§ 1. Orthodox Doctrine.
The Orthodox doctrine of the future life is thus stated in the Assembly’s
Catechism, chapter 32:—
“I. The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption;
but their souls (which neither die nor sleep) having an immortal
subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the
righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the
highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory,
waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the
wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter
darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two
places for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledged
none.
“II. At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be
changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the selfsame bodies, and
none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again
with their souls forever.
“III. The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ, be raised to
dishonor; the bodies of the just by his Spirit unto honor, and be made
conformable to his own glorious body.”
The views here given may be considered, on the whole, the Orthodox notions
on this subject, although Orthodoxy is by no means rigorous on these
points. Considerable diversity of opinion is here allowed. The nature of
the life between death and the resurrection, and the nature of the
resurrection body, are differently apprehended, without any discredit to
the Orthodoxy of the belief. But, on the whole, we may say that the
Orthodox views on these topics include the following heads:—
1. Man consists of soul and body.
2. The soul of man is naturally immortal.
3. The only satisfactory proof of this immortality is the resurrection of
Christ.
4. Christ’s resurrection consisted in his return to earth in the same body
as that with which he died, though glorified.
5. Our resurrection will consist in our taking again the same bodies which
we have now, glorified if we are Christians, but degraded if we are not.
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On the other hand, those views which incline towards rationalism and
spiritualism agree in part with these statements, and in part differ;
thus:—
1. They usually agree with Orthodoxy in believing man to consist of soul
and body.
2. They also agree in believing the soul of man naturally immortal.
3. They differ from Orthodoxy in thinking the proof of immortality to be
found in human consciousness, not at all in the resurrection of Jesus.
We will therefore examine these two points of immortality and the
resurrection, to see what the true doctrine of Scripture is concerning
them.
§ 2. The Doctrine of Immortality as taught by Reason, the Instinctive
Consciousness, and Scripture.
The first class of proofs usually adduced for immortality are the rational
proofs, which are such as these:—
THE METAPHYSICAL PROOF.—This is based on the distinction of soul and body.
The existence of the soul is proved exactly as we prove the existence of
the body. If we can prove the one, we can equally prove the other. If any
one asks, How do we know there is such a thing as body? we reply that we
know it by the senses; we can touch, taste, smell, and see it. But to this
the answer is, that the senses only give us sensations, and that these
sensations are in the mind, not out of it. We have a sensation of
resistance, of color, of perfume, and the like; but how do we know that
there is anything outside of the mind corresponding to them? The answer to
this is, that by a necessary law of the reason, when we have a sensation,
we _infer_ some external substance from which it proceeds. We look at a
book, for example. We have a sensation of shape and color; we infer
something outside of our mind from which it proceeds. In other words, we
perceive qualities and infer substance. This inference is a spontaneous
and inevitable act of the mind. Now, we are conscious of another group of
feelings which are not sensations, which do not come from without, but
from within. These are mental and moral. But they, too, are qualities;
and, as in the other case, perceiving qualities, we infer a substance in
which they inhere. This latter substance we name soul, and we know it
exactly as we know body. It is known by us as a simple substance, having
personal unity. The personality, the “I,” is a fundamental idea. Now, as
soon as we perceive the existence of soul, it becomes evident that soul
_cannot_ die. It may be annihilated, but it cannot die. For what is
_death_ when applied to the body? Dissolution or separation of the parts,
but not destruction of the simple elements. Death is decomposition of
these elements, and their resolution into new combinations. Now, the soul,
being known by us as a simple substance, is incapable of dissolution.
This is the metaphysical proof of immortality. Then comes the TELEOLOGIC
proof, or that from final causes. Man’s end is not reached in this life.
We see everything in this world made for an end. The body is made for an
end, and attains it, and then decays and is dissolved. The soul, with all
its great powers, goes on and on, but the body dies before the soul is
ever perfected. Every human life is like an unfinished tale in a magazine,
with “to be continued” written at its close, to show that it is not yet
ended.
And besides these proofs of immortality, there is the THEOLOGICAL proof,
founded on the attributes of God; and the MORAL proof, based on the
conflict between conscience and self-love; and the ANALOGICAL proof, based
on the law of progress in nature; and the COSMIC proof, founded on the
relation of the soul to the universe; and the HISTORIC proof, resting on
the universal belief in immortality; and lastly, the PSYCHOLOGIC proof, or
the instinct of life in man, which carries with it its own evidence of
continuity.
But after all these proofs have been considered, the final result is
probability. Only the last gives more, and this acts not as an argument,
but as conviction. And the strength of this conviction depends on the
strength in any individual of this instinct. Some have more of the
instinct of life, others less.(29) Those who have much are easily
convinced by these various arguments. But those who have less, feel as
Cicero did after reading the Phædo of Plato.(30)
This instinct of life appears not only to be different from the fear of
death, but its exact opposite. When we have most of the one, we have the
least of the other. Any great excitement lifts us temporarily above the
fear of death by giving us more life. So a man will plunge into the sea,
and risk his own life to save that of another. So whole armies go to die
cheerfully in the great rage of battle. But this instinct receives a
permanent strength by all that elevates the soul. All greatness of aim,
all devotion to duty, all generous love, take away the fear of death by
adding to the quantum of life in the soul.(31)
If it be asked what the Scriptures teach concerning immortality, it must
be admitted that they have not much to say. They speak of life and of
eternal life; but this, as we shall discover, is quite another thing from
continued existence. It refers to the quality and quantity of being, and
not merely to its duration.
§ 3. The Three Principal Views of Death—the Pagan, Jewish, and Christian.
There are three principal views of death—the Pagan view, the Jewish view,
and the Christian view.
PAGANISM, in all its various forms, is chiefly distinguished by its
transferring to the other life the tastes, feelings, habits of this life.
The other world is this one, shaded off and toned down. It is gray in its
hue, wanting the color of this world; and is really inferior to it, and
only its pale reflection. To the gods of Olympus the doings of men are
matters of chief interest. Tartarus and the Elysian Fields are occupied by
lymphatic ghosts, misty spectres, unsubstantial and unoccupied. When a
living man enters, like Ulysses, Æneas, or Dante, they throng around him,
delighted to have something in which they can take a real interest.
“Better be a plough-boy on earth than a king among the ghosts.” This
expresses the Pagan idea of the other world. This world is more _real_
than the other, to the Pagan.
JUDAISM, in its view of hereafter, is much more positive. It began with no
idea of a hereafter. Nothing is taught concerning a future life by Moses,
and little is to be found concerning it even in the prophets. The
explanation is simple. Men hard at work in the present do not think much
of the future; and the work of the Jews was to be servants of Jehovah and
doers of his law here. However, all men must think a little of the region
beyond death. When the Jews thought of it, they projected their LAW upon
its blank spaces. It was a place where Jehovah would vindicate his
law—where the just should be happy, the unjust miserable. The perplexity
which tormented Job, David, and Elijah—namely, that bad men should succeed
in this world and good men fail—was to find its solution there. Judgment
was the Jewish idea of hereafter—a judgment to come. “I have a hope toward
God, as they themselves also allow,” said Paul, speaking of the Pharisees,
“that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, of the just, and also of
the unjust.”
The CHRISTIAN view of death is, that it is abolished—it has ceased to be
anything. The New Testament distinctly says, “who has _abolished_ death,
and brought life and immortality to light.”(32) Death, to a Christian, is
but a point on the line of advancing being; a door through which we pass;
a momentary sleep between two days. In the same sense the Saviour says,
“He that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.”
