Eschatology and the Soul: Resurrection

Eschatology and the Soul

• Initial perceptions of eschatology often revolve around the soul's immortality and indestructibility, which contrasts with the body.
• This view suggests a spiritual existence prior to embodiment and a depreciation of the physical aspect.
• Salvation is then seen as the soul's rescue from the material world, with heaven as a disembodied state.
• Contemporary scholarship challenges this, pointing to a stark contrast with early Christian beliefs.
• New Testament scholars find the early church's eschatology focused elsewhere.
• Ironically, the concept of an immortal soul sounds more like Gnosticism than orthodox Christianity.
• Jesus and the disciples would have held beliefs developed from their Jewish context; Hebrew scriptures do not support the idea of an indestructible part surviving bodily decay.
• The Hebrew word 'nephesh,' translated as 'soul,' does not imply an indestructible core.

Resurrection and the Hebrew Bible

• Explicit texts regarding new life beyond the grave are scarce in the Hebrew Bible. The most notable is Daniel 12:2.
• The resurrection of the dead is distinct from the survival of an immortal part of us after death.
• Resurrection involves the return of the whole person, body and soul, not just the survival of the spiritual dimension.
• Bodily physicality in resurrection is evident in Jewish literature before Christianity.
• 2 Maccabees has a story of seven brothers presenting body parts to executioners, expecting God to restore them in future resurrection, exemplified by 2 Macc 7:11.
• Jesus affirmed the belief in the resurrection of the dead, disagreeing with those who denied it; using scripture, referencing God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt 22.32).
• The most groundbreaking events for early believers aligned with Jewish expectations; gospel accounts stress the bodily dimension, for example, Luke 24:38.
• 1 Corinthians 15 mentions Jesus' resurrection being the cause and model for future resurrection (1Cor15:20-22).
• Jesus' resurrection wasn't the survival of an immortal aspect but an act of God, a creative act bringing life out of death.

The Kingdom of God and Eschatology

• Jewish eschatology was at the core of first Christians beliefs, and not marginal.
• Eschatological ideas are crucial to understanding early Christian texts.
• Jesus frequently spoke of the Kingdom of God, which is the announcement of the his preaching, the nature of his parables, and demonstrated by his ministry.
• The Kingdom of God is an eschatological phenomenon that has dominated New Testament scholarship.
• Eschatology refers to a future age of glory where the divine can be fully revealed.
• The Kingdom of God is a communal, and social phenomenon, contrasting individual isolated salvation, and certainly not an individually disembodied soul.
• Christian theology turned it into individualised message, which argues that 'Christian theology in the course of time turned the Kingdom of God into a Kingdom of heaven it is beyond this mortal life; the well-being of men became a salvation of souls, which again comes to pass beyond this life
• The message of Jesus Christ, is not only about 'another life', but was addressing the body, the whole man, with his involvement in history and society.

Prayers and Eschatology

• Jesus did not advocate spiritualist vagueism instead, he instructed his disciples to pray for God's Kingdom to come, for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• It was not about going to heaven after death but heaven coming to earth.
• The language used to describe Jesus by the first believers is eschatological in character.
• The use of "Christ" or "Messiah" were used to exemplify is eschatological character.
• It is not the Christian was fulfilling Jewish messianic expectation instead, he was the agent eschatological salvation.

Paul's Epistles and Eschatology

• Pauls epistles show what he took from his Jewish heritage, like resurrection plus the outpouring of the spirit.
• This outlook reshaped his Jewish upbringing.
• Paul's message of salvation is not peripheral, but focuses on a new creation breaking into the present.
• In 2 Corinthians, Paul states that being united to Christ means being a new creation, where the old order has gone and a new order has begun (2 Cor 5:17).
• Paul believed the future the scriptures bear witness to the fulfilment of the age of eschatological fulfilment.
• The new creation is not about leaving of the material world, but its' transformation.
• In Romans, Paul mentions 'that whole universe itself is to be freed from the shackles of mortality', which implies a clear transformation of creation.
• What happened to Jesus now happens the whole creation.
• Revelation mentions, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem", implying God has to come down to earth to be with his people.

Revelation and Apocalypse

• The book of Revelation picks up Jewish eschatalogical or populistic expectations of the time.
• Ernst Kasemann, an apocolyptic theology argued that this theology is the "mother is Christianity".
• The contrast is between between the bodily-earth centred eschatology of the Christian scripture, and the popular otherworldly eschatology.
• The popular belief in the modern age for Christians is they tend vision the soul being survived with little reference to the resurrection or recreation.

Platonism and Eschatology

• Pagan philosophy, particularly Platonism, has influenced the development of Christianity in process.
• Original expectation had become spiritualised.
• Platonism divides material and ideal forms; mind/ soul is the real person and part of unchanging world.
• Platonic hope therefore was for disembodied life; bodily resurrection runs against Platonic philosophy.
• Christian hope that reflects a worldview of the Bible is towards hope for the the whole creative entity.
• However, eschatology is influenced by Platonic dualism differentiates between spirit and body, individual and society.
• First few centuries, radicals spiritualisation in the form of Gnosticism resist Christian theology.

