Understanding the Resurrection

I mentioned earlier that I would be leading a memorial service for one of our members, a gracious and loving woman, who will be greatly missed by all. As a pastor speaking hope to my community, I take much hope in my belief in the resurrection and in the afterlife. It is not an academic issue, but is in fact a matter of life and death.
But, having said that I can't just flippantly say I believe, the question is what do I believe? The question arises about the nature of resurrection. In the next couple of days I want to post some quotes from Hans Kung's book Eternal Life? (Doubleday, 1984). It's not a new book but its a helpful one. So here's the first:

It is obvious then that biblical and modern anthropological thinking converge in their conception of man as a body-soul unity, a fact that is of crucial importance also for the question of a life after death. When the New Testament speaks of resurrection, it does not refer to the natural continuation of a spirit-soul independent of our bodily functions. What it means -- following the tradition of Jewish theology -- is the new creation, the transformation of the whole person by God's life-creating Spirit. Man is not released then -- platonically --- from us corporality. He is released with and in his -- now glorified, spiritualized -- corporality: a new creation, a new man. Easter is not a feast of immortality, of a postulate of practical reason: it is a feast of Christ, of the crucified Christ now glorified. (p. 111).

As Kung points out, in regard to the doctrine of resurrection, we must let go of the idea of the immortality of the soul and the body-soul dualism that has so influenced our theologies.

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