Main news for 21 November 2020

In the New Testament books there is a whole series of testimonies about the raising of dead people both by Christ Himself and by His disciples. How, then, are these cases connected with the resurrection of the Savior Himself? And how are they connected with the resurrection that awaits each of us at the end of time?

The Bible looks at human life as the unity of two processes: natural and spiritual. The spiritual process is connected with that breath of God which God "breathes" into the human being "in the nostrils," exactly so in the Hebrew text, at creation. By this breath the human being is alive. It makes him the image of God, and the unique thing that could be defined as humanity is connected with it.

Life as a natural process is called "soul" in the Bible. We are used to looking at the soul as the center of a person's personal qualities, as what makes him unique and unrepeatable. Egyptian priests and Greek philosophers looked at the soul this way.

But by the word usually translated into Russian as "soul," the biblical authors meant an impersonal life force, common to human beings and animals. This life force appears in the human being after God "breathes" into him the breath of life.

Animals too have such a soul, and in them it is connected with blood, for blood is the basis of all life processes in an animal organism. In the human being before the fall, it was connected with the breath of life received from God, but after the fall it became connected with blood, as in animals. After the fall, as can be seen, the human being became much more like an animal than like God, whom he resembled before the fall.

Death too is described in the Bible as a twofold process. The breath of life that the human being received from God returns to God at the moment of death, and the life force, the soul, simply departs, dissolving into the surrounding space. Only a very small part of it remains, making possible the existence after death of what is usually called the human shade, whose place of dwelling is in the lower world called Sheol.

It is precisely this life, which so easily and so inevitably departs, that Jesus calls a person to give to Him so that He may give it a new quality, renewing it with the breath of His Kingdom, of which it will then become a part. The breath of the Kingdom is the same breath of God; it permeates the Kingdom in a fullness that had never before been opened to the human being.

But the person's life, his soul, must be renewed in order to become an organic part of this Kingdom toward which the person strives. Both the resurrection of the Savior and the resurrection of each of us at the end of time are impossible without such renewal, and depending on whether it becomes possible for us, and only our unrepented sins can prevent it, our destiny in eternity will be determined.

There is also resurrection of another kind, as a return to the former, untransformed life. This can happen if the life force has not yet left the person completely, as in the case described in the Book of Acts. However, this is not yet transfiguration. It is only a return to the former, old life, another chance given to the person by God for salvation.