Do the Scriptures Teach the Resurrection of this Body?
By S. S. Griswold
By the resurrection of this body I mean the resurrection of this veritable body in which we have lived here on this earth. My reviewer says, in his reply of January 7, “After its period of unconsciousness is passed over, in the resurrection the particles of the body are reunited, re-organized, and arranged exactly as they were at the moment of death, and re-animated; then the line of life is taken up, and the current of thought resumed just where it was laid down in death, it matters not how many thousands of years before. This the power of God can do; and to deny this is to ‘err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.’” Here we have an explicit statement of the doctrine or fact of the resurrection of this body. Now let there be no evasion, no dodging the issue, no spiritualizing of the elements of which the resurrection body is composed, but stand up to the fact that the very same particles of matter that composed the body at the instant of death will be raised up to constitute the resurrected body. According to this view the resurrected body must be of the exact size and form, and possess the same avoirdupois weight as the body did at death, no more—no less. Hence the resurrected body must have all the grossness, or leanness, and hence all the beauties and deformities, all the scars, and all the deficiencies of the former body at death. Hence, if the former body was born with one hand, one leg, one ear, one eye, it must have the same defects in the resurrected body. For the same particles of matter put in the same relative position must produce the same form and shape. At death some are fat, some are lean, some are toothless, some are bald, some have flowing hair, some are plump, some are shrunken, some are scarred, some are limbless; hence, if the same particles of matter that composed these bodies at death are “reunited and arranged exactly as they were at the moment of death,” how can one evade the fact that exactly the same body will be reconstructed; and hence Heaven will be composed of cripples, of blind, of cancered ones, of diseased ones, full of pustules, of sores, scabs, and humors, in short, the inhabitants of Heaven will be but the ghastly dying ones, who once lived on this earth. And who would not prefer to be annihilated with the wicked, than to enjoy or to suffer such an existence as that forever. Hell itself would be infinitely preferable to such a Heaven as that. Nor have I caricatured the scene. It is the inevitable and absolutely necessary result of the Advent doctrine of the resurrection as given by my reviewer in his own language quoted verbatim. Nor can he be allowed to spiritualize his resurrected body, for the dying body was an earthly, diseased mass of matter, and he says the “particles of matter are arranged exactly as they were at the moment of death,” and they were not spiritual substances. According to my reviewer’s theory, the resurrection of some bodies is an impossibility. The cannibal who dies immediately after eating one of his fellow-men is in possession of the particles of matter of which his victim was composed, and hence the man-eater would be resurrected with the whole of his victim’s body in his; hence his victim could not be resurrected. Now I ask, Do the Scriptures teach such a doctrine? I unhesitatingly answer, No. The Scriptures teach the resurrection or future existence of mankind, but nowhere do they teach the resurrection or reconstruction of this body, but on the contrary explicitly deny it. Paul expressly, in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, calls the man a fool who should believe it: “Thou fool, that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be.” And he affirms that “there is a natural body, and that there is a spiritual body.” As the germ and stalk is evolved out of the seed sown, so is the spiritual body evolved out of the natural body. That there is a spirit substance as well as a matter substance, the Bible abundantly proves. God, angels, and men after death, are composed of spirit substances, and hence such beings are not “immaterial, intangible, indivisible, undefinable, impersonal, sublimated, nonentities,” as my reviewer seems disposed to ridicule. In the 15th of 1 Corinthians, we have the inspired philosophy, physiology and psychology of man’s future existence, contrasted with his present earthly life. And it is almost past credence how any one can, believing Paul, maintain that he taught the resurrection of this body. How any honest writer could write the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, and believe in the resurrection of the body is inconceivable. The fact is, Paul nowhere teaches that this body will ever be resurrected; but that, on the contrary, a spiritual body is to be developed out of the natural one, in a manner similar to the developed life of grain. Hence he contrasts the one body with the other; the natural with the spiritual; the earthly with the heavenly. “There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body,” even while we live on the earth, waiting for its development after death, and the decomposition of the earthly body, out of which it rises into the spirit world. Paul affirms that when the “earthly house of this our tabernacle,” our natural body, “is destroyed, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; for in this” body “we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.” The time when we come in possession of our heavenly house is when we are dispossessed of our earthly one, viz., at death. The Greek word rendered resurrection is anastasis, and means man’s future existence, and never refers to the reconstruction of our natural body. Dr. Dwight says it never denotes the resurrection of the body, but only man’s future existence. The Greek word for the resurrected body of Christ is egeiro, but egeiro is I think never used by Paul, because he never wrote concerning the reconstruction of our material body. That mankind at death immediately come in possession of their resurrection bodies is amply shown by John in the Revelation, where he saw vast multitudes