The eleventh and penultimate Article of the Creed is, like the one that precedes it and the one that follows it, a short and simple Article. In the modified version of the old Roman Symbol that has come down to us as the Apostles’ Creed it consists of two nouns, a subject and a modifying genitive. In the Niceno-Constantinopolitan version of the Creed the subject noun is the same with a different modifying genitive. We shall find the same difference between the two versions when we come to the twelfth and final Article, except that in the eleventh Article it is a simpler swap of a single genitive noun for another whereas in the twelfth it is a complex expression, two words in the Latin, three in the Greek, that takes the place in the conciliar Creed of the single noun in the Apostles’. There is one other difference between the two versions of this Article. Here, as in the tenth Article, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan introduces a new verb to govern the Article.
The verb
that introduces this Article in the version published by the second ecumenical
council is προσδοκοῦμεν. This
word means “we expect.” In the Latin version where the copula implied by the
Greek text is spelled out we find “Et exspécto.” This means “and I expect.” The change from the plural to the singular is
not a Latin innovation. In the
liturgical version of the Greek text the singular is substituted for the plural
here as it is with the previous verbs in the first and tenth Articles. Archbishop Cranmer in the Book of Common Prayer, rather than use
the English transliteration of the Latin, translated it as “and I look for”
which is a better rendition because it retains the strong sense of anticipation
present in the original that words like “expect” and “hope” have lost through
weakening over the last few centuries.
When we looked at the tenth Article it was noted that the shift from
“believe” to “acknowledge” (or “confess”) was not a shift from one verbal idea
to a completely different one but from a verb that expresses an inner action to
that which expresses its external complement (“For with the heart man believeth
unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” Rom.
10:10). Here the shift is one of temporal
orientation. To “look for” or “expect”
is to express faith in that which is promised but yet to come. Note the close relationship between faith and
hope established in Scripture (1 Cor. 13:13, 1 Thess. 1:3, Heb. 11:1).
The noun that is the subject of the article is ἀνάστασις in
the Greek of the conciliar Creed and resurrectio
in the Latin of both versions, with the accusative forms ἀνάστασιν and resurrectionem being used because the
Creed is a form of indirect discourse in which the nouns that are the subjects
of the Articles are the objects of the first person verb(s). Both the Greek and the Latin nouns were
derived from complex versions of the verb for “stand” or “rise”. In the Greek the prefix added to form the
compound usually means “up.” The Latin
prefix means “back” or “again”, the second of these being the meaning it has
here.
The modifying noun in the Apostles’ Creed is carnis, the genitive form of caro.
The use of this word rather than corporis,
the genitive of corpus, may raise a
few eyebrows. Archbishop Cranmer rendered
it “of the body” which would have been the literal translation had the original
been corporis. “Of the flesh” is the literal translation of carnis.
While “flesh” does in ordinary usage mean “the stuff of which the body
is made” in theology it has a specialized meaning that is very different from
this, a meaning established by the usage of St. Paul in his New Testament
epistles.
Consider Galatians 5:16.
In the Authorized Bible this reads “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit,
and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” If this verse stood alone “the lust of the
flesh” could be taken to mean “bodily desires” but the Apostle expands on it
and in verses 19-21 lists several “works of the flesh.” Although the list begins with things such as
“Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness” that would be consistent
with this interpretation it goes on to include items that would not such as
“Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions,
heresies” etc. In some more recent translations other things
are substituted for “the flesh” presumably in order to avoid confusion with the
word’s more literal meaning. Examples include “your sinful nature” (New Living
Translation), “your old nature” (Complete Jewish Bible), “the human nature”
(Good News), “your corrupt nature” (God’s Word), “your sinful selves” (New
Century) and others have added yet a further degree of interpretation to their
translation by rendering it as “selfishness” (The Message) or “selfish” as an
attributive adjective rather than a noun (Common English). While all of these are over-interpretations
in a translation – explaining that “the flesh” in this verse doesn’t mean the
part of you that you can see and touch but the part of you that inclines and
incite you to do bad things is the level of interpretation that belongs to
hermeneutics and exposition not translation – they do give you the general idea
of what “the flesh” means in its non-literal sense. St. Paul, however, chose to speak of the inherited
fallenness of human nature as “the flesh” for a reason, and explaining that
reason is as much the job of the expositor as is explaining what “the flesh”
means in such contexts. Since
over-interpreting in translation can only explain the one and hide the other,
it basically is doing someone else’s job and doing it badly by leaving it half
undone.
