the resurrection of the body

The Text

The penultimate clause and the long-deferred climax of the creed’s eschatology. The second article confessed Christ’s bodily resurrection on the third day. This clause confesses that what happened to Christ then is what will happen to us. The resurrection of the believer is not a separate doctrine; it is the application to the believer of the doctrine confessed of Christ. Carnis resurrectionem — the resurrection of the flesh. Not the immortality of the soul. Not the survival of the spirit. Not a vague afterlife in clouds. The Christian hope, named here, is that this body — these joints, these scars, these eyes, this skin — will be raised, healed, and remade by the same Spirit who raised Jesus. The clause is the church’s permanent refusal of every dualism that would treat the body as a prison from which the real self escapes. Salvation is of the flesh or it is not salvation at all.

Translation Notes

Carnis / sarkos — flesh. The Latin and Greek both use the strongest, most materially concrete word available — flesh, not body, not human nature, not being. The choice is doctrinally deliberate. In the 2nd-century context of the creed’s formation, Gnostic and Marcionite groups were teaching that salvation is the escape of the spiritual self from the prison of fleshly matter; the body, on their view, is what the saved are saved from. The creed answers in the strongest possible language: it is the flesh — sarx, caro — that is raised. Tertullian devoted a major treatise (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, c. 210) to the defense of exactly this clause against exactly this objection. The English body slightly muffles the force of the original flesh; the modern liturgical forms have nonetheless usually translated carnis as body on the judgment that the broader modern English use of flesh now carries connotations (sensuality, weakness) that the original did not.

Resurrectionem / anastasin — resurrection. The same word used in the second article for Christ’s resurrection: resurrexit tertia die a mortuis (he rose again on the third day from the dead). The grammatical and substantive parallel is the doctrinal foundation of this clause. What Christ underwent, the believer will undergo. Paul makes the connection structural: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5); “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep… in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:20–22). The resurrection of the body is therefore not a doctrine independent of Christology; it is the Christological doctrine extended to the believer.

The choice of carnis over corporis. The Western Latin tradition prefers carnis (flesh); the Greek tradition prefers sōmatos (body) but uses sarkos (flesh) interchangeably; the Eastern liturgical languages have continued to favor body. The English body (in modern recitations of the creed) is a translation choice that the contemporary church has made for understandable reasons. The Latin’s carnis should still inform the preacher’s understanding: flesh is the deliberately confrontational word that refuses every escape route from the materiality of the Christian hope.

The Apostles’ Creed has, throughout its history, used carnis in the Latin recitation. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed uses the broader anastasin nekrōn (resurrection of the dead) — slightly different in emphasis (the rising of the dead persons, not the rising of the flesh as such), but identical in substance. The early Latin translation of the Nicene Creed sometimes used carnis resurrectionem even where the Greek had anastasin nekrōn — a sign of the Latin tradition’s particular attachment to the more material noun.

Historical Context

The bodily resurrection of the believer is, with the bodily resurrection of Christ, the oldest and most stable element of Christian eschatology. Paul’s recital of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15 — written within twenty years of the events — makes the resurrection of Christ the firstfruits of a general resurrection that will gather all the dead in Christ (1 Cor. 15:20–23). The general resurrection is part of the apostolic preaching from the beginning: Acts 17:32 reports the philosophical Athenians scoffing at Paul’s preaching of anastasin nekrōn; Acts 24:15 has Paul before Felix professing the hope of a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. The Pharisaic Jewish background of the resurrection hope (Dan. 12:2; Job 19:25–27; Isa. 26:19; 2 Macc. 7) is the Old Testament substrate; the Christian distinctive is that the resurrection has already begun in the rising of Jesus.

The 2nd-century controversies with Gnosticism made the bodily nature of the resurrection a defining mark of orthodox Christianity. Irenaeus of Lyons (Against Heresies, esp. Book V), Tertullian (On the Resurrection of the Flesh), and the early baptismal creeds (the Old Roman Creed, c. 200) all insist on the resurrection of the flesh against Gnostic spiritualization. The conviction was not merely doctrinal but architectural: the Christian cemetery (literally koimētērion, the sleeping-place) was developed as a public ecclesial space, and the bodies of the dead were treated with care that pagan critics (Celsus, Lucian) regularly remarked on, because the Christians believed those bodies would rise.

