2017/04/12

Resurrection - Wikipedia

Resurrection - Wikipedia



Resurrection

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Resurrection (disambiguation).

Plaque depicting saints rising from the dead.
Resurrection is the concept of a living being coming back to life after death. In a number of ancient religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and resurrects. The death and resurrection of Jesus, an example of resurrection, is the central focus of Christianity.
As a religious concept, it is used in two distinct respects: a belief in the resurrection of individual souls that is current and ongoing (Christian idealism, realized eschatology), or else a belief in a singular resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The resurrection of the dead is a standard eschatological belief in the Abrahamic religions.
Some believe the soul is the actual vehicle by which people are resurrected.[1]
Christian theological debate ensues with regard to what kind of resurrection is factual – either a spiritual resurrection with a spirit body into Heaven, or a material resurrection with a restored human body.[2]While most Christians believe Jesus' resurrection from the dead and ascension to Heaven was in a material body, a very small minority believe it was spiritual.[3][4][5]
There are documented rare cases of the return to life of the clinically dead which are classified scientifically as examples of the Lazarus syndrome, a term originating from the Biblical story of the Resurrection of Lazarus.

Etymology[edit]

Resurrection, from the Latin noun resurrectio -onis, from the verb rego, "to make straight, rule" + preposition sub, "under", altered to subrigo and contracted to surgo, surrexi, surrectum + preposition re-, "again",[6]thus literally "a straightening from under again".

Religion[edit]

Ancient religions in the Near East[edit]

See also: Dying-and-rising god
The concept of resurrection is found in the writings of some ancient non-Abrahamic religions in the Middle East. A few extant Egyptian and Canaanite writings allude to dying and rising gods such as Osiris and Baal. Sir James Frazer in his book The Golden Bough relates to these dying and rising gods,[7] but many of his examples, according to various scholars, distort the sources.[8] Taking a more positive position, Tryggve Mettinger argues in his recent book that the category of rise and return to life is significant for the following deities: Ugaritic Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Osiris and Dumuzi.[9]

Ancient Greek religion[edit]

In ancient Greek religion a number of men and women were made physically immortal as they were resurrected from the dead. Asclepius was killed by Zeus, only to be resurrected and transformed into a major deity. Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother Thetis and resurrected, brought to an immortal existence in either Leuce, Elysian plains or the Islands of the Blessed. Memnon, who was killed by Achilles, seems to have received a similar fate. Alcmene, Castor, Heracles, and Melicertes, were also among the figures sometimes considered to have been resurrected to physical immortality. According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room. Later he found not only to have been resurrected but to have gained immortality.
Many other figures, like a great part of those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars, Menelaus, and the historical pugilist Cleomedes of Astupalaea, were also believed to have been made physically immortal, but without having died in the first place. Indeed, in Greek religion, immortality originally always included an eternal union of body and soul. The philosophical idea of an immortal soul was a later invention, which, although influential, never had a breakthrough in the Greek world. As may be witnessed even into the Christian era, not least by the complaints of various philosophers over popular beliefs, traditional Greek believers maintained the conviction that certain individuals were resurrected from the dead and made physically immortal and that for the rest of us, we could only look forward to an existence as disembodied and dead souls.[10]
This traditional religious belief in physical immortality was generally denied by the Greek philosophers. Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century CE, the Middle Platonic philosopher Plutarch's chapter on Romulus gave an account of the mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification of this first king of Rome, comparing it to traditional Greek beliefs such as the resurrection and physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton." Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in traditional ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal."
The parallel between these traditional beliefs and the later resurrection of Jesus was not lost on the early Christians, as Justin Martyr argued: "when we say ... Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus." (1 Apol. 21). There is, however, no belief in a general resurrection in ancient Greek religion, as the Greeks held that not even the gods were able to recreate flesh that had been lost to decay, fire or consumption. The notion of a general resurrection of the dead was therefore apparently quite preposterous to the Greeks. This is made clear in Paul's Areopagus discourse. After having first told about the resurrection of Jesus, which makes the Athenians interested to hear more, Paul goes on, relating how this event relates to a general resurrection of the dead:
"Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, `We shall hear you again concerning this.'"[11]

Abrahamic religions[edit]

Christianity[edit]


Resurrection of Jesus
In Christianity, resurrection most critically concerns the Resurrection of Jesus, but also includes the resurrection of Judgment Day known as the Resurrection of the Dead by those Christians who subscribe to the Nicene Creed (which is the majority or Mainstream Christianity), as well as the resurrection miracles done by Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament. Some churches distinguish between raising the dead (a resumption of mortal life) and a resurrection (the beginning of an immortal life).[citation needed]

Resurrection of Jesus[edit]

