SECTION IX

the corporeity of the risen Saviour

The revelation of the risen Lord was given in a series of appearances which were in many respects highly superterrestrial. The figure of Jesus had become new and different, and His disciples with their troubled minds could not always at once recognize Him in it: Mar 16:12; Luk 24:16. His appearing was something like that of a spirit. More than once He came in a wonderful manner and stood in the midst of His disciples (Joh 20:19; Joh 20:26), and His disappearing was still more wonderful (Luk 24:31).¹ He no longer resides in the accustomed circle in which He formerly resided on earth, but in a mysterious region, which is to His disciples a region of the invisible, and from which He comes forth from time to time, always making Himself more clearly known to them. And so the recognition of Him presupposes a corresponding state of mind or due preparation (Luk 24:31; Joh 20:16). Hence His making Himself known to His disciples at various times is spoken of as showing Himself to them.² The higher nature of Christ’s corporeity was very strikingly displayed in His last departure from His disciples. He was received up into heaven, Mar 16:19; taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight, Act 1:9; He ascends to the Father, Joh 20:17; He was carried up into heaven, Luk 24:51.

He gives many clear proofs of the truth of His corporeity. He bears upon His body the marks of His wounds. He is specially recognized by the sound of His voice and the tones in which He calls His disciples by name, Joh 20:16; by the way and manner in which He prayed and pronounced a blessing, Luk 24:30; and the eagle eye of John recognizes Him at a distance by the peculiarity in His mode of being, Joh 21:7. He can walk the paths and be taken for a traveller of this world, Luk 24:1-53; can even be taken for a buyer of fish, Joh 21:5. He has corporeal flesh and bones, and can let His disciples handle His hands and His feet, Luk 24:39. He can breathe upon them with breath of His new life, Joh 20:22; can take food with them, Luk 24:1-53; and even prepare for them a morning repast, Joh 21:9. This contrast of decided spirituality and indubitable corporeity has given occasion to different views.

Some seek to set aside the want of harmony by holding solely to the superterrestrial in the appearance of the risen Lord.³ Others again would view the resurrection of Christ as if He had returned, for the meantime at least, into the life of this world, and had not entered into the life of glorification until the ascension.⁴ But in either case one must leave a whole series of Gospel facts unaccounted for, and gets a very one-sided and defective Gospel history, or rather loses its peculiar and most essential life. For this life just lies in the mysterious unity of the above-mentioned contrast. It is nothing particularly difficult or great, on the one hand, to get a sight of a brilliant appearance of spirits; and on the other, Gospel history tells of various persons who were raised from the dead, and yet they did not even become apostles, far less heads of the Church. But the point of living contact whereby we come to a due estimation of the new life of Jesus, lies in the union of this contrast and in the knowledge of a resurrection in which the highest spirituality and the most decided corporeity have mutually interpenetrated one another.

To set out, therefore, by depriving these two sides of the manifestation of the new life of Christ of their points of juncture, is an erroneous procedure. For it is just the definiteness of these two sides which forms the key-stone of this wonderful contrast, and sets forth the glorious mystery which here comes to light. Strauss does well when he points out this contrast in the Gospels in all its definiteness. But when he calls it an insoluble contradiction, this simply amounts to a subjective renunciation on his part of all benefit from a primary phenomenon which might be designated as the clearest of all primary phenomena of human life in the glory of the God-man, and in which human life first fully discloses to us the eternal depths of its personal power and destination. He renounces the blessing of the fact through which life and immortality have been brought to light (2Ti 1:10).

