I. General discussion of the place occupied in religious thought at the beginning of the Apostolic Age by the belief in immortality. IL Particular history of the development of the belief during the A]iostolic Age :
1. Pauline doctrine of innnortality.
2. Petrine doctrine of immortality.
3. Johannine doctrine of immortality.
4. Apostolic Fathers' doctrine of immortality. IIL Conclusion. Literature.
I. General discussion.— At the beginning of the Apostolic Age the Grseco-Roman world might almost be compared to the Pool of Bethesda at the critical moment of the angelic visitation. There was a troubling of the waters, and a steadily in- creasing number of seekers after spiritual health. The subject of immortality was, so to speak, in the air. The various Mystery-cults, with varying forms of ritual, all agreed in ottering to the initiate the hope of a future life of bliss after death. Abundant evidence for this may be found in books and monographs dealing with the subject of the Mystery-cults in the Roman Empire. At the same time, along a totally ditterent line of de- velopment, the Jew had arrived at a conception of immortality which was bound up with a spiritual conception of God and man's relation to God. In communion with God lay both the essence of im- mortality and its guarantee for faith. In Alex- andrian Judaism, as represented by Philo, we have the blending of the Platonic doctrine of im- mortality, based on the distinction between the higher and the lower elements in man, with the Pharisaic assertion of the value of the individual to God and its grasp of the eternal character of the soul's communion with God. Hence we can discern at least three distinct elements at Avork in the formation of current ideas about immortality.
(1) The view of a future life which rested ujion the Eastern dualistic attitude towards matter and spirit. This Eastern, and especially Persian, ele- ment which entered so largely into the Mystery- cults of the century before and the century follow- ing the birth of Christ, laid stress upon the deliverance of the soul, by purificatory rites and by asceticism, from the bondage of the body, and thus pointed a way to ultimate salvation and im- mortality by union with the god. The resem- blance of the rites of the Mystery-cults to various elements in the Christian sacraments has led many scholars to trace the influence of these cults of the Graeco-Roman world upon the form which Christi- anity assumed as it developed a system of ritual and doctrine. This point will be discussed briefly in dealing with St. Paul's doctrine of immortality.
(2) The Platonic element in Alexandrian Judaism, modified by Stoic influence, laying stress on the eternity of Reason, and hence ottering an abstract form of immortality in which the continu- ance of personal identity was not involved.
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IM^IORTALITY
(3) The Pharisaic doctrine of immortality with its insistence on the permanence of personal identity preserved in communion with God. The place of the body was not clearly defined, as Pharisaic Judaism held the immortality of the soul in com- bination with various forms of eschatological ex- pectation, in which a body, spiritual or quasi- spiritual, was involved.
The Jewish view was, of course, not confined to Palestine, but, as we know, was spread through- out Egypt, Asia Minor, and all the Mediteri-anean coasts by means of the synagogue. All these ele- ments intermingled and formed the basis of the popular attitude towards the future life, in the 1st cent, of Christianity.
But the form which the doctrine of immortality took in primitive Christianity is by no means ex- plained when we liave examined the conditions of thought under which it grew up. It certainly cannot be explained without them, but neither can it be explained wholly by them. Christianity gave its own definite form to all that it took up from the current thought of its time, and the out- standing factor in the form which the primitive Christian hope assumed is the Resurrection of Christ. It has been argued that the form which the belief in the Resurrection took, especially in St. Paul, was determined by these external influ- ences, especially by the existence in various Mystery-cults of the idea of the death of the god and his resurrection. But these ofler no true parallel to the belief in a historic Resurrection and do not explain either its existence or the peculiar moral value attached to the Resurrection of Christ by the primitive Church.
When we come to the historical account of the doctrine of immortality in the 1st cent, of Chris- tianity, we find, in the first place, that it is in- separably connected with the Resurrection of Christ, and, secondly, that it is also inseparable from primitive Christian eschatology. ' The resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come ' is the phrase which crystallizes the growth of the idea of immortality for the popular mind during the early stages of Christianity. We shall find, however, in both Pauline and Johannine teach- ing, much that transcends the form of belief as crystallized in the credal phrase.
II. Particular historical development. — 1. Pauline. — It is impossible to work through the Pauline treatment of the subject without dis- covering that St. Paul had no doctrine of immor- tality. He deals with the subject only so far as it arises out of the question of salvation through Christ and tlie implications of salvation. Hence the most illuminating method of understanding St. Paul's attitude towards immortality will be to trace the bearings of his theory of salvation as it is worked out in Romans, the most definitely soteriological of his Epistles. The following are the principal points that arise from the examina- tion of the Epistle.