Main articles: Life-death-rebirth deity, Resurrection of Jesus, Easter, and Resurrection appearances of Jesus
Christians regard the resurrection of Jesus as the central doctrine in Christianity. Others take the Incarnation of Jesus to be more central; however, it is the miracles – and particularly his Resurrection – which provide validation of his incarnation. According to Paul, the entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for a life after death. The Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.[12]

Resurrection miracles[edit]


The Resurrection of Lazarus, painting by Leon Bonnat, France, 1857.
Main article: Miracles of Jesus § Resurrection of the dead
During the Ministry of Jesus on earth, before his death, Jesus commissioned his Twelve Apostles to, among other things, raise the dead.[13] In the New Testament, Jesus is said to have raised several persons from death. These resurrections included the daughter of Jairus shortly after death, a young man in the midst of his own funeral procession, and Lazarus, who had been buried for four days. According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus's resurrection, many of those previously dead came out of their tombs and entered Jerusalem, where they appeared to many.
Similar resurrections are credited to Christian apostles and saints. Peter allegedly raised a woman named Dorcas (called Tabitha), and Paul the Apostle revived a man named Eutychus who had fallen asleep and fell from a window to his death, according to the book of Acts. Proceeding the apostolic era, many saints were said to resurrect the dead, as recorded in Orthodox Christian hagiographies.[citation needed] St Columba supposedly raised a boy from the dead in the land of Picts [14]
Most Christians understand these miraculous resurrections to be of a different nature than the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead.[15] The raising of Lazarus and others from the dead could also be called "resuscitations" or "reanimations", since the life given to them is presumably temporary in nature—there is no suggestion in the Bible or hagiographic traditions that these people became truly immortal. In contrast, the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead will abolish death once and for all (see Isaiah 25:8, 1 Corinthians 15:26, 2 Timothy 1:10, Revelation 21:4).

Resurrection of the Dead[edit]

Main articles: Resurrection of the dead § Views in Christianity, and Christian eschatology § Resurrection of the dead
Christianity started as a religious movement within 1st-century Judaism (late Second Temple Judaism), and it retains what the New Testament itself claims was the Pharisaic belief in the afterlife and Resurrection of the Dead. Whereas this belief was only one of many beliefs held about the World to Come in Second Temple Judaism, and was notably rejected by both the Sadducees and, according to Josephus, the Pharisees, this belief became dominant within Early Christianity and already in the Gospels of Luke and John included an insistence on the resurrection of the flesh. This was later rejected by gnostic teachings, which instead continued the Pauline insistence that flesh and bones had no place in heaven. Most modern Christian churches continue to uphold the belief that there will be a final Resurrection of the Dead and World to Come, perhaps as prophesied by the Apostle Paul when he said: "...he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world..." (Acts 17:31KJV) and "...there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." (Acts 24:15 KJV).
Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead, and Jesus's role as judge, is codified in the Apostles' Creed, which is the fundamental creed of Christian baptismal faith. The Book of Revelation also makes many references about the Day of Judgment when the dead will be raised up.

Difference From Platonic philosophy[edit]

In Platonic philosophy and other Greek philosophical thought, at death the soul was said to leave the inferior body behind. The idea that Jesus was resurrected spiritually rather than physically even gained popularity among some Christian teachers, whom the author of 1 John declared to be antichrists. Similar beliefs appeared in the early church as Gnosticism. However, in Luke 24:39, the resurrected Jesus expressly states "behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."

Islam[edit]

Main article: Qiyama
Belief in the "Day of Resurrection", Yawm al-Qiyāmah (Arabic: يوم القيامة‎‎) is also crucial for Muslims. They believe the time of Qiyāmah is preordained by God but unknown to man. The trials and tribulations preceding and during the Qiyāmah are described in the Qur'an and the hadith, and also in the commentaries of scholars. The Qur'an emphasizes bodily resurrection, a break from the pre-Islamic Arabian understanding of death.[16]

Judaism and Samaritanism[edit]

