§ 87. WOESHTP OF KELK'6. DOGMA OF THE EESDKRECTION. 4:51
always set npon by a throng of more and more foreign matter."
As Israel could not sustain tLe pure elevation of its divinO' ly revealed religion, but lusted after the flesb pots of Egypt and coquetted with sensuous heathenism, so it fared also with the ancient church.
The worship of relics cannot be derived from Judaism ; for the Levitical law strictly prohibited the contact of bodies and bones of the dead as defiling.' Yet the isolated instance of the bones of the prophet Elisha quickening by their contact a dead man who was cast into his toinb,° was quoted in behalf of the miraculous power of relics ; though it should be observed thar even this miracle did not lead the Israelites to do homage to the bones of the prophet nor abolish the law of the uncleanness of a corpse.
The heathen abhorred corpses, and burnt them to ashes, except in Egypt, where embalming was the custom and was imitated by tlie Christians on the death of martyrs, though St. Anthony protested against it. There are examples, however, of the preservation of the bones of distinguished heroes like Theseus, and of the erection of temples over their graves.^
The Christian relic worship was primarily a natural consequence of the worship of the saints, and was closely connected with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the hody^ whicli was an essential article of the apostolic tradition, and is incorporated in almost all the ancient creeds. For according to the gospel the body is not an evil substance, as the Platonists. Gnostics, Manichaeans held, but a creature of God ; it is redeemed by Clirist ; it becomes by the regeneration an organ and temple of the Holy Ghost ; and it rests as a Kving seed in
' Num. xix. 11 ff.; xxxi. 19. The touching of a corpse, or a dead bone, or a grave, made one unclean seven days, and was to be expiated by washing, upon pain af death. The tent, also, in which a person had died, and ill open vessels in it. were unclean. Comp. Josephus, c. Apion. ii. 26; Antiqu. iix. 11, 3. The Talmudlats made the laws still more stringent on this point.
^ 2 Kings xiii. 21 (Sept.): H\-^aTO -rSiv oariiv 'EAjo-aie, koI e^'Tjo-e Koi tari) eVl tou B-d5os. Comp. the apocryphal book Jesus Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) xlvi'L 13, 14 dix. 12.
' Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus, c. 36.
452 THIRD PEEIOU. A.D. 311-590.
tlie gravGj to he raised again at the last day, and changed into the likeness of the glorious body of Christ. The bodies of the righteous " grow green " in their graves, to bnrst forth in glorious bloom on the morning of the resurrection. The first Christians from the beginning set great store by this comforting doctrine, at which the heathen, like Celsus and Julian, scoffed. Hence they abhorred also the lieathen custom of burning, and adopted the Jewish custom of burial with solemn religious ceremonies, which, however, varied in diiferent times and countries.
But in the closer definition of the dogma of the resurrection two diiferent tendencies appeared : a spiritualistic, represented by the Alexandrians, particularly by Origen and still later by the two Gregories ; the other more realistic, favored by tlie Apostles' Creed,' advocated by Tertullian, but pressed l)y some church teachers, like Epiphanius and Jerome, in a grossly materialistic manner, without regard to the aoyfia TrveufxariKov of Paul and the declaration that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." " The latter theory was far the more consonant with the prevailing spirit of our period, entirely supplanted the other, and gave the mortal remains of the saints a higher value, and the worship of them a firmer foundation.
Roman Catholic historians and apologists find a justification of the worship and the healing virtue of relics in three facts of the ISTew Testament : the healing of the woman with the issue of blood by the touch of Jesus' garment ; ' the heal-
' In the plirase avda-raai^ rrjs (rapKos, instead of Tov ati/xaT OS, resurrectic carnis, instead of corporis. The Nicene creed uses the expression ai'drrraan veKpuv, resurrectio mortuorum. In the German version of the Apostles' Creed the easily mistaken term jF/eisc/t, _^es/t, is retained; but the Enghsh churches say more correctly : resurrection of the bodi/.
* Jerome, on the ground of his false translatior. of Job xix. 26, teaches even the lestoration of all bones, veins, nerves, teeth, and hair (because the Bible speaks of gnashing of teeth among the damned, and of the hairs of our heads being all numbeied !). " Habent dentcs," says he of the resurrection bodies, " ventrcm, genitalia, et taraen nee cibis nee uxoribus indigent." Augustine is more cautious, and endeaars to avoid gross, carnal conceptions. Comp. the passages in Hagenbach'a Dog mengeschichte, i. § 140 (Engl, ed., New York, i. p. 370 flF.).
' Matt. ix. 20.