So also he spoke of Lazarus as being only asleep, and said of the daughter
of Jairus, “She is not dead, but sleepeth.”
Certainly Jesus could not have spoken of death in this way if he regarded
it as the awful and solemn thing which most believers consider it. If it
is the moment that decides our eternal destiny, which shuts the gate of
probation, which terminates for the sinner all opportunity of repentance
and conversion, for the saint all danger of relapse and fall,—then death
is surely something, and something of the most immense importance.
But Christ has really destroyed death both in the Pagan and in the Jewish
feeling concerning it. He destroys the Pagan idea of death as a plunge
downward from something into nothing, a descent into non-entity or
half-entity, a diminution of our being, a passage from the substantial to
the shadowy and unreal.
For, according to Christianity, we do not descend in death; we ascend into
more of reality, into higher life. Death is a passage onward and upward.
The proof of this we find in the Christian doctrine of the RESURRECTION.
The meaning of the resurrection of Christ is not, as has been often
supposed, that after death he came to life _again_, but that at death he
rose; that his death was rising up, ascent. This we shall show in a future
section of this chapter.
One power of Christ’s resurrection was to abolish the _fear of death_. It
brought life and immortality to _light_. It showed men their immortality.
The fear of death is natural to all men, but it is easily removed. The
smallest and lowest power of the resurrection is shown in removing it.
The fear of death is natural. It consists in this—that we are, in a great
part of our nature, immersed in the finite and perishing. “When we look at
the things which are seen,” which “are temporal,” we have an inward
feeling of instability—nothing substantial. Therefore it is said, “In Adam
all die,” for the Adam, the first man in all of us, is the animal soul.
“The first man is of the earth, earthy.” The law of our life is, that it
comes from our love. When we love the finite, our life is finite. But
besides the finite element in man, the animal soul, or Adam, is the
spiritual element, or Christ, the life flowing from things unseen, but
eternal.
Christ has abolished death. There is now to the Christian no such thing as
death, in the common sense of the term. The only death is the sense of
death, the fear of death, which insnares and enslaves. Jesus delivers us
from this by inspiring us with faith. We rise with him when we look with
him at the things unseen. Faith in eternal things brings into the soul a
sense of eternity. Death is only a sleep: outward death is the sleep of
the bodily life; inward death is the sleep of the higher life. We awake
and rise from the dead when Christ gives us life; and when he, who is our
life, shall appear, we shall also appear with him.
The philosopher Lessing says, “Thus was Christ the first _practical_
teacher of the immortality of the soul. For it is one thing to conjecture,
to wish, to hope for, to believe in immortality as a philosophical
speculation—another thing to arrange all our plans and purposes, all our
inward and our outward life, in accordance to it.”
Jesus also destroys the Jewish idea of death, as a passage from a world
where the good suffer and the bad triumph, to a world where this state of
things is reversed. The kingdom of heaven, with him, begins here, in this
world. Judgment is here as well as hereafter. The Jew lived, and all
Judaizing Christians live, under a fearful looking for of judgment after
death. The Christian sees that judgment is always taking place; that
Christ is always judging the world; that God’s moral laws and their
retributions are not kept in a state of suspense till we die—that they
operate now daily. The Christian knows that heaven and hell are both here,
and he expects to find them hereafter, because he finds them here. He
believes in law, but not in law only. He believes in something higher than
law, namely, love—the love of a present, helpful Father, of a friend near
at hand, of an inspiration from on high, of a God who forgives all sins
when they are repented of, and saves all who trust in him. He is not under
law, but under grace.
When he looks forward to the other world, it is not as to a place where he
goes to be sentenced by a stern and absolute judge, but where judgment and
mercy go hand in hand, where law remains, but is fulfilled by love.
This is what Paul means when he says, “The sting of death is sin, and the
strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who hath given us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The only real death is the fear of death—the Pagan fear of death, which is
a dread of loss, change, degradation of being, to follow the dissolution
of the body; and the Jewish fear of death, which is a fearful looking for
of judgment, and the sting of which is sin. Christ abolishes both of these
fears in every believing heart. He abolishes them in two ways—by the life
and the resurrection. He is both resurrection and life: by inspiring us
with spiritual or eternal life, he abolishes all fear of dissolution; and
by showing us that he has ascended into a higher state by his
resurrection, he gives us the belief that death is not going down, but
going up. For, though “it doth not yet appear what we shall be, yet we
know this, that when _he_ shall appear, we shall be like him.”
But, unfortunately, Christians are still subject to the fear of death.
This fear has been aggravated by the current teaching in pulpits
professedly Christian. The fear of that “something after death” has been
made use of to palsy the will; and conscience, as instructed by Christian
teachers, has made cowards of us all; so that few persons can really say,
“Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
It is very certain that the Pagan view of death and the Jewish view of
death still linger in the Church, and are encouraged by Christian
teachers. Death is made terrible by false doctrine and false teaching in
the Church. Christ has _not_ abolished death to the majority of
Christians. Christians are almost as much afraid of death as the
heathen—sometimes more so.
Actual Christianity is a very different thing from ideal Christianity.
Ideal Christianity is Christianity as seen and lived by Jesus; the gospel
which he saw and spoke; the word of God made flesh in him. But actual
Christianity is an amalgam; a portion of real Christianity mixed with a
portion of the belief and habits of feeling existing in men’s minds before
they became Christians. The Jews took a large quantity of Judaism into
Christianity; the Pagans a large quantity of Paganism. The Christian
Church from the very beginning Judaized and Paganized. Paul contended
against its Judaism on the one hand and its Paganism on the other. But
Judaism and Paganism have always stuck to the Christian Church. She has
never risen above them wholly to this day. They mingle with all her
doctrines, ceremonies, and habits of life. The Romish Church has more of
the Pagan element, the Protestant more of the Jewish. The mediatorial
system of Rome is essentially Pagan. Its ascending series of deacons,
sub-deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, cardinals, and
pope in the Church below; and beatified and sanctified spirits, angels,
and archangels in the Church above; its processions, pilgrimages, dresses,
its monastic institutions, its rosaries, relics, daily sacrifice, votive
offerings—everything peculiar to the Roman Church, existed before,
somewhere, in Paganism. So Protestantism has taken from the Jews its
Sabbath, its idea of God as King and Judge, its exclusion from God’s favor
of all but the elect, its view of the divine sovereignty, its doctrine of
predestination, day of judgment, resurrection of the body, material heaven
and material hell.
I do not mean to say that there is no truth in these things. There is,
because there is some truth in Paganism and in Judaism. We are all Pagans
and Jews before we become Christians. The Jewish and Pagan element is in
every human soul, and in all _constants_ in man there is truth. But the
Pagan and Jewish truths are but stepping-stones to the higher Christian
truth. The law and Paganism are school-masters to bring us to Christ. The
evil is, that Christianity has not been kept supreme; it has often been
sunk and lost in the earlier elements. As the foolish Galatians were
bewitched, and relapsed from the gospel to the law,—turning again to weak
and beggarly elements, desiring to be in bondage to them again, going back
to their minority under tutors and governors,—so the Church has been
relapsing, going back to weak and beggarly elements, not keeping
Christianity supreme in thought, heart, and life, but letting Paganism or
Judaism get the upper hand.
