impossible.  The statement of the Catechism is an affirmation of Scripture and Tradition concerning the value, necessity, and redemption of the total and “true person” - body and soul.  

Answering the question of {How do the dead rise?}, the Catechism offers these words of wisdom: 

 
997 What is "rising"? In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus' Resurrection.

998 Who will rise? All the dead will rise, "those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment."

999 How? Christ is raised with his own body: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself"; but he did not return to an earthly life. So, in him, "all of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear," but Christ "will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body," into a "spiritual body":

1000 This "how" exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is accessible only to faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ's transfiguration of our bodies:

1001 When? Definitively "at the last day," "at the end of the world.” Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ's Parousia:        

 
There will be an incompleteness to our lives until the Kingdom of God (Heaven) comes in it fullness.  We are not meant to merely live as souls but we are meant to live as God created us, and for this reason “the Word became flesh”, to assume and redeem the total person, soul and body.  Indeed, immortality in the totality of our personhood is the destiny of all.  Both the righteous and those who rejected God in this life will stand before God in their soul and body.  The Resurrection of Christ reveals that our resurrected body will be like his, a spiritual body.  The understanding of this great mystery is not open to our reason, or any human imagining, but to the hearts and eyes of faith.  It is rooted in our celebration of the Holy Mysteries - the Sacraments of the Church, especially the Holy Eucharist.  In the celebration of the Eucharist we discover and realize the true nature of “the Church”, and our own “Personhood”; as a foretaste of the eternal communion with the Blessed Trinity, which we call the Kingdom of God.  In the end we shall proclaim the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians: "O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?” (I Cor. 15:55)   

Rev. David A. Fisher,

 
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NOTES:

1.The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol of Faith, usually referred to as the Nicene Creed or just The Creed; was formulated at the Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381.

2. “The notion of the “spiritual” body appears in the New Testament in the first Epistle of the Apostle Paul, addressed to the Corinthians. …The resurrection of the dead was in fact one of the questions that seem to have perplexed Timotheos (Timothy), whom Paul had left in Corinth during his second peregrination, in order to organize and help the Corinthian Church.”  - Antonia S. Kakavelaki, Patristic Journal Scrinium vol 11 2015. pp. .225-241

3. “The official Christian view concerning the resurrection of the dead was that it is the same flesh that rises again, although in a state of glory and eternal. The Christian writers that held this opinion did not approach their conception in a philosophic way, in other words they were not interested whether their argumentation was pertinent in a philosophic- logical way.”  Antonia S. Kakavelaki, Patristic Journal Scrinium vol 11 2015. pp. .225-241