Main article: Jewish eschatology
There are three explicit examples in the Hebrew Bible of people being resurrected from the dead:
  • The prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17-24)
  • Elisha raises the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32-37); this was the very same child whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8-16)
  • A dead man's body that was thrown into the dead Elisha's tomb is resurrected when the body touches Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21)
During the period of the Second Temple, there developed a diversity of beliefs concerning the resurrection. The concept of resurrection of the physical body is found in 2 Maccabees, according to which it will happen through recreation of the flesh.[17] Resurrection of the dead also appears in detail in the extra-canonical books of Enoch,[18] in Apocalypse of Baruch,[19] and 2 Esdras. According to the British scholar in ancient Judaism Philip R. Davies, there is “little or no clear reference … either to immortality or to resurrection from the dead” in the Dead Sea scrolls texts.[20] Both Josephus and the New Testament record that the Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife,[21] but the sources vary on the beliefs of the Pharisees. The New Testament claims that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection, but does not specify whether this included the flesh or not.[22] According to Josephus, who himself was a Pharisee, the Pharisees held that only the soul was immortal and the souls of good people will be reincarnated and “pass into other bodies,” while “the souls of the wicked will suffer eternal punishment.”[23] Paul, who also was a Pharisee,[24] said that at the resurrection what is "sown as a natural body is raised a spiritual body."[25] Jubilees seems to refer to the resurrection of the soul only, or to a more general idea of an immortal soul.[26]
According to Herbert C. Brichto, writing in Reform Judaism's Hebrew Union College Annual, the family tomb is the central concept in understanding biblical views of the afterlife. Brichto states that it is "not mere sentimental respect for the physical remains that is...the motivation for the practice, but rather an assumed connection between proper sepulture and the condition of happiness of the deceased in the afterlife".[27]
According to Brichto, the early Israelites apparently believed that the graves of family, or tribe, united into one, and that this unified collectivity is to what the Biblical Hebrew term Sheol refers, the common Grave of humans. Although not well defined in the Tanakh, Sheol in this view was a subterranean underworld where the souls of the dead went after the body died. The Babylonians had a similar underworld called Aralu, and the Greeks had one known as Hades. For biblical references to Sheol see Genesis 42:38, Isaiah 14:11, Psalm 141:7, Daniel 12:2, Proverbs 7:27 and Job 10:21,22, and 17:16, among others. According to Brichto, other Biblical names for Sheol were: Abaddon (ruin), found in Psalm 88:11, Job 28:22 and Proverbs 15:11; Bor (the pit), found in Isaiah 14:15, 24:22, Ezekiel 26:20; and Shakhat (corruption), found in Isaiah 38:17, Ezekiel 28:8.[28]

Zen Buddhism[edit]

There are stories in Buddhism where the power of resurrection was allegedly demonstrated in Chan or Zen tradition. One is the legend of Bodhidharma, the Indian master who brought the Ekayana school of India to China that subsequently became Chan Buddhism.
The other is the passing of Chinese Chan master Puhua (J., Fuke) and is recounted in the Record of Linji (J., Rinzai). Puhua was known for his unusual behavior and teaching style so it is no wonder that he is associated with an event that breaks the usual prohibition on displaying such powers. Here is the account from Irmgard Schloegl's "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai".
"One day at the street market Fuke was begging all and sundry to give him a robe. Everybody offered him one, but he did not want any of them. The master [Linji] made the superior buy a coffin, and when Fuke returned, said to him: "There, I had this robe made for you." Fuke shouldered the coffin, and went back to the street market, calling loudly: "Rinzai had this robe made for me! I am off to the East Gate to enter transformation" (to die)." The people of the market crowded after him, eager to look. Fuke said: "No, not today. Tomorrow, I shall go to the South Gate to enter transformation." And so for three days. Nobody believed it any longer. On the fourth day, and now without any spectators, Fuke went alone outside the city walls, and laid himself into the coffin. He asked a traveler who chanced by to nail down the lid.
The news spread at once, and the people of the market rushed there. On opening the coffin, they found that the body had vanished, but from high up in the sky they heard the ring of his hand bell."[29]

Technological resurrection[edit]

Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future.[30] Cryonics procedures ideally begin within minutes of cardiac arrest, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation.[31] However, the idea of cryonics also includes preservation of people long after death because of the possibility that brain encoding memory structure and personality may still persist or be inferable in the future. Whether sufficient brain information still exists for cryonics to successfully preserve may be intrinsically unprovable by present knowledge. Therefore, most proponents of cryonics see it as an intervention with prospects for success that vary widely depending on circumstances.
Russian Cosmist Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov advocated resurrection of the dead using scientific methods. Fedorov tried to plan specific actions for scientific research of the possibility of restoring life and making it infinite. His first project is connected with collecting and synthesizing decayed remains of dead based on "knowledge and control over all atoms and molecules of the world". The second method described by Fedorov is genetic-hereditary. The revival could be done successively in the ancestral line: sons and daughters restore their fathers and mothers, they in turn restore their parents and so on. This means restoring the ancestors using the hereditary information that they passed on to their children. Using this genetic method it is only possible to create a genetic twin of the dead person. It is necessary to give back the revived person his old mind, his personality. Fedorov speculates about the idea of "radial images" that may contain the personalities of the people and survive after death. Nevertheless, Fedorov noted that even if a soul is destroyed after death, Man will learn to restore it whole by mastering the forces of decay and fragmentation.[32]
In his 1994 book The Physics of Immortality, American physicist Frank J. Tipler, an expert on the general theory of relativity, presented his Omega Point Theory which outlines how a resurrection of the dead could take place at the end of the cosmos. He posits that humans will evolve into robots which will turn the entire cosmos into a supercomputer which will, shortly before the big crunch, perform the resurrection within its cyberspace, reconstructing formerly dead humans (from information captured by the supercomputer from the past light cone of the cosmos) as avatars within its metaverse.[33]
David Deutsch, British physicist and pioneer in the field of quantum computing, agrees with Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the idea of resurrecting deceased people with the help of quantum computers[34]but he is critical of Tipler's theological views.
Italian physicist and computer scientist Giulio Prisco presents the idea of "quantum archaeology", "reconstructing the life, thoughts, memories, and feelings of any person in the past, up to any desired level of detail, and thus resurrecting the original person via 'copying to the future'".[35]
In his book Mind Children, roboticist Hans Moravec proposed that a future supercomputer might be able to resurrect long-dead minds from the information that still survived. For example, this information can be in the form of memories, filmstrips, medical records, and DNA.[36][37]
Ray Kurzweil, American inventor and futurist, believes that when his concept of singularity comes to pass, it will be possible to resurrect the dead by digital recreation.[38]
In their science fiction novel The Light of Other Days, Sir Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter imagine a future civilization resurrecting the dead of past ages by reaching into the past, through micro wormholes and with nanorobots, to download full snapshots of brain states and memories.[39]
Both the Church of Perpetual Life and the Terasem Movement consider themselves transreligions and advocate for the use of technology to indefinitely extend the human lifespan.[40]

