The first man (Adam) was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man (Christ) is from heaven ..... Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (First Corinthians 15:47, 49)
The Archbishop of Canterbury was quoted recently on the subject of e-Mail and the Internet. He acknowledged the power and usefulness of the Net, but observed that a lot of people thought they were having real relationships by email when in fact there can be no relationship without face-to-face contact. I know two couples who met on the Internet, and they have given me permission to say that that is the absolute truth!
"I believe in the resurrection of the body." That's what we say when we recite the Apostles Creed. The Apostles Creed is what we say at morning and evening prayer. Many of us have been saying "resurrection of the dead" in the Nicene Creed for so long that we have forgotten the phrase "resurrection of the body". "resurrection of the dead" is itself a unique affirmation, but it doesn't make the point as explicitly as "resurrection of the body." St Paul's letter to the church in Corinth addresses this issue head-on. In his famous chapter on love, he speaks of the future day when we will know the Lord and one another, not "through a glass, darkly" ("in a mirror dimly" -- RSV) but "face to face." He goes on, "now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I also am known" (First Corinthians 13:12).
The Corinthian congregation that Paul had founded and nurtured was turning away from the revolutionary Christian proclamation of the resurrection of the body. They were returning to the much more familiar religious idea of the immortality of the soul. In fact the Corinthians thought that they had already gained immortality. They had a "spiritualised" idea of the resurrection that bypasses the body. Paul writes to them, explaining that if they are going to go that way, they are going to be giving up the foundation of the Christian faith: "how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? . . . If there is no resurrection of the dead, that Christ has not been raised; (and) if Christ has not been raised, . . . Your faith is futile and you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:13-17).
Immortality of the soul was such a commonplace belief in the Hellenistic world of Jesus and the apostles that, even though it was not a Jewish idea, no one would have been surprised to hear it. Similarity, we today hear people talk of rebirth, life after death, personal immortality, reincarnation, and all kinds of other generic religious beliefs almost as a matter of course. Only Christianity speaks of the resurrection of the body. Suppose for a moment that the angel in Mark's story had stood outside the still-closed tomb and said to the woman, "The spirit of your Master lives on," or "the immortal soul of Jesus has gone into heaven." Maybe this would have comforted the women. Maybe it would have encouraged them to pick up their lives, warm them with a religious glow and a sense of possibility. Maybe. In view of what they had witnessed at Golgotha, I doubt it. In any case, this is not at all what Mark describes. His gospel ends like this:
Entering the tomb (for the stone had been removed), they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him" . . . And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16:5-8)
Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, (The Undoing of Death)
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