Immortality or Resurrection

Many people wonder: If the human soul is naturally immortal, why does the New Testament teach a final resurrection of the dead? One of the most forceful answers to this question was provided by the leading European Protestant theologian and New Testament scholar Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999) at the Ingersoll Lecture on the Immortality of Man, held in Andover Chapel at Harvard University, on April 26, 1955.

His lecture, titled “Immortality of the Soul and Resurrection of the Dead: The Witness of the New Testament,” was first published in the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin42 and later as a booklet. Cullmann saw an irreconcilable tension between the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul and the Christian belief in the resurrection. For him, the Greek philosophical notion of the natural immortality of the soul could not be harmonized with the New Testament doctrine of the final resurrection of the dead. Interestingly, around AD 150, Justin Martyr (100–165) already warned that those “who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven” could not be considered Christians.43 In 1 Corinthians 15:16–18, Paul argues that “if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen” and, consequently, “those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.” If at death the souls of the righteous are taken to heaven (as many believe), then there is no convincing reason even for Christ’s own resurrection. In this case, Paul could not have spoken of those who died in Christ as having perished because they would already be in heaven with Christ. But the good news of the New Testament is that death, as cruel and sad as it might be, was fully conquered by Christ through His own resurrection. “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

What a blessing to know that all our loved ones who died in Christ will finally be raised from the dead to receive eternal life!