The Phenomenal Corporeity and Investiture

THE PHENOMENAL CORPOREITY AND
INVESTITURE.

Sec, V.

When, by God's permission, Samuel appeared to king Saul, the latter asked the witch, "What seest thou?" "I see," said she, "Elohim (a lofty being) ascending out of the earth." "How is it formed?" asked he further. She answered, "An old man cometh up, and he is covered in a robe" (1 Sam. xxviii. 13). Samuel, who came up out of Hades, had therefore form and clothing as he had had in this world; and when on the mount two men approached Jesus the glorified, appearing likewise iv S6&, and spoke with Him, the disciples immediately recognised in them Moses and Elias (Matt. xvii. 3; Luke ix. 30). These also appeared therefore in an external form, corresponding to their temporal history, and are therefore unmistakeable. But this external form is a spiritual one. For Samuel is invisible to Saul, and only visible to the witch. Moses and Elias are visible to the three disciples, but then these latter are in a state of ecstasy.

Putting Elias out of the question, it was not their material bodies in which Samuel and Moses appeared, for both of them after their death had been committed to the earth. But that material bodies were assumed for the occasion is contrary to all analog}'; for, to say nothing of the Theophanies, even the angels, when they appear in the form of men, assume no material bodies; but, by virtue of an internal power, they give themselves human form when they make themselves visible to whom they will, and whose inner sense is opened to see them. We thence conclude, that even the external appearance conformed to the form that they had previously worn in this state, wherein Moses and Samuel were manifested, was the immaterial product of their pneumato-psychical nature; and this conclusion is confirmed by the fact, that as well in its pictures of Hades, as in its pictures of heaven, Scripture shows us the spirits or souls that are transferred thither, although actually incorporeal, yet with a corporeal form.¹ But if we compare Isa. xiv., Ezek. xxxi., with Apoc. vii. and other passages, the bodily form of the spirits that are in Hades is the copy of that which they had worn in this world;⁸ and the bodily form of those that are in heaven is the pattern of their future glorified, body. And this is confirmed by the expressions of all to whom, since the apostolic times, a glimpse into the spiritual kingdom has been vouchsafed.

We are far from desiring to raise a dispute on what has been said by the Smalcaldian Articles (ii. 2) of our ecclesiastical confession, "that evil spirits have made a great deal of mischief when they appeared as human souls, by unspeakable lies and deceptions." But still we do not decide, on that account, that we can regard all appearances of the dead as a mocking game of lying demons. For the reasons which Strobel³ opposes to us will not stand the test. He maintains (1) that a reappearance of departed souls is not possible without resurrection; that no soul can come forth from Hades, without at the same time breaking the bars of death; but that Scripture knows only one key to Hades, the key of death in the hands of the Risen One (i. 18). We no less distinctly acknowledge, that no soul can be

¹ There remains to souls, says TJmbreit in his work On Sin, 1853, p. 128, after the flesh has passed from them, a certain corporeity, not further described. In the same way, Heyder, I.e. p. 48, animse in Hade versanti umbra corporis vindicatur.

¹ In Ps. xlix. 14, this form, corresponding to that of the present state, in which the ungodly appear, is called 1is = rr\VS, image, form, pattern: "their image is given up to the hell for consumption, without any place remaining for it (in the upper world)."

³ In his notice of this book of ours, Lulh. Zeitschr. 1857, pp. 777-783.

