The teachings of the great philosophers Socrates and Plato cannot in any way be reconciled with the teachings of the New Testament. This remarkable agreement seems to me to show how widespread is the error of attributing to primitive Christianity the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul. But that is no reason to deny a radical difference between the Christian expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul.
The fact is that, according to the first Christians, the full, genuine life of the resurrection is unthinkable apart from the new body, the 'spiritual body', with which the dead will be clothed when heaven and earth are recreated. The jubilant music of this great composer is intended to express not the immortality of the soul, but the event of the resurrection of the body: Et resurrexit tertia die. And Handel, in the last part of the Messiah, gives us an idea of what St. Paul.
Is it not such an integral element of the early Christian preaching that it cannot be surrendered or reinterpreted without robbing the New Testament of its content.
Immortality of the Soul or
Resurrection of the Dead? by Oscar Cullmann
The Last Enemy
Although the proofs of the immortality of the soul do not have the same value for Socrates himself as the proofs of a. He showed how we serve the freedom of the soul even in the present life when we deal with the eternal truths of philosophy. He who fears death proves that he loves the world of the body, that he is completely involved in the world of the senses.
In Luk 12:50 it is completely impossible to explain away the 'need' in the face of death, and also in light of Jesus being abandoned by God on the cross [Mark 15:34] it is not possible to explain the Gethsemane scene except through this need at the prospect of being abandoned by God, an abandonment which will be the work of Death, God's great enemy). Jesus is afraid, but not as a coward would be of the men who want to kill him, much less of the pain and sorrow that precedes death. The writer of Hebrews, who more than any other New Testament writer emphasizes the full deity (1:10) but also the full humanity of Jesus, goes even further than the reports of the three synoptists in his description of Jesus' fear of death.
There is Socrates, who speaks calmly and calmly of the immortality of the soul; here Jesus,. Using different words, the author of the Johannine Apocalypse also considers death as the last enemy, when he describes how death will be thrown into the lake of fire at the end (20:14). Because nothing shows better the radical difference between the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the Christian doctrine of the.
And this act of creation brings back to life not just a part of man, but the whole man—all that God had created and death had destroyed. For Christian (and Jewish) thought, the death of the body also means the destruction of life created by God. Oscar Cullmann, D.Th, D.D., was professor at the Theological Faculty of the University of Basel and the Sorbonne in Paris.
The Wages of Sin: Death
For the Christian, an expectation of the Resurrection can already become visible, even in the earthly body. The body is not the prison of the soul, but rather a temple, as Paul says (1 Corinthians 6:19): the temple of the Holy Spirit. The anthropology of the New Testament is not Greek, but is related to Jewish concepts.
The spirit is the great power of life, the element of resurrection. Like meat, it already belongs to the whole person, internal and external. But here it is only a withdrawal, not a final transformation of the body of death into the body of resurrection.
Only then will the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit possess such a complete body. It is important to see how different the anthropology of the New Testament is from that of the Greeks. Both can and should be released by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit.
This is made especially clear in Paul's letters, but it is the interpretation of the entire New Testament. We will see that the soul is indeed the starting point of the resurrection, because, as we said, it can already be possessed by the Holy Spirit in a very different way than the body. For the inner man, the resurrection can already take place in this present life thanks to the transformation by the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit: through the.
Because the resurrection of the body is an all-encompassing new act of creation, it is not an event that begins with each individual death, but only at the end. Resurrection, not only in the sense of the possession of the inner man by the Holy Spirit, but also the resurrection of the body.
The First-Born from the Dead
Otherwise we will find ourselves constantly mixing foreign thought processes with those of the New Testament. The whole idea of the New Testament remains for us a book sealed with seven seals, if we do not behind every sentence read this second sentence: Death is already overcome (it must be noted, not the body); there is already a new creation (a new creation, be it noted, not an immortality which the soul has always possessed) the resurrection age is already inaugurated. If, as the Qumrân fragment recently published by Allegro seems to confirm, the 'teacher of righteousness' of this sect was indeed executed and his return was awaited, this is still what most decisively distinguishes this sect from the original Christian community [apart from the other differences, for which see my article, 'The Meaning of the Qumrân Texts', J.B.L., 1955. pp. 213ff] is the absence in it of belief in a resurrection which has already occurred.).
But the Holy Spirit is already working in our world as a power of new creation; It already works visibly in the primordial community in various manifestations of the Spirit. It belongs to the very substance of the New Testament, which thinks in temporal categories, and this is because the belief that the resurrection is achieved in Christ is the starting point of all Christian life and thinking. If we proceed from this principle, then the chronological tension between "already fulfilled" and "not yet fulfilled" forms the essence of the Christian faith.
In essence, the entire contemporary theological discussion revolves around this question: is Easter the starting point of the Christian church, of its existence, life and thought. In that case, the belief in the resurrection of the New Testament becomes the cardinal point of all Christian faith. The foretaste of the End, realized by the Holy Spirit, is most clearly visible in the early Christian celebration of the breaking of the end.
Here, in communion with the brothers, we come closest to the Resurrection Body of Christ; and so Paul writes in the following chapter 11 (a passage that has received very little consideration) if this Lord's Supper were received by all members of the community in a fully worthy manner, then joining the Resurrection Body of Jesus would be so effective in our bodies that even now there would be no more sickness or death (1 Corinthians an extremely bold statement. However, despite the fact that the Holy Spirit is already working so powerfully, people still die; even after Easter and Pentecost people continue to die as before. Our body, moreover (not merely our spirit), will rise at the end, when the quickening power of the Spirit will make all things new, all things without exception.
Those Who Sleep
In none of these texts is there so much as a word about the resurrection of the body. The term in the New Testament means more, and like the "rest" of Revelation 14:13 refers to the condition of the dead before the Parousia.) It would be difficult to dispute that the New Testament envisages such a temporary time for the dead as well as for the living, although any kind of speculation about the state of the dead in this intermediate period is lacking here.
I don't understand why Protestant theologians [including Barth] are so afraid of the New Testament position, when the New Testament only teaches so much about the 'intermediate state': (1) that it exists, (2) that it already means union. with Christ [this because of the Holy Spirit]). If the resurrection of Christ meant a great turning point of the ages only for the living and not for the dead, then the living would surely have an immense advantage over the dead. The living, as members of Christ's community, already possess the power of resurrection, the Holy Spirit.
According to verse 8 of the same chapter, it even seems that the dead are closer to Christ. Although he still 'sleeps' and still awaits the resurrection of the body, which alone will give him full life, the dead Christian has the Holy Spirit. Here we see at least some analogy with the "immortality of the soul", but the difference is still less radical.
Furthermore, the state of the dead in Christ is still imperfect, a state of 'nakedness', as Paul says, of 'sleep', of waiting for the resurrection of the whole creation, for the resurrection of the body. The fact that even in this state the dead already live with Christ is not consistent with the natural being of the soul. So it is still true that the resurrection of the body is awaited, even in John's Gospel -- though now of course with a certainty of victory because the Holy Spirit already dwells in the inner man.
Conclusion
Hojiin ammaa kun hiikkaa qorannoo duraan Siwiizarlaanditti maxxanfameedha, (Mélanges guyyaa dhaloota isaa waggaa 70ffaa sababeeffachuun KARL BARTH’f dhiheesse [pub. by Reinhardt, Basel, 1956][Theologische Zeitschrift, N. 2, pp. 126ff ] . Akkasumas Verbum Caro [1956], fuula 58ff) ilaali, gabaabinni isaa barruulee Faransaay hedduu keessatti ba’e.