Zombies[edit]

Main article: Zombie
A zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) can be either a fictional undead monster or a person in an entranced state believed to be controlled by a bokor or wizard. These latter are the original zombies, occurring in the West African Vodun religion and its American offshoots Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo.
Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead[41] and they have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows. Zombie fiction is now a sizable subgenre of horror, usually describing a breakdown of civilization occurring when most of the population become flesh-eating zombies – a zombie apocalypse. The monsters are usually hungry for human flesh, often specifically brains. Sometimes they are victims of a fictional pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way, but often no cause is given in the story.

Disappearances (as distinct from resurrection)[edit]

See also: Entering heaven alive
As knowledge of different religions has grown, so have claims of bodily disappearance of some religious and mythological figures. In ancient Greek religion, this was a way the gods made some physically immortal, including such figures as Cleitus, Ganymede, Menelaus, and Tithonus.[42] After his death, Cycnus was changed into a swan and vanished. In his chapter on Romulus from Parallel Lives, Plutarch criticises the continuous belief in such disappearances, referring to the allegedly miraculous disappearance of the historical figures Romulus, Cleomedes of Astypalaea, and Croesus. In ancient times, Greek and Roman pagan similarities were explained by the early Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr, as the work of demons, with the intention of leading Christians astray.[43]
In somewhat recent years it has been learned that Gesar, the Savior of Tibet, at the end, chants on a mountain top and his clothes fall empty to the ground.[44] The body of the first Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak Dev, is said to have disappeared and flowers were left in place of his dead body.
Lord Raglan's Hero Pattern lists many religious figures whose bodies disappear, or have more than one sepulchre.[45] B. Traven, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, wrote that the Inca Virococha arrived at Cusco (in modern-day Peru) and the Pacific seacoast where he walked across the water and vanished.[46] It has been thought that teachings regarding the purity and incorruptibility of the hero's human body are linked to this phenomenon. Perhaps, this is also to deter the practice of disturbing and collecting the hero's remains. They are safely protected if they have disappeared.[47]
The first such case mentioned in the Bible is that of Enoch (son of Jared, great-grandfather of Noah, and father of Methuselah). Enoch is said to have lived a life where he "walked with God", after which "he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:1–18).[48] In Deuteronomy (34:6) Moses is secretly buried. Elijah vanishes in a whirlwind 2 Kings (2:11). After hundreds of years these two earlier Biblical heroes suddenly reappear, and are seen walking with Jesus, then again vanish. Mark (9:2–8), Matthew (17:1–8) and Luke (9:28–33). The last time he is seen, Luke (24:51) alone tells of Jesus leaving his disciples by ascending into the sky.

See also[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews by Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008
  • Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov. Philosophy of Physical Resurrection 1906.
  • Edwin Hatch. Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church (1888 Hibbert Lectures).
  • Alfred J Hebert. Raised from the Dead: True Stories of 400 Resurrection Miracles
  • Lange, Dierk. "The dying and the rising God in the New Year Festival of Ife", in: Lange, Ancient Kingdoms of West Africa, Dettelbach: Röll Vlg. 2004, pp. 343–376.
  • Richard Longenecker, editor. Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
  • Joseph McCabe Myth of the Resurrection and Other Essays, Prometheus books, New York, 1993, originally printed in 1925 and 1926
  • Tryggve Mettinger. The Riddle of Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East, Stockholm: Almqvist 2001.
  • Markus Mühling. Grundinformation Eschatologie. Systematische Theologie aus der Perspektive der Hoffnung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8252-2918-4, 242–262.
  • George Nickelsburg. Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestmental Judaism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972.
  • Pheme Perkins. Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1984.
  • Erwin Rohde Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks. New York: Harper & Row, 1925 [1921].
  • Charles H. Talbert. "The Concept of Immortals in Mediterranean Antiquity", Journal of Biblical Literature, Volume 94, 1975, pp 419–436
  • Charles H. Talbert. "The Myth of a Descending-Ascending Redeemer in Mediterranean Antiquity", New Testament Studies, Volume 22, 1975/76, pp 418–440
  • Frank J. Tipler (1994). The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-19-851949-4.