free from the Lands of Hades and of death unless this key opens the way for it; but we reject the inference, that all appearances of the dead must therefore be appearances of those who have risen again. The saints which manifestly appeared, according to Matt. xxvii. 52, after the resurrection of Jesus in Jerusalem, were raised from the dead; but Samuel, who appeared to king Saul, was no raised person; and Moses, who spake with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, had not risen from the dead. It is true Strobel refers to both appearances in the chapter de bis mortuis; but that Samuel and Moses were raised up from the dead for the purpose of a passing appearance, to die again afterwards, is a marvellous invention. Both of them were manifested, not as redeemed out of Hades either for ever or for a period: they appeared within the unabrogated limits of their spiritual state as bodiless, and yet—in conformity with their previous corporeity—visible spirits. But (2) how then, asks Strobel, is a soul to make itself perceptible to the inhabitants of the earth, if it have no body? With as much reason it might be asked, How then can angels make themselves perceivable if they have no body? They do not appear in assumed human bodies, which they afterwards lay aside like a mask; and yet they appear in human form, which they give to themselves from within, and in which they operate upon material nature. But with respect to the souls (yfrv^al, Apoc. vi. 9), or, as Scripture expresses itself (without, like Strobel, wrenching asunder soul and spirit), to the spirits (jrvevfiara, 1 Pet. iii. 19, Heb. xii. 23) of departed men, they, as creatively intended for bodily manifestation, are even in themselves not, according to the biblical view, without form. Wherefore should they not be able to make themselves perceptible, on the assumption that God wills it, and opens man's eyes for the purpose of discerning them? But (3) God will not do so, says Strobel, referring to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. From this parable we perceive, that the information upon God's will which we have in God's word needed no filling up by means of the preaching of those who for this purpose should be raised from the dead, and sent to the living. But are we thence to conclude, that the dead do not under any circumstances return to life, in order still to tarry among the living for awhile as testimonies of the divine power of miracle, and thus of the truth of divine revelation? The dead who were raised by the Lord Jesus prove exactly the contrary. And are we at all to conclude thence, that the dead even before their resurrection, and without awakening of their bodies, are not able to appear again? The appearances of Moses and of Samuel prove the contrary. We stand upon the testimonies of Scripture, without interpreting therein in favour of any dogmatic prejudices; and we still even now say with Erich Pontoppidan,¹ "What is acknowledged to be possible in the Holy Scripture, must even outside of it still be possible."

Even the ancients objected that the Samuel who appeared in 1 Sam. xxviii. could not have been the true one; because it was not written that he had re-assumed his body, without which he could not have been seen. One of our old theologians² answers thereto, "Non opus f uit redassumptione corporis sui; spiritus Samuelis enim potuit vel alio quodam corpore aereo, uti angeli, apparere in eoque figuram prioris humani corporis reprsesentare, vel etiam sine illo cerni, facta solum .elevatione sensus oculorum mulieris et Saulis ad lumen e spiritu prodiens recipiendum." We believe, on the other hand, that the spirits of the departed are even in themselves not without a phenomenal bodily form. It is true it may not be assumed that the soul, when separating from the body, continues to exist within its nerve-spirit as its immaterial body:³ for this nerve-spirit is of very doubtful authenticity; and even if it were not so, would belong to the region of power and matter without being of a spiritual-psychical nature. We find it therefore inadmissible that the soul retains the same nature which, in Div. IV. Sec. XIII., we called its nerve-body, or rather which is called by others⁴ its nerve-spirit-body: it is contrary to the nature of

¹ In his scriptural and intelligent treatise, On the Immortality of Human Souls, etc., ed. 2, 1766.

¹ Dachselt, in his Biblia Accentuata (1729), p. 434.

³ V. Rudloff, Lehre vom Menschen, p. 62, and elsewhere.

⁴ This view is widely circulated. "Perhaps," says Kastner himself, in his Considerations on the Influence of Natural Study on Metaphysics, "there is a certain portion of matter constantly associated with our soul, and the rest no further than to form the clothing for the body which we call ours." More definitely, v. Rudloff teaches an intermediate condition of immaterial corporeity of the soul, which consists of its nephesch, i.e. (as he understands this word) the nerve-spirit, or is formed through it.

