Systematic Theology – Eschatology

The Body

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 17 of 32

Track: #17

Year:

Dictation Name: 17 The Body

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer.

Oh Lord our God unto whom judgment and victory belong, we come to Thee who art the author of all things, and beseech Thee to bring forth victory in these troubled times against the powers of humanism, against those who rage against Thy Son and His kingdom, and who seek it’s overthrow. Work Thou in the hearts of judges and of men that Thy will may be done on earth as it is in heaven, that the ungodly may be confounded, and Thy saints encouraged. We beseech Thee our Father to raise up men to fight the fight of faith, to be faithful against adversity, to be courageous in the face of the enemy, and to be resolute in Thy service. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, and grant us Thy peace. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from I Corinthians 15 verses 33-44, I Corinthians 15:33-44 continuing our studies in eschatology and our subject this morning is simply “the body”.

“33 Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.

34 Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.

35 But some man will say, how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?

36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:

37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:

38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own 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 dishonor; 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.”

This morning we barely begin the study of this text, to which we shall return on another occasion. The body has a place in the doctrine of eschatology because God very definitely ordains the body for resurrection. Now when we come to the consideration of life after death we find that thinking in our day is very much under the influence of Greek views. One of the Greek views was that there were two kinds of being; mind and matter, and bother were different substances brought together in uneasy union and after death the body was forever done with, and the soul or spirit lived on. Other Greek views held to a tripartite view, body, mind, and spirit. But the Bible says all of man is God’s creation, it is one being although there are differences of being. The Bible speaks of the unity of man; it tells us moreover that God only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach to, according to I Timothy 6 verse 16. Immortality very strictly means “life without beginning or without end.” So that the Greeks, believing in immortality, were very ready to believe that there was life before birth, as well as after death. But the life before and after was a pale one, and so the Greek idea of the dead was that they were shades, very pale and lifeless beings; and only as one was ready to offer up the sacrifice of human life when he spoke with the dead, the shades would gather round and drink that blood, and get enough vitality to speak.

Now very clearly the pagan view is very radically different from the Biblical one. When the Bible speaks about immortality for man Paul says, as in I Corinthians 15:33 that, “this mortal shall put on immortality.” In other words, it’s not something we have but by God’s providence and grace we who are mortal put on immortality. So it’s not a natural state for man. But even more there’s another factor to be considered. Our Lord gives us a very telling vision on the subject in Matthew 22 verses 31&32 when He says “But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, 32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” In other words, death and God are separate. God is life, not death. It is separation from God which is death. We are told that man was created very good; and man having a body does not have just a transitional thing which is between eternity and eternity, and he’s going to spend the rest of eternity after death without a body. Not so. We are not made to outgrow our body, which was created very good. In fact when in Genesis we are told that God created man a living soul it means very literally in the Hebrew “A breathing creature.” We have read into the word “soul” a Greek idea.

Now, I read to you our Lord’s word in Matthew 22 verses 31 and 32. There’s a very important statement about that by one of the great scholars of American history, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. Warfield says, and I quote: “From the standpoint of the Bible the souls separated from their bodies, though living, are dead. They are under the power of death. They are, because dead, still enduring the penalty threatened against sin. The living God is the God of the living, not of the dead. He cannot have proclaimed Himself the God of those hopelessly under the power of death, suffering the penalty of sin. If he proclaimed Himself therefore the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this is proof beyond cavil that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whatever temporarily may be there state, belong fundamentally to the realm of the living, not to the realm of the dead; and cannot therefore be permanently held by the bonds of death. And the realm of the living is the realm where, not dead souls are, but where living souls are, souls not suffering disabilities through death. Death cannot have permanent dominion over those whom God is the living God. In the very nature of the case they belong to the kingdom of life, they must therefore emerge from Sheol and return to the light of life, soul and body alike partaking of the undivided life that belongs to human nature. If we believe this, and so far as we believe it, we shall cease to wonder at the affect of our Lord’s argument on the people: “and when the multitude heard it, they were astonished at His teaching.” It is the strength of the Old Testament religion that the living God has nothing in common with the shades of Sheol. That God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, that in Him is the fountain of life, which to quaff is to abide forever in fullness of life.”