In the New Testament, σάρξ, the Greek equivalent of caro, is frequently contrasted with πνεῦμα
(spirit). The contrast begins with these
words in their literal meanings. The spirit or breathe (the same word is used
for both), is the invisible mover of the physical and visible, the flesh. Most often σάρξ is used in its literal
sense. When St. John tells us ὁ
λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο (“the Word became flesh”, Jn. 1:14) this is
clearly with no implications of sinfulness, nor are there any such implications
when Jesus referencing Genesis says that the man and his wife are μία σάρξ
(“one flesh”, Mk. 10:8). In contrasting
the spirit and the flesh, however, the flesh is depicted as the weaker of the
two. See, for example, Matt. 26:41. St. Paul tends to use “the flesh” in a sense
that includes both flesh and spirit in their literal meanings and so means
“human nature” in its entirely. When he
speaks of the flesh/spirit contrast he uses “the flesh” in this inclusive sense
and it is not the human spirit that he is contrasting with the flesh, but the
Holy Spirit. In Romans 7, for example,
where he contrasts his “inward man” that delights in the law of God with his
“flesh” that serves sin, the “inward man” is depicted as his νοῦς (mind) rather
than his πνεῦμα (spirit), so as not to create confusion when in the eighth
chapter he sets forth the way of freedom from walking after the flesh as that
of walking after the Spirit, clearly identified as “the Spirit of God” and “the
Spirit of Christ.” (Rom. 8:9) Similarly
in Galatians 5 where the contrast with the “works of the flesh” is the “fruit
of the Spirit”, the Spirit is the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Therefore, when St. Paul speaks of “the flesh” as human
sinfulness this should not be understood as meaning that sin originates from
the physical side of human nature but rather that it originates from fallen
human nature. While σάρξ in its literal
sense is interchangeable with σῶμα (“the body”) the Apostle normally restricts
the sense of sinfulness to the one word.
The verses could be seen as exceptions to this rule, Rom. 6:6 and 7:24, contrast
a past state or condition with that experienced after baptism and the
liberating power of the Holy Spirit.
This brings us back to the question of the use of carnis rather than corporis in the Apostles’ Creed.
It reads this way in the oldest extent versions of the Creed. St. Irenaeus, whose 2nd century Against Heresies includes a “rule of
faith” that is an early version of the Creed, has in the relevant place the
phrase καὶ ἀναστῆσαι πᾶσαν σάρκα πάσης ἀνθρωπότητος or in Latin et resuscitandam omnem carnem humani generis
which in the standard translation is “and to raise up anew all flesh of the
whole human race” (1) At the end of the
fourth century Rufinus of Aquileia compared the Latin text of the old Roman
Symbol to that used in his own Church and in both the phrase was exactly as it
appears in the current Apostles’ Creed. Earlier that century, Marcellus of Ancyra who
was one of the Fathers at the First Council of Nicaea presented a Greek version
of the Symbol to Julius I, Patriarch of Rome, in which the phrase appears as σαρκὸς
ἀνάστασιν. This strongly indicates
“flesh” to be the original reading. The
evidence of St. Irenaeus may indicate it was the original reading not merely of
what became the Apostles’ Creed but of the ur-Creed that was the ancestor of
both versions.
St. Irenaeus also provides a clue as to why this word was
chosen over the word for body. The
heresies that he addressed in his work are those of the type that today are
collectively referred to as Gnosticism. While
the teachings of these groups varied enough that some have questioned the
usefulness of the lump designation they all tended to disdain the material
world and to regard matter as the unfortunate by-product of the passions of a
lesser deity and the source of all evil in which the spirits of men are trapped
and from which they need liberating.
Since the Gnostic concept of salvation involves this liberation the
concept of a resurrection was abhorrent to them. According to St. Irenaeus (and St. Justin
Marty), the first of these and of all heretics, was Simon Magus (the Samaritan
magician who tried to purchase the Apostolic power in Acts 8). That this type of heresy had started up while
the Apostles were still alive can be seen from the epistles of St. John where
the heretics that he called antichrists were characterized by the denial that
Christ is “come in the flesh” (1 Jn. 4:3, 2 Jn. 7). St. Irenaeus’s “rule of faith” is found
towards the end of his discussion of the Valentinians, one of the earliest of the
Gnostic heresies. It is reasonable to
think that the word “flesh” was chosen for the Article about resurrection in
order to take a clearer stand against this type of heresy. The word could hardly have its specialized
theological sense here as that would give the Article the nonsensical meaning
of “the resurrection of the sinful nature.”
