Continued from part 1.

Reformation Era

In many ways, the Reformation can be properly viewed as both a return to and development of what went before and not, as it is often popularly conceived, as a break from the past. Though speaking immediately in the context of the doctrine of justification by faith, James Orr argues that the Reformation “stood in direct continuity with what was deepest, most vital, most characteristic… of the past, and was its legitimate outcome and vindication.”¹ As to the doctrine of the resurrection, this is plainly seen in the teaching of the reformers.

Martin Luther, who showed little hesitancy to contradict teachings of the Church which he viewed as contrary to Scripture, nevertheless held the same understanding of the resurrection as Augustine and the Medieval Church–there is a common bodily resurrection. Along with Augustine he understood the Scriptures to teach an aspect of resurrection already at work in the Christian. Commenting on Paul’s picture of Christ’s resurrection as a kind of first fruits, Luther says

Paul wishes to signify that the resurrection is to be viewed and understood as having already begun in Christ, indeed, as being more than half finished, and that this remnant of death is to be regarded as no more than a deep sleep, and that the future resurrection of our body will not differ from suddenly awaking from such a sleep…
Now if I know this and believe it, my heart or conscience and soul have already passed through death and grave and are in heaven with Christ, dwell there and rejoice over it. And in that way we have the two best parts, much more than half, of the resurrection behind us.²

For Luther, the resurrection is divided into two parts; the first and most important which is already underway and the second which is the future, bodily resurrection. Thus he mirrored the basic understanding of many of the early Fathers, Augustine, and the Scholastics after them.

Likewise, John Calvin saw no need to break with the past in any significant way on this matter. He asserted the reality of the future resurrection, quoting Paul to the effect that the entire gospel is worthless without the resurrection.³ He holds to a single, common resurrection that occurs at the last judgment, arguing “Christ is seated in heaven… and will come on the Last Day as judge to conform our lowly, inglorious body to his glorious body.”⁴ That the unrighteous dead are also raised at the same time is evident when he addresses the apparent difficulty of teaching that “ungodly and accursed of God have a common resurrection, which is a singular benefit of Christ.”⁵ The bodies which are raised will be the same and Calvin says that it is a “monstrous… error [to] imagine that the souls will not receive the same bodies with which they are now clothed but will be furnished with new and different ones.”⁶ His understanding of the resurrection is plainly one and the same with the common views that were agreed upon in the early Church and is in continuity with the beliefs that were later settled in the Medieval Church.

While there is less apparent cohesion between the Scholastics and the Reformers regarding the doctrine of the intermediate state, there is more continuity than discontinuity between the Reformation and the past. Though all the reformers completely “rejected the whole doctrine of purgatory as contrary to Scripture,” they did not see fit to discard or even hardly modify the rest of the doctrine of the intermediate state.⁷ They maintained the understanding of both heaven and hell as the two destinations of man. And both were “conceived of as entered at death, though the final reception to blessedness or banishment to woe is after the resurrection and final judgment.”⁸ From Gregory the Great through the end of the Middle Ages, the western Church was preoccupied with its notions of purgatory and the soul’s eventual movement from there to heaven prior to the resurrection but it never abandoned its belief in both heaven and hell as the true destinations of dead men. Thus, the Reformers maintained the historic belief of the Church even as they abandoned what they regarded as the baseless traditions which obscured the true doctrines of heaven and hell.

Post-Reformation, the positions defended by the reformers were maintained. The words of the Lutheran David Hollatz display this clearly: “the resurrection of the dead consists formally (a) in the reproduction or restoration of the same body which had perished by death, out of its atoms or particles which had been scattered thence and dispersed; (b) in the reunion of the same with the soul.”⁹ He quite explicitly teaches the body raised in the resurrection is the same body which had formerly died and implicitly teaches a singular resurrection–“the resurrection.” Similarly, he indicates that there are only two possible destinations for the soul after death; heaven or hell. “It is certain that the infernal prison is in a real locality… separate from the abode of the blessed….”¹⁰ The rest of the Lutherans joined Hollatz in positively rejecting any idea of a purgatory after death and the Anglicans also concurred, enshrining their rejection of the Roman teaching in the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles.¹¹

The rest of the descendants of the Reformation are no exception and in the prominent confessions of the English Reformed Churches we find the Reformation era teachings further solidified as the dogma of Protestant Christianity. The authors of the Westminster Confession wrote declarations on these subjects that are also found almost identically recorded in the Savoy Declaration and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. The authors and subscribers to these confessions saw no reason to break with their forerunners. Concerning the abode of the dead until the return of Christ, the Baptist confession asserts

their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous being then made perfect in holiness, are received into paradise, where they are with Christ, and behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies; and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell; where they remain in torment and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day; besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.¹²

This language leaves no possibility for doubt that the English non-conforming confessional churches harbored any uncertainty but that only heaven or hell wait for men upon death. These churches were equally confident of the reality of the resurrection which would raise the same bodies that had died. “At the last day, such of the saints as are found alive, shall not sleep, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the selfsame bodies, and none other; although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.”¹³ Finally, the question of how many resurrections will occur is not expressly addressed, but the statement of paragraph two is “made even more explicit in paragraph 3 when it is explained further that ‘all the dead’ means both ‘the bodies of the unjust’ and ‘the bodies of the just’.”¹⁴ It would be quite unnatural to understand the words of these English Protestants as including a belief in multiple resurrections; the meaning that all the dead are raised in a single, general resurrection is unmistakable. In these English churches also, the understandings restored by the reformers were closely guarded.

