Human Nature in its Fourth Estate

The Resurrection Body

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Psychology

Genre: Lecture

Track: 44

Dictation Name: RR131Y45

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

Let us worship God. The Lord was in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy hill, for the Lord our God is holy. Praise ye the `. Praise our God in his excellent greatness. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.

Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly father who hast made all things in heaven and on earth, and has made us for thy pleasure, teach us so to walk day by day, that in all things we may serve and magnify Thee and fulfill thy purpose for us. We thank thee our God that the ends of the earth shall serve, and everything that has breath shall praise thee, that the wrath of man shall praise thee and bow down before thee. And so our God give us grace as we see the things of our time, to know that all things have been made by thee and shall serve thee, to the glory of thy name. Bless us now by thy word and by thy spirit, grant us thy peace in Jesus name, Amen.

Our scripture is 1’st Corinthians 15 verses 39-50. 1 Corinthians 15:39-50. The resurrection body.

“39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:

43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:

44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

47 The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.

48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”

We have seen the past two weeks that the pagan conception of the world beyond is of an afterlife. That is in a sense, whatever they believe concerning the world to come is in effect that it is afterlife, it isn’t truly life. It is pale, shadowy, it is essentially meaningless. In Plato all that survives for example is the mind. Abstract thought which contemplated abstract thought and ideas endlessly. for Aristotle’s pure intellect alone survived, to be absorbed into the divine mind, very much as in Christian science. Homer reflected the popular belief which was common throughout the world of that day and especially in Greece. For him the shades survived. That is, a pale shadowy ghost, barely alive and not really capable of enjoying anything.

There’s a very vivid picture of the popular belief of Greek religion in Homer. We find it elsewhere but Homer gives it to us very, very clearly. In the Odyssey, Odysseus wants some information from Tyreseus and so he goes into the world of the shades to speak to his departed friend. Now since the dead have a very shadowy life and it’s afterlife they are barely able to speak more than a few words, so the way for them to be able to speak at any great length to have a question period and to find out anything, is to give them blood. And so, Odysseus must sacrifice some animals in order for the shades to be able to drink of that blood and therefore to recapture enough vitality to speak to them. And of course when he slaughtered the animals all the dead who were round about came pouring in to drink of that and to have a little more energy. A little more life than to be just a shade a pallid ghost.

Now of course this immediately tells us where the idea of vampirism came from! Right out of paganism. And you find it wherever you have this type of pagan belief, which is almost everywhere in the world. The vampire are the dead who are pale ghosts and who feel the need of blood, human blood, in order to gain a little more blood life. Otherwise they stay as pale ghosts barely alive, barely capable of anything! And it is interesting that in the vampire legends the vampires attack their family first of all! They resent their superior condition of being more alive. Now, of course, there were other variations about beliefs about the afterlife. The stoic version was that some held among the stoics that there was a personal memory in the soul that remained, and others said there was not, it was just a pale shadowy thing.

But all the stoics because they had a cyclical view of history said that the world was run periodically and be totally destroyed together with all the souls that had departed and then things would after a period of chaos start up again. This kind of pagan idea has been revived in our time through Nietzsche and others. Other pagans held that the soul was divine (and therefore you had ancestor worship) and it was necessary to appease the dead in order to assure public safety, and therefore in Rome there were all kinds of activities whereby the dead were appeased. Now, there are examples of a belief in the afterlife which involve the body. The Egyptians and of course the Mohammedans. Both among the Egyptians and among the Muslims there was a belief in some sort of physical body in the world to come. Was this in any sense comparable to that which we have in the Bible? The answer is emphatically no.

With the Egyptians there was the belief that the body actually became divine, it was divinized, and the book of the dead -those who are accepted to the Gods because their good works outweigh their bad therefore the scales of justice- declares “I feel my hands becoming the hands of a god and my feet becoming the feet of a god and my fingernails becoming the fingernails of a god” and so on. But, even with the Muslims who borrowed their ideas somewhat from the bible there’s no truly biblical conception of the resurrection of the body. Why?

Because with the Muslims who represent the closest approach to an idea of the resurrection of the body anywhere in the pagan world... it is still just an afterlife. It is the kind of retirement from life and all that the Muslim people do in the world to come is to sit around and eat forever and to copulate! The idea of the Muslim world to come is one of retirement from work and being rewarded with endless food and endless women! And so even among the Muslims it’s in a sense a retirement from life, it’s an afterlife, it isn’t the real world.

Now the biblical view is radically different from all paganism. First of all it holds to the resurrection of the body. This, as we have indicated, you do not have except among the Egyptians and among the Muslims; and there it is really the resuscitation of the body. It’s the same old body revived and made able to do things in the way of enjoying itself. Saint Paul declares that the resurrection body is a new body. And the life that the resurrection body enters into is a new and perfect dimension of life. Instead of being an afterlife it is true life. It bears the relationship to this life and to this body that the seed does to the plant.

The seed is something potential. The plant or the tree that comes out of that seed is the fulness, the reality. And so, saint Paul says, it is comparable in the relationship between the resurrection body and this body. He goes on to say it is flesh, but not the same flesh. And he says just as there are differences between the flesh of man, the flesh of beasts, of fishes, and of birds, so there differences between the bodies of this world and the bodies of the world to come. Between celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial. It is a physical body, it is flesh, but of a totally different kind.

