resurrection of the dead

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church | 2000 | 700+ words | Copyright

resurrection of the dead. It is a fundamental Christian belief that at the Parousia or ‘Second Coming’ of Christ departed souls will be restored to bodily life and the saved will enter in this renewed form upon the life of heaven. The Christian teaching on the resurrection of the dead differs from the Greek doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul in that it implies a restoration of the whole psychophysical organism, and it holds that life after death is wholly a gift of God. At some periods it has been maintained that the resurrection will involve revivifying the material particles of the dead body, but many theologians now argue that the resurrection body will be a body of a new order, identical with the earthly body only in the sense that it will be the recognizable organism of the same personality.

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E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "resurrection of the dead." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. 30 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "resurrection of the dead." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. (May 30, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O95-resurrectionofthedead.html

E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "resurrection of the dead." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O95-resurrectionofthedead.html

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