The Apostles’ Creed’s carnis resurrectionem was, by the late 4th century, the standard Western confession. The 5th-century Athanasian Creed amplified it: “At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works.” The general resurrection is, in the early creedal settlement, the universal eschatological event in which the living and the dead alike receive their resurrected bodies before the final judgment.

The clause was less contested through the medieval and Reformation periods than most others, though particular questions (the nature of the resurrected body, its continuity with the present body, the precise mode of glorification) generated extensive theological literature. The challenge to bodily resurrection emerged most seriously in the 19th and 20th centuries, when liberal Protestant theology (under the influence of Enlightenment skepticism and idealist philosophy) sometimes substituted immortality of the soul for resurrection of the body. The 20th-century theological recovery — from Karl Barth through N. T. Wright — has decisively restored the bodily-resurrection emphasis as the proper Christian eschatology against the platonized substitute.

A pastoral-historical observation. In the popular Christian imagination of the past seventeen centuries, going to heaven has substantially displaced resurrection of the body as the working description of the Christian hope. The displacement is a cultural development, not a creedal one. Heaven is named twice in the Apostles’ Creed: at the beginning (God the Father is creator of heaven and earth) and in the second article (Christ ascended into heaven). Heaven is not named at the end of the creed. The same is true of the Nicene Creed (the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come) and the Athanasian Creed (all men shall rise again with their bodies). The early church’s hope was not going to heaven; it was the resurrection of the body on the new earth that God is making. The contemporary church has work to do in recovering this emphasis from a piety that has, in many local contexts, drifted toward a half-Platonic heavenly imagination.

Lines of Interpretation

Patristic

Tradition: Irenaeus, Against Heresies V; Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh (c. 210); Athanasius, On the Incarnation; Augustine, City of God XXII; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 18

The patristic settlement on the resurrection of the body insists on three convictions in tension. First, the resurrection is bodily: the very body that died is raised, transformed but continuous, not replaced by an alien spiritual substitute. Tertullian’s On the Resurrection of the Flesh is the sustained patristic defense of this point against Gnostic spiritualization. Second, the resurrection is transformed: the body that is raised is the same body, but glorified, freed from corruption, suffering, and death. Paul’s sōma pneumatikon (1 Cor. 15:44) — usually translated spiritual body, but probably better rendered Spirit-animated body — names the transformed continuity. Third, the resurrection is universal: every human being will be raised, both the just and the unjust, to face the judgment (John 5:28–29; Acts 24:15).

Augustine’s treatment in City of God XXII is the most sustained Latin patristic discussion. Augustine addresses, with characteristic care, the questions the imagination raises: What about those who died in infancy? What about those whose bodies were destroyed at sea or eaten by animals? What about the body’s age — at what point in life will the risen body be? Augustine’s answers are theological rather than speculative: the same God who made the body from nothing will make the resurrected body from whatever scattered matter remains; the resurrected body will be glorified and freed from all defect; the precise mode of its continuity with the present body is a divine work whose mechanism we do not need to specify.

Strengths

• Holds bodily realism and glorification together
• Refuses every form of spiritualization from the start
• Augustine’s pastoral restraint on speculative questions is permanently usable

Weaknesses

• The patristic discussions of the precise material continuity sometimes went into speculation the later tradition was right to retire
• The strong polemical context (anti-Gnostic) sometimes produced overstatement that the New Testament’s more careful language did not warrant

Scholastic

Tradition: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Supplement, qq. 75–86 (on the resurrection); Dante, Paradiso esp. canto XIV

Aquinas treats the resurrection of the body in twelve questions of the Supplement (compiled after his death from his commentary on the Sentences). The treatment is exhaustive: the cause of the resurrection (Christ’s resurrection is the efficient cause; the divine power is the principal cause), the time, the universality, the condition of the resurrected body, the bodies of the damned vs. the bodies of the blessed. Aquinas’s account of the four properties of the glorified body — impassibilitas (imperviousness to suffering), subtilitas (subtle non-impediment to the soul’s operations), agilitas (responsive readiness to the soul’s movements), and claritas (the radiance of glory) — became the standard medieval description and is drawn from 1 Corinthians 15:42–44.