External links[edit]

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ "Gregory of Nyssa: "On the Soul and the Resurrection:" However far from each other their natural propensity and their inherent forces of repulsion urge them, and debar each from mingling with its opposite, none the less will the soul be near each by its power of recognition, and will persistently cling to the familiar atoms, until their concourse after this division again takes place in the same way, for that fresh formation of the dissolved body which will properly be, and be called, resurrection". Ccel.org.
  2. Jump up^ As in the Apostle's Creed: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting." Catholic Encyclopedia: General Resurrection: "Resurrection is the rising again from the dead, the resumption of life. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) teaches that all men, whether elect or reprobate, "will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear about with them" (chapter "Firmiter"). In the language of the creeds and professions of faith this return to life is called resurrection of the body (resurrectio carnis, resurrectio mortuoram, anastasis ton nekron) for a double reason: first, since the soul cannot die, it cannot be said to return to life; second the heretical contention of Hymeneus and Philitus that the Scriptures denote by resurrection not the return to life of the body, but the rising of the soul from the death of sin to the life of grace, must be excluded."
  3. Jump up^ Symes, R. C. "According to Paul of Tarsus, the resurrection transformed Jesus into the Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the world. Christ's resurrected body was not a resuscitated physical body, but a new body of a spiritual/celestial nature: the natural body comes first and then the spiritual body (1 Cor. 15:46). Paul never says that the earthly body becomes immortal.". religioustolerance.org.
  4. Jump up^ The Watchtower Society claims that Jesus was not raised in His actual physical human body, but rather was raised as an invisible spirit being—what He was before, the archangel Michael. They believe that Christ's post-Resurrection appearances on earth were on-the-spot manifestations and materializations of flesh and bones, with different forms, that the Apostles did not immediately recognize. Their explanation for the statement "a spirit hath not flesh and bones" is that Christ was saying that he was not a ghostly apparition, but a true materialization in flesh, to be seen and touched, as proof that he was actually raised. But that, in fact, the risen Christ was, in actuality, a divine spirit being, who made himself visible and invisible at will. The Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses believes that Christ’s perfect manhood was forever sacrificed at Calvary, and that it was not actually taken back. They state: "...in his resurrection he ‘became a life-giving spirit.’ That was why for most of the time he was invisible to his faithful apostles... He needs no human body any longer... The human body of flesh, which Jesus Christ laid down forever as a ransom sacrifice, was disposed of by God’s power."—Things in Which it is Impossible for God to Lie, pages 332, 354.
  5. Jump up^ "Resurrection Theories". Gospel-mysteries.net. Retrieved 2013-05-04.
  6. Jump up^ Cassell's Latin Dictionary
  7. Jump up^ Sir James Frazer (1922). The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion Ware: Wordsworth 1993.
  8. Jump up^ Jonathan Z. Smith "Dying and Rising Gods" in Mircea Eliade (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Religion: Vol. 3. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan 1995: 521-27.
  9. Jump up^ Mettinger, Riddle of Resurrection, 55-222.
  10. Jump up^ Erwin Rohde Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks. New York 1925 [1921]
  11. Jump up^ "Acts 17:30-32". Biblegateway.com. Retrieved 2013-05-04.
  12. Jump up^ 1 Corinthians 15:19-20
  13. Jump up^ Not in the Great Commission of the resurrected Jesus, but only in the so-called Lesser Commission of Matthew, specifically Matthew 10:8.
  14. Jump up^ Adomnan of Iona. Life of St Columba. Penguin books, 1995
  15. Jump up^https://archive.is/20130629200514/http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/stewart.cfm?id=136. Archived from the original on June 29, 2013. Retrieved June 29, 2013. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  16. Jump up^ See:
    • "Resurrection", The New Encyclopedia of Islam (2003)
