Resurrection

Resurrection, in religious belief, revival of the body in some form after death, especially characteristic of Judaeo-Christian belief.

Although a belief in the immortality of the human soul or in the resurrection of certain divine beings was part of some ancient religions, the belief in human resurrection was virtually unknown. Traces of this doctrine, however, are found in Egyptian religion, in Zoroastrianism, and in later Judaism. By the 1st century ad resurrection had become a formal doctrine of the Pharisees and of the general body of the Jewish people, although the Sadducees disputed it. In Islam, the resurrection of all human beings on the Day of Judgement is explicitly taught in the Koran, following prototypes established in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

The Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead rests on the central doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ, which the apostles understood as testimony to and a guarantee of the resurrection of each individual. The Gospels contain the stories of Christ's Resurrection.

Christian teaching concerning the resurrection is based on several extended passages in the New Testament. In these, the resurrection of the dead is ascribed to Christ himself; it will complete his work of redemption for the human race. All the dead will be raised to receive judgement, “those who have done good” coming forth “to the resurrection of life; and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgement” (John 5:29). The resurrection will take place on the Last Day, ushered in by the sound of a trumpet. As to the character of the resurrected body, nothing is explicitly taught in the Bible, except that it shall be like Christ. The possibility of bodily resurrection was evidently a subject of argument among early Christians, and St Paul argues strongly in its favour from occurrences in the natural world that seem scarcely less mysterious. The passages most commonly concerned with this doctrine are John 5:21-29, 6:39-40, 11:25-26; 1 Corinthians 15; 1 Thessalonians 4:14-16; and Revelation 20:12.

The Gnostics and Manichaeans, who were condemned by the early Church for heresy, denied the resurrection of the body, maintaining the purely spiritual character of the afterlife. The Roman Catholic doctrine of resurrection was developed by the theologians St Augustine of Hippo, St Jerome, and Tertullian, who stressed the resurrection of the flesh. A third view, represented in ancient times by the 3rd-century Christian theologian Origen and in the 19th century by the German Protestant theologian Richard Rothe, affirms that the perfected personality in heaven assumes a spiritual body.