So it has been in regard to this subject. We Paganize and Judaize in our
view of death. We reëstablish again what Christ has abolished. We make
death something where Christ made it nothing. It is made the great duty of
life to “prepare for death.” No such duty is pointed out in the New
Testament. Our duty is to prepare every day _to live_; then, when we die,
we shall be taken care of by God. We can safely leave the other world and
its interests to Him who has shown himself so capable of taking care of us
here.
The gloom of death has been heightened by artificial means. Mourning
dresses, solemn faces, funeral addresses, the grave,—all have had an
unnatural depth of awe added to the natural sense of bereavement. The
Orthodox Church has deliberately and systematically Paganized and Judaized
in what it has said and done about death. Its object has been always to
make use of the great lever of fear of a hereafter in order to enforce
Christian belief and action. Hence Death has been made the king of
terrors, the close of probation, the beginning of judgment, the awful
entrance to the final decision of an endless doom. All this is wholly
unchristian, unknown to apostolic times, a relapse towards Paganism. It is
utterly opposed to the great declaration that “CHRIST HAS ABOLISHED DEATH,
AND BROUGHT LIFE AND IMMORTALITY TO LIGHT THROUGH THE GOSPEL.”
What is called faith in immortality, therefore, is of two kinds: it is an
instinct, and it is a belief. In the New Testament these are plainly
distinguished. In the passage just quoted, it is said that Jesus “brought
life AND immortality to light.” Jesus himself says, “I am the resurrection
AND the life.” “He that believeth in me hath eternal life abiding in him,
AND I will raise him up at the last day.”
Life is a matter of consciousness. It is a present possession, something
abiding in us now.
Immortality, or the resurrection, is an object of intellectual belief. It
is something future. We _feel_ life; we believe in the resurrection.
We will pass on, in the next sections, to consider each of these.
§ 4. Eternal Life, as taught in the New Testament, not endless Future
Existence, but present Spiritual Life.
It is only necessary carefully to examine the passages in the New
Testament where the phrase “eternal life” (ζωή αἰώνιος) occurs, to see
that it does not refer to the duration, but to the quality, of existence.
_Temporal life_ is that life of the soul which through the body is subject
to the vicissitudes of time. _Eternal_ (or everlasting) _life_ is that
life of the spirit which is independent of change, and is apart from
duration. God’s being was regarded by the Semitic races as outside of time
and space, as a perpetual Now, without before or after. (“I am the _I
Am_.” Exod. 3:14.) Man, made in the image of God, becomes a “partaker of
the divine nature” (2 Peter 2:4) by the gift of eternal life.
That “eternal life” is not an endless temporal existence appears,—
(_a._) From the passages in which it is spoken of as something to be
obtained by one’s own efforts, as (Matt. 19:16) when the young man asks of
Jesus what good thing he shall do that he may have eternal life, and Jesus
replies that he must keep the commandments, give his possessions to the
poor, and come and follow him. Certainly that was not the method to obtain
an endless existence, but it was the true preparation for receiving
spiritual good. So Jesus tells Peter (Mark 10:30) that those who make
sacrifices for the sake of truth shall receive temporal rewards “in this
time;” and “in the coming age eternal life” (“ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τῷ ἐρχομένῳ ζωὴν
αἰώνιον”). The coming age is the age of the Messiah, when the gift of the
Holy Ghost should be bestowed.
(_b._) Passages in which eternal life is spoken of as a present
possession, not a future expectation. (John 3:36.) “He that believeth on
the Son _hath_ (ἔχει) eternal life.” So John 6:47, 54, &c.
(_c._) Passages in which eternal life is defined expressly as a state of
the soul. (John 17:3.) “This is life eternal, that they may know thee the
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent,” &c.
So (Gal. 6:8) it is represented as the natural result of “sowing to the
Spirit;” (Rom. 2:7) of “patient continuance in well-doing;” as “the gift
of God” (Rom. 6:23); as something which we “lay hold of” (1 Tim. 6:12,
19).
This view of “eternal life” is taken by all the best critics. Professor
Hovey thus sums up their testimony:—(33)
“On a certain occasion, Christ pronounced it necessary for the Son
of Man to be lifted up, ‘that whosoever believeth in him should
not perish, but _have eternal life_’ (John 3:15)—ἔχῃ ζωήν αἰώνιον.
Ζωὴν αἰώνιον, says Meyer, who is, perhaps, the best commentator on
the New Testament, of modern times, ‘signifies the eternal
Messianic life, which, however, the believer already
possesses—ἔχῃ—in this αἰὼν, that is, in the temporal development
of that moral and blessed life which is independent of death, and
which will culminate in perfection and glory at the coming of
Christ.’ And Lücke, whose commentary on the Gospel of John is one
of the most thorough and attractive in the German language, says
that the ζωὴ αἰώνιος, which is the exact opposite of ἀπώλεια
(destruction), or θάνατος (death), is the sum of Messianic
blessedness. It is plain, we think, that the life here spoken of
as the present possession of every believer in Christ is more than
endless existence; it is life in the fullest and highest sense of
the word, the free, holy, and blessed action of the whole man,
that is to say, the proper, normal living of a rational and moral
being. The germ, the principle of this life, exists in the heart
of every believer; it is a present possession. ‘Whosoever,’ says
Christ, ‘drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a
fountain—πηγὴ—of water, springing up into everlasting life.’ (John
4:14.) In another place our Saviour utters these words: ‘He that
heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, _hath eternal
life_, and shall not come into condemnation, _but has passed from
death into life_’ (John 5:24)—μεταβέβηκεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν
ζωήν. Here, again, the believer is said to _have_ eternal life,
even now; for he has passed from death into life. _Ingens saltus_,
remarks Bengel, with his customary brevity and graphic power. We
translate a part of Lücke’s ample and instructive note on this
important verse.
“ ‘The words, “Has passed from death into life” determine that
ἔχει (_hath_) must be taken as a strict present. For the verb
μεταβέβηκεν (_has passed_) affirms that the transition from death
into life took place with the hearing and believing. Only if an
impossible thought were thus expressed, could we consent, as in a
case of extreme necessity, to understand the present ἔχει and the
present perfect μεταβέβηκεν as futures. And then we should be
compelled to say that John had expressed himself very strangely.
But if a higher kind of life, a resurrection process prior to
bodily death, is represented by “hath,” and “hath passed,” then
ζωὴ and ζωὴ αἰώνιος are not to be understood of a life commencing
after bodily death, but of the true and eternal Messianic life or
salvation, beginning even here. This life does not, to be sure,
exclude natural death, but neither does it first begin after this
death. (Cf. 5:40.) Even so θάνατος cannot be understood of bodily,
but only of spiritual death, of lying in the darkness of the
world. This interpretation would be justified here, even if
θάνατος elsewhere in the New Testament denoted uniformly nothing
but bodily death. But the metaphorical idea of death stands out
clearly in 1 John 3:14; 5:16, 17; John 8:51, 52; 2 Cor. 2:16;
7:10. Similar, also, is the use of the words θανατοῦν (Rom. 7:4;
8:13), and νεκρός, νεκροῦν, ἀποθνήσκειν (Matt. 8:22; Eph. 5:14;
Heb. 6:1; Col. 3:5; Gal. 2:19).’
