Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity

by Kirsopp Lake

The reason why Jewish thought triumphed is difficult to ascertain. Few hypotheses as to a future life have less intrinsic probability than that ultimately reached, which postulates an immortal soul living discarnate until the resurrection day, when it will be reunited to its own resuscitated body, and both will be rewarded or punished by the final judgement of God. Nevertheless this hypothesis supplanted all others.

Two causes may be suggested. The pressure of the Docetic controversy, which insisted that Jesus had never been a real man of flesh and blood, but a spirit appearing in human form, made the Church attach greater weight to the reality of his flesh and blood, even after the resurrection. Hence arose the narratives of the appearances of the risen Jesus in Luke and John, emphasising this point. That they there are secondary seems to be proved by the evidence of 1 Cor. xv. Hence, too, it may be, came the suppression of the missing end of Mark. Following this tendency it was natural to argue, as Paul had done, that Christians like Jesus would be raised with the same bodies which they had had.

A different motive was provided by moral considerations. It is clear that there was danger, even in the Corinth of Paul's days, of men arguing that, having obtained the Spirit and consequent immortality, nothing carnal had any importance: the body had, as it were, but a short time, and might be allowed to enjoy itself as it chose. To combat this danger of an absolutely licentious position the Church maintained that the body was as eternal as the soul, and that its future happiness depended on its present behaviour.

Both these factors undoubtedly entered into the development of Christian thought; and they were reinforced by the natural desire of man to preserve the pleasures of life in a body of flesh and blood.

The whole question of the expectation of immortality is as obscure as it is interesting. Direct evidence in favour of a survival of individual consciousness after death is provided in the present by psychical research, and from the past by narratives of the apparitions of the dead, among which the story of the appearances of the risen Jesus must be classed. To most minds the evidence does not justify a decisive verdict of any nature.

The "moral" argument is equally evasive. To certain minds in certain moods it seems incredible that extinction can await beings who display the qualities manifested by men at their best, animated by such high purposes, so little fulfilled. In Christian circles the argument has helped to secure the orthodox belief in the resurrection of the body. But, on the other hand, this belief has received a succession of shocks from other considerations. The resuscitation of the flesh has become more and more incredible. Bishop Westcott endeavoured to meet this feeling by reviving the Pauline notion of a body of "Spirit," and was followed by Bishop Gore in so doing. The process was helped by the fact that in the English creed resurrectio carnis is translated resurrection of the body, so that the denial of the Apostles' Creed involved in the Westcott-Gore interpretation could be softened into an apparent affirmation.

Even more serious, though less often expressed, is the moral objection to the judgement, which dooms men to extremes of bliss or misery in accordance as they fall one side or the other of a certain line. The conscience of the modern man feels that no one deserves either Heaven or Hell. Moreover, this same conscience doubts whether any one really deserves complete perpetuation. All men are of mixed nature; some elements seem to deserve to be eliminated, and others to survive. Thus the moral indictment against the old expectation of judgement is that no one deserves either of its extremes.

A just judgement would be not between man and man, saving one and condemning the other, but between different parts of each of us. For in man good and evil are always present: what we ask for is not complete survival, but the ultimate elimination of some parts and the constant growth of others; we desire change, not permanence.[[9]] Moreover, even in the short space of life which we can observe, elimination and selection are clearly present. The child and the old man are one, not by identity but by continuity of life. The main object of education is to further and confirm this beneficent change. Once more, this, or something like it, is often put forward as the meaning of the doctrine of "judgement." But when the creed states that Jesus will "come again in glory to judge both the quick and dead," it means the Jewish eschatological expectation, and to use its language to express modern thought is unfair to both.

All such thoughts are a priori, and can never convince the reluctant. The path of wisdom is not to weigh the merits of various inconclusive arguments, but to distinguish between Desire and Knowledge.