Dante’s Paradiso canto XIV contains the great medieval poetic synthesis of the doctrine. The blessed, on Dante’s account, long for the reunion with their resurrected bodies — their joy is not complete in the disembodied state. The Christian hope is not the immortal soul’s escape but the whole person’s renewed life.

Strengths

• The four-properties framework, while medieval, names dimensions of glorification the New Testament itself attests
• Dante’s poetic synthesis preserves the conviction that the disembodied state is not the final Christian hope

Weaknesses

• The Supplement’s exhaustive treatment occasionally tips into speculation the New Testament does not warrant
• The medieval vocabulary requires translation for contemporary use

Lutheran

Tradition: Luther, Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15 (1532–33); Augsburg Confession, Article XVII

The Lutheran tradition has held the doctrine in straightforward Reformation fashion: the bodily resurrection of all the dead at the last day, the just to eternal life and the unjust to condemnation, is part of the church’s standard confession. The Augsburg Confession (Art. XVII) is brief and direct. Luther’s Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15 is the major Reformation pastoral exposition; Luther is at pains both to confess the bodily resurrection with full vigor and to ground the believer’s hope of resurrection in the resurrection of Christ.

Strengths

• Holds the doctrine simply and without the medieval speculative apparatus
• Anchors the believer’s resurrection in Christ’s

Weaknesses

• The conciseness of the Lutheran articulation has sometimes left popular piety with less developed pneumatic-eschatological imagery than other traditions

Reformed

Tradition: Calvin, Institutes III.25 (“On the Final Resurrection”); Heidelberg Catechism Q. 57; Westminster Confession Ch. 32

Calvin’s treatment in Institutes III.25 is among the longest sections of the Institutes on a single doctrine and reflects how seriously he took the resurrection of the body. Calvin defends the bodily resurrection at length, addresses the speculative objections, refuses to allegorize the doctrine, and grounds the believer’s hope firmly in Christ’s resurrection. The Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 57) puts the pastoral application memorably: “What comfort does the resurrection of the body afford thee?” A. “That not only my soul after this life shall be immediately taken up to Christ its Head, but also that this my body, raised by the power of Christ, shall again be united with my soul, and made like unto the glorious body of Christ.”

The Heidelberg’s account is notable for holding together the intermediate state (the soul taken up to Christ at death) and the bodily resurrection (the body raised at the last day) without collapsing the two. The Reformed tradition has been particularly careful to keep this distinction.

Strengths

• Calvin’s sustained defense is one of the great Reformation treatments
• The Heidelberg’s account holds intermediate state and bodily resurrection together cleanly

Weaknesses

• The strong stress on the intermediate state has sometimes been heard, in popular Reformed piety, as if the real hope were the soul’s reception, with the bodily resurrection as a footnote — a hearing the Reformers themselves resisted

Eastern Orthodox

Tradition: Byzantine Paschal liturgy; John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith IV.27; Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection

The Eastern tradition has held the bodily resurrection at the absolute center of its liturgical and theological life. The Paschal liturgy is the year’s high point and the entire Orthodox theological year is structured around it. Christ is risen / Truly he is risen (Christos anesti / alēthōs anestē) is the year-round Orthodox greeting from Easter to Pentecost and the foundation of the believer’s confession of personal resurrection. The Eastern theological tradition has emphasized the theotic dimension: the resurrected body is the body deified, transformed into participation in the divine life by the same Spirit who raised Christ. Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and the Resurrection (a dialogue with his sister Macrina near her death) is the great patristic Eastern treatment, and remains a major resource for contemporary Orthodox theology.

Strengths

• The liturgical embedding of the doctrine has preserved it as a living confession rather than a topic of speculation
• The theotic framework integrates resurrection with the entire ascetic-sacramental life

Weaknesses

• The strong Paschal emphasis can leave less attention to the interval between Christ’s resurrection and the general resurrection
• The theological subtlety can be hard to translate for cultures unfamiliar with the patristic-monastic register

Wesleyan

(See Wesleyan Voice below.)