death, which consists in total separation of the soul from the body, as well in its most subtle, as in its grossest, materiality. Yet it is true—as maintained by Tertullian and Irenaus, appealing to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus—that the soul in the future state has ejus corporis quod circumtulit efficfiem (de anima, c. ix.), or preserves characterem corporis, in quo etiam adaptantur, eundem (c. hcer. ii. 34, 1). "The soul of the spirit," we say with Goschel,¹ "after the separation from its body, is not wholly without a body—the inward body follows it." We think that we must form for ourselves the conceptions that flow therefrom, in which, moreover, we may do justice to the truth contained in the confused heathenish representations of the shadowy corporeity of the other world.²

As the soul is the principle of bodily life derived from the spirit, it is even in itself probable, that although immaterial, it is still a manifestation of the spirit, formed conformably to the organism which it enlivens by its universal presence. This is an old view. To the question whether it is possible to see the soul, Macarius answers (Horn. vii. 6 s.), "Like as these eyes behold the sun, thus the enlightened, but only a few, behold the form of their souls;" and to the question whether the soul is in any manner formed, "As the angels have a form and likeness, and as the outward man has a definite external appearance, thus also the inner man has an angel-like form, and on the other hand, a form like to the outer man." And Tertullian relates, in ch. ix. of his book de anima, a story of a Christian woman well known to him, who often fell into a state of ecstasy (similar to a so-called religious somnambulist, but unlike in this particular, that after the ecstasy she was able to remember what she saw), and who once declared, "Among other things, the soul was shown to me corporeally; and I saw it as spirit, but not of an inane and void (shadowy and spectral) character: no, as capable of being grasped by hand, tender and light, and of an aerial colour, and in absolutely human form." In agree

¹ LeCzte Dinge, p. 150.

² See Nagelsbach, Homerische Theologie, vii. 27 (of the Autenrieth ed.), together with the discussions of Caesar upon the life of the Psyches as ultthx of the living, according to Homeric ideas, in the Zcitschr. ftlr A. W. 1842, c. 991; Thiersch's Pindar, pt. ii. p. 233, on the words £un» li XfiVrrx ttliimf uluhon; and Bottcher's Ideas on Art-Mythology, ii. 477.

merit with this vision—which certainly becomes suspicious as a vision, from the fact that it only confirmed what Tertullian himself taught—is what J. B. von Helmont, in his treatise upon the image of the spirit (imago mentis), relates of himself.¹ Threeand-tvventy long years having been occupied with large aspirations after knowledge of the soul, he finally in the year 1633, when he in the midst of outwardly troubled circumstances was in a sabbatical mood, saw in a vision his spirit in a human form. "It was a light, absolutely pure, active Seeing, a spiritual substance, crystalline, enlightened in its own brightness, but enveloped in another cloudy portion as in its husk (siliqua), in which I could not distinguish whether it had a brightness from itself, on account of the predominating flashing of the crystalline brightness therein contained." Moreover, J. Bohme answers to the question, how the soul is specially formed and shaped: "The soul is formed according to the entire body, with all the limbs; the spirit portions it into the whole body; all the limbs are its boughs: its whole form looks like a tree with many twigs and branches." We leave it to the reader to confront these testimonies of the ancients with our representation of the nature of the soul, and its relation to the spirit, and are satisfied ourselves with the hint. It is the doxa of the spirit, immaterial, but similarly formed to the body, which the spirit through it ensouls; it is, as the outside of the spirit, so the inside of the body, which in every change of its material condition maintains it in identity with itself.

When the soul has thus been linked with a body thus or thus articulated, has acted upon it, and has been subjected to its influences, it has become a natural necessity for it to exhibit itself conformed to the constitution of that body formed under its physical and ethical co-operation, and the temporal relations associated therewith. It continues, moreover, in the other world in that form which, as the living principle of the body, it had assumed. Its appearance remains a corporeal one, although

¹ Opp. ed. Francofurt, i. 256 (not exactly communicated in Barth, Lebensmagnelismus, p. 8). The "cloudy portion" is, in Helmont's mind, the anima sensitiva, by him regarded as mental, which has its place circa os stomachi, and pervades the whole body per ministrum organum archei; this archeus, according to our ideas, being the nervous power. S. Spiess, J. B. von Helmont's System der Medicin, p. 46.

