How does a resurrection of the dead work? For many people, an image of someone emerging from a grave or the depths of the ocean comes to mind. For others, they imagine something akin to Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones - with bones coming back together and God covering them with muscles and skin, and then reanimating the reassembled corpse. Does that make sense? Is that what the Bible reveals about the resurrection of the dead? Is that why some people think that the notion of a resurrection is absurd?
Paul famously wrote the saints of Corinth that God will give us a new body in the resurrection (I Corinthians 15:37-38). Continuing his train of thought, he added: "What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever." (Verse 50) But how can God put YOU into a new body?
Herbert Armstrong taught that it was a spirit in humans that made the resurrection possible. He focused on this verse in the book of Ecclesiastes: "For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it." (12:7) He put this together with a passage from Job: "But there is a spirit within people, the breath of the Almighty within them, that makes them intelligent." (32:8) Armstrong reasoned that this spirit was like a recording of everything that makes each and every one of us a unique individual, and that God would use this spirit to resurrect us. Was he right? Will God use a "ruah" (breath or spirit) to resurrect us?
Now, according to the book of Genesis, God did tell the first man: "By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return." (3:19) We also read in the book of Ecclesiastes that "The living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, nor are they remembered. Whatever they did in their lifetime—loving, hating, envying—is all long gone." (9:5-6) In the book of Job, we read: "“But when people die, their strength is gone. They breathe their last, and then where are they? As water evaporates from a lake and a river disappears in drought, people are laid to rest and do not rise again. Until the heavens are no more, they will not wake up nor be roused from their sleep." (14:10-12) Hence, if we really are "like that dog Rover - when we die, we die all over," how does God retrieve the stuff that makes you and me who we are after our physical remains have completely disappeared?
David and Jesus provided a few clues about how this might work. In the one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm, we read: "O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord." (Verses 1-4) In other words, David believed that God was aware of everything that made David - David! In similar fashion, we read in the Gospel of Matthew that Jesus Christ once said: "What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows." (10:29-31) In other words, God is aware of everything that happens in the world and even knows the exact number of hairs on each one of our heads.
Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that God knows the most minute details of the things that make up each and every one of us, and that God has total recall! In other words, we are kept safe for the resurrection in the mind of God - in God's memory. That kind of mind power is incomprehensible to us, but I think it makes the notion of a resurrection very plausible/understandable. What do you think?
Analyzing this issue is a challenge. Based on the terminology in scripture and its historical usage, the human being is a triad of spirit, soul and flesh. This is respectively pneuma, psyche and sarx in Greek. Using this model, some statements from the Bible on this topic are clarified and other parts remain obscure. For instance, it can be supported logically that death is the dissolution of the triad with the only surviving compoment being conditionally immortal pneuma. Sarx and its animating component psyche are mortal. But much of the OT does not acknowledge a surviving immortal spirit. But, then again, much of the OT does not acknowledge a resurrection. This incomplete OT picture must be augmented with the NT. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection. So somewhere in the history of Judaism, resurrection became a prominent belief, maybe based on Daniel. And Second Temple Judaism was influenced by the Book of Enoch in addition to what we accept as the OT canon.
ReplyDeleteBut back to the issue you raise. If our spirits (pneuma) are immortal, then what does God resurrect to return us to a bodily existence? Analogs to sarx and psyche are needed, if a triadic being is once again to be implemented. Notice I said "if." Let us assume that a triadic being is to be implemented. Then, in line with your topic, will the analog to sarx be DNA based? It may not be. Let us assume that it is. Then where does God find the DNA structure? Does some part of our body have to survive? Some Christians believe that this is so. That the resurrection is a bodily resurrection, i.e., from a body or part of a body. Or can God simply rely on memory?
God has our data. He has absolute control over all creation. It is absurd to think that anything gets lost to him. If he wanted to work again in some kind of DNA based material, he either has it in memory or he can actually directly get it from what we call the past. God is not bound by time and space. All points in time are equally accessible to him. So if I got incinerated in nuclear war so that nothing but carbon atoms are left, God just accesses the time before I got incinerated and retrieves whatever working data from the past "me" that he wants to work with. In fact, I don't think he needs to even do this. I just put this chronological concept on the table as a novelty that easily refutes the naive idea that God requires a body for a resurrection. God created us from the foundation of the Cosmos. Then, at the appropriate time, he embodied us. (Some might conjecture from this that we had to have a triadic mode in order to have consciousness but this is not necessarily so.) He can easily embody us again - and from memory.
I do not know where our personal memories are stored. What part of the triad? There are a number of conjectures here - HWA's being one of them.
Great exposition of the triad - thank you. I believe the entire triad is contained in God's mind/memory - that nothing else is needed to access every single iota of the information which is unique to each and every one of us!
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