S. S. Times, March 22, 1902:161—“The resurrection of Jesus was not a mere rising again, like that of Lazarus and the son of the widow of Nain. He came forth from the tomb so changed that he was not at once or easily recognized, and was possessed of such new and surprising powers that he seemed to be pure spirit, no longer subject to the conditions of his natural body. So he was the ‘first-fruits’ of the resurrection-harvest (1 Cor. 15:20). Our resurrection, in like manner, is to involve a change from a corruptible body to an incorruptible, from a psychical to a spiritual.”
(d) That the accompanying events, as the second coming and the judgment, since they are themselves literal, imply that the resurrection is also literal.
Rom. 8:19-23—“For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God ... the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now ... even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body”—here man's body is regarded as a part of nature, or the “creation,” and as partaking in Christ of its deliverance from the curse; Rev. 21:4, 5—“he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more.... And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new”—a declaration applicable to the body, the seat of pain and the avenue of temptation, as well as to outward nature. See Hanna, The Resurrection, 28; Fuller, Works, 3:291; Boston, Fourfold State, in Works, 8:271-289. On Olshausen's view of immortality as inseparable from body, see Aids to the Study of German Theology, 63. On resurrection of the flesh, see Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 1:289-317.
2. The scientific object.
This is threefold:
(a) That a resurrection of the particles which compose the body at death is impossible, since they enter into new combinations, and not unfrequently [pg 1019] become parts of other bodies which the doctrine holds to be raised at the same time.
We reply that the Scripture not only does not compel us to hold, but it distinctly denies, that all the particles which exist in the body at death are present in the resurrection-body (1 Cor. 15:37—οὐ τὸ σῶμα τὸ γενησόμενον; 50). The Scripture seems only to indicate a certain physical connection between the new and the old, although the nature of this connection is not revealed. So long as the physical connection is maintained, it is not necessary to suppose that even a germ or particle that belonged to the old body exists in the new.
1 Cor. 15:37, 38—“that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other kind; but God giveth it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own.”Jerome tells us that the risen saints “habent dentes, ventrem, genitalia, et tamen nec cibis nec uxoribus indigent.” This view of the resurrection is exposed to the objection mentioned above. Pollok's Course of Time represented the day of resurrection as a day on which the limbs that had been torn asunder on earth hurtled through the air to join one another once more. The amputated arm that has been buried in China must traverse thousands of miles to meet the body of its former owner, as it rose from the place of its burial in England.
There are serious difficulties attending this view. The bodies of the dead fertilized the field of Waterloo. The wheat grown there has been ground and made into bread, and eaten by thousands of living men. Particles of one human body have become incorporated with the bodies of many others. “The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea, And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad, Wide as the waters be.”Through the clouds and the rain, particles of Wycliffe's body may have entered into the water which other men have drunk from their wells and fountains. There is a propagation of disease by contagion, or the transmission of infinitesimal germs from one body to another, sometimes by infection of the living from contact with the body of a friend just dead. In these various ways, the same particle might, in the course of history, enter into the constitution of a hundred living men. How can this one particle, at the resurrection, be in a hundred places at the same time? “Like the woman who had seven husbands, the same matter may belong in succession to many bodies, for ‘they all had it’ ” (Smyth). The cannibal and his victim cannot both possess the same body at the resurrection. The Providence Journal had an article entitled: “Who ate Roger Williams?” When his remains were exhumed, it was found that one large root of an apple tree followed the spine, divided at the thighs, and turned up at the toes of Roger Williams. More than one person had eaten its apples. This root may be seen to-day in the cabinet of Brown University.