“With the passage now examined may be compared a statement of the
apostle John to the same effect, namely: ‘We know that we have
passed from death into life, because we love the brethren; he that
loveth not abideth in death.’ (1 John 3:14.) This language,
explained with a due regard to the preceding context, speaks,
evidently, of spiritual death and life, of a passing from one
moral condition into another and opposite one. To say that this
new moral condition and blessed state is to endure and improve
forever, may doubtless be to utter an important truth, but one
which does not conflict in the slightest degree with its present
existence. It begins in this life; it continues forever and ever.
“Again: we find our Saviour saying, ‘He that believeth on me hath
everlasting life;’ ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and
drink his blood, ye have no life in you;’ and, ‘The words that I
speak unto you are spirit, and are life.’ (John 6:47, 53, 63.) By
these verses we are taught once more, that the Greek terms which
denote life and death, living and dying, were applied by Christ to
opposite moral states of the soul. For, observe, (1.) he more than
intimates that his words, his doctrines, are the source of present
life to those who receive them, and that, by eating his flesh and
drinking his blood, he signifies a reception of his words, and so
of himself as the Lamb of God. And, (2.) he declares that one who
believes _has_ eternal life; that one who eats of the true bread
shall not die, but shall live forever; and that one who does not
eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man _hath not
life_ in himself.
“Is it not plain that the words _life_ and _death_, as well as the
words _bread_, _flesh_, and _blood_, _eating_ and _drinking_, are
here used in a spiritual sense? Is it not plain that Jesus here
speaks of something in the believer’s soul which is nourished by
Christian truth, and which is at the same time called _life_? But
it is the function of truth to quicken thought and feeling, to
determine the modes of conscious life, the character or moral
condition of the human soul; and hence the rejection of it may
involve the utter want of certain spiritual _qualities_ and
blessed _emotions_, but not the want of personal existence. In
still another place we read, ‘Jesus said unto her, I am the
resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me
shall never die.’ (John 11:25, 26.) Christ here affirms that every
believer is exempted from death. And it matters not for our
present purpose whether the word ζῶν, translated in our version
‘liveth,’ refers in this passage to physical or to moral life. If
it refers to physical life, then our Saviour pronounces the
Christian to be already, in time, delivered from the power of
death, and in possession of a true and immortal life. But if it
refers to moral life, Christ declares that whoever possesses this
life, whether in the body or out of the body, is delivered from
the power of death; that is, his union with God and delight in
him, which alone constitute the normal living of the soul, shall
never be interrupted: οὐ μὴ ἀποθάνῃ εἰς τὸν αἰώνα—_he shall never
die_....
“ ‘And this is life eternal,’ says the Great Teacher, ‘that they
should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou
hast sent.’ (John 17:3.) The best ancient and modern interpreters
hold this verse to be a definition by Christ himself of the
expression ‘life eternal,’ so often used by him, according to the
record of John. De Wette says, ‘_And this is_ (therein consists)
_the life eternal_; not, this is the means of the eternal life;
for the vital knowledge of God and Christ is itself the eternal
life, which begins even here, and penetrates the whole life of the
human spirit.’ Meyer translates thus: ‘_Therein consists the
eternal life_,’ and says, ‘This knowledge, willed of God, is the
“eternal life,” inasmuch as it is the essential subjective
principle of the latter, its enduring, eternally unfolding germ
and fountain, both now, in the temporal development of the eternal
life, and hereafter, when the kingdom is set up, in which faith,
hope, and charity abide, whose essence is that knowledge.’(34) The
same view, substantially, is presented by Olshausen, Lücke,
Bengel, Alford, and many others.”
Eternal life is the gift of God to the soul through Jesus Christ. It is
God’s life communicated to man—the life of God in the soul of man. This is
distinctly stated in the First Epistle of John (chap. 1:1), as the life
which was from the beginning, the eternal life which was with the Father,
but is manifested to us, giving us fellowship with the Father and with his
Son.
The root of this eternal life is in every human being. It is what we call
“the spirit” in man, as distinguished from the soul and body. It is the
side of each person which touches the infinite and eternal.
Fichte, the most spiritual of German philosophers, says, “Love is life.
Where I love, I live. What I love, I live from that.”(35) When we love
earthly things, our life is earthly, that is, temporal; when we love the
true, the right, the good, our life is spiritual and eternal. Then we have
eternal life abiding in us. Then all fear of death departs. The great gift
of God through Christ was to make the right and true also lovely, so that
loving them, we could draw our life from them. When God becomes lovely to
us, by being shown to us as Jesus shows him, then by loving God we live
from God, and so have eternal life abiding in us.
The natural instinct of immortality is the spirit, or sense of the
infinite and eternal. But it needs to be reënforced by the influence of
Christian conviction, hope, and experience, in order completely to conquer
the sense of death. It is not by logical arguments in proof of a future
existence that immortality becomes clear to us, but by living an immortal
life. Dr. Channing says truly, “Immortality must begin here.” And so Hase
(Dogmatic, § 92) says, “Any proof which should demonstrate, with
mathematical certainty, to the understanding, or to the senses, the
blessings or terrors of our future immortality, would destroy morality in
its very roots. The belief in immortality is therefore at first only a
wish, and a belief on the authority of others; but the more that any one
assures to himself his spiritual life by his own free efforts and a pure
love for goodness, the more certain also does eternity become, not merely
as something future, but as something already begun.”(36)
Whenever Jesus is said to give eternal life, or to be the life of the
world; whenever the apostles declare Christ to be their life, or say that
as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive; when Paul says,
“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the
law of sin and death;” “to be spiritually minded is life and peace;” “the
life of Jesus is manifested in our dying (mortal) flesh;” when John says,
“He that hath the Son hath life;” when in Revelation we read of the book
of life, and water of life, and tree of life,—the meaning is always the
same. It refers to the spiritual vitality added to the soul by the
influence of Jesus, who communicates God’s love, and so enables us to LOVE
God, instead of merely fearing him or obeying him. Love casts out all
fear, the fear of death included. He who looks at the things unseen and
eternal, partakes of their eternal nature, and though his outward human
nature perishes, his inward spiritual nature is renewed day by day.
§ 5. Resurrection, and its real Meaning, as a Rising up, and not a Rising
again.
One part of the Christian doctrine of immortality is conveyed in the term
“eternal life;” the other part in the other term, usually associated with
it—“the resurrection.” The common Orthodox doctrine of the resurrection,
is that the dead shall rise with the same bodies as those laid in earth;
and this identity is usually made to consist in identity of matter, though
Paul expressly says, “Thou sowest _not_ that body that shall be.” On the
other hand, many liberal thinkers of the Spiritual School deny any
resurrection, and think the whole doctrine of the resurrection a Jewish
error, believing in a purely spiritual existence hereafter. Others, like
Swedenborg, teach that the soul hereafter dwells in a body, though of a
more refined and sublimated character; and in this we think they approach
more nearly the teaching of the New Testament.
It is a remarkable fact that the Greek words indicating the rising of men
should have been translated, in our English Bible, by terms signifying
something wholly different, and conveying another sense than that in the
original. It is equally extraordinary that this change of meaning should
seldom or never be alluded to by theological writers.
These words, translated “resurrection,” “rise again,” and the like, all
have, in the Greek, the sense of rising UP, not of rising AGAIN. They
signify not return, but ascent; not coming back to this life, but going
forward to a higher. The difference in meaning is apparent and very
important. It is one thing to say, that at death we go down into Hades, or
into dissolution, and at the resurrection we come back to conscious
existence, or to the same life we had before, and quite a different thing
to say that what we call death is _nothing_; but that we rise _up_, and go
forward when we seem to die. This last is the doctrine of the New
Testament, though the former is the one usually believed to be taught in
it.