Modern Ecumenical

Tradition: Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3 §73; Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God (1995); N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003) and Surprised by Hope (2008)

The 20th and early 21st centuries have produced the most significant theological recovery of the resurrection of the body in the modern period. Barth’s treatment in Church Dogmatics IV/3 §73 places the bodily resurrection at the center of Christian eschatology against every Platonizing alternative. Moltmann’s The Coming of God (1995) gives a sustained constructive eschatology with the bodily resurrection and the renewal of creation as the central themes. N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003) — 800+ pages — is the major recent historical-theological defense of the bodily resurrection of Christ as the foundation of the believer’s; his Surprised by Hope (2008) is the popular extension, and has done more than any other recent book to recover the bodily-resurrection emphasis in English-speaking Protestantism against the going-to-heaven default.

Strengths

• Has decisively restored the resurrection of the body to its proper centrality in modern Christian thought
• Wright’s popular work has reached a much wider audience than scholarly theology usually does

Weaknesses

• The popular reception of the recovery has sometimes overcorrected, treating the intermediate state (the believer’s life with Christ between death and the general resurrection) as if it were not part of the New Testament’s witness
• Some modern reconstructions blur the distinction between the resurrection of the body and the broader new creation

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s confession of the resurrection of the body is unambiguous, biblical, and at the heart of his eschatology. The Articles of Religion (1784), Article III, confesses that “Christ did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body, with all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature, wherewith he ascended into heaven.” Article III governs the Christology; Article III’s implication for the believer is the substance of this clause of the creed. The same Christ who rose bodily will raise his people bodily.

Wesley’s preaching on the resurrection of the body is concentrated in Sermon 137, “On the Resurrection of the Dead” — among the longest of his sermons, and a sustained pastoral-theological treatment of the doctrine. The sermon defends the bodily resurrection against objections from natural philosophy (the apparent dispersion of bodily matter after death), grounds the believer’s hope in Christ’s resurrection, and exhorts the congregation to live the present life in light of the bodily future. Wesley’s Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament on 1 Corinthians 15 — the chapter Paul devotes wholly to the resurrection — preserve a robust bodily realism throughout.

What is distinctively Wesleyan is the integrated register the doctrine acquires in Methodist theology. The same Spirit who raised Christ is the Spirit who regenerates the believer in baptism, sanctifies the believer toward Christian perfection, and will at last raise the believer’s body. Resurrection is not, on the Wesleyan account, an eschatological footnote bolted on to the gospel of justification; it is the culmination of a process that has begun already in the believer’s union with Christ. If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Rom. 6:5). The Methodist ordo salutis runs from prevenient grace through justifying grace through sanctifying grace to glorifying grace, and glorifying grace names precisely the Spirit’s completion, at the resurrection of the body, of the work that began at conversion.

This is also why the Methodist tradition has held Christian perfection as a real possibility in this life. The body is not the obstacle to perfection; the body is the site of the Spirit’s transforming work, of which the resurrection is the consummation. Schemata in which the soul is saved and the body is left behind have never made sense in the Methodist register; the same God who saves saves the whole person. Methodism’s strong emphasis on the works of mercy — feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, attending the prisoner, providing for the dying — also flows from this body-affirming theology. The bodies of the poor and the sick are bodies God will raise; care for them is, on the Wesleyan account, an anticipatory participation in the new creation.

The Methodist funeral service has, in its various forms, kept the bodily-resurrection accent vivid. The 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship gives the Service of Death and Resurrection its theological frame: the deceased Christian is committed to God in confidence of being raised, body and soul, at the last day to the life that has no end. The committal at the graveside, with the words we commit his (her) body to its resting place, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, is the working liturgical form of this clause of the creed.

The pastoral Wesleyan posture: confess the bodily resurrection with full vigor; receive the Spirit’s present transforming work as the first fruits of the resurrection still to come; live the present life in this body, knowing that this body will be raised, healed, and remade; care for the bodies of others as bodies God will raise.

Hymnody

The Wesleyan hymnody on the resurrection of the body is rich, both in the Easter hymns and in the funeral and watch-night hymns that name the believer’s resurrection hope directly.