Then he goes on to say 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. Now with these terms, corruption, dishonor, weakness, he is referring to the fact that our body is dishonored by the fact that it perishes, it dies. It is of weakness of the flesh, of the flesh of this life. But, all these weaknesses are gone in the life to come. It is raised in glory and power, it is sown a natural body but it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.

Now by spiritual body he does not mean that it is spirit, that is non-physical, what he means is that it is one which is quickened by the spirits, made alive by the holy spirit. Moreover this body has faculties of which we are now unaware. Then saint Paul goes on to say, the first man is of the earth. Earthy. The second man is the Lord from heaven. Christ comes as the last Adam, a quickening spirit. The first Adam was made a living soul a creature endowed with animal life. Whereas Christ has life in himself and according to John the 5’th chapter verses 21 and 26, can give life to as many as he will.

And Saint Paul says howbeit that was not first which is spiritual but that which is natural and after that which is spiritual. In other words what Saint Paul is saying is that there is a law or principle involved here. The lower precedes the higher. There is a development in God’s purpose for us. We are born before we are regenerated. Birth precedes rebirth, therefore the birth of the body also precedes the rebirth of the body into it’s true glory. And therefore as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall bear the image of the heavenly.

Now this I say brethren, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. In other words, our bodies as now constituted cannot inherit the kingdom nor the mortal be immortal. A new body is required and the new body shall be fashioned like Christ’s own glorious body. Thus, the whole of God’s creation shall undergo a tremendous change with the resurrection. It shall be comparable to the change which came with Christ at his resurrection and glorification. This great change affects more than man it affects the whole creation. And saint Paul declares in Romans 8 that the creatures, the animal creation moans and travails and the natural creation around us, the ground beneath our feet, the vegetation, for that glorious liberty of the Sons of God. The Resurrection.

And as Calvin and other great commentators through the centuries have pointed out, this very clearly means that a general resurrection the animals themselves as well as all creation shall share in that general resurrection. Now the word resurrection in the greek is literally anastasius. We have it in the very common Russian name Anastasia. It means a raising up, to cause to stand up, and it implies an exaltation, an advance, a victory. Now, since the word salvation has a similar meaning of fulness of health, of victory, the resurrection as the standing up, the advance, is the fullness of salvation. The fulness of victory. The general resurrection thus is the standing up or raising up or victory of all creation.

Creation then comes into its own. The new creation began with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It continues without rebirth, it culminates in the general resurrection of the dead in the new creation. The whole purpose of history was therefore set forth in Christ, his coming and his resurrection. The meaning of history therefore is not in history but beyond history in Christ. The goal of history therefore in not merely in history although the victory IS to be realized in part here, but beyond history in the new creation. Over against the powers of darkness Christ set forth his resurrection in time, and his reign after his ascension in eternity. Declaring in both his sovereignty and his power of all that destroys life. That he shall finally destroy death itself, the power of sin and death shall finally be forever banished.

Saint Paul declares in Romans 11:16, for if the first fruits be holy the lump also is holy. And if the root is holy, so also are the branches. Thus he established a principal. What pertains to Christ pertains therefore to every one of us who are members of Christ. He could therefore go on to declare in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 20, now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. His destiny is therefore our destiny, because we are members of him.

The original sin of man was to be as God. Now, the philosophical and theological terms used to describe the absolute sovereign self created being of God is aseity. Aseity means that God is self existent. He walks throughout all eternity, he is throughout all eternity. It is significant that this term that is always been applied to God, has been made by modern man a term to describe man. The goal of existentialism is aseity for man! This is not surprising. The original sin of man was to be as God, to try and be his own God, and existentialism as the last and latest form of unbelief very logically says that man must seek to attain aseity. To be totally independent of all men, of all things. The goal of the existentialist as one scholar (not a christian) has said is “to become Christ in a Christ-less world, to take over and destroy all that is come before.”

As a result, those who have this desire to be their own Gods, have an urge to destroy. They want nothing that God has made. And therefore, their destiny is hell. A place where they recognize the existence of no one else in hell nor of god nor of anything else. But stand forever in their claim to aseity. In utter isolation throughout all eternity.

But the new creation for us in perfect community with God and in God. Because we recognize that we are creators, and that Jesus Christ is our redeemer and that we can only truly live in him we find our life in him and his regenerating power, we become members of him and of the new creation, our citizenship is in heaven and therefore we find the fullness of self realization and Gods service eternally. In him and by him and through him so that for us the fullness of life is fellowship in Christ and with Christ throughout all eternity and that fulness of life which is the resurrection body and it’s communion in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father who of thy grace and mercy hast called us to be thy people, and hast given us such glorious promises in Him. And even now fulfilment in and through Jesus Christ. We pray that thou wouldst ever draw us closer to him and to one another in him. That we might serve thee in fullness of life that is our destiny, and might rejoice in that which is ours today and shall be in the world to come. O Lord our God how glorious thou art, and we praise thee. In Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions now first of all on our lesson? Yes?