The immense stress laid, in the New Testament, on the resurrection of
Jesus is by no means explained by supposing that after his death he came
to life again, and so proved that there is a life after death. What he
showed his disciples was, that death was not going down, but going up; not
descent into the grave, or Hades, but ascent to a higher world. This is
the evident sense of such passages as these. We have not room to go over
all the passages which should be noticed in a critical examination, but
select a few of the most prominent.
1. Ἀνάστασις, commonly translated “resurrection,” or “rising again,” but
which literally means “rising up.” (So Bretschneider, “Lexicon Man. in
lib. Nov. Test.” defines it as “resurrectio, _rectius_ surrectio.”)(37)
This word occurs forty-two times in the New Testament. In _none_ of them
(unless there be a single exception, which we shall presently consider)
does it necessarily mean _a rising again_, or coming back to the same
level of life as before. In a large number of instances the word _can
only_ mean a _rising up_, or ascent to a higher state. Of these cases we
will cite a few examples.
Ten of the passages in which the word ἀνάστασις occurs, are in the account
by the Synoptics of the discussion between Jesus and the Sadducees
concerning the case of the woman married to seven brothers. After stating
the case, they say, “Therefore, _in the resurrection_, whose wife of them
is she?” It is plain that the word “resurrection” here is equivalent to
“the future state,” and cannot be limited to a return to life. This
becomes more apparent in the answer of Jesus, as given, somewhat varied,
by the three Synoptics: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are
given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” (Matt. 22:30.)
Mark, instead of “the resurrection,” has the corresponding verb, “when
they shall rise from the dead.” This certainly means, not rising again,
but rising up, ascending to a higher state. And Luke adds another element,
showing that the “resurrection” is a state to which all may not attain,
but which is dependent on character; evidently therefore a higher state.
“They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world (τοῦ αιῶνος
ἐχείνου), and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given
in marriage; neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the
angels” (or rather “are like the angels”) “and are children of God, being
_children of the resurrection_.” (Luke 20:35, 36.) This last phrase,
“children of the resurrection,” is very significant, and intends a
character corresponding to this higher state. There seems, indeed, to be a
contradiction between this passage, which makes the resurrection
conditional, and those which declare it universal. (See John 5:29, and 1
Cor. ch. 15.) But perhaps the reconciliation can be found in the apostolic
statement (1 Cor. 15:23) “every one in his order.” All shall ascend into
the higher state, called “the resurrection,” but only as they become
prepared for it. All are not now prepared to hear the voice of the Son of
man (or of divine truth), which shall causes them to rise to the
resurrection of life and of judgment; but, in due season, all shall come
forth from their graves, and hear it.
Another passage in which this word occurs is in Luke 2:34, where Simon
says, “This child is set for the fall and _rising again_ (ἀνάστασιν) of
many in Israel.” A moral fall and rising are here evident; and only if the
reduplication be dropped, and we read “for the fall and the rising up,” do
we get the true idea. It is not meant that Jesus comes to degrade us
morally, and then lift us up again morally. Rather it means that he comes
to test the state of the hearts of men: some cannot bear the test, and
fall before it; others, better prepared, rise higher. Here, also,
ἀνάστασις means rising up, and not rising again.
The most remarkable use of this word, however, is in that famous passage
where the common meaning is wholly unintelligible, in the story of
Lazarus. (John 11:24, 25.) Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the
life.” If resurrection means coming back to life after death, in what
sense can Jesus be “the resurrection and the life”? Then Jesus said that
he was “the coming back to life,” which is unintelligible. But if the
resurrection means the ascent to a higher state, then Jesus declares that
he is the way of _ascent to a higher state_, just as he says elsewhere, “I
am the way;” “I am the door.” It is the power of Christ within the soul,
the power of his spirit of faith, hope, and love, which enables us to go
forward and upward. Christ is not the principle of resuscitation to an
earthly existence, or a merely human immortality. He does not bring us to
life again, but he lifts us up. So he adds, “He who believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Not, shall come to life again;
no, but, shall rise out of death into life, ascend into a higher condition
of being. Then he adds that to one who has faith in him, who has adopted
his ideas, there is no longer any such thing as death. Death has
disappeared—is abolished. “He who liveth and believeth in me shall never
die.”
But, it may be objected, if spiritual death and life are here spoken
of,—if the passage means that he who believeth in Christ shall have inward
religious spiritual life, a heavenly and celestial life,—then how could
that comfort Martha, or apply to her case, who was mourning, not the
spiritual, but the natural, death of her brother?
Christ is essentially a manifestation of the truth and love of God. To
believe in him is therefore to believe in God’s truth and love. But belief
in this fills the soul with life. And the soul full of life cannot die.
What seems death is only change, and a change from a lower to a higher
state, therefore rising up, or resurrection. Christ, then, the love and
truth of God in the soul, is the life and the resurrection. He fills the
soul with that life which causes it to rise with every change, to go up
and on evermore to a higher state. That which seems death is nothing; the
only real death is the immersion of the soul in sense and evil, the
turning away from truth and God.
Now, Martha believed, as most of us believe, in a _future_ resurrection.
She believed that, after lying a long time in the grave, one would come
out of it at last, on a great day of judgment, and somehow the soul and
body be reunited. She believed this, for it was the general belief of the
Jews in her day. It is the general belief of Christians now. The majority
of Christians have not got very far beyond that. They talk of the
resurrection, as though it were merely the return of the soul into the old
body; and when you comfort them over their dead by saying, “Your dead will
rise,” reply, “I know it—at the resurrection, at the last day.” But Jesus
tells Martha, and all the Martha Christians of the present time, that he
_is_ the resurrection and the life. Your brother is not to sleep in the
dust till the last day, and then rise. He does not die at all. He rises
with Christ here, and in whatever other world. His nature is to go _up_,
not down, when he is Christianized. Now or then, to-day or at the last
day, if he has the living faith of a son of God, he will be raised by that
Christ within him, who is his life.
This, it seems to us, is the only adequate explanation of this passage,
and shows conclusively that resurrection must mean, in this place, a
rising up to a higher existence, and not a mere return to this life.
It appears, from 1 Cor. ch. 15, that there were some in the Christian
church who said there was no resurrection of the dead (ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν,)
or that it was past already. (2 Tim. 2:18.) These Christians did not deny
the doctrine of immortality, or a future life. It is difficult to imagine
the motive which could induce any one, in those days, to join the
Christian church, if he denied a future life. Probably, therefore, they
assumed that the only real resurrection takes place in the soul when we
rise with Christ. They said, “If we are to rise into a higher life after
this, _how_ shall we rise, and with what bodies?” (1 Cor. 15:35.) They
professed to believe in a simple immortality of the soul, but not an
ascent of the personal being, soul and body together, to the presence of
God. They did not question a future life, but a higher life to which soul
and body should go up together.
To these doubting Christians, who could not gather strength to believe in
such a great progress as this, Paul says that if man does not rise, if it
is contrary to his nature to rise, then Jesus, being a man, has not risen,
but gone down to Hades with other souls. Then he is not _above_ us, with
God, sending down strength and inspiration from our work. This faith of
ours, which has been our great support, is an illusion. We have all been
deceived—deceived in preaching forgiveness of sins through Christ from
God; deceived in preaching a higher life above us, into which Christ has
gone, and where he is waiting to receive us. But we have not been
deceived—Christ _has_ risen, and risen as the first fruits of humanity. He
leads the way up, and in proportion as we share his life, we also have in
ourselves the principle of ascent, and shall go up too. He goes first;
then all who are like him follow and finally, in due order, all mankind.
