Not Another Body but the Same
Upon the supposition that the living agent each man calls himself is a single being, it is as easy to conceive that we may hereafter animate these same or new bodies, variously modified and organized, as to conceive how we can animate such bodies as our present.
—Bishop Butler.
Church leaders whose standards of dictum hold to the literal resurrection have fallen in with this modern idea. The modern idea is essentially rational. It has no special regard for revelation, no great reverence for authority. The modern idea takes its cue from the Bible, but makes havoc of Bible facts and principles. It may range itself under the name of some great Bible doctrine, but it disembowels the doctrine, and leaves us nothing but an empty, delusive name. No one conversant with the trend of things can be ignorant of the fact that rationalism, under the cover of modern ideas or thought, is affecting the granite foundations of God’s truth. Doctrines which the wisdom and faith of the Church have reduced to axiomatic dogmas are so changed by the transforming process of modern thought that no essential part of the original doctrine remains. The new dress has changed not only the outward appearance, but the heart of the precious old truths is entirely changed. It is marvelously strange how widespread are false views of Christ, his atonement, the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. These pernicious views are found in literature, commentary, exposition; they are clothed in such attractive garb and found in so many places that they fix themselves in thought before we are aware of it, and we have so little knowledge of the Bible that we cannot detect the counterfeit. It comes to pass that views always rejected by the great body of believers as unscriptural are referred to without scrutiny or protest.
It is one of the problems of this age to find out the process how the current of orthodoxy, purified, deepened, and made strong by the confluent piety of ages, finds itself almost lost in the shallows and sands of the ancient and worst forms of heterodoxy.
These modern ideas are not modern, though they may bear its imprint. They are almost as old as Christianity, and are as heterodox as they are old. We would not oppose them because they are new, nor reject them because they are hoary reprobates. We put no store by the modern idea. No special store do we put by the ancient idea.
We do, though, put store, all the store we can muster, by the Bible idea. We measure all that is old and all that is new by that infallible standard; and of whatever is new or whatever is old which does not agree with that, we say, Let it be accursed, and he who bids it Godspeed is partaker in the sin.
Is this modern idea the Bible idea? Is it worthy of being put to the front of gospel statements? How vague and intangible this modern idea of the resurrection! How strange that reason should reject as unworthy of credence the Bible statement of the resurrection, and yet gulp down with greediness the dreamy vagaries contained in the modern idea. The Bible idea of the resurrection of the body is the fact of a literal resurrection of the body. The Bible declares that our bodies are parts of us, that they are included in the recovering scheme of grace, that they are partners with the spirit in its earthly course of faith or disobedience, and that they are to share in the honors or shame of the eternal future.
The resurrection of the same bodies which we put in the grave is the doctrine which pervades the Bible through and through. All its truths are soaked in this great doctrine. The same body put in the grave is to come forth. Its weakness is to put on immortal energy. Its corruption is to put on incorruption. This comforting doctrine full of enrapturing, deathless hope, which has been the support of martyrs and saints, which has quenched for them the violence of the fiery stakes, which has quickened their faith, wiped away their tears, relieved the bitterness of death, and enabled them to triumph over the grave — this doctrine, which commends itself to reason as well as to faith, is to be relinquished for this modern idea, which for practical, vigorous Christian uses is as profitless as “.ZEsop’s Fables” or the “Arabian Nights.”
The Bible word to assert this doctrine is “resurrection,” which means the rising again after a fall — the rising again of the thing that had fallen, not the rising of something else — and to this idea the Bible strongly and constantly holds us.
Not only is the doctrine of the resurrection of the body involved in the doctrine of the general judgment, but the fact that it is the same body. A new body could not stand in the judgment, for it is not accountable — it is the same body that was a witness and a sharer in the transactions of life that is to be in the judgment. A new body would not be amenable to the judgment bar. So it is declared that the judgment will be of the living and of the dead. “And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the judge of quick and dead.” Paul writes to Timothy: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.” The dead represent the ones put in the grave. Isaiah preached the resurrection of the same bodies. He was called the evangelical prophet because he saw these latter-day glories and doctrines so distinctly. He says: uThy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they rise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.”
The dead are to live. The body only is dead; the body is to live. With Christ’s resurrection as the pattern and power they are to arise. That which dwells in the dust is to awake and sing; the body only is to be resolved to dust. The body in the dust is the body that is raised. The earth shall cast out her dead. The earth holds nothing but the body; the spirit has never been imprisoned by the earth nor soiled by its mold. The earth holds our bodies. The authority of the resurrection will break that hold, and these prisoners of hope will come forth.