We by no means deny that we have here a contradiction of the old-Adam experience. In the sphere of the old life, life in the body is nowhere to be met with save in the conditionality of the earthly existence; and when we form a conception of spiritual beings who have been freed from this conditionality, we think of them as disembodied spirits which have lost power in regard to the things of this world. But the question here is, whether this contradiction in the old experience of man forms at the same time a contradiction in his eternal being. Were the latter true, we must give up a succession of glorious Christian ideas: the idea of the spiritual or glorified body, the idea of the glorified Church, and the idea of the transformation of the world. But this would at the same time undermine the most intimate and proper suppositions and demands of Christian spiritual life, and particularly this, that the spirit of man, by its awaking to Christian freedom, must always gain more and more the mastery over the body, take it into its consciousness, imbue and ennoble it. And at last the issue would be seen, that attacks made on the idea of the transformation and sanctification of the natural body would amount to a denial of the very first and foundation principle of all life, according to which the life of nature is identical with the being of the spirit, and is destined to be always increasingly apprehended, penetrated, determined, and moved by it. Thus we are finally compelled to trace back and find the source of all this contradiction in the false suppositions of a confused and comfortless dualism.

Our opponents will doubtless object here, that they too maintain the identity of nature and spirit in the life of man, and desire that they should increasingly interpenetrate each other; only this interpenetration cannot remove the limits of earthly existence. The more firmly it is established, that earthly conditionality is a kind of spirit—a legal spiritual life, the more it is proved, they think, that the spirit cannot break these laws without becoming alien to its own essence. They arrive at this conclusion by the same assumption as that whereby they come to the denial of miracles; the assumption is this: There is only one æon of man, only one development of human life, and only one form of human existence.

This proposition, however, cannot be at all justified by a general law of life. Such a law would have to be expressed somewhat thus: No kind of created being can by any possibility appear in more than one form of existence, nor can it ever pass from lower stages and forms of life into new and higher. But an assertion like this would be at once refuted by a whole series of facts. One needs only to recollect the connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly to establish the proposition, that it is quite possible that the life of a particular creature may undergo a very extraordinary change of form, and may appear and reappear in quite different modes of existence.

But if the proposition is meant to be limited to human existence, it is lowered to a proposition of the old common Adamic experience, that is, to a proposition by which nothing is proved against a new æon of human life; nay, which we must suspect of being a false proposition, the more it becomes manifest to us by the life of Christ, that the old Adam-æon of man is to be considered as a sunken and abnormal historical development, and the more gloriously the life of Christ shows itself as standing in opposition to that old life as a specifically new and yet true human life, and consequently as the principle of a new æon. Even in this life we recognize a dawning of light which points, as a mighty prophecy, to that new æon. There is first of all the idea of the transformed body which forms the centre of the new æon, the transformed world, which is mediated by the facts of the religious and moral life of the spirit. How very much is man, at the beginning of his earthly pilgrimage, in the dark power of nature! And in how great a measure can he, under the influence of the life and power of Christ, and by the light and victory of the Spirit, gradually set his life free from this power and, reversing the case, change his body into an organ of spiritual life! He can always increasingly take up his bodily existence into his consciousness, and penetrate it with the ray of his spiritual being. What ascendancy can he exercise over his earthly need, and reduce it to a minimum! He can mortify the immoral in his impulses, take up what is pure in them into his consciousness, and by his freedom ennoble what is necessary in them. His outward life may be so penetrated by the warm breath of his inward spiritual life, that, notwithstanding the death in his members, it becomes in every part refined and spiritualized. His form may become a consecrated manifestation of a spiritual life, which strives with ever increasing success to become fully one with the bright form of its eternal being in God. What a difference in all these respects is there between a rude, dull, undeveloped, or vicious and ruined man, in whom the spiritual is held down by the rude mass of a rank materiality, or darkened by the distorted figure of a morally ruined corporeity, and the appearance of a divinely consecrated man which is surrounded by the halo of spiritual consecration, prayer, self-control, refined consciousness, and spiritual beauty!

The most consecrated human life is not, indeed, set free from the conditions of earthly existence. Christ Himself was, in His first stage of life, placed under the law of human indigence. But the question here is, Whether the high measure in which man in this life approaches to the ideal, glorified life, must not be taken by us as a prophecy of the realization of this ideal in the other world, and a pledge of a life in which the great qualities of man, spirituality and corporeity, have fully interpenetrated one another. Christian assurance has really found in the dawning light on earth the prophecy of the glorified body. The spirit of revelation has called this expectation into being in every Christian, has nourished and confirmed it, and has indicated the temporary change of Christ’s form on the Mount of Transfiguration as the highest and clearest prophecy of this future transformation of man.

