I have been wanting to share some of these thoughts for at least a couple years.
Wednesday night prayer meeting. Been looking at the post-resurrection stories. Luke 24 leading into Acts. Walk to Emmaus. Then the resurrected Christ appears to the disciples in Jerusalem.
Although the structure of Luke 24:36-49 is nearly identical to that of Luke 24:13-35 the emphasis is quite different. The Emmaus story emphasizes experiencing the risen Christ in the holy meal we call Eucharist or Communion. The Jerusalem story emphasizes the corporeality of the risen Christ.
Consider this question I asked of Church of the Nations on Sunday and of University Baptist Church on Wednesday. What would be wrong with the following? God sends Jesus to show us what God is like. Jesus teaches us a whole bunch of really nice things about being nice to people. Jesus dies. His immortal soul returns to God. One day we also will die and our immortal souls will return to be with God forever in heaven.
End of story.
What exactly is wrong with that? It is logical. It is coherent. It is consistent. It is not so difficult to believe. And quite frankly it is how many modern people Christian or not look at the Christian faith. As Fred Craddock points out in his commentary on Luke in the Interpretation series this is because many people still presume the Greek concept of the immortality of the soul. That is why some interpret the resurrection of Christ solely in spiritual not physical terms.
But that is not the story the New Testament gives us. The New Testament insists on something very strange that quite frankly would seem unnecessary if the purpose of Christ was no more than to teach us God loves us and we should love God and other people.
The New Testament insists on resurrection of the body.
The Jerusalem story in Luke 24 is at pains to emphasize this.
They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. Jesus said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in you minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have”. (24:37-39)
“It is I myself!” As if to say if Jesus is a ghost and has no body he is no longer himself. Or perhaps it is him but he is less than himself. If the human being is a union of body and soul then Jesus seems to be saying if he is now a soul (or spirit or ghost) without a body it is no longer (entirely?) him. A human being is not complete without a body. A soul no matter how immortal is not enough.
This is precisely what one finds in an astonishing text by J. R. R. Tolkien published long after his death: “Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth” in Morgoth’s Ring (History of Middle Earth, volume 10) edited by Christopher Tolkien. Anyone who cares about the writings of Tolkien must have this volume. You can manage without the other supplementary volumes but this one is crucial.
It tells the story of a conversation between Finrod Felagund the elven king and Adanel the wise woman. The conversation revolves around the fact that Men are mortal. They grow old and sick and die. Adanel insists this is not the way they are supposed to be. That once they were immortal like the elves. Finrod refuses to believe this because it does not make sense. Not when you think carefully about it.
(Finrod) “To us your claim for Men is strange, and indeed hard to accept, for two reasons. You claim, if you fully understand your own words, to have had imperishable bodies, not bounded by the limits of Arda, and yet derived from its matter and sustained by it. And you claim also to have had hroar and fear [bodies and souls/spirits] that were from the beginning out of harmony. Yet harmony of hroa and fea is, we believe, essential to the true nature unmarred of all the Incarate: the Mirroanwi, as we call the Children of Eru”. (315)
Any Orthodox/orthodox Christian would recognize and understand this concept. We are not souls/spirits that happen to inhabit bodies and at death the soul/spirit goes away and the body no longer matters. God likes bodies. God created bodies. God created human beings to be a union of body and soul/spirit (Genesis 2). And to those who belong to God in Christ the body is an instrument of the spiritual life. Not its enemy!
Back to Luke 24. We have addressed complete human being (including Jesus!) = body + soul. Now back to the importance of physical resurrection. Why insist on it so much? Does it not complicate what would otherwise be a very straightforward and much easier to believe story about Jesus the great teacher who comes and dies and lives forever spiritually?
I know that many scholars and Christians insist on two points. First that the resurrection vindicates Jesus. Jesus always said he would be raised from death. If he was not raised from death then he would have been a liar and we could not trust him. While that is true and important I do not think that completely explains the importance of resurrection. Physical resurrection has an important apologetic/forensic value but surely it is much more than that. Again it was not necessary. Jesus the great moral teacher never had to bring it up just to prove that he was who he said it was. So clearly we are dealing with something more.
The second point is it represents victory over death. Jesus defeated death. So we also will defeat death. Again I suggest this is extraordinarily important and true. But it might still not quite answer the question. Because we could still just as easily talk about eternal life solely in spiritual terms. Sure we defeat death. After we die our souls live forever with God in heaven. No death. Tada!
But no we have this strange insistence on physical not just spiritual life beyond death. The defeat of death includes defeat of physical death. Why is this so important?
There is a point at which Finrod says something to Adanel that to me was most astonishing. Toward the end of their conversation after Finrod leaps to the insight that Men represent and achieve the healing of Arda Marred.
“Since Eru will surely not suffer Melkor to turn the world to his own will and to triumph in the end. Yet there is no power conceivable greater than Melkor save Eru only. Therefore Eru, if He will not relinquish His work to Melkor, who must else proceed to mastery, then Eru must come in to conquer him”. (322)
Yes you realize that Finrod somehow conceives of the Incarnation of Eru within Arda and within time. But what shocked me was the above argument. Is Eru going to “relinquish his work to Melkor” and just let Melkor win?
Okay Melkor. You have ruined and corrupted physical creation. Whatever. It’s all yours. Take it. Have your little kingdom of misery and death. At least I get all these souls of elves and men that I will take somewhere else.
Why is physical resurrection so important? Why not just emphasize the salvation and immortality of the soul?
Because otherwise we are saying that God does not care about the physical creation. He will relinquish it to Satan chaos evil and death. At least he gets our souls that go off somewhere to party with God forever. But the world can go to pot.
To deny the physical resurrection of Christ and ultimately of ourselves is to deny the victorious love of God for all that he has created. Including the physical world.
