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By Corbin Croy
We are examining whether or not my proposal of a spiritual resurrection is even possible given the historical context in which early Christian resurrection belief formed. It seems that the earliest church fathers had no particularity for a specific historical narrative. Ignatius had a secondary belief in the actual historicity of the resurrection narratives contained in the Gospels and New Testament epistles, but his primary concern seemed to always focus around the salvation of the whole person, body and spirit, and toward primacy of spiritual principles and disciplines toward the completion of human salvation.
Resurrection belief began with the Jews. The standard for religious belief is the Torah and the oral Torah. This is canonized in the Talmud. For the Jews resurrection belief is somewhat mandatory, but it was not during the time of Christ. There was conflict between the pharisees and the sadducees. Among the pharisees there was contention. The points of contention were whether or not the resurrection would happen at the end of history, or after the end of history, and there was a point of contention regarding whether or not the bodily resurrection would happen from the inside out, or from the outside in. Some pharisees believed that as the old body was regenerated it would form its bones first, then sinews, muscles, skin, and so on. Others believed that the new body would regenerate skin, then muscles, and so on.
The point that many apologists make is that Jews may have disputed the resurrection, but they did not dispute whether or not it would be the old physical body being returned to a new form of existence. The early church fathers were not monolithic, and neither was early Jewish belief. The reasons why these distinctions and disputes existed represent the same kind of conflict that is going on even today. People felt their deeply held ideologies threatened and argued to support their primary devotion through splitting hairs over secondary matters. Whether or not the resurrection was historical/post-historical or inside out/outside in was merely a subtext.
The resurrection became a postexilic belief to sustain the Jewish faith in light of God’s abandonment during the exile. While they lived as aliens in lands foreign to them, Jews held on to one belief to preserve their faith: God is just. Afterlife belief allowed the Jews to keep faith that ultimately Israel’s enemies would be punished, and they would be rewarded. It also encouraged what would become known as the final judgment, or the idea that after we die, God will judge us. This notion permeated the Jewish psyche and provided hope for what would happen to those for whom God passed positive judgment. Hence, the resurrection became a symbol for God being able to fulfill all his promises to the Jews. It also became a culmination of all that the Jews believed God to be. In a world where it seemed like the God they believed in had failed them or not existed at all, the resurrection gave the Jews the ability to keep their faith and hold on indefinitely to their religion.
For these Jews, there was little to no importance on whether or not the actual resurrected body would be the same body that perished. There were many Jews who did believe this, but the primary focus of the resurrection was the fulfillment of God’s promises and the justice that would be meted out in the afterlife. The fact that they argued over whether or not the regeneration of our bodies would happen inside-out or outside-in reflects the real issue they were disputing. If this “new creation” formed our regenerated bodies from the inside-out, then it would resemble in many ways how the natural world works in the here and now. Smaller components form more complex units and become components for something else. But the outside-in theory for resurrection sought to uproot this natural system and proposed that in a world where God was in complete control, humans could not impose what they thought a natural system would look like. Thus, the inside-out believers held onto faith that God’s promises would happen in human history, and the outside-in believers held onto God’s sovereignty and power.
Along these lines it is irrelevant whether or not the actual regenerated body comes from the body that perishes. It could very well be the case that our bodies are regenerated inside-out in the here and now, or that our resurrected bodies are entirely unconnected to the body that perished. Either way, what you have is an entirely “new creation,” which was the point of the resurrection, anyway. So early Jewish belief does not seem to give us a monolithic account of how a genuine resurrection belief ought to be placed in a historical setting over and against spiritual principles.
But there are more than just our Talmudic references to consider. Enoch is an important book of Jewish antiquity which can shed light on the Jewish beliefs in spirit and afterlife. Enoch is not about the resurrection; it is about the coming deluge, and God giving Enoch instruction and visions about what will happen to those left on earth. It is a watershed book for Jews during the Second Temple period, because it expresses the developing eschatology that was becoming a staple of Jewish belief. In Enoch they struggle with the same issues that we are discussing right now, except for in Enoch they are concerned with whether it is a person’s body or spirit that will suffer after God’s judgment. It is interesting that in the realm of eschatological belief there are colliery principles which intrinsically work to support one another. In Enoch, a person’s body is discarded, their soul is judged, and then they suffer. Enoch does not speak of a heavenly existence for those judged righteous (beyond stating that they will shine like light), for in Enoch the righteous ones are the children of Noah who get to repopulate the earth. So the lesson for Enoch is that God’s revelation is a kind of heaven for the righteous (1 Enoch 103-104).