What Warfield is saying, and what scriptures says, is that God did not create the body for a short span of years, for our 70, or 80, or 90, or 20, or 30 years upon this earth. He created it forever to be the way we live. Evil is not a metaphysical fact having to do with the body, it is a moral fact having to do with our character. Satan, as I have pointed out more than once, is a spiritual being. The birth and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is a vindication of matter, and that vindication is completed in the resurrection of the body, and as our Lord speaks of it in Matthew 19:28 “The regeneration of all creation.” Life in heaven is an intermediate state. Man is normally in a physical condition, and that is normative for Him. He was created very good, in a body which did not have the infirmities that our body has, although it had the possibility of them. When he is resurrected he will have forever as his body one which has not possibility of infirmities.

Now apart from sin and death man’s visible existents is destined to be a glorious one. The Bible does speak of life in heaven as a sleep, as in I Corinthians 15:51, but not as a soul-sleep. But it is the time when the body is asleep, and we are told, and we’ll return to that on another occasion, that the body is sown like seed is sown, and the body that is resurrected is very different from the body that is buried, and a glorious one. Our body’s sleep when we die. We live then as a spiritual being in heaven until the resurrection of the dead. We’ll return to that briefly, but first to cite Warfield again, and I quote: “these all dying in Christ die not, but live; for Christ is not Lord anymore than God is God of the dead, but of the living. We must catch hear the idea that pervades the whole of Jewish thought, inculcated as it is with the most constant iteration by the whole Old Testament Revelation, that death is the penalty of sin, and that restoration from death, that is resurrection, is involved therefore in reception into the favor of God.” Sin and sickness and death itself are not natural to the body, they are perversions of it. God made the body for life, man by sin has made it the local of moral and physical death.

Now as we look therefore at the eschatology of the body, we have to see it as an endpoint, and end time, eschatology. First of all, to treat the body here and now, to deal with end point eschatology, to deal with it here and now with disrespect is to despise God’s handiwork, and to sin. It is true that our bodies have infirmities, these are a part of a fallen world, of a sinful world. But we are to wage war against sin and against the effects of sickness and death. Hence, we have dietary laws in the Bible because God is concerned with the health of the body. We are told moreover “thou shalt not kill”, we cannot take the life of any animal apart from God’s law; that even when we kill a bird for food, we are not to kill both the mother and the young. Life comes from God, and life- physical life, is to be treated with respect because it is God’s handiwork, which he declares to be very good. This is why abortion is so fearful an offense against God. It is murder, and it reveals apart from the act of murder, a fundamental contempt for God and for life. As though life were something we can dispose of at our will.

Then second, as we deal with end-point eschatology, we have to see everything that deals with healing, medicine and dentistry, as priestly callings. Now the word “salvation” in the Latin means “health – salve, health” it’s very significant because this is precisely what we find in the Hebrew; and the fact that in more than one language there is a coincidence between the word for health, and for salvation, indicates that even pagan religions remembered what God had originally revealed to all men. When in Genesis 49:18 Jacob says “I have waited for Thy salvation oh Lord” the word salvation which he uses, the Hebrew word means deliverance, it means victory and health.

Sin, death, sickness, these are enemies of God. They are perversions of His creation, and sickness is something that a Christian should seek to avoid; and medicine has been called, are the healing arts, priestly callings because they are trying to push-back the ravages of sin, of the fall. Now we can only do it partially in this life, just as we cannot be perfectly holy in this life. But we have a duty to seek holiness; we have a duty to seek health. Salvation means deliverance from sin and from death forever. The quest for health apart from God is self-frustrating because everyone, no matter how earnestly they seek health, apart from Christ still manifest a suicidal bent. “All they that hate me” scripture says “love death”; and so to seek health apart from Christ is frustrating; but for the believer to seek health, is Godly, and it is a duty.

Then third, as our scripture tells us, and which we will deal with in greater detail later, our bodies now are a pale shadow of the resurrection body. We are sown like a seed at our death, to be raised up at the resurrection with a glorious body throughout all eternity. The fall and sin have warped our physical nature, as well as our nature; and regeneration is the beginning of our restoration, and that restoration is completed with the resurrection of the dead. And basic to that restoration, beginning here and now, is the moral factor, faithfulness to the law word of God. And this is why the law is so important, for our sanctification, and for our health. We are sanctified by law, we are saved by grace. This is why Isaiah 65:20 speaks as we saw some months ago, of the increase of life expectancy in history as men push back sin. Because as they push it back, they push back death also, and the life expectancy of man is increased as man grows in his faithfulness to God, and to the every word of God. Life in Christ means holiness and righteousness or justice. It means changes in our total life, body and soul, and it means changes also, we are told, more than once as in Deuteronomy 28:12, in the weather itself

But then finally we must say our full restoration awaits the end of the world, and the resurrection of the dead. Our bodies are a part of the physical universe. Man was created when all else was created. On the first five days God created the heaven and the earth, and on the sixth day He created man, the culmination of the creation. Man was created when all was created, and He is to be regenerated when all is recreated and ready for the perfect life. When there is a new heaven, and a new earth. A new physical creation, then man is to be created, then the resurrection of the dead, so that even as on the 6th day at the end of the physical creation, so at the end of the regeneration and restoration of all things, man will be resurrected physically, and our being will be united, will be one throughout all eternity. Because then, with the perfect new creation, man will be ready with the resurrection body for the perfect life in that creation.

