2. The resurrection was not a transfer of the natural body, of 'flesh and blood' and of natural human relations into the transcendent realm. Jesus risen, Jesus reigning in heaven, does not possess a material organization identical with that with which He was clothed on earth. Says St. Paul: "Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more. The old things are passed away. "Old principles of judgment," says Dr. Brown, "are at an end." Such a transfer of flesh and blood would be a violation of human nature, a limitation, not the perfection, of personal freedom. Much more is to be affirmed than an external translation from a lower to a higher sphere. The earthly organization with which He was born was in one respect superseded and surmounted in the article of death. The same personality as to nature and constitution that died, rose again from the dead; but in developing His identity He underwent a miraculous change. 'Put to death in the

flesh,' He was 'quickened in Spirit.'

From this negative conception two things follow: 1. The natural and spiritual conditions on which depended the communion of His disciples with Him whilst living in the flesh now no longer avail. When Jesus drew near to two of His disciples going to a village named Emmaus, 'their eyes were holden that they should not know Him.' A thorough-going spiritual change of the disciples, a new creation, became requisite, corresponding to the spiritual

12 Cor. v. 16. Meyer's interpretation of the passage is: "Wenn auch der Fall statt gefunden hat, dass wir nach Fleische norm Christum erkannt haben, so findet aber jetzt dieses Erkennen desselben nicht mehr bei uns statt."

transition which Jesus experienced when He rose from the dead. Says Paul: "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, they are become new." Again He says: "If then Christ, seek the things that

2. Christ living and suffer

ye were raised together with are above, where Christ is." ing in the flesh is not, when taken by itself, an adequate criterion of judgment respecting His personality. A correct conception concerning Him as represented by His deeds and words on earth is indeed necessary and of first importance, but this conception is not the norm of judg ment concerning His personality in the transcendent realm.

3. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is not a transition that may be predicated of any one member or element of His divine-human constitution. The mystery embraces the whole Christ. "He who rises from the dead," says Van Oosterzee, "is not the man Jesus merely, but the God-man, during and after the state of death inseparably one with the Father.”3

The resurrection may not be predicated of His divinity, implying that as God, being mightier than death and Satan, He overcame death and Satan. Such a conception denies the reality of the resurrection, resolving it into an empty vision. Jesus rose from the dead in His humanity.

Nor may the resurrection be predicated of His humanity, if we imply that the manhood of Christ was raised up and enabled to triumph by the mighty power of God the Father, the divinity of Christ meanwhile being quiescent, or not a participant in the mystery of the transaction. Such an opinion is both Ebionitic and dualistic: Ebionitic it is, inasmuch as the resurrection, the corner-stone of 2 Col. iii. I. 3 Christian Dogmatics, II., p. 564.

1 2 Cor. v. 17.

Christianity, would be a victory achieved in the person of a man only, not of the God-man; dualistic it is, for it severs the divine nature from the human nature in the consummating epoch of redemption. The assumption of manhood into God in the person of the Christ would on this supposition fail in the last stage of His vicarious humiliation.

Much less may we predicate the resurrection of any one part or member of His humanity, of His soul but not of His body, or of His body but not of His soul; for soul and body are an organic unity, each being an essential member of manhood. In either case, whether the resurrection embraces the soul only, or the body only, the reality of the mystery is in effect denied, and as a logical consequence the reality of His death is also denied.

The article of the Christian Creed concerning the death of Jesus by crucifixion, as this death is everywhere set forth in the New Testament, involves His divine-human personality. The Mediator offered Himself on the cross; a truth which means, to say the least, that the offering was made in the wholeness of His manhood. The Mediator as to body and soul subjected Himself to death on the cross, and 'descended into the lower parts of the earth.' The resurrection is the antithesis of His death. As the human soul of the Mediator did not rise from the dead, implying that the remains of His natural body saw corruption, so neither were the remains of His natural body revived and reconstructed, implying that His soul was not implicated in His crucifixion, and therefore that His soul superseded a resurrection. But as His death was a really human death, an epoch including body and soul, so was His resurrection in reality a human resurrection, a victory

over the realm of death in which His manhood in the integrity of its constitution participated.'

§ 271.

The denial of defective views of the resurrection is a corollary from faith in its positive substance.

In rising from the dead the Christ fulfils the law of redemption. Leaving behind the status and mode of His mediatorship belonging to the existing order of the Adamic race on earth, He asserts the hidden force of His mediatorial work in the flesh,' of His bitter passion and death dynamically in the character of a new mystery, a mystery that translates Him from the unglorified into the glorified domain of His theanthropic history.

1. In His resurrection Jesus Christ transcends the fallen mundane order. The event we may call a transcendent act. The Christ does not return from the 'lower parts of the earth' into 'this world;' instead He rises from 'the abyss,' and goes beyond the confines of earth; though not

The conception commonly prevalent among theologians from the ante-Nicene age onward to our own century has limited the resurrection to Christ's body. His body was resuscitated, quickened, changed on the third day. Cf. Dwight's Theology, II., p. 264, 274. This conception is connected with the idea that Christ died as to His humanity, not as to the unity of His constitution. If this interpretation be analyzed it will be found that not a few theological thinkers mean only that Jesus died as to His body, not as to His soul; the assumption being that the soul is immortal whilst the body is mortal. Yet theology, if logically consistent, must concede that the seat of sin is not in the body but in the soul, and in the ruling constituent of the soul, namely, in the will. Sin is the principle of death. Death begins where sin begins. It is the soul that dies under the law of sin. The body dies not of itself, but in consequence of its vital union with the soul. It is the personality of Jesus that revives and triumphs.

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in the absolute sense during the 'forty days' as by His ascension; but in principle He absolves Himself from natural connection with the earthly mode of His existence. The evangelical records agree in showing that He does not reassert Himself amid the conditions of ordinary Adamic life. These Adamic conditions as affecting Himself He abolishes, and He abolishes them forever. From the mundane He passes into the supermundane domain, from the earthly into the heavenly, where He is accessible, not to the bodily senses, not to ordinary natural intelligence, but only to the eye of the faith of the spiritual

man.'

The transcendent state of the Christ was begun in the mystery of the resurrection, but not completed. The resurrection anticipated His ascension, when God "made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come." The forty days preceding His ascension from Mount Olivet were an intermediate stage in the history of His glorification.

Two classes of phenomena appear, natural and supernatural, showing that He was living His resurrection life in a real human body, yet living in a real body that had undergone a marvellous change. Natural phenomena, such as the print of the nails in His hands, the wound in His side, and eating with the disciples, serve to demonstrate His personal identity. With these natural manifestations were connected supernatural phenomena, such as suddenly standing in the midst of the disciples, the doors being shut. Besides, there was something in the expression of His bodily presence which caused the