Viewpoint on the Resurrection

In the Treatise on the Resurrection, the author addresses his pupil, Rheginos, regarding whether believers receive a spiritual or fleshly resurrection. The author begins by stating that the Savior’s resurrection allowed him to “swallow up death” (Treat. Res. 45.14–19). He then describes how, in his viewpoint, believers are united to the Savior through the Savior’s suffering and resurrection. Using baptismal language, the author speaks of unification and says that believers are now with the Savior in heaven (which seems to be in opposition to Paul’s viewpoint in 2 Tim 2:18). The author then offers a statement that suggests he rejects the resurrection of the flesh: “spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic in the same way as the fleshly” (Treat. Res. 46.1–2). However, he later writes, “For if you did not exist in flesh, you received flesh when you entered this world. Why then will you not receive flesh when you ascend into the aeon?” (Treat. Res. 47.4–8). In this case, the “flesh” (σάρξ, sarx) appears to relate to the “body” (σῶμα, sōma).

The resurrection of which the author speaks is not the restoration of the former physical flesh, as Paul uses the term. Rather, the resurrected flesh for the author of Treatise is “the living members which exist within them” (Treat. Res. 48.1–3), which has some parallels with Paul’s notion of the spiritual body in 1 Cor 15:44. The spiritual body that the author speaks of also has some parallels with Elijah and Moses at the transfiguration of Jesus (see Watson, “Resurrection and the Limits of Paulinism,” 460–61). (But this is not to suggest Treatise’s viewpoint aligns with the biblical viewpoint or that of the early church fathers. For example, in opposition to Treatise’s viewpoint, John 5:28–30 teaches that those who have done good will receive a resurrection of life, while those who have done evil a resurrection of judgment.)