REPENTANCE
198not (as with positivism) usually consid-
ered incoherent until shown differently.
REPENTANCE. More than regret, repen-
tance involves remorse for a past wrong-
doing and the resolution not to do the
wrong again. Theologians disagree about
whether confession and repentance are
necessary conditions for forgiveness.
RESURRECTION. The resurrection of
Jesus is the central doctrine of the
Christian faith and the ground of its
ultimate hope. Christians hold that God
raised Jesus to life after he had been dead
for three days. The distinctively Christian
doctrines hinge crucially on the truth
of this claim. The resurrection is the most
compelling demonstration for Jesus’
divinity, which is essential not only for the
doctrine of the atonement, but also for
the incarnation and the trinity.
It is important to distinguish the
doctrine of resurrection from two other
notions that are sometimes confused with
it. First, resurrection is not resuscitation.
The New Testament records instances of
Jesus and others raising people from the
dead, but these are all examples of resus-
citation, for the persons were restored to
mortal life and would consequently die
again. Resurrection is more than mere
resuscitation. Second, resurrection is not
the survival of the soul after the death of
the body. Resurrection pertains precisely
to the body, not just the soul.
That resurrection is bodily is made
clear in the gospels by the emphasis on
the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty, along
with the accounts of his performing
physical acts like eating. That resurrec-
tion is not mere resuscitation is clear from
the fact that the body of the risen Jesus
does not have the sort of limitations that
are typical of a mortal body. He can sud-
denly appear, he can pass through locked
doors and the like. So resurrection is the
raising of the body to immortality, to the
kind of life that will be typical in the new
order when there will be no more death,
and all things will be made new. Jesus’
resurrection was the prototype of what
all persons who are saved may anticipate
when heaven comes to earth and God’s
kingdom comes in its fullness. As such it
was an eschatological event that portends
the age to come.
A matter of debate among Christians
is whether resurrection pertains only to
the body, or to the whole person. The
traditional view is that souls continue to
survive in conscious form between death
and resurrection. Although with Christ,
separated souls are incomplete or dam-
aged persons as they await the resurrec-
tion, which will reunite body and soul
into one whole person. More recently,
some biblical scholars and theologians
have argued that there is no conscious
survival between death and resurrection,
that the entire person is destroyed at
death and then restored to life at the res-
urre c tion. On this vie w, the “s oul” is s ome-
times thought of as the form of the body