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Doctrine

Resurrection

Also Known As Resurrection of the dead · resurrection of the bodyOriginal Term anastasis (Greek); techiyat ha-metim (Hebrew)
Last Things
Origin 165 BCE to 381 CE

The creeds are more specific than the modern translations suggest. The Apostles' Creed says resurrection of the flesh, and the Nicene says resurrection of the dead; the familiar "resurrection of the body" is a twentieth-century softening. They mean it as opposed to something else. The immortality of the soul is a Greek philosophical doctrine, and it is not what the resurrection language is asserting. Paul argues the point at length in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians and insists on a body, transformed, incorruptible, but a body, against interlocutors who apparently found the idea repellent. The Athenians in Acts are reported as laughing at it. A great deal of ordinary Christian talk about the dead has quietly reverted to the position the doctrine was formulated against.

The unresolved question inside Christianity is the intermediate state: what obtains between death and the general resurrection. The mainstream answer is a conscious existence of the soul awaiting reunion with the body, which requires the soul to be doing something in the interval. A minority tradition holds instead that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection, which has the merit of taking the resurrection seriously as the moment life resumes and the cost of leaving the dead nowhere in the meantime. Seventh-day Adventists hold this, as did Tyndale and a number of the more radical Reformers. Jehovah's Witnesses are regularly listed alongside them and should not be: their teaching is that the person ceases to exist altogether at death and is recreated at the resurrection, which is a stronger claim than an unconscious soul and goes by a different name.

A further minority position, conditional immortality, holds that immortality is a gift given to the saved rather than a property of every soul, and that the lost are destroyed rather than everlastingly tormented.

The concept is not Christian property. Resurrection of the dead is a Pharisaic doctrine before it is a Christian one, denied by the Sadducees, affirmed in the second blessing of the Amidah and in Maimonides' principles; and bodily resurrection at the Day of Judgement is standard in Islam.

Facts
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Defined and binding within this tradition 1Tradition: Christianity
Confessed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed
Status Within the Tradition
Defined and binding within this tradition 2Tradition: Islam
A Quranic essential
Status Within the Tradition
Binding, without a formal definition 2Tradition: Islam
Al-Ghazali counted the denial of bodily resurrection as unbelief
Status Within the Tradition
Genuinely disputed within this tradition 3Tradition: Judaism
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 3
Origins
Origin Period
165 BCE to 381 CE 1
Held By
Held as dogma within mainstream Christianity, confessed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed, and within Islam, where it is a Quranic essential; contested within Judaism, where belief in bodily resurrection has never been uniform across its movements. 1
Position Profile
Key Text
Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter fifteen, is the earliest surviving extended argument for the resurrection and its centrality to Christian faith. 1
Doctrinal category (class)Sourced to the subject's own account
Last Things 4
Identity
Also Known As
Day of Resurrection 1
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Mainstream Christian creeds affirm bodily resurrection, distinct from mere spiritual survival or the immortality of the soul alone, though traditions differ on the nature of the risen body. 1
The Claim
The Claim
That Jesus Christ rose bodily from death on the third day after his crucifixion, and, more broadly in Christian eschatology, that the dead will be bodily raised at the end of the age. 1
Learn More
The Body, Not the Soul

In the strict sense the doctrine of resurrection is about the raising of the dead in the body, and it is deliberately distinct from the survival or immortality of a soul. The creeds are specific, "the resurrection of the body," "the resurrection of the dead", where popular belief often drifts toward a disembodied afterlife the doctrine does not teach.

Within the Hebrew Bible an explicit hope of resurrection emerges late and unevenly; Daniel 12:2, with its promise that "many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake," is the clearest statement, and by the first century it divided the Pharisees, who affirmed it, from the Sadducees, who did not. Christian teaching makes the resurrection of Jesus the hinge: in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul argues that Christ is raised as the "firstfruits," that the dead will be raised likewise, and that what is raised is a "spiritual body", transformed, not merely resuscitated flesh, but bodily nonetheless. In Islam the parallel doctrine of bodily resurrection at the Day of Judgement is treated in its own entry.

What Happens in Between, and the Minority Reports

Two questions have generated most of the disagreement: the state of the dead before the general resurrection, and whether every soul is by nature immortal.

The mainstream of patristic and medieval theology, carried into the Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches, teaches bodily resurrection preceded by a conscious intermediate state, the dead are with God or otherwise await the end while remaining aware. Against this, some radical Reformers and later bodies such as the Seventh-day Adventists have held soul sleep (psychopannychism), the view that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection wakes them. A related minority position, conditional immortality, denies that the soul is inherently deathless and holds that unending life is a gift given only to the redeemed, so that the lost finally cease to be rather than suffering forever.