Thus, to depreciate the body is morally, religiously, wrong. The body has a key place in eschatology. End point eschatology requires the care of our bodies as God’s handiwork, as the temple of the Holy Spirit, as God’s property, hence the serious nature of sin. In I Corinthians 6:13-20 when Paul deals with the body, he speaks of it as the temple of the Holy Spirit, He speaks of it as God’s property, and then He says something that I do not believe we will ever fully understand until we are in heaven; but which we can also very clearly understand in some of its meaning now. Paul says: “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.” So speaks Paul I Corinthians 6:5 [It’s actually 6:15].

Now as I said, we cannot plumb the full meaning here, we cannot understand all that is involved in what happens when we are made members of Christ, and what happens when we are made of members of a prostitute by union with her. There’s something there that in this life we will not fully grasp. There is an extent, a reach of meaning there that is beyond us, but which is very clearly tremendous. We do know that God says that every act of our body is a membership, an act of membership, and affirmation of God, an affirmation of faith, or an affirmation of sin and death. So all the days of our life we are affirming something with our bodies. We are saying “yes we are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and we will affirm God with our every physical act.” Or we will affirm death and hell.

Now, that is clear. What is involved in that act of affirmation, and membership as Paul calls it? Inspired of God he calls it an “act of membership”. I think it’s far more than we can begin to imagine, but which will be made known to us by the Lord, and the world to come. God is, our Lord says, the God of the living, and every act of our body is an act of affirmation of life, or an affirmation of membership in death. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God great and marvelous art Thou, Thy purpose for us how great and wonderful. Thou hast made us for Thyself, Thou hast given us the glory of physical life, and hast destined us for the resurrection of the dead; and for life in the perfected creation. Give us grace day by day so to walk that our every act, our every physical and our every moral act is an affirmation of membership in Jesus Christ; that we grieve not Thy Holy Spirit, but are joyful in Him, and moved by Him affirming those things which are of Him. Bless us to this purpose we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} Two things, one is the children’s catechism question that asks “where is God?” and the answer is “God is everywhere.” And the other being Warfield’s statement, that God is not God of the dead.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s a very good question, and I don’t think I can answer it. Very definitely we are told in scripture that sin and death are separation from God, our Lord makes that clear in the word from the cross “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” At the point when He was made sin for us, and took on death for us. At the same time the Psalmist, inspired of God says, “though I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there. If I go to the uttermost parts of the earth, behold thou art there.” So there is no escaping from God at any point, but there are apparently points where God is not in His presence, as far as being with us; we are separated from Him in a radical way.

Now that’s a mystery, but that’s about all that can be said.

Any other questions?

Yes?

[Audience member] Are there any other organizations besides, I believe the Seventh Day Adventists, that hold to soul sleep?

[Rushdoony] There are a number of groups that hold to the doctrine of soul sleep, yes. It has been a doctrine that has repeatedly in history been revived. In the late Middle Ages it was very prevalent. Subsequently at the time of the Reformation it again arose among some of the sects, and both Luther and Calvin spoke very strongly against it, and Calvin in particular regarded it with anger and disgust as a kind of stupid doctrine in which ignorant people involved themselves. It again revived in the last century, and we do have it in several groups today.

[Same audience member] Did Calvin make reference to it in his institutes, is that where he made reference to it?

[Rushdoony] I do believe he did refer to it in his institutes, yes. And he referred to it also in some of his writings against various Anabaptists groups.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that Thou hast made us, and Thy works shall never perish. We Thank Thee that Thou hast remade us, and made us Thine, hast given us the gift of the spirit, and such great promises in Thy word. We rejoice in the certainty of Thy presence, the promise that Thou wilt never leave us, nor forsake us, so that we may boldly say: “The Lord is my helper; I shall not fear what man may do unto me.” Make us ever mindful oh Lord that we are citizens of the new creation, and that Thine is the victory, the power, and the glory. Our God we praise Thee, in Jesus name, amen.