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On the Resurrection of the Flesh
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Chapter 39. Additional Evidence Afforded to Us in the Acts of the Apostles.
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ALSO BEAR WITNESS TO THE RESURRECTION: Now the apostles had nothing else to do, at least among the Jews, than to explain the Old Testament and confirm the New, and above all, to preach God in Christ. Consequently, they brought in nothing new concerning the resurrection, except to announce it to the glory of Christ. In every other respect, it had already been accepted in simple and intelligent faith, without any question about what sort of resurrection it would be, and without meeting any opponents except the Sadducees. So much easier was it to deny the resurrection altogether than to understand it in some alien sense. You find Paul confessing his faith before the chief priests, under the protection of the chief captain, among the Sadducees and the Pharisees. He says, "Men and brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am now called in question by you," Acts 23:6. He was referring, of course, to the hope of the nation. He said this so that, in his present condition, as one who seemed to be a transgressor of the law, he would not be thought to come near the Sadducees in opinion on the most important article of the faith, even the resurrection. Therefore, the belief in the resurrection which he would not seem to impair, he actually confirmed in the opinion of the Pharisees, since he rejected the views of the Sadducees, who denied it. In the same way, before Agrippa also, he says that he was advancing nothing except those things which the prophets had announced, Acts 26:22. Therefore he was maintaining exactly such a resurrection as the prophets had foretold. He also mentions what was written by Moses concerning the resurrection of the dead. In doing so, he must have known that it would be a rising in the body, since in it demand will have to be made for the blood of man, Genesis 9:5-6. He therefore declared it to be such as the Pharisees had admitted, such as the Lord Himself had maintained, and such too as the Sadducees refused to believe. That refusal indeed led them to an absolute rejection of the whole truth. Nor had the Athenians understood Paul to announce any other resurrection, Acts 17:32. They had in fact mocked his announcement. But they would have shown no such mockery if they had heard from him nothing but the restoration of the soul, for they would have accepted that as the very common expectation of their own native philosophy. But when the preaching of the resurrection, of which they had not previously heard, stirred up the heathen by its complete novelty, and when a not unnatural unbelief in so wonderful a matter began to trouble simple faith with many discussions, then the apostle took care in almost every one of his writings to strengthen men's belief in this Christian hope. He pointed out that there was such a hope, and that it had not yet been fulfilled, and that it would be in the body. This was the special point under inquiry. And another question remained: that it would not be in a body different from ours.
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