Death and Hades have been conquered by this new influx of life in Christ.
Instead of remaining pale ghosts, naked souls, we shall rise into a
fuller, richer, larger life, of soul and body.
There is one passage, however, where there seems a difficulty in
considering ἀνάστασις, or resurrection, as implying an ascent of
condition. It is in John 5:28, 29. Our common translation reads thus: “The
hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice
(that is, the voice of the Son of man), and shall come forth, they that
have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil
unto the resurrection of damnation.” At first sight it certainly seems
that the “resurrection of damnation” (ἀνάστασιν χρίσεως) could hardly be
considered a higher state. All depends, however, on the meaning of the
word, here translated “damnation.” The word, in the Greek, is the genitive
of χρίσις. Now, by turning to the Concordance, we find that this word
χρίσις occurs some forty-eight times in the New Testament. In these
places,—
It is translated 3 times by “damnation.”
It is translated 2 times by “condemnation.”
It is translated 2 times by “accusation.”
It is translated 41 times by “judgment.”
It is evident, therefore, that our translators considered _judgment_ to be
the primary and usual meaning of the word. Why, then, did they not
translate it here, “rising to judgment,” or “resurrection of judgment”? It
must have been because they believed either that (1.) “judgment” would
make no sense here; (2.) that “damnation” would make better sense; or,
(3.) that “damnation” was more in accordance with the analogy of faith.
But we can decide these points for ourselves. “Judgment” is the better
word here, for it accords with the doctrine of the New Testament, that in
proportion as man goes wrong, he dulls his moral sense, and needs a
revelation of truth to show him what he is. A true man, who has lived
according to the truth here, has judged himself, and will not need to be
judged hereafter. (1 Cor. 11:31.) He rises into the resurrection of life.
But those who follow falsehood here, need to see the truth; and they rise
into the resurrection of judgment. The truth judges and condemns them. But
this is really an ascent to them also. It is going up higher, to see the
truth, even when it condemns them. This passage, then, is no exception to
the principle that wherever “resurrection” (ἀνάστασις) occurs in the New
Testament, it implies going up into a higher state.
All the other places where the word occurs either evidently have this
meaning, or can bear it as easily as the other. Thus (Luke 14:14), “Thou
shalt be recompensed in the higher state of the just.” (20:27), the
Sadducees “deny a higher state.” (Acts 1:21), “he is to be a witness with
us of the ascended state of Jesus.” (Acts 4:2), “preached, through Jesus,
the higher state of the dead.” (17:18), “preached to them Jesus and the
higher state.” (20:23), that Christ “should be the first to rise into the
higher state.” (Lazarus and others had returned to life again before
Jesus, so that in this sense he was _not_ the first fruits.) (Rom. 6:5),
“planted in the likeness of his resurrection.” This can only mean as
Christ passed through the grave into a higher state, so we pass through
baptism into a higher state.
The only text which presents any real difficulty is Heb. 11:35,
translated, “women received their dead raised to life again,” literally,
“women received from the resurrection their dead” (ἐξ ἀναστάσεως), which
may refer to a return to this life, as in the case of the child of the
widow of Sarepta (1 Kings 17:17), and of the Shunamite (2 Kings 4:17).(38)
But in the same verse, the other and “better” resurrection is spoken of,
for the sake of which these martyrs refused to return to this life. The
case referred to is probably that of the record of the seven brothers put
to death by Antiochus (2 Macc. 7:9), who refused life offered on condition
of eating swine’s flesh, and said, when dying, “The King of the world
shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, unto everlasting life” (εἰς
αἰώνιον ἀναβίωσιν ζωῆς ἀνατήσει ἡμας), literally, “to an eternal renewal
of our life.”(39) This verse shows, therefore, that though ἀνάστασις may
mean a return to this life, yet that the other sense of a higher life is
expressly contrasted with it, even here.
Our conclusion, therefore, with regard to this term ἀνάστασις, is, that
its meaning, in New Testament usage, is not “rising again,” but “rising
up,” or “ascent.”
2. Ἀνίστημι. This word is the root of the former. It is used one hundred
and twelve times in the New Testament. It is translated with _again_ (as,
“he must rise again from the dead”) fifteen times. It is translated
thirty-six times “rise up” or “raise _up_” (as, “I will raise him up at
the last day”), and ninety-six times without the “again.” It is rendered
“he _arose_,” “shall _rise_,” “stood up,” “raise up,” “arise,” and in
similar ways.
3. Ἐγείρω. This word is also frequently used in relation to the
resurrection, and is translated “to awaken,” “arouse,” “animate,”
“revive.” The natural and usual meaning is ascent to a higher state, and
not merely a “rising again.”
-------------------------------------
From these considerations we see that the primitive and central meaning of
the terms used to express the resurrection is that of ASCENT. It is GOING
UP. This is the essential Christian idea. But it soon became implicated
with the Pagan idea of immortality, or continued existence of the soul,
and the Jewish idea of a bodily resurrection at the last day. But though
there is a truth in each of these beliefs, the Christian doctrine is
neither one nor the other. The gospel _assumes_, but does not teach, a
continued existence of the soul. Since the greater includes the less, in
teaching that the MAN rises at death into a higher life, it necessarily
implies that he continues to live. And in teaching that he is to exist as
man, with soul and body, in a higher condition of development, it teaches
necessarily the bodily resurrection of the Jews. Christ, who came “not to
destroy, but to fulfil,” FULFILS both Pagan and Jewish ideas of the future
state in this doctrine of an ASCENSION at death.
The principal points of the teaching of Jesus concerning the life which
follows the dissolution of the body are these: _First._ As against the
Sadducees, he argues that the dead are living (Matt. 22:31, and the
parallel passages), from the simple fact that God calls them _his_. If God
thinks of them as _his_, that is enough. His thinking of them makes them
alive. No one can perish while God is thinking of him with love. Such an
argument, carrying no weight to the mere understanding, is convincing in
proportion as one is filled with a spiritual conception of God.
_Secondly._ Jesus abolishes death by teaching that there is no such thing
to the soul which shares his ideas concerning God and the universe. This
is implied in the phrases, “He that liveth and believeth in me shall never
die.” (John 11:26.) “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” (John
6:47.) “I am the living bread, whereof if a man eat, he shall live
forever.” (John 6:51.) “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath
eternal life.” (John 6:54.) “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see
death.” Here, “eating Christ’s flesh, and drinking his blood,” is plainly
equivalent to “keeping his saying,” and “believing on him.” As “food which
we eat and drink changes itself so as to become a part of our own body by
assimilation,” so Christ intends that his truth shall not be merely taken
into the memory, and reproduced in words, but shall be taken into the
life, and reproduced in character. _Thirdly._ He teaches that as feeding
on his truth changes our natural life into spiritual life, and lifts
temporal existence into eternal being, so it will also place us outwardly
in a higher state and higher relations, to which state he applies the
familiar term the “resurrection” or “ascent,” the “going up.” “I will
raise him up at the last day.” The “last day,” in Jewish and New Testament
usage, means the Messianic times, as appears from such passages as Acts
2:17, where the term is used of the day of Pentecost; Heb. 1:2, “hath in
these last days spoken unto us by his Son;” 1 John 2:18, “Little children,
it is the last time.” Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to the
Father (John 14:15), in whose house are many mansions, where he is to
prepare a place for his disciples. (John 14:2.)