“Christ the Lord is risen today” (Charles, 1739), already cited under the second article, names the resurrection hope as the believer’s own: “Soar we now where Christ has led, / Following our exalted Head; / Made like him, like him we rise, / Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.”

“Rejoice for a brother deceased” (Charles, 1759) is the major Wesleyan funeral hymn of bodily-resurrection hope: the brother has died, but the resurrection in Christ’s life is the firm anticipation of the funeral’s grief.

“Come, let us join our friends above” (Charles, 1759) — cited under the communion of saints — names the bodily-resurrection consummation: “One family, we dwell in him, / One Church, above, beneath; / Though now divided by the stream, / The narrow stream of death.” The hymn anticipates the bodily reunion at the resurrection.

“Sing with all the saints in glory” (William J. Irons, 1873; not Wesleyan in origin but in the Methodist canon) puts 1 Corinthians 15 into singable form: “Sing with all the saints in glory, / Sing the resurrection song! / Death and sorrow, earth’s dark story, / To the former days belong.”

“Lift high the cross” (George W. Kitchin and Michael R. Newbolt, 1916) names the cross and the resurrection-hope together: “O Lord, once lifted on the glorious tree, / As thou hast promised, draw the world to thee.”

“Soon and very soon” (Andraé Crouch, 1976) names the bodily resurrection in the gospel cadence that has reanimated Methodist eschatology in the late 20th century: “No more crying there, / We are going to see the King. / No more dying there, / We are going to see the King.”

For the funeral service: the Methodist liturgical tradition draws also on the broader ecumenical hymnody — “Abide with me” (Henry F. Lyte), “For all the saints” (William W. How), “O God, our help in ages past” (Watts) — all of which name the resurrection hope explicitly.

For Easter: the entire Easter repertoire of Methodist hymnody participates in this clause. The believer who sings Christ the Lord is risen today is, in the same breath, confessing the personal hope of bodily resurrection.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

The doctrine is best taught by first naming what it does not say. The creed does not end with and after death I go to heaven. The word heaven does not appear at the end of the Apostles’ Creed at all. The same is true of the Nicene and the Athanasian. The early church’s hope was not the soul’s eventual escape from the body to a non-material heaven; the early church’s hope was the resurrection of the flesh — this body, healed and remade, in a renewed creation that the new heaven and new earth together will be. The cultural assumption that the Christian hope is going to heaven when you die is not what the creed says, and has been the inherited shape of popular Christian piety only over the past several centuries, in significant part under the influence of Platonic, Gnostic, and Enlightenment dualisms that the New Testament and the early church specifically resisted.

This is not a small matter. The way one talks about the future of the Christian shapes the way one treats the present body. If the Christian hope is the soul’s eventual escape from the body, then the body — both one’s own and one’s neighbor’s — becomes a temporary inconvenience, perhaps an embarrassment, certainly less important than the real spiritual self. The history of Christian asceticism in its harshest forms, the history of Christian indifference to bodily suffering, the history of Christian collusion with regimes that abused bodies — much of this has its theological root in a heaven-not-resurrection Christianity that the creed itself refuses. If, by contrast, the Christian hope is the resurrection of the body — if this body is destined for the glory of God — then the body becomes the present site of grace, of sanctification, of the works of mercy, of the eucharist, of the Spirit’s transforming labor.

The Bible’s resurrection vocabulary is consistently material. Isaiah 25 names the resurrection hope as a feast: “on this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow.” Choice wines. Rich foods. Eaten on a mountain that, in the biblical imagination, is a real mountain in a real geography of the new creation. The thief on the cross is told he will be with Jesus that day in paradise (Luke 23:43) — and paradise in the biblical vocabulary is the Garden, the Eden of Genesis 2, a place with real trees and real water and real rest. The resurrection appearances of Jesus involve a body that ate broiled fish (Luke 24:42–43), was touched by Thomas (John 20:27), and walked seven miles to Emmaus (Luke 24:13). The biblical hope is not floating in clouds; it is dining at a feast.

