Resurrection of the flesh

“ The Resurrection is to life, not to death. Shall I not see those who have risen again walk here among men perfect in body and spirit, whole and glad in the flesh, living in the flesh, loving in the flesh, begetting children in the flesh, arrived at last to wholeness, perfect without scar or blemish, healthy without fear of ill-health? ”

“ That is, although their flesh was sentenced to suffer and was compelled to suffer a temporal or momentary taste of death, yet, on account of the promised Son of God, who should crush the head of the devil, they hoped for a resurrection of the flesh and a life eternal after the temporal death of the flesh, which hope we also have. ”

“ Why lean upon a blind guide, if you have eyes of your own? Why be clothed by one who is naked, if you have put on Christ? Why use the shield of another, when the apostle gives you armour of your own? It would be better for him to learn from you to acknowledge the resurrection of the flesh, than for you from him to deny it; because if Christians must needs deny it, it would be sufficient if they did so from their own knowledge, without any instruction from the ignorant multitude. ”

“ The most ancient versions of the Apostles’ Creed teach explicitly the resurrection of the flesh, and the earliest Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, writing only a hundred years after the death of Christ, defends the doctrine by asking whether it be any more difficult for God to create a body anew from its dust than for him to create it the first time in its mother’s womb. ”

“ Thus our flesh shall remain even after the resurrection—so far indeed susceptible of suffering, as it is the flesh, and the same flesh too; but at the same time impassible, inasmuch as it has been liberated by the Lord for the very end and purpose of being no longer capable of enduring suffering. ”

“ Now, the Apostle Paul says that "He shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." What kind of bodies will the righteous possess in the resurrection? They are to be bodies of flesh and bones quickened by spirit; not quickened by blood, no longer subject to death, pain, or any of the ills of mortality. This does not look much as if the separation of the spirit from the body is resurrection. Such a doctrine as that is not according to the scriptures, it is only "vain philosophy." ”

“ The foregoing proofs are indeed quite sufficient to evince the possibility of the resurrection of the flesh; but since these men are exceedingly unbelieving, we will further adduce a more convincing argument still, —an argument drawn not from faith, for they are not within its scope, but from their own mother unbelief,—I mean, of course, from physical reasons. ”

“ But of all these, the most difficult question is, into whose body that flesh shall return which has been eaten and assimilated by another man constrained by hunger to use it so; for it has been converted into the flesh of the man who used it as his nutriment, and it filled up those losses of flesh which famine had produced. For the sake, then, of ridiculing the resurrection, they ask, Shall this return to the man whose flesh it first was, or to him whose flesh it afterwards became? ”

“ Is the question about what things will have to be received by the body, or the things which have been already done in the body? Well, if the things which are to be borne by the body are meant, then undoubtedly a resurrection of the body is implied ”

“ We too now know that though worms destroy this body, yet in our flesh shall we so far see God as to be still in Him and of Him—biding our time for a resurrection in a new and more glorious body; and, moreover, that we shall be to the full as conscious of this as we are at present of much that concerns us as closely as anything can concern us. ”

“ If, therefore, the humiliations of the flesh thrust off its resurrection, why shall not its high prerogatives rather avail to bring it about?—since it better suits the character of God to restore to salvation what for a while He rejected, than to surrender to perdition what He once approved. ”

“ For that which we seek is not the vehicle of the spirit, but the spirit itself. This mould undergoes change even in this world. Thus, for example, the materials derived from the condensation of the exhalations and the inspissation of the blood in the stomach of the mother are changed by food, and new flesh is produced. Many questions may be asked of those who say that the identical mould must return and rise in the resurrection, and that its absence can in no wise be tolerated, and they will find much difficulty in answering them. ”

“ For if He bore flesh for any other reason than that of setting the flesh free, and raising it up, why did He bear flesh superfluously, as He purposed neither to save it, nor to raise it up? But the Son of God does nothing superfluously. ”

“ From the following words, moreover, you may learn that it is the works of the flesh which are condemned, and not the flesh itself: “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if ye live after the flesh ye shall die; but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” ”

“ The resurrection, however, of our own flesh will have to be maintained in another little treatise, and so bring to a close this present one, which serves as a general preface, and which will pave the way for the approaching subject now that it is plain what kind of body that was which rose again in Christ. ”

“ Paul, in speaking on the resurrection, refers to the different qualities of flesh as follows:
"But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds."—1 Cor., xv, 38, 39. ”

“ The ox was slain with all solemnity, and all 90those present partook of the flesh, and then—the hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing. The Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all-important. We are so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the renouncing of something. ”

“ That the bodies of the saints shall after the resurrection be spiritual, and yet flesh shall not be changed into spirit.
The bodies of the righteous, then, such as they shall be in the resurrection, shall need neither any fruit to preserve them from dying of disease or the wasting decay of old age, nor any other physical nourishment to allay the cravings of hunger or of thirst; for they shall be invested with so sure and every [Pg 547] way inviolable an immortality, that they shall not eat save when they choose, nor be under the necessity of eating, while they enjoy the power of doing so. ”

“ The sole question, therefore, which is enough for us to consider here, is whether the Lord, when He ordains salvation for man, intends it for his flesh; whether it is His will that the selfsame flesh shall be renewed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For naturally nothing nourisheth our bodies but what is made flesh and blood by the last digestion, which it would be blasphemous to say of the incorruptible Body of Christ. Yet the sacred Elements, which in some manner are, and are said to be the Body and Blood of Christ, yield nourishment and encrease to our bodies by their earthly nature, in such sort, that by virtue also of the heavenly and spiritual food which the faithful receive by means of the material, our bodies are fitted for a blessed Resurrection to immortal glory. ”

“ XXXVII. Now, for these walls of flesh, wherein the Soul doth seem to be immured before the Resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a Fabrick that must fall to ashes. All flesh is grass, is not onely metaphorically, but litterally, true; for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified [84] in our selves. Nay further, we are what we all abhor. Anthropophagi and Cannibals, devourers not onely of men, but of our selves ”

“ Through virtue of these testimonies, and notwithstanding the opposition and terror of so many cruel persecutions, the resurrection and immortality of the flesh, first in Christ, and subsequently in all in the new world, was believed, was intrepidly proclaimed, and was sown over the whole world, to be fertilized richly with the blood of the martyrs. ”

“ In this remarkable discourse Christ promises to feed His disciples, His followers, with His own flesh and blood, by which they will partake of the eternal nature and enter with Him into a resurrection life. The "flesh and blood" here offered to men cannot refer to an outward sacrament which is eaten in a physical way, because in the very same discourse Christ says that outward, physical flesh profits nothing. ”

“ For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” For I cannot endure the trifling of some who shamelessly do violence to Scripture, in order that their opinion, that the resurrection is without flesh, may find support ”

“ Can the breath Of very heaven bid these bones revive, Open the graves, and clothe the ribs of death? Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said again: Say to the wind, come forth and breathe afresh, Even that they may live, upon these slain, And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh. The spirit is not dead, proclaim the word. Where lay dead bones a host of armed men stand! ”