IMMORTALITY AND RESURRECTION

Robert C. Pingpank
Religion 201 “Major Motifs of Biblical Thought”
Theodor M. Mauch, Th.D., Trinity College (Hartford)
January 7, 1959

 

INTRODUCTION

 

            Everyone knows that someday he will die. Most of us are curious to know what, if anything, happens to us after death. In the history of ideas, many theories have been set forth about this issue.

            An idea that prevails in many religions is that of “im­mortality of the soul.” The Greek philosophers are, perhaps, the purest example, of the concept of immortality - generally unclouded by myths and legends.

            On the other hand, there is a distinct view in Hebraic traditions of the “resurrection of the body.” The nature of man is regarded differently from the Greek-types of thought.

            It is my purpose in writing this paper to describe a broad view of the Christian view of “final things,” and in particular to understand some differences between the ideas of immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body.

 

THE GREEK  IDEA OF BODY & SOUL

 

            Appearing in Greek thought is a sharp distinction between the body and the soul. The soul was regarded as “pure, holy, and immortal”1; the body as “evil, earthy, and corruptible.2  Man’s existence on earth is a living death during which the soul is trapped within the body. The sixth century B. C. Greek philosophers taught that the soul can be purified from its bodily defects in order to escape from the physical, earthly existence, then to return to the realm of pure spirit. In the Platonic tradition the body is regarded as the prison of the soul. Death emancipates the soul. A main doctrine of this way of thinking proposed a body-soul dualism that emphasized the highest worth of the soul; likewise, the entire non-physical dimension is divine and eternal. These philosophers are suspicious of physical desires, and they regard whatever is physical as worth little.

 

THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF BODY & SOUL

 

            In the Genesis story of creation, God is the only creator. The whole of creation, according to the Bible, has purpose, for each individual thing that God creates is created for a pur­pose and has a specific place in his plan. All of physi­cal existence, including the human body, with its desires and instincts, are created by God and are good and purposeful. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) Here is a definite assertion that the physical is good.

            Man is created from the “dust of the ground” and also in the image of God.” (Genesis 1:27) He has neither a “divine spark” nor any other divine element in his body. “Man in no way participates in the divine nature.”1  His relationship with God is as an image of the original. There is likeness between the Creator and the created, but not an identity.

            According to Owen, there is only one significant mention of a soul in biblical literature that has bearing upon the issue. This occurs in Genesis: “then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) The Hebrew word for “soul” is nephesh, which does so much as connote a body-soul dualism. Nephesh is applicable to any living thing. It means “life-breath.”  Since it is applicable to any living thing, it is not the differentiating factor of man from the rest of creation. “What distinguishes man from the rest of nature is that he is made in ‘the image of God.’”2 This is to say that he is capable of gaining a personal status that is similar to the life of God.

            Owen quotes H. Wheeler Robinson writing that it is characteristic of the Bible not to assert a doctrine of a body-soul dualism.

“Hebrew has no proper word for body; it never needed one as long as the body was the man; definition and nomenclature come only when there is some conscious antithesis. The antithesis is not reached in the Old Testament, nor could it be reached along native lines of Hebrew thought.”3

For the Hebrews, man is a united organism with many complex parts which draw their life and activity from nephesh, which is not a separable aspect of the body.

1. Owen, D. R. G., Body and Soul, p. 33.

2. ibid.

 

IMMORTALITY

 

            Many hopes for an afterlife have been based on the theory of the immortality of man. This belief proposes that in human nature there is something that death cannot destroy, and that as long as this something cannot die, human beings cannot die.

            The basic idea of immortality is that man is made up of two elements, body and soul. While man is in his earthly life, his body and soul are in a temporary active partnership. The soul by its very nature, is immortal. It cannot die; it is imperishable. Obviously, the body is mortal and does die. Many thinkers have proposed the notion that the partnership of the body and soul ends at death. The body then turns to dust and in effect ceases to exist. The soul, however, does not decay, but, having been set free at the body’s death, the soul lives on eternally.

            The doctrine of immortality was very popular among the Greek thinkers. Anaximenes taught that air was the underlying substance of the universe; the soul was rarified air, which held the individual together. When it left the body, the body disintegrated. According to Empedocles, the soul leaves the body after death and continues its existence after entering another body. Plato believed that the soul entered the body after an earlier existence during which it contemplated the realm of ideas. The body clouds the soul, and it forgets its preexistence. The soul’s goal is to free itself from the body so that it can return to blissful contemplation. Greek thought is permeated with ideas of body-soul dualism and thus the immortality of the soul.

 

1. ibid., p. 167.

2. ibid.

3. ibid., p. 175.

 

RESURRECTION OF THE BODY & ITS DIFFERENCES FROM IMMORTALITY

 

            Resurrection in the Bible occurs as a gift from God, not as an automatic process of nature. One important difference be­tween resurrection of the body and immortality is that the resurrection doctrine thinks of man as an integrated whole. It does not di­vide man into two or more parts. It allows us to call some­thing in man “soul,” something else “body,” and something else “mind,” The Bible does not, however, “philosophize” about this. When there is life in someone, the whole person is alive; when life is not in him, his whole being is dead, that is, “mind,” “body,” and “soul.” Man is a single being, both in life and in death.

            Another important difference is that if we base hope for life after death on a theory of immortality, we put our hope and faith in man. However, if we base our hope on the ground of resurrection, we place our hope and trust in God. Immortality says that we shall live on eternally because we cannot die. Resur­rection says, on the other hand, that we may live after the grave, because God’s love raises us from death to life. It is the difference in putting our trust in ourselves or in God.

