I want to share with you my experience with Pascha (Easter) this year.
Most of you probably know that Orthodox celebrate Pascha at a different date, following the Julian calendar. Service begins a 10PM and ends at around 2AM, after which come the paschal meal. Many times, we joyfully chanted in seven different languages:
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!
The general understanding of the verse is that at death our souls no longer go to Hades, but to life eternal in Heaven. This is a straightforward interpretation. However, an attached theological assumption is that this new life is only for the soul for now, as the body will join to it at the general resurrection sometimes in the unknown future.
Another assumption is that this life of the soul in heaven is not yet full, as its fullness will be attained only when the body joins to it, possibly thousands of years into the future.
However, there were other verses chanted that night, or at other services, that draw a different picture:
“Yet, as God, Thou didst rise from the dead, didst ascend to the heavens in glory, and didst raise with Thyself us who cry: Allelulia!”
“Having by His life-bestowing hand raised up all the dead out of the dark abysses, Christ God, the Giver of Life, hath bestowed the Resurrection upon the fallen human race;…”
Here Christ is giving resurrection to humanity in the past tense, as if it were an accomplished feat. And below he is doing it in the present tense, now:
“Though Thou didst descend into the grave, O Immortal One, yet didst Thou destroy the power of hades. And didst arise as victor,…You Who dost grant resurrection to the fallen.”
“Hades is bound; the prophets rejoice with one voice, saying: A Savior hath come for them that have faith. Come forth, ye faithful, for the Resurrection.”
How can the resurrection be past or present, when we are told it is still future?
How can this life in heaven be not yet full, therefore limited, when the apostles, the church fathers and other Orthodox liturgical texts describe it as full of the highest and most indescribable joy, nowhere mentioning it as an intermediate and temporary state?
Temporary is not eternal.
Our Futurist friends will wield the now but not yet argument or the need for a mystical approach, but these are infinitely elastic arguments…
Other verses provide more details on the past aspect of this Resurrection.
“As God, Thou didst arise (resurrect) from the Tomb in glory, and Thou didst raise (resurrect) the world together with Thyself.”
“…When Thou didst descend unto death, O Life Immortal, then didst Thou slay hades with the lightning of Thy Divinity. And when Thou didst also raise (resurrect) the dead out of the nethermost depths, all the Hosts of heavens cried out…”
“Though didst arise (resurrect) from the tomb…;and the dead arose, and creation at the sight thereof rejoiceth with Thee. And Adam also is joyful,…”
“My Savior and Redeemer hath, as God, raisedup (resurrected) the earthborn from the grave and from their fetters, and He hath broken the gates of hades,…”
“…for He was pleased to ascend the Cross in the flesh, and to endure death, and to raise (resurrect) the dead by His glorious Resurrection.”
“Unto hades, O my savior, didst Thou descend, and having broken its gates as One omnipotent, Thou, as Creator, didst raise up (resurrect) the dead together with Thyself. And Thou didst break the sting of death, and didst deliver Adam from the curse,…”
“Having arisen from the tomb, Thou didst raise up the dead and didst resurrect Adam. Eve also danceth at Thy Resurrection, and the ends of the world celebrate…”
Here the Resurrection seems to be a past event, a done deal. The Orthodox (and any traditional Christian) explain this as the raising up of souls from Hades to Heaven at Christ’s resurrection, the so called Harrowing of Hell. This would explain the past tense, but what about the present tense mentioned earlier? I have not seen an Orthodox theologian explain this, but some priests have told me this refers to the raising of our souls at death. Fair enough, I take that, but this means that there was a resurrections of souls at the end of Mosaic age (the past tense examples above) and there continues to be resurrection of souls ever since, when we die, now during the age of our Lord. This is exactly what most Full Preterists teach.
Why is this subject in principle avoided by all Futurist? Why most of us have never heard the expression Resurrection of the Soul? Is it because it opens the door to too many questions that Futurism cannot answer? If it is not the real resurrection, then why call it Resurrection?
***
Moreover, any time you see in those verses (resurrection) or (resurrect) in parenthesis after raise or raise up, it means that the original Slavonic used the word Resurrection (voskresenie), which the translator refused to translate as such, but rather used Raising, suggesting a bias on his part. In principle and etymologically (in English, its Latin source and allegedly in Greek) both words are synonymous in the proper context, however the English word Resurrection is a theologically charged word that carries in itself the meaning of reviving, quickening, whereas in Raising such a meaning is given only by context. This is something the translator apparently wanted to avoid getting into.
In Slavonic, however, Resurrection (Voskresenie and its root Kres), etymologically has nothing to do with Raising, It means exclusively reviving, revivifying or quickening. At the same time the etymological dictionaries tell us that Voskresenie is a calque of G386 Anastasis, the Greek word for Resurrection, which as per the concordances literally means raising, raising up, standing up, getting the meaning of reviving apparently from context, just as Raising in English. This seems a bit contradicting at first, because the Slavs have other words that can better reproduce this sense of the Greek.
Many exegetes argue that this meaning of the Greek, as suggested by the concordances, demands a physical resurrection only. If so, then why did the Slavs, who got their Cyrillic script, bibles and service books from the Greeks, chose a word meaning revive, quicken, when they have, and sometimes use interchangeably in proper context, the words vozdvig (to raise) and vostat (to stand)?
