This spiritual resurrection through union with the Risen Christ St. Paul describes as lieing 'quickened together with him' and 'raised up with him and made to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus' (Epli 2^"). This renewal in which the Christian life consists is a manifestation in us of 'the power of his resurrection' (Ph 3'"), or, as St. Paul more often puts it, of the same mighty power of God w Inch had effected Christ's resurrec- tion and enthronement in the heavenly places, ' that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead . . . and (raised) you when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins' (Eph !""• '2' ; cf. 2 Co 4'''). The resurrecting energy of God in raising Christ and in raising us wiien we were dead in trespasses and sins is one and the same. The one act is the prolongation of the other, the manifestation in two steps or stages of the s;ime Divine miraculous energy. ' Every conversion, every advance in the new life, is part of that great new creation which began at the ojien grave, which advanced at Pentecost, and which will only reach its consummation when every knee shall bow to Christ and every tongue confess that He is Lord' (Cairns, Christ and Human Need, p. 186). St. Paul, indeed, speaks of the Christian's resur- rection and enthronement as a Divine act 'con- temporaneous with the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ' (J. Armitage Robinson, on Eph 2"), as if it were already achieved. It is involved in the latter ideally in posse, but it has to be worked out really in e.^se. But one is as much the creative work of His Spirit as the other. And the outcome of this working of the Spirit St. Paul describes as being 'transformed into the same image (eiVAca), passing from one glory to another, inasmuch as (this influence proceeds) from the Lord the S])irit' ('2 Co 3^®, KaBaTTcp dwd Kvpiov Trvei'^aros). ' Not mere semblance is implied in St. Paul's use of eiKwv, but semblance resting on identity of nature, community of being' (Kennedy, Last 'Things, p. 294). So that the end is nothing le.ss than perfect assimilation to the very nature of God Himself.
(c) The bodily resurrection of believers depends upon it. Already in the Apostolic Age there were those who, uniler the influence of non-Christian dualistic pre-suppositions, declared that there was nothing more to hope for than a moral and spiritual rising from the dead, that ' the resurrection has taken place already ' (2 Ti 2'*). And similar attempts are made today, under the influence of the dualistic pre-suppositions of modern thought, to confine the resurrection to the moral and spiritual side of our natures, and thus to exclude the physical. And sometimes the authority of St. Paul is claimed for such a position. Matthew Arnold, c.r/., claims that in St. Paul's teaching the expression ' resurrec- tion from the dead ' ' has no essential connexion with physical death. . . . Resurrection, in its essential sense, is . . . for Paul the rising, within the sphere of our visible earthly existence, from death in this sense [obedience to sin] to life in this sense [obedience to righteousness]. . . . Christ's physical resurrection after he was crucified is neither in point of time nor in (joint of character the resurrection on which Paul, following his essential line of thought, w.-intcd to fix the believer's mind. The resurrection Paul was striv- ing after for himself and others was a resurrection noiv, and a resurrection to righteousness' (St. Paul and Protestantism, ed. London, 1887, p. 55 fl.).
356 KESUliKKCTION OF CHRIST
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
How little this represents St. Paul's point of view may be seen, not only from the arfjumint in 1 Co 15, which we shall presently consider, but from such a passage as Uo 8'"* where St. Paul impressively reasons from the indwelling of the Spirit (or the Kisen Christ) in believers, not only to their moral but to their bodily resurrection. ' If Christ is in you, the body is dead [consigned to phy.sical dis- solution] because of sin [of Adam] ; but the spirit [the human spirit of the believer] is living as the result of righteousness [of Christ]. And,' he goes on — for the spiritual resurrection which has already taken place through the indwelling of the Spirit in the believer is not all — ' if the Spirit of him who raised .fesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also make 3'our mortal bodies live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives.' For St. Paul, as for Jewish thought generally, personal life was an indissoluble unity of soul and body. (On the Hebrew 'synthetic view ' of life, see Kennedy, St. Paul's Conceptions of the Last Things, pp. 113, 153, 157.) There is no trace in his thinking of the Hellenic dualistic antagonism between body and spirit. And the quickenin" or 'making alive' which is the result of the indwelling irfeS/j.a extends to the whole personality, physical as well as moral and spiritual.
It may be, as Matthew Arnold complains, that popular theology has confined the idea of the resurrection both of Christ and of the Christian too much to the bodily resurrection, thus losing sight of the profoundly spiritual conception of the Resurrection for apostolic thought. Jesus had already taught, according to the Johannine account (Jn li=«- ; cf. 6*-" 5-' 3**), that the root of the resurrection-life lay in living organic connexion with Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, and apostolic teaching is in line with this. The ground, the operating principle of the resurrection, both spiritual and physical, of the believer is the indwelling in him of the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Christ, or ' the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead.' The link which makes the Christian participate in Christ's resurrection is the possession of His Spirit — ' Christ in you the hope of glory ' (Col I''').