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The Physical Nature of the
Resurrection
.
Despite the centrality of
the resurrection in Scripture and church history, many have never been clearly
taught its meaning, so they imagine they’ll live forever in a disembodied state
- a nonphysical resurrection is like a sunless sunrise - there’s no such thing - Resurrection means we
will have bodies - if we didn’t have bodies, we wouldn’t be resurrected.
By Randy Alcorn
Many Bible-believing
Christians today are crippled by their unbiblical view of the life to come.
This is why I have
written at length on the subject of Heaven, putting primary
emphasis on the resurrection and eternal state centered on the New Earth.
Despite the centrality of
the resurrection in Scripture and church history, many of them have never been
clearly taught its meaning, so they imagine they’ll live forever in a
disembodied state.
But this predominant
viewpoint is self-contradictory.
A nonphysical
resurrection is like a sunless sunrise. There’s no such thing.
Resurrection means we
will have bodies! If we didn’t have bodies, we wouldn’t be resurrected.
Christ’s
resurrection body demonstrated what our own will be like: “See my hands and
my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have
flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39).
Corinthian believers were
immersed in the Greek philosophies of Platonism and dualism, which perceived a
dichotomy between the spiritual and physical realms.
Platonists see a
disembodied soul as the ideal. The Bible, meanwhile, sees this division as
unnatural and undesirable.
We are unified beings.
That’s what makes bodily resurrection so vital.
That’s
also why Paul said that if there is no resurrection, “we are of all people
most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19).
The truth is, God intends
for our bodies, once raised, to last as long as our souls.
In an article for First
Things, Abigail Rine Favale writes about “Evangelical Gnosticism” and the
need for Christians to regain an understanding of what the resurrection means:
I teach
in a great books program at an Evangelical university. Almost all students in
the program are born-and-bred Christians of the nondenominational variety.
A
number of them have been both thoroughly churched and educated through Christian
schools or homeschooling curricula. Yet an overwhelming majority of these
students do not believe in a bodily resurrection.
While
they trust in an afterlife of eternal bliss with God, most of them assume this
will be disembodied bliss, in which the soul is finally free of its “meat suit”
(a term they fondly use).
I first
caught wind of this striking divergence from Christian orthodoxy in class last
year, when we encountered Stoic visions of the afterlife.
Cicero,
for one, describes the body as a prison from which the immortal soul is
mercifully freed upon death, whereas Seneca views the body as “nothing more
or less than a fetter on my freedom,” one eventually “dissolved”
when the soul is set loose.
Resistance
to the idea of a physical resurrection struck them as perfectly logical. “It
doesn’t feel right to say there’s a human body in heaven, when the body is tied
so closely to sin,” said one student.
In all,
fewer than ten of my forty students affirmed the orthodox teaching that we will
ultimately have a body in our glorified, heavenly form.
None of
them realizes that these beliefs are unorthodox; this is not willful doctrinal
error. This is an absence of knowledge about the foundational tenets of
historical, creedal Christianity.
A 1997 poll of Americans
found that of those who believe in a resurrection of the dead, two-thirds
believe they will not have bodies after the resurrection.
Unfortunately, as the
above article demonstrates, twenty years later many Christians are still laboring
under a false understanding of the resurrection.
In
response to Abigail’s article, one Christian university professor wrote on Twitter, “I did not believe this
was true of my students, so I polled two of my classes today. I was floored
(and dismayed) to discover the vast majority don’t believe in the bodily
resurrection.”
Later he wrote, “After five minutes of discussion
most of them were more open to the idea.”
This is encouraging, as I
believe most believers are interested in learning the real biblical meaning of
the resurrection (the fact that we have a physical eternity to look forward to
is good news!)
So why does all this
matter? Because if we don’t get the resurrection of the body right, we’ll get
nothing else right concerning our eternal future.
I agree
with Abigail’s assessment: “The tenet of the bodily resurrection is not a
peripheral doctrinal issue. It is part of the entire economy of salvation.”
It’s therefore critical
that we not merely affirm the resurrection of the dead as a point of doctrine
but that we understand the meaning of the resurrection we
affirm.
For more on the eternal
life that awaits us, see Randy’s book Heaven.
You can also browse additional books
and resources on Heaven available from EPM.
Randy Alcorn (@randyalcorn)
is the author of fifty-some books and the founder and director
of Eternal
Perspective Ministries.
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