With no fear of confusion in that direction, using “flesh” instead of
“body” guarded against the error of taking St. Paul’s “spiritual body” to mean
“a body composed of spirit rather than matter.” (2) Since “flesh” here is clearly used in its
literal sense, which is interchangeable with “body”, the English is not a wrong
translation. (3)
In the Creed as published by the First Council of
Constantinople in 381, the word νεκρῶν is used.
The Latin correctly translates this as mortuórum and in the Book of
Common Prayer it appears, also correctly, as “of the dead.” The difference between this version and the
Apostles’ Creed is that the Apostles’ Creed identifies what will be resurrected, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan identifies who will be resurrected. The use of this word does not raise the same
sort of questions as the use of “flesh” in the other Creed.
In the Athanasian Symbol, which is based on the Creed but
expanded and structured differently, the section corresponding to the eleventh
Article reads Ad cuius adventum omnes
homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis which in the Book of Common Prayer is translated “At
whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies” (the Canadian edition
of the BCP substitutes the word “must” for “shall”). The Symbol is traditionally attributed to St.
Athanasian of Alexandria who fought Arianism in the fourth century. Since the seventeenth century it has widely
been considered to be later than this, usually sixth century although Daniel
Waterland made a convincing argument for the early fifth. Even if the attribution to St. Athanasius
were correct this would still be in the period after other heresies had
superceded Gnosticism as the primary opponents of orthodoxy and so the reason
for using “flesh” rather than “body” was waning. Nevertheless, the longer wording found here would
effectively accomplish the same thing.
The resurrection confessed here is what is usually referred
to as the General Resurrection. It
includes both the resurrection of the righteous, those who have been cleansed from
their sins and justified by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and the
resurrection of the wicked, those who have rendered their souls incurably by
final impenitent rejection of Christ.
Nevertheless, while both of these are included they are not included
equally. The place in the Creed where
they are equal is in the seventh Article where they are implicitly in Jesus
Christ’s Second Coming to judge “the quick and the dead.” The resurrection of the righteous is very
much what is in focus in the eleventh Article and the resurrection of the
wicked is present merely as the inescapable background to the resurrection of
the righteous. This is evident from the
fact that the resurrection is confessed as an object of faith. “I believe” in the Apostles’ Creed does not
merely mean “I affirm to be true”, although it does, of course, mean that but
has the additional connotations of “I grasp these truths to myself and cling to
them as my only hope in this life and eternity.” In the conciliar Creed, as we have seen, the
verb governing this Article is “I look for”, that is, “I look for in hopeful
anticipation.” The resurrection of the
wicked to the condemnation of final and eternal exclusion from the blessedness
of the righteous, while necessarily part of the General Resurrection confessed
in this Article, can hardly be viewed as the object of these verbs in their
fullest senses. The appropriate way to
confess belief in it is in the bare minimal sense of the word. We believe, that is, we affirm it to be true,
because both Testaments and especially the words of the Lord Jesus Christ
declare it to us.
As an object of faith and hope, the bodily resurrection of
the dead distinguished the religion of the True and Living God from heathenism
even before the Advent of Jesus Christ.
Job, in one of the oldest books of the Old Testament, possibly the
oldest, testified in the midst of his affliction “And though after my skin worms
destroy this body, yet in my flesh
shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and
not another; though my reins be
consumed within me.” (Job 19:26-27)
Although the Old Testament speaks of Sheol, an underworld so similar in
conception to those of pagan mythology that it is rendered Hades in the
Septuagint and in New Testament quotation, the Old Testament contains what
pagan mythologies did not, hope of deliverance from it. This is most observable in the Psalms and
while “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy
One to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10) is a Messianic prophecy of the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is clearly depicted in the
New Testament as the guarantee of the resurrection of all others. By contrast, in pagan mythology deliverance
from the underworld is generally depicted as something that heroes attempt and
fail, as in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. (4) While pagan philosophers such as Plato
explored the idea of the spirits of the dead returning to this world this was
conceived of in terms of reincarnation not resurrection.
By the time of the New Testament a sect called the Sadducees
had arisen which held only the books of Moses to be Scripture and which denied
the doctrine of the General Resurrection.
Each of the Synoptic Gospels records Jesus demonstrating the truth of
the resurrection to them out of the only books they recognized after they
attempted to trip Him up with a garbled retelling of the story of the book of
Tobit. In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus early
on identifies Himself as the One Whose voice will call the dead back to life.