There is also a question about the continuity of the present body with the resurrected body that the New Testament settles in a particularly important way. The risen body of Jesus bore the wounds of the cross. Thomas, in the upper room, was invited to put his hand in the wound. The scars were not erased. This is among the most striking pastoral facts of the resurrection. The past is not erased or forgotten or moved on from. The past is healed — but its history remains visible on the resurrected body. What this means for the believer: the resurrected body is your body. The scars of your life — the surgeries, the accidents, the things that hurt you, the things you did to yourself — will be on the resurrected body, but healed. The history of the life is not abolished; it is glorified. Your body is what is raised, not a replacement body that has nothing to do with you.

This also bears on how the believer treats the present body. The body is not, in the Christian account, a prison the soul is locked into, nor a temporary vehicle the soul will discard. The body is the believer. The I that says I believe is the I that has joints and a face and a history. We are clay pots, Paul says (2 Cor. 4:7) — but the treasure is in the pot itself, and the pot will be remade. We are knocked down, Paul continues, but we aren’t knocked out. The clay pot will be remade out of the same clay.

For pastoral application: the doctrine is the church’s permanent answer to the despair of the body. To the person whose body is failing — the cancer patient, the survivor of trauma, the one who has carried chronic pain for years, the one who will not see their next birthday — the doctrine of the bodily resurrection is the church’s most concrete word of hope. The body that hurts now will be raised. The body that is being lost to the disease will be remade. The body that was abused will be restored, with the abuser’s verdict overturned. The hope is not the soul’s eventual freedom from the body; the hope is the body’s eventual freedom from death. The same God who said Let there be light, who took flesh in Mary’s womb, who raised Jesus on the third day, will raise the body of the believer. Carnis resurrectionem — this flesh, this body, healed and glorified.

The clause is therefore not an abstract eschatological belief; it is the operating premise of every act of bodily care in the church. It is why the church visits the sick. It is why the church anoints with oil. It is why the church holds the hand of the dying. It is why the church buries the dead with reverence rather than disposing of them as biological waste. It is why the church feeds the hungry and clothes the naked and houses the homeless: those bodies are bodies God will raise, and the Christian response in the present is the only response consistent with that future. The resurrection of the body is the present politics of the church.

For the preacher: do not let going to heaven substitute for resurrection of the body in the congregation’s working imagination. Heaven is in the creed, twice, but neither time names the believer’s final hope. The final clauses of the creed name the body, raised, on the new earth, in the life everlasting. Preach the doctrine in its biblical fullness. Trust the congregation to receive it. The hope is this body. Not someone else’s body. Not a body without the marks of the life that was lived in it. This body, healed.

Further Reading

• Daniel 12:1–3; Job 19:25–27; Isaiah 25:6–9; 26:19; Ezekiel 37:1–14 — Old Testament resurrection texts
• 2 Maccabees 7 — intertestamental Jewish resurrection hope
• Matthew 22:23–33; John 5:25–29; John 11:17–27 — Jesus on the resurrection
• Luke 24; John 20–21 — the bodily resurrection of Jesus, paradigmatic for ours
• Acts 17:32; 23:6–8; 24:15 — apostolic preaching of the general resurrection
• Romans 6:1–11; 8:11; 1 Corinthians 15 (the locus classicus) — Pauline resurrection theology
• 2 Corinthians 4–5 — clay pots, the building from God
• Philippians 1:21–24; 3:20–21 — Pauline tension about the present body
• 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 — the dead in Christ shall rise
• Revelation 20:11–15; 21:1–4 — the general resurrection and the new creation
• Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies Book V
• Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh (c. 210)
• Athanasius, On the Incarnation
• Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection
• Augustine, City of God Book XXII (the most sustained Latin patristic treatment)
• Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 18
• John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith IV.27
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Supplement, qq. 75–86
• Martin Luther, Lectures on 1 Corinthians 15 (1532–33)
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion III.25 (the major Reformation treatment)
• Heidelberg Catechism, Question 57
• Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 32
• The Articles of Religion of the United Methodist Church (1784), Article III
• John Wesley, Standard Sermons, Sermon 137, “On the Resurrection of the Dead”
• John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament on 1 Corinthians 15
• Charles Wesley, “Rejoice for a brother deceased” (1759); “Come, let us join our friends above” (1759)
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3 §73
• Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Fortress, 1996)
• N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003)
• N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (HarperOne, 2008)
• John Updike, “Seven Stanzas at Easter” (1960)