Systematic Theology (Volume 3 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

G. S. Fullerton, Sameness and Identity, 6, 32, 67—“Heracleitus of Ephesus declared it impossible to enter the same river twice. Cratylus replied that the same river could not be entered once.... The kinds of sameness are: 1. Thing same with itself at any one instant; 2. Same pain to-day I felt yesterday = a like pain; 3. I See the same tree at different times = two or more percepts represent the same object; 4. Two plants belonging to the same class are called the same; 5. Memory gives us the same object that we formerly perceived; but the object is not the past, it is the memory-imagewhich represents it; 6. Two men perceive the same object = they have like percepts, while both percepts are only representative of the same object; 7. External thing same with its representative in consciousness, or with the substance or noumenon supposed to underlie it.”

Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 153, 255—“What is called ‘remaining the same,’ in the case of all organic beings is just this,—remaining faithful to some immanent idea, while undergoing a great variety of changes in the pursuit, as it were, of the idea.... Self-consciousness and memory are themselves processes of becoming. The mind that does not change, in the way of growth, has no claim to be called mind. One cannot be conscious of changes without also being conscious of being the very being that is changed. When he loses this consciousness, we say that ‘he has lost his mind.’ Amid changes of its ideas the ego remains permanent because it is held within limits by the power of some immanent idea.... Our bodies as such have only a formal existence. They are a stream in constant flow and are ever changing. My body is only a temporary loan from Nature, to be repaid at death.”

With regard to the meaning of the term “identity,” as applied to material things, see Porter, Human Intellect, 631—“Here the substance is called the same, by a loose analogy taken from living agents and their gradual accretion and growth.” The Euphrates is the same stream that flowed, “When high in Paradise By the four rivers the first roses blew,” even though after that time the flood, or deluge, stopped its flow and obliterated all the natural features of the landscape. So this flowing organism which we call the body may be the same, after the deluge of death has passed away.

A different and less satisfactory view is presented in Dorner's Eschatology: “Identity involves: 1. Plastic form, which for the earthly body had its moulding principle in the soul. That principle could effect nothing permanent in the intermediate state; but with the spiritual consummation of the soul, it attains the full power which can appropriate to itself the heavenly body, accompanied by a cosmical process, made like Christ. 2. Appropriation, from the world of elements, of what it needs. The elements into which everything bodily of earth is dissolved, are an essentially uniform mass, like an ocean; and it is indifferent what parts of this are assigned to each individual man. The whole world of substance, which makes the constant change of substance possible, is made over to humanity as a common possession (Acts 4:32—‘not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common’).”

(c) That a material organism can only be regarded as a hindrance to the free activity of the spirit, and that the assumption of such an organism by the soul, which, during the intermediate state, had been separated from the body, would indicate a decline in dignity and power rather than a progress.

We reply that we cannot estimate the powers and capacities of matter, when brought by God into complete subjection to the spirit. The bodies of the saints may be more ethereal than the air, and capable of swifter motion than the light, and yet be material in their substance. That the [pg 1022] soul, clothed with its spiritual body, will have more exalted powers and enjoy a more complete felicity than would be possible while it maintained a purely spiritual existence, is evident from the fact that Paul represents the culmination of the soul's blessedness as occurring, not at death, but at the resurrection of the body.

Rom. 8:23—“waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body”; 2 Cor. 5:4—“not for that we would be unclothed; but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life”; Phil. 3:11—“if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.” Even Ps. 86:11—“Unite my heart to fear thy name”—may mean the collecting of all the powers of the body as well as soul. In this respect for the body, as a normal part of man's being, Scripture is based upon the truest philosophy. Plotinus gave thanks that he was not tied to an immortal body, and refused to have his portrait taken, because the body was too contemptible a thing to have its image perpetuated. But this is not natural, nor is it probably anything more than a whim or affectation. Eph. 5:29—“no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it.”What we desire is not the annihilation of the body, but its perfection.

Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 188—“In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the soul reunites itself to the body, with the assurance that they shall never again be separated.” McCosh, Intuitions, 213—“The essential thing about the resurrection is the development, out of the dead body, of an organ for the communion and activity of the spiritual life.” Ebrard, Dogmatik, 2:226-234, has interesting remarks upon the relation of the resurrection-body to the present body. The essential difference he considers to be this, that whereas, in the present body, matter is master of the spirit, in the resurrection-body spirit will be the master of matter, needing no reparation by food, and having control of material laws. Ebrard adds striking speculations with regard to the glorified body of Christ.

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 126—“Now the body bears the spirit, a slow chariot whose wheels are often disabled, and whose swiftest motion is but labored and tardy. Then the spirit will bear the body, carrying it as on wings of thought whithersoever it will. The Holy Ghost, by his divine inworking will, has completed in us the divine likeness, and perfected over us the divine dominion. The human body will now be in sovereign subjection to the human spirit, and the human spirit to the divine Spirit, and God will be all in all.” Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, 112—“Weismann maintains that the living germ not only persists and is potentially immortal, but also that under favorable conditions it seems capable of surrounding itself with a new body. If a vital germ can do this, why not a spiritual germ?” Two martyrs were led to the stake. One was blind, the other lame. As the fires kindled, the latter exclaimed: “Courage, brother! this fire will cure us both!”

We may sum up our answers to objections, and may at the same time throw light upon the doctrine of the resurrection, by suggesting four principles which should govern our thinking with regard to the subject,—these namely: 1. Body is in continual flux; 2. Since matter is but the manifestation of God's mind and will, body is plastic in God's hands; 3. The soul in complete union with God may be endowed with the power of God; 4. Soul determines body, and not body soul, as the materialist imagines.