The word glorification (verklärung) has often been employed in an obscure sense. The glorified body has often been represented as a corporeity surrounded by an effulgence of light, without any very clear idea being formed of it. But the effulgence which surrounded the Lord at His first glorification was only the foretoken—the prophetic blossom—of His coming essential glorification. We do not read that an outward effulgence of light surrounded the risen Lord, and yet His glorification was then completed. Glorification is the raising up of life into the being of his spirit. The glorified man is one in whom the spirit rules, whose corporeity has become entirely spirit, whose spirit has fully attained to the power of corporeity. Hence follows, that the idea of glorification removes the contrast between both worlds. The glorified man belongs to a new and higher world, which stands above the world on this side and the world beyond the grave, as synthesis does above thesis and antithesis, and which is thus the living union and fulfilment of both. The three essential features of the spiritual glory of the transformed man are, in accordance with the image of the glorified Messiah, truth, freedom, and beauty.

The glorified Messiah is, above all, a true man. The eternally essential in His existence has now first come to full maturity, realization, and manifestation in Him, while all the functions of life which belonged merely to the nascent world are definitively set aside, or rather raised to something higher. He has risen to a life of true manifestation in a body which is altogether substance, organ, and power of His life—in which matter never preponderates over vital energy, but vital energy always preponderates over matter⁵—nay, in which the material has been altogether swallowed up in the ideality of the vital power. Thus His new body is always in vigour, absolutely sound, and infinitely more real than His old earthly body. The pre-eminence of His being appears in every feature, even in the peculiar features of His pilgrimage here and departure from this earth. He is the same, at heart, as He was before, especially in the tone with which He greets men and with which He prays to God. He retains distinct and clear remembrance of all that He experienced in His life on earth. He can point to the marks of the wounds He there received. Thus He is manifested as the perfected child of the earth—like a ripe fruit on the tree of earthly life which, just because it has become ripe, detaches itself from the earth and falls into the bosom of heaven.

Consequently He is also the free man. He has emerged from the obstructions and needs of earth into self-sustained life. The conditionalities of His former life have been, by His death, repose, resurrection, and life in God, transformed in their very essence into positive principles of eternity. His nature is no longer like an unwrought material hanging about Him, a foreign law imposed upon Him, or an outward life which may be violated, for He has taken it into His inner life. He has become familiar with the mystery of all its laws, has taken them into His consciousness as appointed of God, and has imparted to His nature a perfect compatibility with His inner life. Hence He is free not only from the limits of earthly existence, but free also from the limits of immature creaturely subsistence in general. As the spirit moves Him, He goes freely through the world, appears and disappears as He inwardly determines. The secret of His eternal life consists in this, that He always retires into the depths of the Godhead as into the deepest repose of death, and always comes forth from these depths with renewed youth, as if in the power of a new resurrection. He is the perfected child of heaven.

Finally, He is beautiful in the unity of His truth and freedom. What He became at first in spirit, has now come to manifestation. The new name of His ideal subsistence has been revealed in full clearness. The image of God is pre-eminently mirrored in Him through the pre-eminence of His being. Thus He has become the perfect member of God’s household, whose inheritance is a new heaven and a new earth (2Pe 3:13).