(5) Later, when Lazarus dies, and He
tells Martha “thy brother shall rise again” (Jn. 11:23) she understands him to
speaking of the General Resurrection, “I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day” (v. 24) and He says of Himself in response “I am
the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead,
yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die”
(vv. 25-26) which, when asked if she believed, Martha responded with “Yea,
Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come
into the world” (v. 27). Her confession
is identical to that of St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16:16) and to the
content of saving faith as identified by St. John later in his Gospel (Jn.
20:31). The doctrine of the General
Resurrection and Jesus’ role as the Agent in it is thereby made inseparable
from the basic truths at the heart of the Christian faith.
We find this again in the fifteenth chapter of St. Paul’s
first epistle to the Corinthians. This
chapter begins with St. Paul declaring the Gospel that he preaches, “that
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried,
and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (vv. 3-4)
which is followed by a list of eyewitnesses to the risen Christ (vv. 5-8).
(6) This leads into St. Paul’s argument
against those who deny the resurrection of the dead. If the dead do not rise, St. Paul argues,
then Christ could not have risen, but since Jesus Christ rose from the dead,
therefore the dead rise. (vv.12-20) The resurrection of Jesus Christ, an
element of the Gospel itself, stands or falls with the General Resurrection,
therefore. St. Paul then goes into how
Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection of all, an argument that draws on
the same parallel between Christ and Adam that he would later make in the fifth
chapter of his epistle to the Romans. By
Adam death came upon all, in Christ all shall be made alive, (vv.20-23)
something that is connected both here (vv. 24-28) and at the end of the chapter
(vv.54-57) with Christ’s triumphant defeat of all of His enemies.
This chapter also includes St. Paul’s response to a
hypothetical question about the nature of the body with which the dead are
raised. (vv.35-55). Careless misreading of this passage has been responsible
for many, perhaps most, errors regarding the resurrection both in the early
centuries and in more recent ones. We
have already touched on some of this when considering why the Apostles’ Creed
uses the word carnis rather than corporis.
St. Paul compares the resurrection to the planting of grain,
a comparison that the Lord had previously used in reference to His own
resurrection (Jn. 12:24). He observes
that the grain when it is planted is not yet the plant that will grow from it
(1 Cor. 15:37). He then observes that
flesh comes in different kinds (v. 39) and bodies come in different kinds (v.
40-41), and states that in the resurrection of the dead, the body sown is
different from the body raised (vv. 42-44).
“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” (v. 44) This
verse does not mean, as many have misread it to mean, that the resurrection
body is not physical or material. The
word rendered “natural” in this verse is ψυχικός (the neuter form with a final
nu instead of sigma). This word does not
mean anything like “material” or “physical”.
It is derived from the word for soul, life, or mind from which word all
of our English words beginning psych- are derived. Yes, it is contrasted with “spiritual”, but
both words are adjectives modifying the word σῶμα (body). The idea of physicality or materiality is
implicit in this word, the noun. Consider
the different types of bodies mentioned in verses 40-41. They are all composed of matter. The two adjectives are both derived from
words that denote the immaterial side of human nature. While these words they usually depict
different aspects of that side it is not uncommon for them to be used
interchangeably. In 1 Cor. 15:44 the
adjectival forms are used to create a distinction and since both basically
refer to an immaterial force that animates and controls the body the
distinction is between that which animates the body in this life and that which
will animate it in the resurrection. In
the following verse Genesis is quoted about Adam having been made a ψυχὴν ζῶσαν
(living soul) and the Last Adam (Christ) is said to be a πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν
(quickening or life-giving spirit). The distinction made by calling the
pre-resurrection body “natural” or “soulish” and the resurrection body
“spiritual”, therefore, is that in this life the body is animated by the life
that was bestowed upon man in creation and which has come down from Adam and
which has been corrupted by sin bringing death upon us all but in the
resurrection the body will be animated entirely by the new life that Jesus
Christ came to give us.
This also tells us what St. Paul’s use of the grain analogy
that Jesus had used for His Own resurrection had hinted at and what the
description of Jesus as the firstfruits of the resurrection states
explicitly. The final resurrection is
the same resurrection that Jesus has already undergone. It is not like the raising of Jairus’ daughter,
the son of the widow of Nain, or Lazarus.
In these instances, prior to Jesus’ resurrection, the Lord returned
these individuals to the same condition they were in prior to their death –
life, but mortal life, susceptible to disease, decay, and death. Jesus, when He rose from the dead, rose never
to die again. This is the resurrection
for which we look. One of the other
differences between the present body and the resurrection body stressed in 1
Cor. 15 is that the present body is corruptible but the resurrection body – and
the body into which the “quick” will be changed without undergoing death at the
Second Coming (vv. 51-54) – is incorruptible (vv. 42, 50).
