Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

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 [pg 315] 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 [pg 316] 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, [pg 317] 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.