NOTES for Act 20:10

In the New Testament books there are a number of testimonies about the raising of dead people both by Christ Himself and by His disciples. How 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 "blows" into a person "in the nostrils," precisely so in the Hebrew text, at creation. By this breath a person 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 accustomed 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 humans and animals. This life force appears in a person after God "blows" into him the breath of life.

Animals also have such a soul, connected with blood: blood is the foundation of all life processes in an animal organism. In a person 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 a person received from God returns to God at the moment of death, while the life force, the soul, simply departs, dissolving into the surrounding space. Only a very small part of it remains, making possible the postmortem existence of what is usually called a person's shadow, whose place of residence is in the lower world called Sheol.

This very life, so easily and inevitably departing, is what Jesus calls us to give to Him so that He may give it a new quality, renewing it by the breath of His Kingdom, of which it will then become 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 humanity.

But the life of a person, his soul, must be renewed so as to become an organic part of this Kingdom toward which the person strives. Both the Savior's resurrection 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, for only our unrepented sins can hinder this, our fate in eternity will be determined.

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

This conversation of the apostle Paul with the Ephesian presbyters is one of the most dramatic passages in the book of Acts. Paul knows that he is going to meet trials, and that he will no longer see most of his brothers and coworkers. Therefore his words to them are a kind of spiritual testament, the most important thing he can say to the disciples of Christ.

Thus he reminds them that he did not preach a new teaching, a new law, or a new religion to them; he simply became a servant and witness of the beginning of their own direct relationship with God. He does not call them to cling to external authorities, but to pay attention to themselves and to the flock in which the Spirit dwells, the flock that Christ the Savior acquired for Himself. Now God will guide His Church, and the presbyters are only His servants. And finally, let them remember the words of Jesus, words that Paul himself fulfilled to the end: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Paul proved that these words are not so much about money as about everything a person has: soul, time, strength, his whole life.