of the dead, then living in the spirit world, and all had their spiritual bodies, for they had heads on which were crowns, and hands in which they held harps, and mouth and organs of music they sang. And yet their earthly bodies were left on the earth. John also saw Christ in that world, but he was in a spiritual body. See the description in Rev. 1. Did Christ ever have such a body while here on earth? But it is said that resurrection means to revive, and that it cannot be predicated upon any undying part of our being. The word resurrection means rather a continuance of living than a reliving. It represents the life after death, and is predicable on the undying or indestructible nature of mankind. Just as being born again, or reborn, is predicable on the fact only of man’s spiritual nature, rather than on his being reborn literally. As to be reborn does not require one to return to his fetal life, but to the development of a spiritual life, so to be resurrected does not require one’s material body to be reconstructed, or his return to the earth life; but to the unfolding of a spiritual life, a mode of existence which is the continuance of our present one, as the earth existence was the continuance of the ante-natal one. The Nicodemi are not all dead yet. Christ is said to be the first begotten of the dead, or out from among the dead ones, the first fruit of them that slept, the first that should arise out from among the dead ones. Now we all know that Christ was not the first one that was resurrected from natural death. There was the widow’s son raised to life by the prophet; the widow of Nain’s son; the daughter of Jairus; Lazarus and others who were raised from the dead before Christ. Christ then was not the first to rise from the dead, if rising from the dead, or the resurrection, means the restoration of life as the annihilationists maintain. But Christ was the first to arise out from among the dead ones who had passed from earth previous to his death, and who were then occupying the hadesian regions of the spirit world, and Christ’s real ascension was in the world of spirits where he went after his death to preach to the spirits of the departed then in that prison house of the under-world; a doctrine and fact universally believed and taught during the primitive age of Christianity, and abundantly taught by the apostles. The real ascension of Christ and the resurrection of his people consists in their ascension or resurrection out from the dead in the world of spirits. For the dead will not all sleep in that under-world of spirits, but when the trump reverberates through those regions where live the dead, those that have done good will there come forth to the resurrection of life; while the evil to the resurrection of condemnation. But my six pages to which I am limited are full. I must close. It has not been reserved to the nineteenth century to produce the wonderful objection to the resurrection of the dead, which, Bro. G., in the foregoing article, manipulates with such apparent satisfaction. His objection is as old as Porphyry, Pliny, and Celsus. It is as old as the Epicureans and Stoics of Athens, who called Paul a babbler when he advocated the doctrine, and thought that he was a setter forth of strange gods. Is Bro. G. willing to identify himself with those who have stood as sponsors for this cavil against the power and word of God? We did not suppose that any one would be in danger of misunderstanding our remarks in the REVIEW of Jan. 7, respecting the identity of the resurrected body, nor can we now see how any ingenuous mind could well misconstrue them. Bro. G. seems to be conscious that any consistent view of the matter would spoil the point he tries to make against it, and hence anxiously repeats his call upon the reader not to take such a view of it, but to regard us as teaching that the body after the resurrection manifests all the conditions of disease and deformity to which it was subject in this mortal state, notwithstanding Paul expressly says that the body is raised in honor, and glory, and incorruptibility! When we contend for the unconscious state of the dead, it is objected that that cannot be; for it would make the resurrection a new creation; and when it is answered to this that the same body is restored, and the exact organization returned, and this constitutes identity of being, then an effort is made to put it in a ridiculous light, as in the instance before us. But when we say that the particles of the body are re-united, re-organized and arranged exactly as they were at the moment of death, is it saying that all the grosser particles are there? By no means. There are fortuitous and abnormal conditions which are not to be taken at all into the account. And when we speak of the body, and of the particles of the body, the essential and elemental parts are only to be understood. Who would imagine that the body might not differ in the resurrection from what it was before, as much at least as it differs at one period in its earthly history from its condition at another, and yet its identity be preserved? But we are sometimes in health, sometimes in sickness, sometimes in flesh, and sometimes wasted away, sometimes with diseased members, and sometimes entirely free from disease; and in all these changes we are conscious that we have the same body. Why? Because its essential elements remain, and its organization is continued. Whatever change can take place in our bodies during our earth life, and our identity be continued, changed to the same degree may be the body when resurrected, and yet it be the same body. But a missing member might be instantly restored, a diseased limb healed, the consumptive raised to the bloom of health, or the body swollen with dropsy reduced to its natural size, and the individual still be conscious that he was the same person. In the article of Jan. 7, to which Bro. G. refers, we were careful to guard our position when speaking of the re-arrangement of matter by saying, “especially of the brain, the organ of the mind, being identically what it was” But ignoring all this, he even goes so far as to make the temporary contents of the stomach, an