■[f A human body is the necessary — is the only — method and condition on earth of spiritual personality. It is capable, indeed, of expressing spirit very badly; it is capable of belying it; indeed, it is hardly capable of expressing it quite perfectly ; it is, in fact, almost always falling short of at least the ideal expression of it. And yet body is the only method of spiritual life ; even as things are, spirit is the true meaning of bodily life ; and bodies are really vehicles and expressions of spirit ; whilst the perfect ideal would certainly be, not spirit without body, but body which was the ideally perfect utterance of spirit.1
If It was with keen feeling that St. Paul, with his thorn in the flesh and his many infirmities, referred to the body of humilia- tion, and it was with gladness that he looked forward to the body of glory, which would accomplish whatsoever his soul desired, so that he could imagine no high endeavour but this perfect servant would carry it into action.2
ii. The Resurrection Body.
1. Our resurrection bodies are to be our mortal bodies made alive. That this making alive implies transformation is much 1 Moberly, Problems and Principles, 358. 2 J. Watson.
428 THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY
insisted upon. We wait for the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven, "Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory " (Phil. iii. 21).
T[ Matthew Arnold has told us that St. Paul, without being aware of it, substituted an ethical for a physical resurrection, and an eternal life in the spirit here for an everlasting life here- after. Now a German theologian (Kabisch) tells us that St. Paul knows nothing of a figurative " life " ethical in quality, but only of a physical life ; that prolongation of physical life after death is the object of his hope ; that even the Spirit, in his system of thought, is physical and finely material, and communicates itself by physical means, by baptism, and even by generation through a Christian parent ; that the germ of the resurrection body is a spiritual, yet physical body, existing now within the dead carcase of the old body of sin ; and that the essence of the resurrection will consist in the manifestation of this spiritual body by the sloughing off of its gross carnal envelope. Such are the two extremes. Surely the truth lies somewhere between.1
I dreamed that I was growing old
(It may be it was not a dream), I shivered in the frosty cold
And trembled in the summer beam; It cost me many a bitter sigh, Until I knew it was not I.
The house my Maker for me made Eeceived His likeness in its form ;
His wisdom all its parts displayed,
His beauty clothed its chambers warm;
If not so fair as years go by,
What matter — for it is not I.
The lamps that light its rooms burn low, Its music sounds more dull of late,
And one — it may be friend or foe, Knocks loudly often at its gate;
I tremble then — I scarce know why,
My house he claims, it is not I.
I am indeed a dweller there,
A winter and a summer guest, Its rust and its decay I share,
But cannot look therein to rest ;
1 A- B. Bruce, St. Paul's Conception of Christianity, 391.
ROMANS vin. ii 429
I'm sure to leave it by and by, 'Tis but my house — it is not I.
I sometimes think, when lying down, For the last time I lock the door,
And leave the home so long my own, That I may find it yet once more
So changed and fair I scarce shall know
The home I lived in long ago.1
2. Of what nature, then, is the resurrection body ?
(1) First, it is identical with the mortal body of the same person, in the sense of its being body to the same spirit, and con- stituting with that spirit the same soul, the same self. Jesus, speaking on another subject, stated an implication which Paul recognized and expanded. When a grain of wheat dies in the earth, it has a resurrection in the "much fruit" which springs from it (John xii. 24). Paul calls attention (1 Cor. xv. 36-41) to the identity of the blade with the kernel that was sown : " to each seed a body of its own." The kernel and the blade are alike the body to the differential principle of the kernel. The product is still wheat, not something else; still that individual type of wheat, not some other.
(2) Second, various terms are used to indicate the differences between the present body of a person and his resurrection body. One is earthy and the other heavenly, one psychical and the other spiritual, one corruptible and the other incorruptible (1 Cor. xv. 42-54). Jesus had taught that in the resurrection men die no more, but are like the angels (Luke xx. 36 and parallels), and Paul expands this doctrine of a heavenly, spiritual, incorruptible body. This might be illustrated by all the numerous passages which speak of the changing of our mortal bodies (e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52; 2 Cor. v. 2, 4; Phil. iii. 21 ; Eom. viii. 11).