Does then the idea of such a glorified life necessarily contradict the idea of human corporeity? We need only lift up our eyes to the stars to see that there are not only earthly, but also heavenly worlds; and surely there is also a heavenly body. As a second life for man is certain, it is not only possible, but conformable to the law of his being, that he should pass from an earthly body to a heavenly. Is he to be raised in spirit above the whole universe, while his body remains subject and confined to this earth alone? Even his mortal eye sees beyond this earth, and is conversant with the universal. But even if man can attain to a heavenly corporeity, does he thereby gain the possibility of a body which moves spontaneously and freely in God, which can appear and disappear to the mortal eye, and with ever-circling living energy renew its youth in God? We can distinctly see this possibility, when we consider distinctly the different qualities of bodies. How invisible and yet enlivening is the air which encircles the earth,—what force is in the storm! How freely does the sunbeam dart through creation! The white cloud disappears in the blue ether and again reappears. But the star sustains and renews itself for thousands of years in the sea of ether which surrounds and nourishes it. May not God impart these and similar corporeal capabilities to the perfected body of man? The very idea of the perfected man implies that all the powers of nature must be united in him, and be manifested in a glorified form. The royal supremacy of man over the creature must yet be revealed by showing that, in his bodily substance, all the powers and faculties of creatureliness are gloriously manifested in the light of the law of the spirit. We cannot deny the possibility of the glorified life of the body, if we regard man as the real prince and vicegerent of God in the circuit of nature. There must be in him the capacity of unfolding in his being all the qualities of nature, and presenting them in a glorified form. This expectation has been realized in the life of Christ. But as Christ has risen, not merely in a passive but also in an active sense, He is in this higher sense the glorified man. He is ever working in the depths of humanity as the principle of its glorification, and thereby brings the earthly temporal nature into the position where it is delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

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Notes

It contradicts the specific idea of the resurrection of Christ, as it has been confirmed by the collective testimony to it, to assume that essential changes took place in His body between the resurrection and the ascension. It is a groundless assumption to affirm, that Jesus was gradually strengthened after His return from the grave, and that the words, ‘Touch Me not,’ which He said to Mary, prove that His body was at first too sensitive to bear well a firm grasp. (See Strauss, ii. 612.) Whether we attribute this supposed sensitiveness of His body, with Paulus, to His having just recovered from apparent death, and being still weak and sickly, or, with Schleiermacher, to the tremulous tenderness of the first stage of His new life, the supposition is in either case disproved by the way He walked, and by His whole conduct on the first day of the resurrection as related in the Gospels. We must also reject as untenable another and a nobler view, according to which there went on during the forty days a process of gradual refining of Christ’s corporeity till it was completely glorified. Christ’s body must, according to the idea of His resurrection, have come forth from the grave entirely new and heavenly. If we would consider the forty days (see Olshausen, iv. 259), or their close (on the fantastic hypothesis of a Tübingen theologian, comp. Strauss, ii. 621), as the time of His transformation process, we would make a kind of death, or at least a process similar to it, take place in this very period of His triumph. Against this supposition we have the fact, that on the first day of the resurrection Jesus proved His spirituality; as also the fact, that beside the sea of Galilee He showed Himself possessed of a body having full power to perform the functions of life in this world. Comp. Kinkel.⁶

1) This mode of expression, ἄφαντος ἐγένετο ἀπ' αὐτῶν, occurs often in the Greek tragedy and elsewhere, when poets represent gods and heroes suddenly disappearing from the sight of men. But the same words are used also when any one suddenly ceases to be seen by his fellow-citizens, from his having set out on a journey, been spirited away, or put to death secretly.

2) Ἐφάνη, Mark xvi. 9; ἐφανερώθη, vers. 12, 14; ἐφανέρωσεν ἑαυτὸν, John xxi. 1; παρέστησεν ἑαυτὸν ζῶντα ἐν πολλοῖς τεκμηρίοις, &c. Acts i. 3; ὤφθη, 1 Cor. xv.

3) See Weisse.

4) See Hug, ii. 223. The author conjectures that during the 40 days Jesus resided with His mother.

5) [See the remarkable speculation of Isaac Taylor on the 'enlarged power to originate motion,' as a property of the glorified man. (Physical Theory of Another Life.)—ED.]

6) [An article by Professor Robinson on the Nature of our Lord s Resurrection-body will be found in the Bibl. Sacr. for 1845, p. 292. He thus distributes the opinions on the subject: 'On this subject three different opinions have prevailed more or less at various times in the Church. Some have held that the body of Christ was changed at the resurrection as to its substance; so that it was in its substance a different and spiritual body. Others have regarded the Lord, as having had after the resurrection the same body as before, but glorified; or, as the earliest writers express it, changed as to its qualities and attributes. The third and larger class have supposed that the body with which Christ rose from the dead was the same natural body of flesh and blood which had been taken down from the cross and laid in the sepulchre.'—ED.]