essential part of the body! This he does by referring to cannibals, and saying that a cannibal might have the entire body of his victim within his own. In this case he must eat the entire body at one meal, skull, bones, brains and all. We had never before supposed that they were such enormous eaters, or that they had such enormous capacity as to take down a whole man at one eating. To answer this with more seriousness than it deserves, let us suppose a cannibal in process of time to consume an entire victim; what proportion could be used in this way? Not one-half by weight. And what proportion of this would be taken up by the body and become incorporated with it? But a small fraction. And to what parts would this naturally go? To those grosser and immaterial parts which most rapidly change, and demand the most constant supply. But while a few pounds of matter are supplied to the body, if that body maintains a uniform condition, an equal amount of matter has been thrown off. Thus it will be seen that at no one time is it possible for any material amount of one body to be a part of another. This objection when reduced to its essence amounts simply to a cavil. Dr. C. Kingsley answers it at length, in his work on the resurrection, but we have not room for extracts. But does not Paul say, “Thou fool, thou sowest not that body that shall be,” as quoted above? Not exactly. Bro. G. here tries hard to make the foolish stick to the wrong party. Paul says, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die”! 1 Cor. 15:35, 36. Paul here asserts an obvious fact that there can be no quickening, which Webster defines, “to revive or resuscitate as from death, or an inanimate state,” without death has first supervened; and he says that man is a fool who says otherwise. To talk of a quickening or making alive of that which does not die, or of a resurrection from the dead of that which does not go down into death, is richly deserving of the epithet which Paul here applies to it. And what is it that shall be quickened in the resurrection? The Bible, the word of God, answers, This mortal body. Rom. 8:11: “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Again in verse 23, Paul says: “Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” And in 1 Cor. 15, Paul is as explicit as he well can be on this subject. Verse 44: “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” What does he mean by the natural body, and by its being sown? He means the burial of our present bodies in the grave. So he says in verses 42, 43: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” What is sown? The natural body. Then what is raised? The very same thing. IT is sown; IT is raised; raised in incorruption, in glory, in power, a spiritual body. Raised in this manner, the natural body becomes a spiritual body. How? Because the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ quickens, resuscitates, or makes it alive again, as Paul wrote to the Romans. Yes, says Bro. G., there is a natural body and a spiritual body at the same time. But Paul says that is not so. Verse 46: “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.” In verse 49 he says we have borne the image of the earthly, and we shall bear, future, the image of the heavenly; and this will be when this mortal and corruptible, which is this mortal body, puts on incorruption, verses 52, 53, or is clothed upon with the house from Heaven. 2 Cor. 5. To the Philippians Paul testifies again on this point: “For our conversation is in Heaven from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” This language is explicit. A change is to be wrought in the vile, mortal or corruptible body of this present state, not a spiritual body released from it, which never sees death and needs no change; and the change is that it is to be fashioned, changed over, into the likeness of Christ’s glorious, immortal body. Anastasis, says Bro. G., means simply a future existence. Why such a gloss as this? Such declarations betray a consciousness of the inherent falsity of the position in behalf of which they are uttered. Liddell and Scott define the word, “a making to stand or rise up, awakening, a restoration, e. g., of the dead.” So all lexicographers. To attempt to apply this to a state of existence which continues uninterruptedly from a previous one, is—what? We leave the reader to find fitting terms if he can to designate such a course. The resurrection, he says, cannot mean the resurrection of the body, because Christ who was to be the first to rise from the dead was not the first to come bodily out of the grave. But if the resurrection means the entrance of the spirit at death into the spirit world, had none entered there before Christ? And if it means coming out of the hades region, whatever that may be, did not those who were raised before Christ enter at death into that region, and come out of it by a resurrection? Bro. G.’s objection is as much against himself as against us. But in what sense was Christ to be the first to rise from the dead? The titles, first begotten, and first born, are applied to him to denote the exaltation and dignity of his position. See definitions of these words. And it is said in Acts 26:23 that Christ should first shew light to the Gentiles by a resurrection from the dead. See the Greek of that passage. Those openly raised before his time, had been restored to this mortal life. Christ was the first to give ocular demonstration of a resurrection to immortality. John saw, it is said, multitudes of the redeemed in the spirit world, while their bodies were in the grave. Not so fast. John beheld scenes which were future. And the redeemed will be in the kingdom as he saw them in their spiritual, immortal bodies, after the coming of Christ and the resurrection. No doctrine can be more clearly taught than the resurrection of the body is taught by the Scriptures of truth. Men may resort to cavils, and all sorts of spiritualistic theories to oppose it, but folly is written all over such attempts here, and shame and confusion of face will be written upon them when, by the events of the great day, God shall vindicate the literal truthfulness of his word.