Belief in the Resurrection as the Corner Stone of the Christian Dispensation

The resurrection of the saints is called the manifestation of the sons of God, the glorious liberty of the children of God, the adoption, the redemption of our bodies. It is the grand jubilee of the Church, and even of the creation. Till then the former as well as the latter shall be held under a degree of bondage, as being yet subject to the effects of sin. But then Chris fs promise shall be fulfilled, CfI will raise them up at the last day’* and the deliverance of the saints will be the signal of that of the creation.

—Rev. Andrew Fuller.

The notion of an incorruptible germ, or that of an original and unchangeable stamen, out of which a new and glorious body, at the resurrection, is to spring, appears to have been borrowed from the speculations of some of the Jewish rabbins, who speak of some such supposed part in the human frame under the name Luz, to which they ascribe marvelous properties and from which the body was to arise. No allusion is, however, made to any such opinion by the early fathers in their defenses of the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead. On the contrary, they argue in such a way as to prove the possibility of the reimton of the scattered parts of the body, which sufficiently shows that the germ theory had not been resorted to, by Christian divines at least, in order to harmonize the doctrine of the resurrection with philosophy. So Justin Martyr, in a fragment of his concerning the resurrection, expressly answers the objection that it is impossible for the flesh, after a corruption and perfect dissolution of all its parts, to be united together again, and contends “that if the body be not raised complete, with all its integral parts, it would argue a wyant of power in God”; and although some of the Jews adopted the notion of the germinating or springing up of the body from some one indestructible part, yet the most orthodox of their rabbis contended for the resurrection of the same body. So Maimonides says: “Men, in the same manner as they before lived, with the same body, shall be restored to life by God, and sent into this life with the same identity”; and “that nothing can properly be called a resurrection of the dead but the return of the very same soul into the very same body from which it was separated.”

This theory, under its various forms, and whether adopted by Jews or Christians, was designed, doubtless, to render the doctrine of a resurrection from the dead less difficult to conceive, and more acceptable to philosophic minds; but, like most other attempts of the same kind to bring down the supernatural doctrines of revelation to the level of our conceptions, it escapes none of the original difficulties and involves itself in others far more perplexing.

For if by this hypothesis it was designed to remove the difficulty of conceiving how the scattered parts of one body could be preserved from becoming integral parts of other bodies, it supposes that the constant care of Providence is exerted to maintain the incorruptibility of those individual germs, or stamina, so as to prevent their assimilation with each other. Now, if they have this by original quality, then the same quality may just as easily be supposed to appertain to every particle which composes a human body; so that, though it be used for food, it shall not be capable of assimilation, in any circumstances, with another human body. But if these germs, or stamina, have not this quality by their original nature, they can be prevented from assimilating with each other only by that operation of God which is present to all his works, and which must always be directed to secure the execution of his own ultimate designs. If this view be adopted, then, if the resort must at last be to the superintendence of a Being of infinite power and wisdom, there is no greater difficulty in supposing that his care to secure this object shall extend to a million than to a thousand particles of matter. This is, in fact, the true and rational answer to the objection that the same piece of matter may happen to be a part of two or more bodies, as in the instances of men feeding upon animals which have fed upon men, and of men feeding upon one another. The question here is one which simply respects the frustrating of a final purpose of the Almighty by an operation of nature. To suppose that he cannot prevent this is to deny his power; to suppose him inattentive to it is to suppose him indifferent to his own designs; and to assume that he employs care to prevent it is to assume nothing greater, nothing in fact so great as many instances of control which are always occurring; as, for instance, the regulation of the proportion of the sexes in human births, which cannot be attributed to chance, but must either be referred to superintendence or to some original law.

Thus these theories afford no relief to the only real difficulty involved in the doctrine, but leave the whole case still to be resolved into the almighty power of God. But they involve themselves in the fatal objection that they are plainly in opposition to the doctrine of the Scriptures. For:

i. There is no resurrection of the body on this hypothesis, because the germ, or stamina, can in no good sense be called “the body” If a finger, or even a limb, is not the body, much less can these minuter parts be entitled to this appellation.

2. There is, on these theories, no resurrection at all. For if the preserved part be a germ, and the analogy of germination be adopted, then we have no longer a resurrection from death, but a vegetation from a suspended principle of secret life. If the stamina of Leibnitz be contended for, then the body, into which the soul enters at the resurrection, with the exception of these minute stamina, is provided for it by the addition and aggregation of new matter, and we have a creation, not a resurrection.

3. If bodies in either of these modes are to be framed for the soul by the addition of a large mass of new matter, the resurrection is made substantially the same with the pagan notion of the metempsychosis; and if St. Paul at Athens preached not “Jesus and the resurrection,” but Jesus and a transmigration into a new body, it will be difficult to account for his hearers scoffing at a doctrine which had received the sanction of several of their own philosophic authorities.

Another objection to the resurrection of the body has been drawn from the changes of its substance during life. The answer to this is that, allowing a frequent and total change of the substance of the body (which, however, is but a hypothesis) to take place, it affects not the doctrine of Scripture, which is that the body which is laid in the grave shall be raised up. But, then, we are told that if our bodies have in fact undergone successive changes during life, the bodies in which we have sinned or performed rewardable actions may not be, in many instances, the same bodies as those which will be actually rewarded or punished. We answer that rewards and punishments have their relation to the body not so much as it is the subject, but the instrument of reward and punishment It is the soul only which perceives pain or pleasure, which suffers or enjoys, and is, therefore, the only rewardable subject. Were we, therefore, to admit such corporeal mutations as are assumed in this objection, they affect not the case of our accountability. The personal identity or sameness of a rational being, as Mr. Locke has observed, consists in self-consciousness: uBy this every one is to himself what he calls self, without considering whether that self be continued in the same or divers substances. It was by the same self, which reflects on an action done many years ago, that the action was performed.” If there were indeed any weight in this objection, it would affect the proceedings of human criminal courts in all cases of offenses committed at some distance of time; but it contradicts the common sense because it contradicts the common consciousness and experience of mankind.