Feature
Glorious Flesh
How Dorothy Sayers Taught Me the Meaning of the Resurrection
Having grown up as a Christian, I would always have said I believed in the resurrection of the body. However, the doctrine of resurrection functioned as a kind of footnote in my thinking, while my primary concern was focused on the immortality of the soul. Without giving it much thought, I simply assumed that the doctrine of resurrection was a shorthand way of referring to the salvation of the soul. Even though I had read the Gospel accounts of Christ's resurrection many times, and even though I had read Paul's lengthy discussion of bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, I still unthinkingly assumed that the resurrection of believers would be non-physical.
It wasn't until my wife urged me to listen to a recorded lecture by Edith Schaeffer that I experienced what is often called a "paradigm shift." In this lecture Mrs. Schaeffer showed from Scripture what might seem obvious by definition but was for me a new revelation: the resurrection of the body will be experienced bodily. She explained that in heaven we will have physical bodies, though of course the body will be transformed through being delivered of corruption. I still remember walking among the English hedgerows as I listened to the lecture and thinking, "Wow!"
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Robin Phillips is the author of Gratitude in Life's Trenches: How to Experience the Good Life Even When Everything Is Going Wrong (Ancient Faith 2020). He has a Master's in history from King's College, London, and is currently working on a Master's in Library Science through the University of Oklahoma. He is Blog & Media Managing Editor for the Fellowship of St. James and a frequent contributor to Salvo and Touchstone magazines. He operates a blog at www.robinmarkphillips.com.
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30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
The Christian Cure for What Ails Modern Politics by David Bradshaw
