Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 24/1 (2013):1-2. Article copyright © 2013 by Randall W. Younker. Editor’s Page Randall W. Younker Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary Andrews University Our first issue for 2013 starts us off with a core issue for Christianity–the resurrection. It plays a central part in the Christian narrative of the New Testament, but many critical scholars have questions as to whether or not it can be found in the Old Testament. Jon Paulien brings us up to date on current discussions on this vital topic. Continuing with our look into the Old Testament we have Elias Brasil de Suza who examines the sanctuary through the OT view of cosmos, covenant, and creation. Clinton Wahlen then moves us into the New Testament with his study on justification–rather than reviewing the more oft-studied Pauline texts on this topic, Clinton provides a fresh look at justification as it is found in the gospels. The next article continues our study of the New Testament with the second entry on the topic of thrones in Revelation by Laszlo Gallusz. Moving into the realm of theology, the Everlasting Covenant is the focus of Peter van Bemmelen’s contribution to this issue. Next is an update on the debate of the sola scriptura principle by Aleksandar Santrac. We conclude this issue with Fernando Canale’s examination of what being the Remnant means. We also want to encourage you to check out our website which has a variety of resources available. Under our publications tab you can find JATS archives and you can also find our publication, Perspective Digest. The activities tab lists information about the various symposiums which ATS holds each year in the spring and the fall. The media tab has archived video and audio selections in several media formats. Please feel free to utilize these all as you study various topics. 1 JOURNAL OF THE ADVENTIST THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY In addition to the articles in this issue, we wish to inform our readers of a new ATS publication. Occasionally a good study or dissertation is brought to our attention that we think will be of interest to our readers. That is the case with The Role and Status of the Catholic Church in the Church-State Relationship within the Roman Empire from A.D. 306-814 by Jean Zukowski which has just been published. If you are interested in acquiring a copy of this book, please visit our webpage at www.atsjats.org. Blessings as you read! 2 Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 24/1 (2013):3-24. Article copyright © 2013 by Jon Paulien. The Resurrection and the Old Testament: A Fresh Look in Light of Recent Research Jon Paulien Dean, School of Religion Loma Linda University “In so far as the ancient, non-Jewish world had a Bible, its Old Testament was Homer. And in so far as Homer has anything to say about resurrection, he is quite blunt: it doesn’t happen.”1 This statement sets the table for the fundamental challenge faced by early Christians on this topic. Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was “known” to be false.2 Outside Judaism, nobody believed in resurrection, at least not in the way that the Bible defines it.3 This is not to say that the ancient world had no concept of life after death. If Homer functioned like the Old Testament for the Hellenistic world, its New Testament was Plato.4 Plato had no need for resurrection because he understood the human person to be divided into two distinct 1 N. T. Wright, “The Resurrection of the Son of God,” Christian Origins and the Question of God, volume three (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 32. 2 Recall the mocking response of many of the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill when Paul brings up the resurrection of Jesus in Acts 17:31-32. 3 Markus Bockmuehl, “Complete History of the Resurrection: A Dialogue with N. T. Wright,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26:4 (2004): 491-492; Timothy Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (New York: Dutton, 2011), 216; John J. Tietjen, “A Book Worth Discussing: The Resurrection of the Son of God,” Currents in Theology and Mission 32/2 (April 2005): 96; Wright, Resurrection, 35. 4 Wright, Resurrection, 47-48. Homer is generally reckoned to have lived around the Eighth Century BC and Plato in the late Fifth to early Fourth Century BC. See note 87 on page 48 of Wright, Resurrection. 3 JOURNAL OF THE ADVENTIST THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY parts; a mortal, material body and an immortal, immaterial soul that lives on after death.5 So for Plato, death affects only the body, not the soul. Before going any further it would be wise to define exactly what I mean by resurrection. Resurrection is not a general term for life after death in all its forms,6 it refers specifically to the belief that the present state of those who have died will be replaced by a future state in which they are alive bodily once more.7 This is not a redefinition of death, but the reversal or defeat of death, restoring bodily life to those in which it has ceased.8 While the resurrected body may be different in many ways, it is as material as the first body, usually arising at the very place of death, wearing clothes, and arising with recognizable, physical characteristics of the former life.9 Resurrection in the fullest sense requires the belief that human beings are whole persons, with unified body, soul and spirit. That means that, in the Seventh-day Adventist view, resurrection is absolutely necessary in order to experience life beyond the grave.10 According to the ancients, a lot of things happened after death, but bodily resurrection was not one of them, it was not a part of the pagan’s hope for the future.11 Death was like a one-way street, you can travel down that street leading to death, but once at your destination you can’t come 5 John C. Brunt, “Resurrection and Glorification,” in the Handbook of Seventh-day Adventist Theology, edited by Raoul Dederen, Commentary Reference Series, volume twelve (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 2000), 365. 6 Resurrection, re-incarnation, immortality of the soul, etc. 7 This is well expressed in the second edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica: “Ultimately the dead will be revived in their bodies and live again on earth.” Moshe Greenberg, “Resurrection in the Bible,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, edited by Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, volume 17 (Detroit: Thomson- Gale, 2007), 240. 8 Wright, Resurrection, 201. 9 Albrecht Oepke, “evgei,rw, etc.” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, volume two, edited by Gerhard Kittel, translated and edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964), 337. 10 P. G. Damsteegt, primary contributor, Seventh-day Adventists Believe. .: A Biblical Exposition of 27 Fundamental Doctrines (Washington, DC: Ministerial Association, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1988), 356. 11 Wright, Resurrection, 38, 85. Although other scholars might qualify the statement a bit, Wright goes on to say (page 76), “Nobody in the pagan world of Jesus’ day and thereafter claimed that somebody had been truly dead and had then come to be truly, and bodily, alive once more.” On pages 32-84 of his monumental work Wright summarizes the evidence for his categorical claim. 4 PAULIEN: RESURRECTION AND THE OLD TESTAMENT back.12 The ancient Greeks did allow that resurrection could possibly occur as an isolated miracle, but such are either fictional or are more like resuscitations than genuine resurrections.13 The idea of a true resurrection, particularly a general resurrection at the end of the world, was alien to the Greeks.14 This means that something happened to Jesus that had happened to no one else in the ancient world.15 What is particularly striking is a sudden proliferation of apparent deaths and reversals of deaths in the ancient pagan world beginning with the mid to late First Century AD and for centuries afterward.16 It is quite likely that these were influenced by the New Testament stories of the resurrection of Jesus.17 12 Ibid., 81-82. 13 Albrecht Oepke, “avni,sthmi, etc.,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume One, edited by Gerhard Kittel, translated and edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964), 369. On the difference between resuscitation and resurrection see Edith M. Humphrey, “Which Way Is Up? Revival, Resurrection, Assumption, and Ascension in the Rhetoric of Paul and John the Seer, ARC 33 (2005): 328-330. See also Michael Welker, “Wright on the Resurrection,” Scottish Journal of Theology 60 (4, 2007): 462-466. A couple of examples of such “isolated miracles” in ancient Greek literature can be found in the play Alcestis by Euripides and the novel Callirhoe, by Chariton. Alcestis is the only tale containing a true resurrection in the entire ancient world. The heroine of the story, Alcestis, does in fact return from the dead to bodily life, but even this is not a true parallel to New Testament resurrection; like Lazarus she will presumably die again. Even so, intelligent pagans in Jesus’ day dismissed the story as a mythic fiction (see Wright, Resurrection, 67, but see Stanley E. Porter, “Resurrection, the Greeks and the New Testament,” in Resurrection, edited by Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes and David Tombs [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999], 52-81).