resurrection from the Latin resurgo (‘I rise’), refers to the belief that the dead will ultimately be raised and have their bodies restored to them. While this belief is found in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, Christian belief in the resurrection and saving of the dead is shaped specifically by the resurrection of Christ who, according to the New Testament, on the third day after his death and burial rose again and appeared to his followers.

Several scriptural accounts of the resurrected Jesus stress the materiality of Jesus' body. For example, in Luke's gospel Jesus told his disciples to touch him, asking whether a ghost has hands and feet, as he has, and then proceeded to eat a fish in front of them. In John's gospel ‘doubting’ Thomas was invited by Jesus to put his finger on Jesus' hand where the nails had been, and put his hand in Jesus' side which had been pierced. In Matthew, Jesus met his disciples and they touched his feet. And yet, despite this stress on the material body of Jesus as ‘proof’ of his resurrected identity, on several occasions — on the beach at daybreak and on the Emmaus Road, for example — the men and women disciples did not recognize him; and in the account of the resurrected Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene, in John's Gospel, Jesus instructed Mary not to hold onto him because he had not yet ascended to the Father. This represents a tension, in the New Testament accounts, between the materiality and ‘spiritual’ nature of the resurrected Jesus.

From early on, Jesus' resurrection was an important part of Christian teaching as indicated in Acts and Paul's epistles. In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote of Jesus being raised from the dead and appearing to Cephas, the twelve, some five hundred brothers and sisters, James and the rest of the Apostles, and finally to Paul himself. Thus Paul concluded that if Christ was resurrected, as his evidence attests, then the resurrection of the dead could not be denied. Paul expressed a variety of views about what that resurrection meant. Later in 1 Corinthians, Paul held that the resurrected body would be ‘new’ and spiritual, of a new order and raised above the limitations of the earthly body. In 2 Corinthians he suggested that the body will be discarded when we come to reside in heaven. But in Romans he expressed the notion that resurrection begins with baptism, suggesting, perhaps, that resurrection is the rebirth of the embodied person.

The Christian idea of the resurrection of the dead is found in the notion that at the Parousia or Second Coming of Christ, the dead will have their bodies restored to them and the saved will enter into heaven in this bodily form. Despite Paul's primary emphasis on the resurrected, ‘spiritual’ body, early Christian writers increasingly came to understand the resurrection of the dead as meaning the full reassemblage of bodily parts (and thus material continuity), as indicated by patristic debates about resurrection, from the second to fifth centuries. The apologist Justin Martyr defended the material continuity of the fleshly body at the resurrection against the criticism of pagan critics, such as Celsus, who asked why anyone would want to recover the body, given that corpses were revolting. Tertullian believed in the reassamblage of bodily bits, seeing all reality as corporeal and arguing that the whole person would be rewarded or punished, because the whole person — soul and body — had sinned or behaved virtuously. Such ideas were developed in the context of Gnosticism (which saw the resurrection as spiritual and an escape from the body) and Docetism (which saw Christ's body not as real but as metaphorical), and as Christians asked questions about what happened to the bodies of martyrs. Literal, physical resurrection was seen as victory over death after martyrdom, for those Christians who had died voluntarily and sacrificially.

This idea of the resurrection of the literal body was continued into the Middle Ages, for example in the formulation of doctrines and creeds, in sermons, and in popular stories of miracles. Eschatology was seen in material terms, and there existed a strong sense of a self whose physical nature was linked to emotions, intellect, sensations, and reason, and thus to notions of salvation. Aquinas challenged these ideas, asserting that the soul accounts for a person's identity and therefore maintaining that the continuity of the fleshly stuff of the body was unnecessary. He encountered considerable opposition to his ideas, especially between the 1270s and 1300, but the condemnations of his views were removed in 1325. This might be seen as a benchmark moment — when the idea that the soul was primary in the resurrection of the dead began to take precedence. Modern debate about bodily resurrection has tended to focus on the scientific plausibility of such a notion, although Stanley Spencer's painting, The Resurrection, Cookham (1927) is a modern rendering of the idea of bodily resurrection, as the fully embodied inhabitants of Cookham climb out of their tombs to enjoy eternal life.

