PROBLEMS AND PERPLEXITIES.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 35, Issue 4, 1 June 1944, Page 11

PROBLEMS AND PERPLEXITIES.

, A candidate for Confirmation coniesses to feeling distressed about his inability to say sincerely that he believes in that part of the Apostles' Creed about the resurrection, of the body. "Is it right for me to repeat thatpart of the Creed when I don't really believe it?"-. He has no> difficulty about the rest of the. Creed, which he believes wholeheartedly. I only wish that all Confirmation candidates were of this quality. Now precisely what is the diffi'culty of believing in the resurrection of the body? Is it the difficulty of believing, in the resurrection of the body which goes into the grave or the crematorium? What is in our minds when we repeat •these words? Is it the idea of the resurrection of a corpse? But that? is not what the Creed affirms. And the Bible, on which the Creed is* founded, specifically denies that idea. In 1 Corinthians, chapter x'v., St. Paul settles that question. "But some one will say, How are the dead raised? and with what manner of body do they come? Thou foolish •one, that which thou thyself sowest is not quickened,., except it die; and "that which tKbu sowest, thou sowest not the body that -shall be.' Let me give Dr Moffat's translation: "What you sow 1 is not the body that is to "be; it is a mere grain of wheat, for example, or some other seed. God gives it a body- as He pleases, gives each kind of seed a body of its own * - ,' . . So with the resurrection of the body; what is sown (i.e., buried) is mortal, what rises is- immortal; sown inglorious, it rises -in glory; sown in weakness, it rises in power; sown an animate body,, it rises a spiritual body . ... .As man' the material is, so are ..the material; as man the heavenly, is, so are the heavenly. Thus as we have become the likeness of material man, so we. are to bear the likeness of the heavenly man. I tell you this, my brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the Realm of God, nor can the perishing inherit the impershable . . . the dead will rise imperishable. For this perishing body must be invested with the imperishable, and this mortal body invested with immortality; and when this mortal body has been invested with immortality, then the saying of Scripture will be realised, 'Death is swallowed up in victory, O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your siing?'" ■ *■ . . „■ I have" made this long excerpt from St. Paul (for there is nothing like the Bible) to establish one point; that there is no Biblical warrant for saying that the Apostles' Creed, or any other orthodox Creed,

affirms the resurrection of the earthly body which goes into the grave. Very jmuch the negation of that, in fact. Whatever the Creed means by the resurrection of the body, it does not mean the resurrection of a ' corpse. — Church of England Newspaper.