No Greater Love: THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

The Apostles’ Creed says that I believe in the “the resurrection of the body”.  In Part III of Introduction to Christianity, Professor Joseph Ratzinger explains what is the New Testament hope of the “resurrection of the body”. Well, I think that in fact one can only arrive at an answer if one inquires carefully into the real intentions of the biblical testimony and at the same time considers anew the relation between the biblical and the Greek ideas. For their encounter with each other has modified both conceptions and thus overlaid the original intentions of both approaches with a new combined view that we must first remove if we  want to find our way back to the beginning. First of all, the hope for the resurrection of the dead simply represents the basic form of the biblical hope for immortality; it appears in the New Testament not really as a supplement to a preceding and independent immortality of the soul but as the fundamental statement on the fate of man. There were, it is true, in late Jewish teachings hints of immortality on the Greek pattern, and this was probably one of the reasons why very soon the all-embracing scope of the idea of resurrection in the Graeco-Roman world was no longer grasped.  Instead, the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul and the biblical message of the resurrection of the dead were each understood as half the answer to the question of the fate of man, and the two were added together. It was thought that, to the already existing Greek foreknowledge about the immortality of the soul, the Bible added the revelation that at the end of the world bodies would be awakened, too, to share henceforth forever the fate of the soul-damnation or bliss. Christians even now believe that when a person dies they exist as a disembodied soul until the end of the world.  At that time they receive a body which then goes to Heaven or Hell.  Professor Ratzinger rejects this idea.

As opposed to this, we must grasp the fact that originally it was not a question of two complementary ideas; on the contrary, we are confronted with two different outlooks, which cannot simply be added together: the image of man, of God, and of the future is in each case quite different, and thus at bottom each of the two views can only be understood as an attempt at a total answer to the question of human fate. The Greek conception is based on the idea that man is composed of two mutually foreign substances, one of which (the body) perishes, while the other (the soul) is in itself imperishable and therefore goes on existing in its own right independent of any other beings. Indeed, it was only in the separation from the body, which is essentially foreign to it, so they thought, that the soul came fully  into its own. The biblical train of thought, on the other hand, presupposes the undivided unity of man; for example, Scripture contains no word denoting only the body (separated and distinguished from the soul), while conversely in the vast majority of cases the word soul, too, means the whole corporeally existing man; the few places where a different view can be discerned hover to a certain extent between Greek and Hebrew thinking and in any case by no means abandon the old view. The awakening of the dead (not of bodies!) of which Scripture speaks is thus concerned with the salvation of the one, undivided man, not just with the fate of one (perhaps secondary) half of man. It now also becomes clear that the real heart of the faith in resurrection does not consist at all in the idea of the restoration of bodies, to which we have reduced it in our thinking; such is the case even though this is the pictorial image used throughout the Bible. What, then, is the real content of the hope symbolically proclaimed in the Bible in the shape of the resurrection of the dead? I think that this can best be worked out by means of a comparison with the dualistic conception of ancient .philosophy.

I. The idea of immortality denoted in the Bible by the word "resurrection" is an immortality of the "person", of the one creation "man". Whereas in Greek thought the typical man is a perishable creature, which as such does not live on but goes two different ways in accordance with its heterogeneous formation out of body and soul, according to the biblical belief it is precisely this being, man, that as such goes on existing, even if transformed.  This perhaps explains why people who have absorbed the Greek view that man is perishable see no problem with “sins of the flesh”.   Since our bodies are destroyed anyway, it does not matter if they are corrupted by sin.        

2. It is a question of a "dialogic" immortality (= awakening!); that is, immortality results not simply from the self-evident inability of the indivisible to die but from the saving deed of the lover who has the necessary power: man can no longer totally perish because he is known and loved by God. All love wants eternity, and God's love not only wants it, but effects it and is it. In fact the biblical idea of awakening grew directly out of this dialogical theme: .he who prays knows in faith that God will restore the right (Job I9:25ff.; Ps 73:23ff.); faith is convinced that those who have suffered in the interests of God will also receive a share in the redemption of the promise (2 Macc 7.9ff.).  Immortality as conceived by the Bible proceeds, not from the intrinsic power of what is in itself indestructible, but from being drawn into the dialogue with the Creator; that is why it must be called awakening. Because the Creator intends, not just the soul, but the man physically existing in the midst of history and gives him immortality, it must be called "awakening of the dead" = "of men". It should be noted here that even in the formula of the Creed, which speaks of the "resurrection of the body", the word "body" means in effect "the world of man" (in the sense of biblical expressions like "all flesh will see God's salvation", and so on); even here the word is not meant in the sense of a corporality isolated from the soul.   It is the whole person who is loved by God and not just the “soul”.

3· That the awakening is expected on the "Last Day”, the end of history, and in the company of all mankind indicates the communal character of human immortality, which is related to the whole of mankind, from which, toward which, and with which the individual has lived and hence finds salvation or loses it. At bottom this association results automatically from the collective character of the biblical idea of immortality. To the soul as conceived by the Greeks, the body, and so history, too, is completely exterior; the soul goes on existing apart from them and needs no other being in order to do so. For man understood as a unity, on the other hand, fellowship with his fellowmen is constitutive; if he is to live on, then this dimension cannot be excluded. Thus, on the biblical premise, the much-discussed question of whether after death there can be any fellowship between men seems to be solved; at bottom it could only arise at all through a preponderance of the Greek element in the intellectual premises: where the "communion of saints" is an article of faith, the idea of the anima separata (the "separated soul" of Scholastic theology) has in the last analysis become obsolete.  We rise with all humanity and in fellowship with all humanity.

The full elaboration of these ideas became possible only after the New Testament had given concrete shape to the biblical hope---the Old Testament by itself ultimately leaves the question about the future of man in the air. Only with Christ, the man who is "one with the Father", the man through whom the being "man" has entered into God's eternity, does the future of man definitely appear open. Only in him, the "second Adam", is the question of man's identity finally answered. Christ is man, completely; to that extent the question of who we men are is present in him. But he is at the same time God speaking to us, the "Word of God". In him the conversation between God and man that has. been going on since the beginning of history has entered a new phase: in him the Word of God became "flesh" and really gained admission into our existence. But if the dialogue of  God with man means life, if it is true that God's partner in the dialogue himself has life precisely through being addressed by him who lives forever, then this means that Christ, as God's Word to us, is himself "the resurrection and the life" (Jn 11:25). It also means that the entry into Christ known 'as faith becomes in a qualified sense an entry into that being known and loved by God which is immortality: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life" (see Jn 3:15; 3:36; 5:24). Only from this angle is it possible to understand the train of thought of the fourth evangelist, who in. his account of the Lazarus episode wants to make the reader understand that resurrection is not just a distant happening at the end of the world but happens now through faith. Whoever believes is in the conversation with God that is life and that outlasts death. At this point, too, the "dialogic" strand in the biblical concept of immortality, the one related directly to God, and the "human fellowship" strand meet and join. For in Christ, the man, we meet God; but in him we also meet the community of those others whose path to God runs through him and so toward one another. The orientation toward God is, in him at the same time toward the community of mankind, and only the acceptance of this community is movement toward God, who does not exist apart from Christ and thus' not apart either from the context of the whole history of humanity and its common task.  Our fellowship with Christ and the community of humanity cannot be interrupted by death.

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--Jim Nugent, CFP