In Judaism, belief in the resurrection of the body is found in some passages of the later Hebrew scriptures, and gradually became a central, if debated, tenet of Judaism, as found in parts of the Mishnah. It is the idea that body and soul are indivisible and will be resurrected together which is important in Judaism. In Islam, it is on the day of resurrection, Yaum al-Oyama, that all will die on the first blast of the trumpet, and, after an interval, and on the second blast of the trumpet, will be bodily resurrected to stand before Allah for judgment and division between heaven and hell. Hinduism has many notions of the return, reassemblage, and revival of the body — especially after it has been eaten or digested — if not any specific doctrine of resurrection.

Jane Shaw

Bibliography

Bynum, C. W. (1995). The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christendom. Columbia University Press, New York.

Resurrection of Christ. The conviction that God not only sent His Son into the world but also vindicated Him after His death upon a cross, is fundamental to the NT witness and the cornerstone of Christian faith and theology.

One of the earliest Christian creeds, quoted by St Paul at 1 Cor. 15: 3–5 (perhaps 15: 3–7) speaks of Christ being raised (i.e. by God) ‘on the third day’, and appearing to Cephas (i.e. St Peter) and to the twelve. Other appearances are listed. Paul insists (v.11) that this belief was shared on all sides in the early Church.

The Gospels report the discovery of Christ's empty tomb either by St Mary Magdalene alone (Jn. 20: 1–9) or with one or more other women (Mt. 28: 1; Mk. 16: 1; Lk. 24: 10). They disagree over other details: whether it was one or two angels or young men who told of Christ's resurrection, whether Christ Himself then appeared, whether He or the young man directed the disciples to Galilee, and whether the women obeyed. Appearances in Jerusalem and/or Galilee follow. Attempts to harmonize these traditions have not persuaded critics, but the testimony of the biblical writers to the Divine event itself is unanimous. However, because Paul (writing earlier than the Evangelists) did not mention the empty tomb, some modern critics have questioned its historicity.

The nature of Christ's risen body has been a matter of debate. Insistence on its objective reality may be found at Lk. 24: 36–43, but the Gospels generally avoid implying that He was restored to His previous earthly life; He is said, for example, to have passed through closed doors (Jn. 20: 19).

Resurrection of Christ. Fundamental tenet of Christianity, that Jesus was raised from the dead by God ‘on the third day’ after his crucifixion. It was part of the earliest Christian preaching (the kerygma). All four gospels record that Jesusʾ tomb was found empty on Easter Sunday morning, but no one would have come to believe that he had been raised from the dead on that basis alone. According to Paul and the gospel writers (except Mark?) the cause of the belief was Jesusʾ appearances to his followers (beginning with Peter: Luke 24. 34). Scholars who discount the appearances of Jesus as the cause of the Easter belief usually hold a ‘theological theory’ instead: the disciples, reflecting on Jesusʾ death, believed that it could not have been the end, and came to faith that God had raised him up; but in the Jewish context, and in the context of the fact of the crucifixion, there is no serious possibility that theological theories of this kind are correct.

Already in the New Testament the theological significance of the resurrection is variously expressed: as God's vindicating Jesus and raising him to his right hand in heaven (Acts 2. 34–6); as an anticipation of the general resurrection (1 Thessalonians 4. 14); as Christ's victory over death (1 Corinthians 15. 57); and as the basis of the new life of Christians (Romans 4. 24).

Muslims deny the resurrection of Christ, believing that he did not die on the cross at all; and the Aḥmadīyya maintain that he went on to preach in India, and believe that they can identify his tomb.