            A third important difference is that if the soul is im­mortal and the body is mortal, only the soul survives death.  Since the soul is only a part of an individual as we know him, the immortality doctrine implies that the individual person as a whole does not live on, that only a part of him does.

 

WHAT KIND OF A BODY

 

            Does the Bible teach that in resurrection God raises our buried corpses from the grave and re-breathes the spirit of life into them? This idea seems not only fantastic and incom­patible with God’s ways of accomplishing things, but also just plain revolting. Saint Paul has this to say in the First Letter to the Corinthians (R.S.V., verses 35-45):

But some one will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.  It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

            In this quotation Saint Paul writes that the post-resurrection body will be glorified or transfigured. He does not think that at the resur­rection of an individual, a corpse is restored to life. Our physical body as we now have it is only a seed of what is to come. It dies and the more glorious body is given to the per­son. I think that this is about as far as one can go in at­tempting to say something about the kind of a body. It is cer­tainly difficult not to speculate, however, on the possibilities of things to come regarding the body.

 

KNOWLEDGE OF THE AFTER-LIFE

 

            A crucial question that may be justifiably raised now is this: How can we know that God raises us from the dead in this way? The hope of Christians to believe in the resurrection of the body is based chiefly on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus. This resurrection of Christ is proclaimed by Christians as an event in history. It is regarded as an assurance of our own resurrection.

            A problem is raised here, however. Just because Jesus was raised from the dead, does this mean that we shall all be raised? From my knowledge of biblical literature the only in­dication of this is when Jesus says, “Because I live, you shall live also.” Perhaps, then, if Jesus was resurrected, then our life after death is somewhat promised.

 

DID JESUS ACTUALLY RISE FROM THE DEAD?

 

            Did the resurrection actually occur? The only evidence is recorded at the end of the Gospels, in the Book of Acts, and in some Epistles. From these portions of Scripture the following points may be made: There were many witnesses to the risen Christ. “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” (I Corinthians 15:16)

            These witnesses would most likely not have been deliberate liars, for too many of them were tor­tured and were killed for defending their story. Usually, deliberate liars would not be willing to be martyred for a lie. It was probably not a hallucination, for the witnesses did not expect to see Jesus after his death. A hallucination occurs only when an individual expects to see something.

             The Christian Community would not have come into existence if Christ had not been raised. Its reason for existing from its beginning was to bear witness to a living Lord. The crucifi­xion did for a short time end the hope of Jesus’ friends that He was the Messiah and Savior of the world. They were bitterly disappointed. “And all the multitudes who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts.” (Luke23:48) Then something happened that changed them to people of amazing confidence. This confidence is born out through generations of the believing Community. Their confidence came from the

original knowledge of the Community that Jesus had risen.

 

THE LIFE EVERLASTING

 

            The idea of an everlasting life gives me the impression that when God raises us from the dead, the life we shall have is one in which neither death nor illness of our “minds,” “bodies,” or “souls” will occur. As to what exactly will be happening, we can only speculate on ideas that are not foreign or incompatible with biblical thought. We can say, however, that God’s purpose of love will be accomplished, and that man will live in a love relationship with God, himself and his neighbor. As to the exact nature of our existence, we cannot, as mentioned above, know with certainty, because God has not yet told us of this.

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

            The concept of immortality is one which came into contact with Christianity through historic circumstances “by way of Greece.” Although there are many varied ideas of immortality, the chief emphasis is on the dualism in the human being be­tween body and soul. The body is subject to corruption and will decay after the physical death; it is mortal. The soul, on the other hand, is immortal; it is not corruptible; it will continue an eternal existence, separate from the body.

            In an effort to describe the Christian hope of everlasting life in Greek terms, the concept of immortality of the soul crept into Christian thought, sometimes as a general term to describe the Christian hope. It can be definitely contrasted with the more distinctively biblical idea of resurrection of the body - of which the Apostles’ Creed speaks.

            The concept of immortality of the soul fails to convey the full meaning of the biblical motif of eventual fulfillment of the whole life of a person. It stresses the non-biblical theme of the worthlessness of the corrupt body.

            Immortality has become synonymous with the Christian idea of everlasting life. If the term is understood in this bibli­cal context, it may be acceptable, but its actual original meaning is in a Greek dualistic frame of reference.

            The support of the biblical idea of resurrection of the body is chiefly based on the historical event of the resur­rection of Jesus Christ. Our knowledge of what occurs at death and the nature of our existence after death is not certain, because God chooses not to reveal these facts. We are justi­fied in believing that we shall retain our individuality, thus being able to recognize one another and love one another in the life to come. Bodies will be provided for us by God, and we will be able to communicate not only with each other, but also with God - at last seeing him face to face, and enjoying a full loving relationship with him. If we believe these things, death itself is but an episode of life.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

The Holy Bible (Revised Standard Version)

 

Cullman, O. Immortality of the Soul Or Resurrection of the Dead. London: The Epworth Press, 1958.

 

Frost, S. E., “The Soul and Immortality” in Great Philosophers. New York: Doubleday, 1942.

 

Owen, D. R. G., Body and Soul. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956.

 

Quick, 0., Doctrines of the Creeds. New York: Scribners, 1938.

 

Reade, W. H. V. The Christian Challenge to Philosophy. London: S. P. C. K., 1951.

 

 

For a number of decades, Dr. Theodor M. Mauch (course instructor) was professor of religion at Trinity College, Hartford. He earned a Th.D. in Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York and was the author of about 50 articles in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (1976).
 


Website editor’s note:

 

See relevant writings in these subsites: Biblical Thought, The Bible, Perennial Philosophy, Cherbonnier, Kirkpatrick, and All Handouts.