immaterial. We are constrained thus to express ourselves. For although we hesitate to speak of an immaterial corporeity of God and of the angels, because certainly materiality (even although spiritualized) is an essential characteristic of corporeity; still it is precisely in this case that the idea of immaterial corporeity is no self-contradiction, because it is only in this case that the form of corporeity will be conceived of abstracted from its matter. For this intermediate state of corporeity, as compared with the material corporeity, is on the one hand only a shadow of the latter, but on the other hand is, so to speak, its essence or extract, so far as it is a far more immediate and more transparent image of the actual nature of man, and is related to the corruptible body as the cast is to the broken mould.¹ As, generally, what the man has been and how he has been in this life is not extinguished in the future state, but becomes essentially manifest; so there is reflected in this material, or (as, to guard ourselves against misconstruction, we prefer saying) this phenomenal psychical corporeity, all that man has become through his own self-destination among divinely-appointed conditions. In this life, the soul has only a limited power over the corporeity. In noble bodily forms dwells often a hateful soul; in hateful forms, a noble soul. In the other world it is otherwise. The phenomenal corporeity, laying aside all that is inadequate, will be the adequate bodily copy in human form of the ethical self-formation of the soul. All that is good and divinely wrought in man, and all that is evil, with the exception of that which is blotted out in the blood of Christ Jesus, comes then to manifestation; for as well good as evil deeds leave behind lasting traces in the soul, and give to it a permanent character.² Happy then is the soul, which, purified by Christ's word, is pervaded by the cleansing fire of death as a light in the Lord !*

¹ Just in this way Gregory of Nyasa. See Moller, I.e. p. 93, forma qusedam (sFoof) semper mariens.

¹ Therefore it is prayed at the close of the 1x(iKxmi)i.i<; of Zacharias (ed. Boissonade, p. 151): rov; xxxoii; xxpxxrripit; xxi Tvtovi rii; ^vx^; i£iX«io-«u, oif£«/ rs Tiji, tlxinx T%9 trtinin JLHlumn. By these are meant stigmata et vibices, quibus vitia animas maculant et deformant, quaque eis etiam a corporibus separates insident.

³ See Goschel, Der Mensch diesseits und jenseits, p. 71: "Death is the final washing of the feet, for purification through the blood."

I cannot here refrain from citing some expressions of the two clairvoyants already often mentioned, who, on account of their manifest piety, and on account of visible indications of grace, of which they were thought worthy in their state, deserve special consideration. No psychologist will deny that the circumstances which I communicate are deep glimpses into the mystery of the life of the soul, although the actual fact of that which was seen only allowed itself to be beheld by them in symbolical refraction. "In every human soul," says one, "is formed first of all a tree of life. This has its roots in the heart, its several kinds of branches expand themselves in the breast, and the tenderest twigs in the brain. The most various kind of flowers—as roses, lilies, tulips, and the like—and its just as various kinds of fruits, show forth from it outside the head in the crown of the rays of righteousness. Thus, as by the tree of life, the kingdom of plants is represented in the soul: thus there are formed in it also, by strong spiritual operation, lifeless forms, more strongly or more weakly stamped as animal, which encamp around our heart; and there, even although they have no life of their own, are stirred at the heaving of the passions. There appears the serpent, as a symbol of malicious cunning; the peacock, as that of vain pride; the goat, as that of sensuality; the toad, as that of covetousness, and the like. And where these dark brute-forms are encamped in more vivid character, there the stream of life which pours from the heart to the brain and again returns to the heart suffers, and there also the tree of life suffers, an absolute darkening and change." "Even the evil men," says the other clairvoyante, a little girl of ten years old, " have flowers around their head; but I cannot in any wise tell you how terrible, how disgusting they are. In the same way that a darkness surrounds their whole body, which terrifies me, and causes me cramps, so also are their flowers darkened. They hang down all withered and heavy; many appear absolutely dark, many as if mouldered. Ah, no corrupted, rotting earthly rose appears so loathsome as the black rose on the darkened head of an evil man: its leaves are wildly torn to pieces, and ragged in many withered rags; and its darkness is so frightful, that I cannot look upon it."¹

