1.0 Introduction 2.0 Objectives 3.0 Main Content
3.1 The Nature of the Resurrection Involved 4.0 Summary
95 5.0 Conclusion
6.0 References/Further Readings 1.0 Introduction
This section continues the discussion on the nature of the resurrection. Here we shall deal with the issue of terminology: What language should we use to express this distinction of our resurrection between already and not yet? One is the bodily and non-bodily resurrection; what has already taken place is not bodily.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
Distinguish between external and internal, the invisible and visible resurrection in reference to Christ's return.
3.0 Main Content
3.1 The Nature of the Resurrection Involved
Now keeping in view, the organic connection between these elements, we may express the basic control or structure of Paul's teaching on the resurrection as follows: the unity of the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers is such that the resurrection of believers consists of two episodes in the experience of the individual believer. One that is past, that has already been realized, and one that is still future, yet to be realized. Notice how the formal structure of the apostle's eschatology, the overlap of the two aeons, is reflected in his teaching on the fundamental eschatological occurrence, what is the fundamental eschatological reality for the believer, that is the resurrection. You can't get more eschatological than the resurrection. That formal structure of already-not-yet is reflected in the specific matter of the resurrection. Both these aspects of the believer's experience are integrally related to each other. We can't envision the one without the other. In turn they are integrally related to the resurrection of Christ; it is all one big, grand resurrection harvest. We can say that Jesus' own resurrection refracts itself into the experience of the believer in a twofold fashion. But when I put it that way, we need to always keep in view that we do not mean to blur the spatiotemporal distinction between all three occurrences. We must not compromise actual spatiotemporal, historical distinctiveness. We want to guard against Barth's idea of Geschichte. His understanding of history is not Paul's. That is the idea that the meaning of history is dialectically beyond history, and hinges on history in a tangential fashion, and eliminates all distinctions between redemption accomplished and redemption applied, and the state of humiliation and exaltation. Our salvation is not a-historical or supra-historical.
Let me say finally then that in view of the stress we have been seeing on the unity that exists between Christ and His people in His resurrection, in the passivity of Christ, for Paul, the primary significance of Jesus' resurrection does not lie where we find the difference between Christ and His people. Paul does not see the resurrection especially as display of Jesus' true deity. Rather, the primary significance of the resurrection for Paul is found in terms of what He and His people have in common, genuine
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humanity. The resurrection is not so much an evident display of Christ's divinity, it is rather the vindication of the incarnate Christ, Christ's vindication in His suffering, His obedience unto death.
And with that, the resurrection is the powerful transformation of His humanity. Something happened to Jesus in his resurrection. It brings into existence for the first time a humanity that previously did not exist, a glorified, exalted humanity. So, the resurrection is the constitution of Christ as the firstborn among many brothers. It is the constitution of Christ as the image, the eikon, so that He might be the firstborn from among many brothers. The believers will be conformed to this image--the same form.
The resurrection for Paul has an Adamic character, His resurrection in His identity as last Adam or second man. Thus, on balance, we could put it this way: the resurrection for Paul is a thoroughly messianic event. Not just representative with respect to his deity, but constitutive as human identity.
And it is messianic as is His suffering and death. It is just as much representative and vicarious as are His suffering and death. 2 Cor. 5:15, "the one who died and was raised for them."
It is important to understand that the bodily and non-bodily resurrection has to be approached with caution because both have visible consequences. Others again have proposed: secret and open.
Another distinction not mentioned yet which is sometimes used is not helpful and probably should be rejected because it is misleading between spiritual and physical/bodily. If we use the word spiritual as we should, in a biblical sense, as referring to the Holy Spirit, then there is no problem with saying the resurrection that has already taken place is "Spiritual," capital "S," the work of the Spirit; but the problem that comes in here is that the future physical bodily resurrection is just as Spiritual, no less Spiritual. So, if we asked Paul, what would he say? He would turn us to 2 Cor. 4:16.
2 Cor. 4:16 (ESV) "Therefore we do not lose hope. But even if our outer self is undergoing decay, our inner self is being renewed day by day."
Here Paul is making an important anthropological distinction between the inner man and outer man, so that inner and outer would be a way of keeping fairly close to Paul's language to distinguish the two aspects of our resurrection. (Cf. Ridderbos, 114-121.) One member of this distinction occurs in Rom.
7:22 and Eph. 3:16. It is not intended to compartmentalize man, as if we are made of two parts, or compartments. But rather, the distinction here is aspectual rather than, strictly speaking, partitive;
these are aspects, ways of looking at who I am as a believer. So that the inner man would be what Paul has in view when he speaks elsewhere, correlatively, of the heart. That seems to be, that brings into view, me at my motivating center, me for who I am at the core of my being deeper than my functions, my thinking, my doing. So that Paul is saying so far as I am an inner man, my truest, deepest self, I have already been raised. It is at the root of the renewal that the believer has already experienced. But so far as I am an outer man, or what Paul will usually refer to correlatively as soma, the body, or melle, members, viewing the body as a functioning composite of parts. The functioning me is undergoing corruption; so far as I am that outer man I am still to be raised. Always keep in view regarding inner and outer self that the whole me has hope. There is not a kind of schizophrenia going on here.