That Jesus’ resurrection is the pattern of the future
resurrection for which we look is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that
the “spiritual body” is not a physical body.
When Jesus appeared to the Apostles on the evening of His resurrection
they were afraid because they thought they were seeing a ghost but He said
“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a
spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Lk. 24:39) and after
showing them His hands and feet gave them further proof by eating a piece of
fish and a honeycomb (vv. 41-42). Later
He challenged St. Thomas who had been absent on that occasion to put his hand
in the hole in His side (Jn. 20:27).
From this it is clear that Jesus’ resurrection body was a physical body,
the same body in which He had been crucified, and recognizably so. While it had been changed into a glorified,
incorruptible, body with new capacities it remained a physical body.
St. Paul tells us in Romans and elsewhere that we can
participate in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ in the here and now by the
power of the Holy Spirit Who indwells us.
To fully share in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, however, when our
bodies are transformed through death and resurrection or translation at the
Second Coming to be like unto His, this is the first part of our hope which is
our faith looking forward into the future.
We shall discuss the second part of that hope when we come to consider
the twelfth and final Article of our Creed.
(2) This is not mere speculation on my part. Philip Schaff explained the use of “flesh” here as that “by which the ancient Church protested against spiritualistic concepts of the Gnostics” in his notes on the Apostles Creed in the second volume of The Creeds of Christendom. This occurs in the context of discussing how earlier translations of the Creed had rendered it literally, the first change to “body” having been made in The King’s Book in 1543, and the literal reading retained even by Cranmer in the interrogatory version used in the order of Baptism and Visitation of the Sick. Schaff spoke of the change to “body” in a tone of approval because flesh “may be misunderstood in a grossly materialistic sense.” Elsewhere (in the third volume of his History of the Christian Church) he mentions the disagreement in the early church between the “spiritualistic” interpretation of the resurrection body held by Origen et al., and the “more realistic” interpretation of Tertullian and the Apostles’ Creed, saying that the realistic interpretation was “pressed by” Epiphanius and St. Jerome in a “grossly materialistic manner” that in his opinion contributed to the development of the cult of relics. This is obviously what he was referring to in his comment on the wording of the Creed.
(3) Roman Catholic English translations of the Creed also tend to use “body” rather than “flesh”, as for example, in the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Interestingly translations in some other languages (German and Armenian, for example) sometimes substitute the Niceno-Constantinopolitan reading for the Apostles’.
(4) The interesting exception to this is the myth that was dramatized by Euripides in his play Alcestis. The title character was the wife of the Thessalonian King Admetus, whom the Fates had allowed to outlive the day they had appointed for his death provided someone was willing to take his place. The only person so willing was his wife. Hercules, (Heracles in the original Greek), in the midst of his labours, arrives at the palace in the midst of the mourning right after Alcestis had died and learns, despite the king’s attempt to keep it secret, what had happened. He departs, to return soon after with a veiled woman whom he had won in a wrestling match and hands over to Admetus. When the king removes her veil, he discovers that it is Alcestis, whom Hercules had wrestled away from Death himself. C. S. Lewis, like St. Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, believed that God had been working among the ancient pagan nations albeit in a different way than He had been working in Israel to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ. Whereas St. Justin Martyr and Clement believed this preparation to have taken the form of the ancient philosophy that sprang from the “seeds of the Logo”, Lewis argued (especially in God in the Dock) that ancient mythology, although polytheistic and containing many other errors, grew out of the truths written into the natural world and since natural revelation comes from the same God Who ultimately revealed Himself in history in the events of the Gospel, that the truths myths point to find their ultimate fulfilment in Jesus Christ. It would be difficult not to see how this applies to the myth of Alcestis. However imperfect their depiction, the Greeks had somehow grasped that only the Son of the Highest God could defeat Death and release those who had been held captive by him.
(5) John 5:25-29. Verse 25 is likely referring to spiritual regeneration rather than the resurrection, but verses 27 to 29 clearly refer to the resurrection and Final Judgement.
(6) The structure of the Gospel is that of two acts of Jesus Christ, each supported by two forms of testimony. The two acts of Jesus Christ are that 1) He died for our sins, and 2) He rose again from the dead. The Scriptures are the first testimony to each. The additional witness to Christ’s death is His burial. The additional witness to His resurrection is the long list of eyewitnesses.