Resurrection

The central claim of Christianity, that the pre-existent Son of God was incarnated in the man Jesus, that Jesus was the Christ (or Anointed One), and that Jesus died an agonizing death and three days later came back to life in the flesh. Underlying Christianity is a belief in the goodness of material creation and the necessity of a body for a human individual to be a complete person. Future existence will be in a "spiritual body," though there is some disagreement as to what the Apostle Paul means by that term (I Cor. 15:44). Jesus in his resurrected body, as recorded in the gospel accounts and the books of Acts, had what appeared to be a physical body. He ate food and invited Thomas to touch his body. Again, he did extraordinary things such as suddenly appear in a closed room.

Many Spiritualists' and Christians' acceptance of Spiritualist claims have argued for "resurrection" in what might be termed an astral or light body, a non-corporeal body suitable for life in an existence analogous to earthly life but quite distinct from the material world.

As the theory of reincarnation has become the dominant belief within the New Age community, there has been an attempt to confuse the two terms both out of ignorance of Christian belief and in an attempt to lessen the tension in a society in which the majority believe in "resurrection" in a Christian sense.

Resurrection (Lat., resurgo, ‘I arise’). The destiny of the dead in the restoration to them of bodies through which their continuing identity can be expressed. The belief occurs especially in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, the belief that people will ultimately be raised from the dead is not found in the Hebrew scriptures until the end of the biblical period. However, by the rabbinic period, the doctrine had become a central tenet of the Jewish religion. In rabbinic thought the doctrine involved reward and punishment for the whole nation, and a belief that body and soul are indivisible and both will be resurrected. Later Jewish philosophers continued to disagree on the details. In general, Progressive Judaism has abandoned the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in favour of belief in the immortality of the soul, but it remains a basic tenet of Orthodoxy.

In Christianity, the belief in resurrection rests partly in the teaching attributed to Jesus and in the debates in the Jewish context of the time, but much more in the resurrection of Christ. This produced the traditional teaching that at the parousia of Christ departed souls will be restored to a bodily life, and the saved will enter in this renewed form upon the life of heaven.

For Resurrection in Islam (Arab., baʿth, nushūr), see YAUM AL-QIYĀMA; YAUM AL-DIN.

resurrection [Lat.,=rising again], arising again from death to life. The emergence of Jesus from the tomb to live on earth again for 40 days as told in the Gospels has been from the beginning the central fact of Christian experience and a cardinal feature of Christian doctrine (Mat. 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20; Acts 4.2; Romans 6). It was the guarantee not only of Christ's mission and the seal of redemption but also of the resurrection of all men. The general resurrection or resurrection of the body has been understood in diverse ways, always in the light of St. Paul's teaching on the risen or glorified body. In the conventional theology the material body is identified with the glorified body (since the soul is the substantial form of each) and is in some way spiritualized so that it is made incorruptible and immortal. At the end of the world (see Judgment Day ) the souls of all men will be reunited with their risen bodies. The Christian doctrine of resurrection of the body is thus fundamentally different from the resurrection beliefs of the ancient Egyptian religion and other ancient religions (see fertility rites ). Belief in a resurrection of the body distinguished the Pharisees from the Sadducees. It is also a tenet of Muslim belief.

Bibliography: See C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (1995).

res·ur·rec·tion / ˌrezəˈrekshən/ • n. the action or fact of resurrecting or being resurrected: the story of the resurrection of Osiris. ∎  (the Resurrection) (in Christian belief) Christ's rising from the dead. ∎  (the Resurrection) (in Christian belief) the rising of the dead at the Last Judgment. ∎  the revitalization or revival of something: the resurrection of the country under a charismatic leader | resurrections of long-forgotten scandals.

resurrection Rising of the dead to new life, either in heaven or on Earth. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all hold that at the end of the world there will come a Day of Judgement on which those worthy of eternal joy will be allowed to draw near to God, while those unworthy will be cast out into darkness. The term also applies to the rising of Jesus Christ from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion.

Resurrection, the in Christian belief, Christ's rising from the dead; the rising of the dead at the Last Judgement.

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