Historically, the doctrine's early defenders spent their energy against the opposite tendency: Gnostic and philosophical currents that treated the body as a prison to be escaped and read resurrection as a metaphor for the soul's liberation. The insistence on a raised body was, in that setting, a claim that the material creation is good and is not discarded at the end.

Resurrection
Filter Results1 entry

The resurrection of Christ

Resurrection
Connections

Affirmed By

The resurrection of Christ, Beliefs & Restrictions

The bodily resurrection of Christ affirmed as a historical claim, not a symbol.

Belongs to Tradition

Anabaptism, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Anglicanism, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Baptist, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Calvinism (Reformed), Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Christianity, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Conservative Judaism, Denominations

Bodily resurrection language is retained in the traditional liturgy, unlike classical Reform's removal of it.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Eastern Orthodoxy, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Haredi Judaism, Denominations

Bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed literally.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Islam, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Jehovah's Witnesses, Denominations

The resurrection of the dead is affirmed doctrine, applied to both the earthly and the 144,000 heavenly resurrections this tradition teaches.

Source Jehovah's Witnesses: Continuity and ChangeGeorge D. Chryssides
Judaism, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), Denominations

The fourth Article of Faith and the whole plan of salvation turn on a literal bodily resurrection, taught as universal.

Lutheranism, Denominations

Article III confesses that Christ truly rose again on the third day, and Article XVII the resurrection of all the dead at his return.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Methodism, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Modern Orthodox Judaism, Denominations

Bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed literally.

Source The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles ReappraisedMarc B. Shapiro
Oriental Orthodoxy, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Orthodox Judaism, Denominations

Bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed literally, per Maimonides' thirteenth principle of faith.

Source The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles ReappraisedMarc B. Shapiro
Pentecostalism, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Presbyterianism, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Roman Catholicism, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Held Differently

Seventh-day Adventism, Denominations

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Seventh-day Adventism, Denominations

Soul sleep and conditional immortality: the dead are unconscious until the resurrection, and immortality is a gift rather than an inherent property of the soul.

Rejected Here

Humanistic Judaism, Denominations

Bodily resurrection is rejected as a supernatural claim inconsistent with this stream's humanistic philosophy.

Source Society for Humanistic Judaism (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Reform Judaism, Denominations

The 1885 Pittsburgh Platform rejects belief in bodily resurrection, affirming instead the immortality of the soul.

Source The Pittsburgh PlatformCentral Conference of American Rabbis (predecessor gathering)the holders' own account

Positions on This Question

Eastern Orthodoxy, Denominations

Bodily resurrection at the end, with the departed conscious and prayed for in the interval.

Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Bodily resurrection at the end, with a conscious intermediate state between death and the general resurrection.

Related To

Christus Victor, Doctrines

On this account the resurrection is not the sequel to the atonement but the moment the victory becomes visible.

Source Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the AtonementGustaf Aulen
The Last Judgement, Doctrines
The Resurrection, Miracles

The doctrine of resurrection covers the general raising of the dead; what is described here is the specific historical claim about Jesus and its evidentiary debate, which that entry does not address. Cross-linked, not duplicated.

The Resurrection of Jesus, Religious Events

The creedal doctrine states the claim this event records.

Transmission Of

Zoroastrianism, Religions

Why this is disputed. Bodily resurrection and a Last Judgment in Second Temple Judaism, possibly reflecting Zoroastrian eschatology. Mary Boyce and other Iranists argue the timing supports transmission, since Zoroastrian ideas of a final judgment and bodily restoration are attested well before comparable Jewish texts; other scholars, pointing to the difficulty of dating Zoroastrian doctrine independently of the Achaemenid and later periods, argue the resemblance may instead reflect parallel development or a later exchange running in either direction.

Source A History of ZoroastrianismMary Boyce
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005Entry: Resurrection of the dead; intermediate stateView the Source
2. The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection
Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Oxford University Press, 2002View the Source
3. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005art. ResurrectionView the Source
4. The Pittsburgh Platform
Central Conference of American Rabbis (predecessor gathering), 1885the holders' own accountView the Source
Jehovah's Witnesses: Continuity and Change
George D. Chryssides, Routledge, 2016
The Augsburg Confession
Philipp Melanchthon, 1530The Augsburg Confession, Articles III and XVIIView the Source
Society for Humanistic Judaism (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, WikipediaView the Source
The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised
Marc B. Shapiro, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004
Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Macmillan Reference USA, 2007View the Source
The Holy Bible
Anonymous (multiple authors), Robert Barker, 16111 Corinthians 15, on the resurrection of the dead and the spiritual body; Daniel 12:2View the Source
A History of Zoroastrianism
Mary Boyce, Brill, 1989View the Source

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