That “resurrection” was understood to mean a present higher state, and not
a future return to life, appears also from its use by the apostles.
Christians are spoken of as having already “risen with Christ” (Col. 3:1);
“risen with him in baptism” (Col. 3:1); walking “in the likeness of his
resurrection” (Rom. 6:5). And, no doubt, it was by making this idea of a
present resurrection too exclusive, that some Christians maintained that
it was wholly a present resurrection, and not at all future—that “it was
past already.”
This Christian faith in “resurrection” as ascent to a higher condition of
being at death is practically borne witness to by such common expressions
concerning departed friends as these: “He has gone to a better world;” “He
is in a higher world than this;” “We ought not to grieve for him—he is
better off than he was.” The practical sense of Christendom has taken this
faith from the Gospels, though the Creeds do not authorize it. The Creeds
teach that the souls of the good either sleep till a future resurrection,
or are absorbed into God until then, while the souls of the impenitent
descend to a lower sphere. Christ teaches that at death _all_ rise to a
higher state—of life and love to the loving, or judgment by the sight of
truth to the selfish; but _higher_ to all. Paul declares that “as in Adam
ALL die, even so in Christ shall ALL be made alive,” making the rise
equivalent in extent to the fall.
The great change in the faith of the apostles, in consequence of the
resurrection or ascent of Christ, was this: They before believed that at
death all went to Hades, to the gloomy underworld of shadows, there to
remain till the final resurrection. But the belief that Christ, instead of
going down, had gone up, and had assured them that all who had faith in
him had the principle of ascent in their souls, and were already
spiritually risen,—this took the victory from Hades and the sting from
death.
To Christians, at least, Hades is no more anything; all who have a living
faith rise with Christ; and sooner or later, each in his order, _all_
shall rise. This was the “power of the resurrection” of Jesus to destroy
the fear of death, to enable them “to attain” _now_ “to the resurrection
of the dead” (Phil. 3:10), teaching that “if the Spirit of Him who raised
up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Jesus from the dead
shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwells in you.”
“For it is Christ that died, _yea, rather, that is risen_, who is even at
the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” It was,
therefore, the duty of all Christians, since they were risen in Christ,
“to seek the things which are above.”
§ 6. Resurrection of the Body, as taught in the New Testament, not a
Rising again of the same Body, but the Ascent into a higher Body.
It is remarkable that those who profess to believe in the literal
inspiration of the New Testament should nevertheless very generally teach
that the future body is _materially_ the same as this. We often hear
labored arguments to show how the identical chemical particles which
compose the body at death may be re-collected from all quarters at the
resurrection. Yet the only place where any account is given of the future
body, declares explicitly that it is different from the present, just as
the stalk which comes out of the ground differs from the seed planted. “We
sow _not_ the body which shall be, but bare grain, and God giveth it a
body as pleaseth him.”
Many persons, however, take an opposite view, and have no belief in any
future bodily existence. They speak much more frequently of the
_immortality of the soul_. But the resurrection of the body is
unquestionably a doctrine of the New Testament, while the immortality of
the soul is not. The New Testament knows nothing of a purely spiritual
existence hereafter, nothing of an abstract disembodied immortality. The
reaction from materialism to idealism has caused us now to undervalue
bodily existence. So it did among the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote, “How
say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” These
Corinthians were not Sadducees, nor Epicureans. There is no evidence that
these sects had any influence on the Christian Church. They did not deny a
_future existence_, but they denied a rising up and a _future bodily
existence_. They believed, like us, in an immortality of the soul, denying
the possibility (probably on philosophical grounds) of the resurrection of
the body. So Paul proceeds, in the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians, first
to prove the fact, and then to explain the nature of a bodily
resurrection.
Let us consider, first, what is meant by a resurrection of the body.
This word _resurrection_ tends to mislead us by suggesting the rising from
the grave of the material body there deposited; and accordingly we have
the theory which makes the future body the mere revival of the same
particles of matter composing the present body. But the Greek word, as we
have fully shown, means not merely rising out of the grave, but rising to
a higher state of existence. The _anastasis_ of the body is its elevation
and spiritualizalion. By the resurrection of the body, we mean that in the
future life of man, he shall not exist in the same material and fleshly
envelope as now, nor yet as a purely disembodied spirit. The true doctrine
avoids both extremes—the extreme of pure idealism on the one hand, and of
pure materialism on the other. It asserts three things: first, that we
have a real body hereafter; second, that this will be identical with our
_true_ body now; third, that it will be this true body in a higher state
of development than at present, a spiritual instead of a natural body.
First, it will be a real body. A real body is an organization with which
the soul is connected, and by means of which it comes into connection with
the material universe, and under the laws of space and time. This
organization may be more or less refined and subtle; it may not come under
the cognizance of our present senses; but if it is an organization by
means of which we may commune with the physical universe, it is
essentially a _body_.
Again, the future body is identical with the present true body of man. For
what is our _true body_? Not the particles of flesh and blood, but the
principle of its organization. The identity of our body does not consist
in the identity of its material particles, for these come and go, are in
constant flux, and are wholly changed, it is said, every seven years. But,
notwithstanding this change, the body of the man is the same with that of
the child. The same features, figure, temperament, morbid and passional
tendencies, are reproduced year after year. These flying particles,
gathered from earth and air, are manufactured into brain, bone, blood,
according to an unvarying law, and then given back again to air and earth.
There is, therefore, a hidden mysterious principle of organization working
on during the whole seventy years of our earthly existence, which makes
the body of the infant and the child identical with that of the man and
the old man. This is the true body; and this, extricated at death from its
present envelope, and clothed upon with a higher spiritual and immortal
form, will constitute the future body.
But again, it will be a _higher development of the body_. Paul plainly
teaches this. He uses the analogy of the seed, showing that the future
body is related to this; and differenced from this, as the plant is
related to the seed, and yet different from it. “Thou sowest _not_ that
body _that shall be_, but bare grain.” You do not sow the stalk, but the
kernel; you do not sow the oak, but the acorn. Yet the oak is contained
potentially in the acorn, and so the future body is contained potentially
in the present. The condition of the germination of the acorn is its
dissolution; then the germ is able to separate itself from the rest of the
seed, and start forward in a new career of development. In like manner the
spiritual body cannot be developed until the present organization is
dissolved.
Paul goes on to say that “there is a natural body and there is a
spiritual.” This body is the natural body; the future will be the
spiritual. Two things may be implied in this distinction. As by the
natural body we come into communion with the natural world, the world of
phenomena, so by the spiritual we commune with the spiritual world, the
world of essential being and cause. _Here_ and _now_ we see things through
a glass, darkly, _then_ face to face. _Here_ we look at things on the
outside only; but how often a longing seizes us to know the essences, to
penetrate to their interior life! That longing is an instinctive prophecy
of its own fulfilment hereafter. The spiritual body must also _manifest
the spirit_ hereafter, as the natural or soul body now manifests the soul.
For while the present body expresses adequately enough present wishes and
emotions, it fails of expressing the spiritual emotions, and fails of
being a true servant of the higher life.
