The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the CorinthiansDods, Marcus
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the Corinthians
Dods, Marcus
Bible. Corinthians, 1st -- Commentaries
Even outside the circle of Christian thought these analogies in nature
have always been felt to remove some of the presumptions against the
Resurrection and to make room for listening to evidence in its favour.
The transformation of the seed into the plant and the development of
the seed to a fuller life through apparent extinction, the
transformation of the grub into the brilliant and powerful dragon-fly
through a process which terminates the life of the grub--these and
other natural facts show that one life may be continued through
various phases, and that the termination of one form of life does not
always mean the termination of all life in a creature. We need not,
these analogies tell us, at once conclude that death ends all, for in
some visible instances death is only a birth to a higher and freer
life. Neither need we point to the dissolution of the natural body and
conclude that no more perfect body can be connected with such a
process, because in many cases we see a more efficient body disengaged
from the original and dissolving body. Thus far the analogies carry
us. It is doubtful whether they should be pushed further, although
they might seem to indicate that the new body is not to be a new
creation, but is to be produced by virtue of what is already in
existence. The new body is not to be irrespective of what has gone
before, but is to be the natural result of causes already working.
What these causes are, or how the spirit is to impress its character
on the body, we do not know.
It is not impossible, then, nor even quite improbable, that the death
of our present body may set free a new and far more perfectly equipped
body. The fact that we cannot conceive the nature of this body need
not trouble us. Who without previous observation could imagine what
would spring from an acorn or a seed of wheat? To each God gives its
own body. We cannot imagine what our future body, subject to no waste
or decay, can be; but we need not on that account reject as childish
all expectation that such a body shall exist. "All flesh is not the
same flesh." The kind of flesh you now wear may be unfit for
everlasting life, but there may await you as suitable and congenial a
body as your present familiar tenement. Consider the inexhaustible
fertility of God, the endless varieties already existing in nature.
The bird has a body which fits it for life in the air; the fish lives
with comfort in its own element. And the variety already existing does
not exhaust God's resources. We read at present but one chapter in the
history of life, and what future chapters are to unfold who can
imagine? A fertile and inventive man knows no bound to his progress;
will God stand still? Are we not but at the beginning of His works?
May we not reasonably suppose that a truly infinite expansion and
development await God's works? Is it not entirely unreasonable to
suppose that what we see and know is the measure of God's resources?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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