    • "Avicenna". Encyclopaedia of Islam Online.: Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Sīnā is known in the West as "Avicenna".
    • L. Gardet. "Qiyama". Encyclopaedia of Islam Online.
  17. Jump up^ 2 Maccabees 7.11, 7.28.
  18. Jump up^ 1 Enoch 61.5, 61.2.
  19. Jump up^ 2 Baruch 50.2, 51.5
  20. Jump up^ Philip R. Davies. “Death, Resurrection and Life After Death in the Qumran Scrolls” in Alan J. Avery-Peck & Jacob Neusner (eds.) Judaism in Late Antiquity: Part Four: Death, Life-After-Death, Resurrection, and the World-To-Come in the Judaisms of Antiquity. Leiden 2000:209.
  21. Jump up^ Josephus Antiquities 18.16; Matthew 22.23; Mark 12.18; Luke 20.27; Acta 23.8.
  22. Jump up^ Acta 23.8.
  23. Jump up^ Josephus Jewish War 2.8.14; cf. Antiquities 8.14-15.
  24. Jump up^ Acts 23.6, 26.5.
  25. Jump up^ 1 Corinthians 15.35-53
  26. Jump up^ Jubilees 23.31
  27. Jump up^ Raphael, Simcha Paull (2009). Jewish Views of the Afterlife. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 45. ISBN 9780742562202.
  28. Jump up^ Herbert Chanon Brichto "Kin, Cult, Land and Afterlife – A Biblical Complex", Hebrew Union College Annual 44, p.8 (1973)
  29. Jump up^ Schloegl, Irmgard; tr. "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai". Shambhala Publications, Inc., Berkeley, 1976. Page 76. ISBN 0-87773-087-3.
  30. Jump up^ "What is Cryonics?". Alcor Foundation. Retrieved 2 December 2013. "Cryonics is an effort to save lives by using temperatures so cold that a person beyond help by today's medicine might be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health."
  31. Jump up^ Best BP (April 2008). "Scientific justification of cryonics practice". Rejuvenation Research 11 (2): 493–503. doi:10.1089/rej.2008.0661. PMID 18321197.
  32. Jump up^ Nikolai Berdyaev, The Religion of Resusciative Resurrection. "The Philosophy of the Common Task of N. F. Fedorov.
  33. Jump up^ Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (New York: Doubleday, 1994), ISBN 0198519494. 56-page excerpt available here.
  34. Jump up^ David Deutsch (1997). "The Ends of the Universe". The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes—and Its Implications. London: Penguin Press. ISBN 0-7139-9061-9.
  35. Jump up^ Giulio Prisco (October 11, 2015). "Technological Resurrection Concepts From Fedorov to Quantum Archeology". Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Retrieved December 10, 2015. Giulio Prisco (December 16, 2011). "Quantum Archaeology". Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  36. Jump up^ "Mind Children". google.co.uk. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  37. Jump up^ "Resurrecting the Dead - Futurisms - The New Atlantis". Futurisms - The New Atlantis. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  38. Jump up^ Socrates (18 July 2012). "Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity and Bringing Back the Dead". Singularity Weblog. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  39. Jump up^ Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, Millennium [i.e., Second] Edition, Victor Gollancz – An imprint of Orion Books Ltd., 1999, p. 118: "the novel that Stephen Baxter has now written from my synopsis — The Light of Other Days."
  40. Jump up^ Anthony Cuthbertson (December 9, 2015). "Virtual reality heaven: How technology is redefining death and the afterlife". International Business Times. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
  41. Jump up^ Smith, Neil (March 7, 2008). "Zombie maestro lays down the lore". London: BBC News. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
  42. Jump up^ Erwin Rohde Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks. New York: Harper & Row 1966.[1921]
  43. Jump up^ Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho (ca 147-161 A.D.) Catholic University Press, 2003
  44. Jump up^ Alexandra David-Neel,and Lama Yongden, The Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling, Rider, 1933, While still in oral tradition, it is recorded for the first time by an early European traveler.
  45. Jump up^ Otto Rank, Lord Raglan, and Alan Dundes, In Quest of the Hero, Princeton University Press, 1990
  46. Jump up^ B. Traven, The Creation of the Sun and Moon, Lawerence Hill Books, 1977
  47. Jump up^ See: Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain, The Dial Press, 2000
  48. Jump up^ Genesis 5:18-24
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Amazon.com: Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality (Audible Audio Edition): J. Brent Bill, Trevor Thompson, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Books