This, then, constitutes the future body. First, it is an organization
connecting us with the outward universe of space and time. Second, it is
identical with the present true body. Third, it is a development and
advance of this into a higher organization. Let us now inquire what are
the evidences and proofs of _this future body_. How do we know, or why do
we think, that we shall have any such body?
The first proof of a future bodily existence is its reasonableness. There
is a law of gradation in the universe by which the seed unfolds gradually
into the stalk, the bud into the flower, the flower into the fruit. We see
a gradual progress of vegetable life into animal, and a gradual transition
from the lower forms of animal existence to the higher. The transition is
so gradual that it is very difficult to say where vegetables end and where
animals begin. Radiated animals ascend towards the mollusks, the mollusks
towards the articulata, the articulata towards the vertebrata. And through
this last class we see a steady ascent from one form of organization to
another; from fishes to reptiles, from reptiles to birds, from birds to
mammalia, until by steady rise we reach the human body, in delicacy,
beauty, and faculty the crown of all. Why should we suppose this the end
of bodily existence? Why not rather that this is to pass into a still more
noble and beautiful type of organization? After this gradual development,
why suppose the enormous change to a purely spiritual existence? Is it not
more reasonable to suppose, instead, a higher order of bodily life?
If we may look at the question for a moment from a metaphysical point of
view, we shall find it hard to comprehend the possibility of personal
existence hereafter apart from bodily organization. Everything which is,
must be either somewhere, or everywhere, or nowhere; that is, it must be
present in some particular point of space, or omnipresent through all
space, or wholly out of space. But to be wholly out of space is to lose
that which distinguishes one thing from another, for all distinctions
which we can conceive of are distinctions in space and time. To be
everywhere is to be omnipresent, which is an attribute belonging to God
and not to finite being, and would imply absorption into the divine
nature. Therefore personal existence is existence somewhere in space, but
locality in space is an attribute of body, not of spirit, and implies
bodily existence.
Moreover, shall we suppose that after death we are to have no more
communion with the material universe, no more knowledge of this vast order
and beauty, which is a perpetual manifestation of God, the garment which
he wears, one of his grand methods of revelation? These myriads of suns
and worlds, these constellations of stars peopling space, this city of God
full of wonder and infinite variety, are they to be nothing to us after
the few years of mortal life are over? We cannot believe it. If, then, we
are still to perceive the material universe, the faculties by which we
perceive it will be more intense bodily faculties. If spiritual things are
spiritually discerned, bodily things are discerned in a bodily manner.
Such considerations as these show that a future bodily existence is
reasonable; but the proof of it must come, if at all, either from
revelation or experience. Let us see, then, what bearing the resurrection
of Jesus has upon this question.
According to the Gospels, Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form. This
body resembled his former one, so as to be recognized by his disciples; it
had the marks of the spear and nails; it could be touched, and was capable
of eating food. In all these respects it seems exactly the same body he
had before. This, too, is confirmed by the fact that he came from the tomb
where his body had been placed, and that this had disappeared. But, on the
other hand, many peculiarities indicate a difference; such as his not
being recognized at once by Mary in the garden, nor by the disciples
during the whole walk to Emmaus; his appearing and disappearing suddenly;
his coming through the closed doors. Again, if the body of Jesus was
exactly like that which he had before death, it is evident that he would
have to lay it aside again before ascending into the spiritual world, for
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But if he was to lay it
aside again, this would be equivalent to dying a second time, which would
destroy the whole meaning and value of his resurrection, making it nothing
but a mere revival, or coming to life again, like that of a person who has
been apparently drowned. Such a revival would have produced no results,
and the faith of the Church which has come from the resurrection of Jesus
would never have taken place.
Accordingly, we must conclude that Jesus rose with a higher spiritual
body. And this gives to the ascension its meaning. For otherwise, the
ascension would be only a disappearance; whereas, in this view, the
disciples saw him pass away in the shape and form he was to continue to
wear in the other world. Then the gulf was bridged over, in their minds,
and they had looked into heaven.
This was what the resurrection of Jesus did for the apostles. It changed
doubt and despair into faith and hope; changed theoretical belief into
practical assurance; imparted that commanding energy of conviction and
utterance which only comes from life. Animated thus themselves, they were
enabled to animate others. And so the resurrection of Christ was the
resurrection of Christianity, the resurrection of a Christian faith and
hope infinitely deeper and stronger than had before existed in the minds
of the disciples.
We do not like the usual method of regarding the resurrection of Jesus as
a great exceptional event, and an astounding violation of the laws of
nature. Its power seems rather to have consisted in this, that it was a
glorious confirmation of those everlasting laws announced by Jesus—laws
boundless as the universe. The very essence of the gospel is the
declaration that good is not only better than evil, which we all knew
before, but stronger than evil, which we weakly doubt.
The gospel assures us that love is stronger than hatred, peace than war,
holiness than evil, truth than error. It is the marriage of the goodness
of motive and the goodness of attainment; goodness in the soul and
goodness in outward life; heaven hereafter and heaven here. It asserts
that the good man is always in reality successful; that he who humbles
himself _is_ exalted, he who forgives _is_ forgiven, he who gives to
others receives again himself, he who hungers after righteousness is
filled. This was the faith which Christ expressed, in which and out of
which he lived and acted; it was this faith which made him Christ the
King, King of human minds and hearts. Was it then all false? Did his death
prove it so? Was that the end, the earthly end, of his efforts for man?
Were truth and love struck down then by the power of darkness? That was
the question which his resurrection answered; it showed him passing
through death to higher life, through an apparent overthrow to a real
triumph; it gave one visible illustration to laws usually invisible in
their operation, and set God’s seal to their truth. Through that death
which seemed the destruction of all hope, Jesus went up to be the Christ,
the King.
In this point of view we see the value and importance of the resurrection
of Jesus, and why Easter Sunday should be the chief festival of
Christianity. It was the great triumph of life over death, of good over
evil. It was the apt symbol and illustration of the whole gospel.
If, then, the resurrection of Christ means that Christ ascended through
death to a higher state; if our resurrection means that we pass up through
death, and not down; not into the grave, but into a condition of higher
life; if the resurrection of the body does not mean the raising again out
of the earth the material particles deposited there, but the soul clothing
itself with a higher and more perfect organization; if it is, then, the
raising of the body to a more perfect condition of development,—then is
there not good reason why such stress should be laid upon this great fact?
All the proof rests on the historic fact of the resurrection. Was Christ
seen in this higher spiritual and bodily state, or was he not? If he was,
then we have a fact of history and experience to rely upon to show us that
the future life involves an ascent both spiritual and bodily. And this is
the reason why such stress has been laid on the resurrection.
This raising of man, through the power of Christ’s life, to a higher
state, is not a mere matter of speculation, then, not an opinion, not
something pleasant to think of and hope for, but it is a fundamental fact
of Christian faith. Because Christ has arisen and passed up, we must all
arise and pass up, too, with him. He is the first fruits of those who
sleep. In proportion as the Spirit of Christ is in us, in that proportion
is the power in us which shall carry us upward towards him. He wishes that
those who believe in him shall be where he is. We shall belong to him and
to his higher world, not arbitrarily, but naturally; not by any positive
decree of God, but by the nature of things.
The essential fact in the resurrection is, that Christ rose, through
death, to a higher state. The essential doctrine of the resurrection is,
that death is the transition from a lower to a higher condition in all who
have the life which makes them capable of it.