Either attitude would be a mistake. It is
true that a literal resuscitation of Christian corpses on some future
Day of Resurrection would be neither possible nor desirable.
Nevertheless the Christian doctrine of the life to come involves more
than a bare assertion of the immortality of the soul.
The body is the embodiment or vehicle of the spirit; the spirit
disembodied would be a mere wraith, a phantasm of the living man. The
life of the world to come is not unreal or shadowy as compared with
the concrete reality of the life of earth: it is a life richer and
fuller, more concrete and more glorious than the life of earth. The
Church by her doctrine of the Resurrection means to affirm that the
full reality of that which made the living man what he was is carried
over into the life beyond. The buried corpse is not "the body that
shall be." "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."
As to the nature of the future embodiment of the spirit in the life
beyond the grave we are ignorant. "GOD giveth it a body as it hath
pleased Him, and to each seed a body of its own.
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