Modern Era

In the modern era, this uniformity of belief has again come under attack. From within the ranks of Protestant theologians, the rise of Liberal Theology cast doubt on almost the whole of the doctrines of the intermediate state and resurrection of the body. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the Father of Liberal Theology, attempted to rebuild the very foundation of Christianity and, in so doing, inevitably came into conflict with the idea that the wicked are to expect punishment after death.¹⁵ He rejected the notion that divine punishment could be intended as actual punishment but concluded it was only ever designed as a deterrent.¹⁶ This leaves little place for an abode of torment following death. He further regarded the notions of a common, heavenly intermediate state for the saints to be at odds with the expectation of a bodily resurrection. Because the Protestant conception of the intermediate state “must be a state of enhanced perfection… it is difficult not to regard the general resurrection of the dead as superfluous, and reunion with the body as a retrograde step.”¹⁷ Therefore, one or the other of these doctrines must give way. The new understanding Schleiermacher built of the Christian faith was not friendly to the historic understandings of life following death.

One other source of disagreement with the Reformation era consensus was the return of premillennialism. Following its rapid rise and then decline in the early Church, this eschatological position was all but extinct until the Modern period. Though the restored premillennialism of those such as George Eldon Ladd and the innovative version found in Dispensationalism have significant differences (even as respecting the resurrection of the dead) they are agreed that the single, general resurrection idea is erroneous. Ladd quite explicitly held that Scripture teaches two bodily resurrections–“the teaching of two resurrections is a clear assertion of Scripture, and the teaching of a single resurrection must pass over several important passages in the Word….Two literal bodily resurrections are demanded.”¹⁸ Elsewhere he indicates that these two resurrections are divided both in time and in subject; the “first resurrection occurs immediately after the victorious Second Coming of Christ and is followed by the millennium…. After the millennial reign of Christ, … the second resurrection is one of judgment which leads to the second death.”¹⁹ Thus, Ladd broke with the former general consensus of one single resurrection. The Dispensational form of Premillennialism makes the same break. While he does not directly speak of a difference in the timing of the resurrections, Lewis Sperry Chafer does noticeably distinguish them in function. He says that “[s]ome are to be raised to everlasting life before they enter the kingdom… and some to everlasting contempt.”²⁰ Those raised to everlasting life rise prior to the kingdom while it is implied that those raised to everlasting contempt rise after the kingdom. Where Chafer is unclear, Charles Ryrie is explicit. He states that there are two classes of bodily resurrection, “the resurrection of life or the first resurrection, and the resurrection of condemnation or the second resurrection….”²¹ And he says that “[t]hese resurrections will not occur at the same time….”²² These rejections of a general resurrection are not merely the peculiarities of these individuals for the simple reason that “the doctrine of a general resurrection is impossible to reconcile with any form of premillennialism.”²³ This belief in multiple resurrections is a basic requirement of any premillennial system.

Neither of the previous two positions, however, have shown an inclination to disrupt the doctrine of the intermediate state. Ryrie holds that “the spirit [of the unredeemed] goes to hades to wait for the resurrection of the body. . .”²⁴ And “[h]ades stands in contrast to heaven. . .” which is the immediate destination of the redeemed at death.²⁵ Chafer shares this belief.²⁶ Ladd firmly held that the abode of the believer after death is in the presence of God–“[t]he one fact that is taught by both the Gospels and Paul is that the righteous dead–believers–are with Christ in the presence of God….”²⁷ The doctrine of the intermediate state, as restored by the reformers, is unchallenged by these recent premillennial developments.

Throughout the winding history of Christ’s Church, many variations of doctrine have arisen, some as better expressions of former understandings but others as eccentric warts on otherwise commonly held doctrines; no era has been entirely without some who were unable to accept the dogmas of the Church. And while Christ tarries, there will no doubt continue to be differences of belief. But in every era, the beliefs that heaven waits for the believer, that eternal torment is the expectation of those that rebel against Christ, and that a resurrection of the body waits for all men has always been held and defended.

Footnotes

1. Orr, Progress of Dogma, 247. ↩︎
2. Martin Luther, Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Corinthians 15, Lectures on 1 Timothy, ed. Hilton C. Oswald, vol. 28, Luthers Works (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1973), 110. ↩︎
3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), III.xxv.3. ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. Ibid., 1:III.xxv.9. ↩︎
6. Ibid., 1:III.xxv.7. ↩︎
7. Berkhof, History of Christian Doctrine, 261. ↩︎
8. Orr, Progress of Dogma, 347. ↩︎
9. David Hollatz, Examen Theologicum Acroamaticum (1707), 1245, quoted in Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1889), 642. ↩︎
10. Hollatz, Examen Theologicum Acroamaticum, 984, quoted in Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 659. ↩︎
11. Berkhof, History of Christian Doctrine, 261. ↩︎
12. 2LBCF (1677/89), XXXI:1. ↩︎
13. Ibid., XXXI.2. ↩︎
14. Waldron, A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, 469. ↩︎
15. Allison, Historical Theology, 715. ↩︎
16. Ibid. ↩︎
17. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 712. ↩︎
18. George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956), 81. ↩︎
19. George Eldon Ladd, The Last Things (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1984), 85–86. ↩︎
20. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Dispensationalism (Fort Worth: Exegetica Publishing, 2015), 57. Emphasis added. ↩︎
21. Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 604. ↩︎
22. Ibid. ↩︎
23. Waldron, A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, 473. ↩︎
24. Ryrie, Basic Theology, 605. ↩︎
25. Ibid., 604–6. ↩︎
26. Chafer, Dispensationalism, 57. ↩︎
27. Ladd, The Last Things, 39. ↩︎

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