The best explanation is because the Greek Anastasis, must carry in itself more than what the concordances convey, the meaning of reviving, quickening. It is possible that over time, due to theological assumptions, this meaning became delegated to the background or its root meaning taken too literally. To a degree it is happening in some modern Slavic languages too, if you check the modern Western Wictionary vs other more in depth etymological dictionaries in the Russian language. In reverse, however, the word Anastasis entered into English as a loan word, not meaning standing up or raising, but 1-recovery, 2-rebirth, 3-resurrection.
Let’s check now the Latin, from which we get Resurrection and so many other abstract and religious concepts. The dictionaries tell us that, as in the Slavonic voskresenie, the Latin Resurrectio is the calque of Ansastasis. Knowing the Latin etymology should help us to better understand Anastasis. Resurrectio, which comes from the verb Resurgere, where Re stands for Again and Surgere, from which we get Surge, stands for emerge, arise, appear, come up, etc. In a way to say to resurrect it is like saying to re-surge, to re-emerge. Further etymology of Surgere (without the prefix re-) imply the movement is up and in a straight line, consistent with standing up, but the meaning is abstract enough to include, in fact to mostly refer in the general record, to non-solid substances such as liquids or gases, plus non-tangible concepts such as ideas, feelings and, the soul. If this is so, we can now understand why the early church, and the Orthodox to this day, call the raising up of souls to Heaven, the Harrowing of Hell – Resurrection. If souls can be resurrected without a physical body, without flesh, then Full Preterism is a step further away from being heresy.
Further support comes from the word resuscitate, which means in English to revive, revivify, just as it does in the source Latin. Every single usage of this word in the Vulgate comes from the Greek G450 Anistemi, which is the source of Anastasis and means essentially the same, just in verbal form. The only usage of Resuscites in the Latin that does not come from Anistemi, is 2Tim 1:16, where it comes from G329 Anazopureo (re-enkindle, stir-up) often translated as revive.
The above shows that Resurrectio and Resuscitatio the Latins understood them interchangeably and used both words rather arbitrarily to translate Anistemi/Anastasis, giving preference, but no exclusivity, to Resurrectio.
Furthermore, some modern Romance languages conserve their equivalent of Resurrectio only as a noun and have lost the verbal forms. Instead they denote action by using the equivalents of the Latin verb Resuscitare (to revivify, to revive). In English it would be as if being able to say I believe in the resurrection, however not being able to say I believe he resurrected, but rather be forced by the rules of grammar to say I believe he resuscitated.
All of the above shows that the Greek words for Resurrect and Resurrection, must have carried in them the meaning of revive, reviving, quickening in a higher degree than what modern concordances suggest. That the meaning of the words does not require a solid body to stand up as the subject of reference. That the early church understood it as such and called the raising up of souls to Heaven – Resurrection, just as Full Preterists do.
If so, dear lovers of Christ who are not Full Preterists, I believe it would be fairer to withhold the charge of heresy against them, at least when it comes to the subject of the Resurrection of the Flesh.
***
The concept Resurrection of the Flesh (Body) as in the Apostles Creed, arose exclusively in the Latin West and the record goes back to the 2nd century. All the other Eastern churches never used such a term, in fact it seems they never established a general creed until the time of the Arian controversy in the 4th century, at which point they manage to impose church-wide the term Resurrection of (or from) the Dead. This required some theological wrestling with Rome, but they managed to win the day alleging scripture. Nevertheless the concept of Resurrection of the Flesh remained one way or the other.
Dead is a more elastic term than Flesh and by definition a Resurrection of (or from) the Dead doesn’t require flesh or a physical body to take place. Theology, though, did and does require it. If theology is right, then Flesh and Dead, theologically speaking, mean the same. If so, why the dispute over the term? Wouldn’t this be rather trivial? Why would Rome, the honorary head of Christendom, or its supreme leader as per Roman Catholics, with a longer history of creed making and with about half of the empire behind it, would have to yield on the subject? Could it be that by the early 4th century many Christians still adhered to another view of the resurrection, one that did not require flesh or a material body? Could it be that by picking the abstract Dead, vs the tangible Flesh, the fathers of the day were trying to include as many Christians as possible into the fold of the One Holy Catholic (Universal) church?
Sam Frost in his Misplaced Hope does a great job at documenting that this was quite possibly the case. He cites church fathers and early Christian writings, saying that there were other Christians, who were not considered heretics (i.e. not Gnostics), who understood or referred to the resurrection and the life in the Kingdom in not so fleshy terms. I would love to see the new Sam Frost to refute the old Sam Frost on this point and many other good points the old Sam dug up in the old days.
In answer to the question in the title, Resurrection of the Soul or Resurrection of the Flesh? I think it is neither. The answer must lie somewhere in between, an important key to which is provided by the apostle Paul in 1 Cor 15. But this will be a subject of a different article.
It seems that Sam Frost removed his book Misplaced Hope from Amazon. The link is no longer working.
Yes indeed. It seems he did it as a result of this article. A pity, it was a good book, very coherent. His new books have not refuted his older positions and are way less coherent.