Amazon.com: Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality (Audible Audio Edition): J. Brent Bill, Trevor Thompson, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Books



Customer Reviews

Bringing us all together
BySteve Crateon February 24, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

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5.0 out of 5 starsWe all need a daily dose of silence!
ByRich Lewison December 2, 2016
Format: Paperback
“This little book is an invitation to experience more fully the life-changing power of sacred silence.” Silence is powerful! We all need a daily dose of silence!

I walk away with three takeaways from this wonderful book.

“Quaker silence is pregnant with holy expectation. 
It is filled with anticipation that Jesus will be there.” 

 I practice centering prayer. Centering prayer opens me to the gift of contemplative prayer. Contemplative prayer is a silent sit with God. I bring no agenda. I open my mind, heart and body to God who is beyond thoughts, words and emotions. I sit with God because I love God.

During centering prayer, I open to God’s presence and action within. I will continue to be open but I will also “expect” that Jesus will be there! I will also “expect” that Jesus will speak to me! “Quaker silence is filled with expectation-expectation that God will speak. When we hear God, our lives are changed.”

I sit in silence two to three times per day. “In the New Testament we find many examples of Jesus’s seeking the silence of solitude, even group solitude.” I need silence in community. There are centering prayer groups in my community. I must seek them out and also sit in community silence. Silence in community is powerful. Brent shares what to expect when you attend a traditional Quaker silent service. Two years ago I attended a traditional Quaker silent service. I sat in an old meeting house with at least one hundred adults and children. I must do so again. I miss this vital form of silence.

At the end of the book, Brent provides some silent practices. One practice caught my attention. “As you move through this day, look for places where you might be quiet….washing dishes, riding the train to the office, walking in the woods.” These moments are available to us each day. It is in these ordinary and sometimes mundane moments that I can and will encounter the Divine.

“I need God’s help. That is why holy silence is an important part of Quaker life.” I too need God’s help! Where will I best find God’s help? I will find it in the silence of the holy hush.

Please read this short but life-changing book. It will forever change how you think about silence.

Rich Lewis
SilenceTeaches.com
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5.0 out of 5 starsFriendly Quaker Silence for Everyone
ByLeah ChangVINE VOICEon December 17, 2016
Format: Kindle Edition


"The Quaker view that all of life, including silence, is sacramental is based in the Bible as well as in Friendly faith. It is a practice solidly grounded in Christian theology, history, and Scripture." Holy Silence, page 21.

 I've read, blogged, and reviewed several of Brent's books and always appreciate that they're never too long, that he has close connections to nature, the environment, the land (I hope so, because he's a farmer!) and especially that all of them emphasize ways we can live closer to God and to all of God's creation.

 In theological and in practical everyday terms, I often consider "holy" as the sacred wholly-other-than the profane, the mundane, than the routinely commonplace. Then again, holy is the very here and now regular common earthbound stuff of our daily activities as we move closer to praying always and in all ways a sense of God's presence in, with, and under all the we do and everything we are. J. Brent Bill named his mostly photography website "Holy Ordinary." To my sacramental, liturgical tradition that affirms God's self-revelation, God's self-giving and grace via physical, earthly, everyday "means," Holy Ordinary sounds... highly sacramental. Although Quakers, or Friends don't formally practice ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper, they do have a well-known formal practice of sitting in silence. So well-known that besides the guy on Quaker cereal boxes, silent worship probably is the main aspect of the Society of Friends most people have heard about. Then again, some Quakers have programmed worship that includes the usual type of printed Order of Worship bulletin handout, hymns, prayers offered out loud, a sermon or homily.

 The author gives us a short synopsis of biblical and Christian practices of silence; not surprisingly, early in the book Brent cites the famous story of Elijah not encountering God until the still small voice, whisper, or (best version) sheer silence. I love the idea of silence being sheer; sheer sounds transparent, see-through to our senses and perceptions.

 Brent is very clear that Christians from very different traditions such as mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics that emphasize sacraments, Pentecostals who rejoice in the more demonstratively eschatological gifts of the Holy Spirit, easily can make Holy Silence at least a weekly, possibly a daily or monthly practice. He mentioned scheduling the Friends Meeting at his own farmhouse for a time other than Sunday mornings so people committed to Sunday worship with a different tradition also could take advantage of meeting Jesus in common community silence. In sheer silence, so the presence of God permeates all our senses.

 Final note: the plain yet elegant silver on white cover of this second edition of Holy Silence conveys a strong sense of what's inside those covers.
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quaker oats live: quakers & the resurrection

quaker oats live: quakers & the resurrection

Thursday, April 27, 2006

quakers & the resurrection

I will work on the next two points that QuakerK makes on Quaker Glimmerings, because they go together:

3. Early Quakers didn't stress the physical resurrection. Again they got a lot of flack for this. I've seen this in the Nayler writings that I have read--they stress the idea of "spiritual body."

4. They discounted the overriding importance of Christ's death on the cross: not that it was unimportant, but that by itself it meant nothing, and wasn't effectual without the Inner Light.

I don't pretend to be incredibly knowledgable about early Quaker writings on these topics--maybe that shows that there aren't many! Or maybe I'm just ignorant of them. At any rate, I'll do my best here.

First, I would echo a comment from Wess on QuakerK's post: Friends contemporary with Nayler came to see him as heretical, in that they felt he was going a different way from the goals of the Friends movement. I haven't read much Nayler, so I'm not sure if what QuakerK is referring to is from his earlier or later writings, but either way I'm not sure I would take him as representative of early Friends, although some of his writing is probably still useful and good.

