Third installment in Gnosticism series

Those who have been following my ongoing series on Gnosticism and Evangelicalism will be pleased to know that the third installment in this series has now been published at the Chuck Colson Center. Titled 'Raised a Spiritual Body', I have continued the discussion of bodily resurrection, interacting with certain Gnostic tendencies that are prevalent in the contemporary church. This article gives particular attention to St. Paul's discussion of resurrection in chapter 15 of his letter to the Corinthians. This is good timing, not simply because it is still the Easter season, but because these reflections dampen the sorrow we feel at the passing of Chuck Colson.

Following is a link to the article, as well as a link to the two preceding articles in the series:

• Raised a Spiritual Body: Gnosticism and Evangelicalism (3)
• Resurrection and the Sanctification of Matter: Gnosticism & Evangelicalism (2) 
• Salvation as Escape from the Body: Gnosticism and Evangelicalism (1)

Further Reading

Eight Gnostic Myths You May Have Imbibed

Jonathan Edwards on Resurrection

“Redemption is not complete till the resurrection, not only with respect to the positive good and happiness that is obtained, but also with respect to what they are redeemed and delivered from. So long as the separation between soul and body remains, one of those evils remains that is part of the penalty of the law; one of our enemies remains. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Death and hades, or a state of separation, are two evils that shall be at the last day cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14). To be without the body is in itself an evil, because 'tis a want of that which the soul of man naturally inclines to and desires. And though it causes no uneasiness in the departed spirits of the saints, it is not because they don't want it, but because their certain hope and clear prospect of it, and apprehension how much it will be best for them, and most for their happiness to receive it in the time that God's wisdom determines, satisfies them till that time and is a full remedy against all uneasiness; and they perfectly rest in the hope and prospect and trust in God that they have. There is something that they still want, and their rest and satisfaction is not a rest of enjoyment, but a rest of perfect and glorious trust and hope.”

Thus wrote Jonathan Edwards, when reflecting on the wonderful Christian hope. He suggests that because being without a body is in itself an evil, our salvation will only be complete when the Lord gives us a new body. Contemporary Christians sometimes overlook this important aspect, focusing exclusively on the salvation of the soul. Some Christian writers have even gone so far as to suggest that our spirits will never be reunited with our body, but that we will be non-corporeal throughout all of eternity.

Keep reading...

Escape from the Body?

In a recent article I wrote for the Chuck Colson Center, I shared a Time Magazine report from the close of last century. Time had reported that two thirds of Americans who say they believe in the resurrection of the dead do not believe they will have bodies after the resurrection.

More recently, a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll interviewed 1,007 American adults and discovered that only 36% of them said “yes” to the question: “Do you believe that, after you die, your physical body will be resurrected someday?” Yet most of these same Americans also acknowledged being believers and going to church.
 

The Christians who were polled reflect the increasingly common notion that the culmination of salvation is to live in heaven for eternity as disembodied spirits rather than to have our physical body raised from the dead. The Time Magazine poll suggests that this is now often what people assume the word ‘resurrection’ means.

 

Many who rightly consider it a sign of theological liberalism to spiritualize Christ’s resurrection into something non-physical are quite comfortable doing just that when it comes to their own. This stands in contrast to both the Bible (particularly 1^st Corinthians 15) and ancient Christian creeds (particularly the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed), which taught that the resurrection of the physical body is the culmination of salvation.

Although the Christians who were polled did not realize it, their thinking had been deeply tinctured by the heresy of Gnosticism.

Keep reading...

Blanchard's Surprise

In John Blanchard's article, "Whatever Happened to Heaven?" he noted the scarcity of the topic of heaven within historic Christian discourse. While Blanchard sees this as both a surprise and a great tragedy, I see it as neither. Rather, it makes sense when we  realize that bodily resurrection, not heaven, is the primary locus of the Christian hope according to the New Testament (a point I have developed in my other posts about resurrection). This is what Blanchard notes:

Jonathan Edwards on Resurrection

I recently posted some shocking statistics about the denial of future bodily resurrection among professing Christians. One of the best resources for understanding why this denial is so radically unbiblical is Tom Wright’s refreshing book Surprised by Hope. For those who don’t have time to read Wright’s book, however, the following words from Jonathan Edwards serve as a timely reminder of just how wrong-headed this crypto-gnosticism is:

Alarming Survey on Bodily Resurrection

"Most Americans don’t believe they will experience a resurrection of their bodies after they die, putting them at odds with a core teaching of Christianity," I read today here. The article confirms concerns that I expressed in my earlier article, "Resurrection or Disembodiment." The writers go on to say:

The findings of a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll surprised and dismayed some of the nation’s top theologians since it seems to put Americans in conflict with the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, ancient statements of faith meant to unify Christian belief.

Matter/Spirit Dualism

In my previous post, "Dorothy Sayers and the Aliveness of All Things", I discussed the way Sayers went to such lengths to establish what she termed “the intimate unison between spirit and matter.” To a large degree Sayers was legitimately reacting against the disjunction between the material world and the spiritual that was a recurring motif in 20th century Protestant discourse. James Campbell was typical when, in 1924, he observed that,

“When the material world perishes, we shall find ourselves in the spiritual world; when the dream of life ends, we shall awake in the world of reality; when our connection with this world comes to a close, we shall find ourselves in our eternal spirit home.” 

Behind Campbell’s words lay the assumption that matter and spirit are not merely distinguishable, in the way that men and women are distinguishable, but that they are utterly divisible and contradistinct, similar to the antithesis between light and darkness. Over and against the traditional of historic Christian theology which had maintained that the doctrines of Creation, Incarnation and Resurrection made possible the marrying together of matter and spirit, much popular evangelicalism of the 20th century seemed to be following the Gnostics in urging their divorce. Nowhere was this more evident than in the nascent Platonism opposed by Sayers which made the doctrine of the soul’s immortality, rather than bodily resurrection, the central locus of the Christian’s hope.

Resurrection or Disembodiment? Gnosticism in Evangelical Theology

Someone left an interesting comment on my post about Gnosticism, saying "I so often feel like an outsider with my hope not resting in the so-called immortality of the soul, but rather the resurrection from the grave. This being a belief that few hold where pastors constantly rail against it and deride any who hold such a belief."

That comment caught me at a good time, because I have recently been doing some writing and reading around this issue as part of the process of preparing a research proposal for  postgraduate study. It is indeed a sad indictment on the state of the evangelical church that much of its unofficial theology now functionally denies the doctrine of bodily resurrection and has been replaced by ideas more akin to Gnosticism and Greek philosophy than Christianity.

Let's talk about Greek philosophy first.

Tom Wright on Resurrection

Tom Wright on Resurrection, Heaven and Hell