Therefore, we should appreciate the full impact of what Paul brings us to consider from a passage like this, and the others we have been looking at: If you are a believer in Christ, you will never be more resurrected than you are at the core of your being. That is not just an analogy, or a figurative way of speaking. That is of course true only as we exist bodily, only as we have an outer man. So, the principle holding things together here is that this is true only in the body, that the inner man, but it is not yet true for the body. What is true in the body is not yet true for the body. I think that anthropological distinction opens up a great deal of Paul's teaching.
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Confirmation: We want to bring out and make explicit something that has only been implicit thus far.
This is confirmed in Paul's statements. There is a pattern found in Paul's statements:
Christ is the direct object of egeiro God is the subject, of the verb egeiro in the active. So Rom 10:9.
And sampling here, cf. 1 Cor. 15:15, Acts 13:30, 37. God raised Christ. Correlatively, Jesus can be the object of the participial subject, the one who raised Jesus from the dead. Cf. Rom 4:24; Col 2:12. So far as the subject is concerned here, ho theos, the reference is more specifically to ho pater, the father, who raises Christ Jesus from the dead. Cf. Gal 1:1; cf. Eph 1:17, 20, 1 Thess 1:9, 10.
Or, the verb is in the passive, with Christ as subject. Approximately half of the references to the resurrection in Paul are in this category. It can be aorist passive, as in Rom 4:25 and 2 Cor 5:15--"was raised." Or it can be perfect, as in 1 Cor 15:20 and 2 Tim. 2:8--"raised from the dead." (It can be middle as well as passive when it is in the perfect, but there is no question here of a middle sense, because of the first pattern we see of the active, that God is the subject, Jesus the object. It can have an intransitive active sense (he rose), but here it is a truly transitive active force that the verb has.)
4.0 Summary
So, to summarize, as we look at Paul's passing, undeveloped references to Jesus' resurrection, we can notice two things in it. 1) It is God in His specific identity as the Father who raises Jesus, and 2) correlatively, Jesus is passive in His resurrection. And this is a viewpoint that is held consistently without exception by Paul. Nowhere does Paul say that Christ was active or contributed in His resurrection, or that Jesus raised Himself. To put it provocatively, Paul does not teach that Jesus rose from the dead, but that Jesus was raised from the dead in a passive sense. The stress everywhere is on the creative, enlivening power of the Father, through the Holy Spirit, of which Christ is the recipient, the beneficiary. What is the theological significance? We can connect this with what we have already seen to be Paul's central controlling conception, the unity of Christ's resurrection and the resurrection of believers. His being raised passively evidences His identification with those who slept. He is the beginning. This passive language reflects His solidarity with the dead as he is firstborn.
5.0 Conclusion
How do we relate this to statements of Jesus such as John 2:19? "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Future active indicative of egeiro. He was talking about His body, looking toward His own resurrection. He was active in His resurrection. Or more fully in 10:17-18: "I lay down my life in order that I may take it again. No one takes it from me…. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it again." Very definite, forceful active assertion. These statements in Paul are not in conflict but are complementary. Here is where the church's formulations as at Chalcedon becomes very helpful. (Cf. 451.) Anything that is true of either of Christ's natures is true of Christ as a person. The controlling substructure of NT revelation expressed in the creed is that the two natures exist without confusion, but without separation. What is true of one of the two natures may be affirmed about the person. Paul is looking at Jesus' resurrection in reference to his Adamic identity (what is true in reference to His true humanity, his identification with humanity). In John, Jesus is affirming what is true in reference to His true deity (what is true in his identification with the Father). We may affirm both that Jesus rose from the dead, and that He was raised from the dead.
98 Self-Assessment Exercises
i. Explain how the resurrection of Christ was a powerful transformation of his person.
ii. Explain the nature of our solidarity with Christ in his death and resurrection.
6.0 References/Further Readings
Fraser, J. W. (1971). Paul‘s Knowledge of Jesus: II Cor V.16 once more, NTS 17.
Martin, R. (1981). Reconciliation at Corinth, in Reconciliation: A Study of Paul’s Theology. Atlanta:
John Knox.
O‘Brien Peter T. (1999). The Letter to the Ephesians. Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans.
Hoehner, Harold. (2002). Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002).
Arnold, Clinton E. (2010). Ephesians: Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament.
Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
Pao, David W. (2012). Colossians and Philemon: Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, ed. Clinton E. Arnold. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
Stott, John. (1984). Message of Ephesians: God’s New Society. Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press.
Unit 3: The Place of the Holy Spirit in Eschatology