I think in a way it is true that early Friends didn't stress the physical resurrection, but that is at least in part because it wasn't really questioned yet. The Enlightenment was going on at the same time, but I think most people hadn't gotten to the point of truly questioning faith and miracles yet. There wasn't much of a need to "stress" Jesus' physical resurrection because it was assumed that most people would already believe in that. We have to remember that it was a completely different culture and mindframe! Europe was nearly all nominally Christian (with some Jews and Muslims and others thrown in there). Most all regular citizens would belong to some church, probably the state church. Most people weren't converting to Quakerism from atheism, but from other Christian denominations.

Quakers tended to emphasize that followers of Christ will suffer, be persecuted, and possibly die for their beliefs and actions. I think QuakerK is right that early Friends didn't emphasize the crucifixion as an end in itself, but saw it more as an analogy for the lives of the followers of Christ: if people will persecute and kill God, how much more likely is it that we normal people will be persecuted for our beliefs? They focused more on the life of Jesus, following his example and in that way "carrying thier cross."

In the modern era several atonement theories have been put forth to explain the reason Jesus had to die on the cross. The early Friends were working with just one atonement theory, pretty much the only one there was (as far as I know): that of substitutionary atonement, that God had to die as a perfect sacrifice, mimicking the Jewish substitutionary system with the perfect human sacrifice, who alone could cancel out our sins through death. This theory emphasizes the death part of the life-crucifixion-resurrection, and while it has some good parts and some biblical basis, more modern atonement theories come at it from a different direction.

Perhaps the early Friends were unconsciously reacting to this fairly negative way of looking at the life of Jesus, not to mention humanity. As I said in my post yesterday, Quakers tend to be on the whole a more optimistic group in terms of human nature than most other Protestants. Quakers and Anabaptists tended to see the life of Jesus as an example to live (and die) by, and the resurrection as the promise of new and full life in God whether one survives or dies as one follow God's guidance. Although they didn't come up with a new atonement theory I think in many ways they lived it out.

I would also say that perhaps early Friends didn't spend too much time debating the little doctrinal pieces because they felt there were more important things to do--like work against injustice and help others. But I think all these impulses came out of their understanding of the true life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which gave their lives and their actions meaning and hope.
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3 comments:


QuakerK said...
The Nayler writings I've read are from the first volume of his collected works--1653-54. At the same time, I think it could be an overstatement to say that Nayler was out of the mainstream of Quakerism. It is true that later, after the ride into Bristol, Nayler was disowned. However, in the early years, perhaps up to 1656, my impression is that Nayler was considered almost co-equal with Fox as a leader of the Quakers. At least, he was considered such by non-Quakers, and I don't think that was just because he was an easy target (although he may very well have represented the more radical wing of the Quaker movement that did Fox).

I'm also not sure if it would be accurate to say that the resurrection hadn't been doubted. As I've noted elsewhere, reading Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down has been eye-opening for me. He makes it clear that religious skepticism was more wide-spread in England than I would have thought. I wouldn't say it was mainstream, but it was well-known--including scepticism about the resurrection, which by certain radical religious groups was seen as an allegory, rather than a historical fact. Accurately or not, the Quakers were seen by their critics as a continuation of that stream of thought.

Overall, though, I think you're right about the Quakers having a different implicit theory of atonement. I once heard a Quaker say that the early Friends stressed that the point of the atonment wasn't to atone for sins, it was to stop sinning--thus the Quakers attacks on preachers who "plead for sin."

David
9:58 PM
cherice said...
Thasks for your comments. I haven't read a whole lot of Nayler so what I know is mostly from what other people wrote about him later, so you very well may be right about him being a recognized leader with Fox in the early days.

I agree also about people doubting the resurrection to some degree--it was the beginning of the Enlightenment, after all. But I think as a whole cultural phenomenon it probably wasn't doubted that much. The Enlightenment in England was mainly a movement of the educated elite for a long time. But I'm sure it was part of what got Fox questioning in the first place: he was in the midst of a culture that was starting to question. I'll have to read more early Friends stuff and see what more people say about the idea of the resurrection. I haven't read Friends writings with that question in mind before.

I also agree about the idea to stop sinning. They were majorly influenced by the influx of Anabaptists who were thrown out of their countries in mainland Europe about 25-50 years prior, and that was something the Anabaptists also stressed. They and Quakers had in common the belief that the stuff Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount and other radical discipleship texts were meant to be lived out in this lifetime and that through God we can create the Kingdom of God in our communities. Anabaptists chose to create their own communities as examples of what the Kingdom of God looks like, and Quakers chose what is probably the harder route, to live out the Kingdom of God in a world that wants no part in it.
11:26 PM
Anonymous said...
You have not mentioned reading any of Joseph John Gurney's writings. I suggest that you find a copy of his MEMOIRS edited by Joseph Bevan Brathwaite. This may give you a different slant on one well-known early Friend's work and theology. There is also a book written by Gurney himself entitled OBSERVATIONS ON THE DISTINGUISHING VIEWS AND PRACTICES OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. Both should be of interest to you!
9:21 PM
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