Theological glossary · FaithLogic

Resurrection

God's raising of the dead to renewed bodily life — accomplished already in Jesus ('the firstfruits') and promised to all at the last day.

Latin resurrectio, 'a rising again'; Greek anastasis ('a standing up') and egersis ('a waking').

Daniel 12:2; Isaiah 26:19; Ezekiel 37; John 5:28–29; 11:25; Acts 24:15; 1 Corinthians 15; Philippians 3:21; Revelation 20:4–6, 12–13.

Jewish hope (Pharisees, not Sadducees) was corporate and at the end of the age; the Christian claim that one man was raised, transformed and immortal, in the middle of history is a sharp mutation of that hope. Confessed in every creed ('the third day he rose again'; 'the resurrection of the dead').

Not resuscitation (a return to mortal life, like Lazarus) but transformation — the same body, now imperishable and Spirit-empowered ('a spiritual body', 1 Cor 15:44), continuous with the old yet gloriously changed. Christ's resurrection is the pattern and guarantee of the believer's.

Whether the resurrection of Jesus is a historical event (historic Christianity), a subjective vision, or the rise of the 'Easter faith' (Bultmann); and, for the general resurrection, the relation of the raised body to the buried one.

Open in the glossary for related terms and the doctrines this concept appears in.