Essay On Bodily Resurrection

IV. The Call for the Reconsideration of the Historicity of the Bodily Nature of Jesus’s Resurrection and Its Eschatological Implications

Thus, I now turn to the matter of the historical credibility of Jesus’ “bodily resurrection” and its eschatological implications. Unlike Peacocke and Keller’s view of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, it is “credible” or “well-motivated belief” that the resurrection of Jesus was a “bodily” event that happened to Jesus based on the two traditions of many eyewitnesses and Jesus’ empty tomb. On the basis of these traditions, according to N.T. Wright, the early Christians understood the resurrection neither Jesus’ “perceived status in the ongoing church”, nor his “heavenly and exalted status”, nor “the passage of the human Jesus into the power of God”, but affirmed his “bodily resurrection.” In the same vein, John Polkinghorne affirms that the confession of Jesus as the Lord and the Son of God can be seen as a well-motivated belief rather than a made-up tenet of irrational faith. This motivated belief is reinforced and shared among Christians along the history of the Church through their participation in the Eucharist and worship, based on the fact that the risen Christ is present with them at …show more content…
That is, while the life-giving Spirit gives genuine independence to creatures, the Spirit is immanent in creation as “the power of the future.” It is a field where creatures “transcend” themselves in openness to the genuine novelty of the future. While the Creator continues to work through the contingency of creation, its telos lies in the new creation, and the past and the present constitute “the pull from the future.” Thus, God has the power to achieve the consummation and redemption of nature and history from natural evil in the new creation despite the threat of the cosmic