Gnosticism

• Gnostics share the belief that it is a sign of fallen world and humanity is not in its best condition.
• Salvation is freedom that comes from rejecting this belief - Brian Daley.

Irenaeus of Lyons

• 2nd century theologian, who defended bodily resurrection againts the Gnostic tendencies.
• 'Irenaeus's theology is essentially a plea for the religious relevance pf the ordinary things, of the material world, as the place of God's creation and redemption; of Israel's whole biblical narrative, interpreted and "summed up" in Christ; of the reality of Christ's human flesh as the instrument by which he revealed in the world the life-giving glory of God.'
• 'Central to the salvation of the faithful, Irenaeus argued, is the “resurrection of the flesh", the final goal of God's original plan for human creation.' - Brian Daley.
• Stresses the flesh aspect so much that it gives hyperbole - Dennis Minns.

Origen

• Origen tried to marry Platonism and some sort of Christianity together.
• Origen's theology begins 'cyclical', where souls contemplate God but fall away - they are then given bodily form to redeem but leave, in order to reach their original unity.
• 'Origen, who accepted the arguments of Plato ... on the immortality of the soul, considered them to be naturally immortal ... the spiritual world of rational creatures was.
• Since creatures are fallible, then the they must possess free will choose'.
• 'Their current position is as fallen away from God, but this fall removes right freely choose'.

Origen view on Paul

• This Paul meant the resurrection towards contemplation of God, which Jesus mentions and fulfils.
• This makes body very irrelevant to theology, and the inconsistency with the the churches teachings on the resurrection was not lost on some of Origen's opponents.

Origen Vs Church Traditions

• You can reconcile his perspective with the Church tradtion by talking Paul's Corinthians of a spiritual body.
• 'Origen insists that Christians look for resurrection in a way that is worthy of God the raising of what Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 refers to as a spiritual body related causally to the present one, but incorruptible and wholly new in qualities and appearance
• One theologian, suggested that the 'Origen was so criticised for conceiving the risen body'
• His approach to to resurrect it was spiritualised and little differed from other gnostic sects.

Origin interpretations on Resurrection

• Dangerous close in line woth, Greek hopre of immoratility towards the soul.
• A clear Hellenization case study for Christian eschatology.
• Desire to defend Origin as although believe seem indispensible and has been.

Mark Edwards defends Origin from the Metaphysics of Plato

• Mark Edwards defends to Origin as his theology based on scripture and not Plato.
• "1 Corinthians 15:42 and following: 'So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. it is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.' " - 1 Cor 15:42-44
• Some translations suggest the body is physical or what is made of, versus its' composition toward something like spirit. One can compare the balloon analogy.
• Easter Orthodoxy is how the spirit transforms body from death to one of living.

The body versus the soul

• Similarly the same misunderstanding surrounds 1 Cor 15:50 mentions '"flesh and blood"
• Jeremiah has demonstrated, does note refer to body but human nature or human frailty.
• Septuagint details human at its weakness, towards vulnerability, and in this sense Paul states it comes from not "flesh and blood" but from God'.

Augustine

• Eschatological thesis New Testament spiritualised the idea of hope.
• He read of the books 'The Platonists', in his move was his from 'Manichean theology', to Christianity
• He was complex to see him on the nature resurrection.
• He also parted companies from the Neoplatonism because of these key issues.
• As Plato insists underbodination from to body to to soul.
• Platonists begin sound Manichean, when wished of the body.

Augustine on scripture

• The dogma around the 'resurrection' had his 'exegesis', of his new new profound scripture.
• This mean by resurrection of the flesh as even though called flesh by Augustie.
• Interpreting him is a complex sounds both like opposed Origin and Irenaeus.
• Never the less, new thinking is that never left behind Platonism in Augustine.
• Instead has a distinctive Christian of Platonism In the making.

How does Augustine apply the philosophies?

• Plotinus turns Augustine towards inward through outward world into a kind of soul.
• Augustian only thinks about how how worthy things can know God and the soul.
• The 'Platonism' acts as a force towards 'God', because of its nature God acts as God to be attributes.
• Augustine problem is 'how to locate God wihtin the soul without affirming the divinity of the soul'.
• Augustines comes to a solution where "turn into the inside' into a movement in then up, first entering within the soul and then looking above it.'.

Gods presence for Augustine

• Augistine, mentions is a complex set God in all things above, so it belongs middle point and beneath.
• Then argues the aprooarching of of God never less Augustine, continue of his mind.
• The understanding of the concenption in here by platonist tradition.
• So is the implication here is both sacrament neither efficacious for God.
• Carylso argues to support to what seems scriptual support.
• And cary conclused it is much like Platonism of massies.

Continuing Augustines thoughts

• One can further state can could have the more Platonism on the world.
• Concluding will the that those say the had enought as 'both theologians affirms bodily'
• The soul is fascination particulalry 'Origins', also 'finding little support in those things.
• This shift in focus away from the end and more toward just the soul ends.

Explore eschatology's initial perceptions of the soul's immortality and contrast with early Christian beliefs. Early church eschatology focused on the resurrection. Examine the Hebrew word 'nephesh' and its implications for understanding the soul.