2 Enoch delves more into Enoch’s heavenly vision and ascension. Just as 1 Enoch made a sharp distinction between the flesh and the spirit when it came to eternal punishment, 2 Enoch does the same when it comes to heavenly existence. In 2 Enoch, Enoch is exalted into heaven and given a new heavenly body: his earthly body must be left behind (2 Enoch 22:8-10). Enoch further elaborates on the heavenly existence that the righteous will enjoy: it will be eternal and incorruptible. It does not make special mention of how earthly bodies will be preserved, and so the general implication is that our earthly bodies perish and remain so while new heavenly bodies are given to those whose souls are righteous (65:6-10). 3 Enoch goes into greater detail describing how a body of flesh cannot enter heaven, as Enoch’s muscles and skin burn and melt from the chariot of fire that is carrying him into heaven. Enoch’s body is not transformed–his body is destroyed by the fire of God, and a new body is given to him (3 Enoch 15:1).
1 Enoch and 2 Enoch would have most likely been around during the time of Christ and the formation of the early church, whose members were Jewish. Thus, they would have been exposed to the ideas contained in Enoch and other various Jewish writings. I will refrain from delving into every ancient Jewish piece of literature, as I feel it has been sufficiently demonstrated that a monolithic account of how all resurrection belief entailed a restored physical body is simply untenable.
I think it is fair to say that most resurrection belief accompanied physical restoration, but did not entail it in any sense of the word. Most resurrection belief was designed to accommodate two things: God’s judgment and the eternal righteous existence. There does not seem to be anything about these two things which require that our previous bodies be restored and then glorified in lieu of our previous bodies simply perishing and new bodies being given to us. For all intents and purposes the distinction between these two was simply a non sequitor in the ancient world. It was not that important of an issue. If the majority held to a particular belief, then I have no reason to think that it was because of some logical or revealed reason that I am missing. It is most likely because it was a more convenient belief.
To that I will admit that it is epistemically easier, given certain cognitive predispositions, to assume that if God is going to “raise us up,” then what will be raised will be the bodies that we perished with. But logically there is no reason why such a cognitive predisposition should be favored over another simply because it is the cognitive predisposition of a majority. It does not seem like this ever became a hard line theological issue in the ancient world, and it was not a hard line theological issue for the early church fathers either. So there does not seem to be a reason, for me, to think that it should be a hard line theological issue today.
Very informative, Corbin. There were those several schools. One that you don’t discuss very much, though, was that held by many Jewish thinkers, that there was no afterlife or resurrection. That was not an uncommon belief. The ones you discuss, while held by “the authorities” were the beliefs of the centralists, those who were benefited by their society, who were literate and writing and reading. They did control the temple and tended to be strong in the developing synagogue movement after 70ce. They were the part of the intellectuals that survived. We don’t have much from the other groups that did survive. The early followers of Jesus often did not accent the resurrection. That became significant later, about 2 or 3 generations later, after the destruction of the temple, when the question of how would we survive became as, or more, important as it was at the time of the exile.
That all happened in a time when it was easy to assume that there was a supernatural world, something that is very hard to do today. I’d say most educated people who have thought about it would deny that there was much value to assuming that there was a supernatural world, therefore no way to use the appeal to supernatural causes. God then would become some gathering of natural attributes and entities, with greatly different meanings than those held in a age where it was easier to believe in the reality of the supernatural. Concepts of God still have a purpose, and are valuable if employed responsibly. So is resurrection, but not in a supernatural way. More on that later.
One brief mention – resurrection has very little to do with judgment and even less for salvation. At least in my view. Factual belief here, for me, is less valuable than poetic meaning.
Thank you. You could make the argument that Paul is really the first one to introduce Christianity to the resurrection idea, but that you take some tweeking to 1 Corinthians 15. It is generally accepted that because of the creedal format of the first few verses of said chapter that resurrection belief would have been very early, in the 1st generation. However, Schillibeeckx and other modern theologians have speculated that resurrection belief could have evolved from a simpler state of exaltation belief. Spong wrote a really good book about this called, “Resurrection: Myth or Reality”. If you are interested in a more rhetorical belief in the resurrection then this series certainly explores that option, and the said book makes such an argument as well.