If these pictures must be regarded as visionary or poetical, ¹ See M. Beeeel, Letzte Aussagen (1851), p. 47.

at any rate they are pictures of what is actual. "The will of the soul-spirit"—thus J. Bohme¹ expresses this matter of fact— "is eternal; that which is comprehended in the will of the soulspirit is taken along with the, soul, when body and soul are severed. Therefore it is necessary for us to aspire after something good, in which the soul can find its eternal occupation, and within which it may have its enjoyment; for the works of our soul follow us, and the works of the hands and of the external spirit remain in this world, for the soul is in eternity. What it makes and imagines its own in this state, this stands ever before it, if it be then that it may shatter it again, it is then as a shattered work, on which it spends no more effort; for it is delivered from it. For eternity carves an eternal model, and that which is fragile and incipient carves a perishable model; for all things of this state shall stand every one in his own model. For what the eternal will grasps lays hold of an imperishable form; therefore it does not break that in pieces."²

There is a spiritual form of the soul which is the sum of its present ethical conduct and condition.³ This, even in the future

¹ Of liie Threefold Life of Man, xii. 2 (works published by Schiebler, iv. 183).

² If the testimony of the theosophist be rejected, let that of a late philosopher be heard: "Every individuality," says J. H. Fichte, in his work on the idea of personality, and of individual continuance (ed. ii. p. 108), "takes over along with it, in itself, its judgment, to the rest of blessedness, or to ever unblessed rending opposition. The sum of its inner and outer works, which it has lived in its passions and endeavours, its capacities as its incapacities, it continues to take with it, as spiritually formed habit and fundamental tendency. The self-conviction of this sum of life establishes thereby at once the soul's condition after death. It is the conditioning and the basis of the future corporeity."

³ Dante has this in mind when he sings (Purg. x. 121-126):

"Christians, and proud! 0 poor and wretched ones!
That, feeble in the mind's eye, lean your trust
Upon unstayed perverseness: know ye not
That we are worms, yet made at last to form
The winged insect,¹ imp'd with angel plumes,
That to heaven's justice unobstructed soars?"⁸

He who wishes to read another commentary upon these profound poetic

¹ "Nati a format V angelica furfulla."

² Carey's translation.

intermediate state, will come to a more transparent manifestation, in that the soul by the power of the spirit makes itself visible, in conformity with its present corporeity and its present habitus, allowing for all the inadequacy of its spiritual form. The godless person will then not be able to conceal his internal condition, and will so far go yv[ivo<;, as that his shame appears (Apoc. xvi. 15). But he who already here below has lived in God, and has put on righteousness in the faith of Christ, and lias been nourished by Christ's flesh and blood, his self-manifestation is the serene prelude of that perfection for which he waits in peace; and there shall appear upon him nothing of sin, or standing in closer or remoter connection with sin: for that is all swallowed up by justifying grace. The phenomenal body, in which such an one manifests himself, is as the embodied blissful hope of his coming glorification; and as a pledge of this, he receives a white raiment, in which the garment of salvation, wherewith even here below he was invested inwardly, makes itself visible; and the faithfulness with which he watched over the purity of his robe of salvation finds its recompense.¹ The Apocalypse makes mention of these lfidria Xeu/wfc, or aroXai XevKal, so frequently and continually (iii. 4, 5, vi. 11, vii. 9, 13, xix. 14, comp. iii. 18, iv. 4), that it is exegetically impossible to regard this white raiment as a mere figure of speech.² Moreover, none who at any time have been thought worthy to catch a glimpse of the eternal state, have known how sufficiently to extol this heavenly whiteness in which the spirits of those who have died in the Lord are clothed. It is the white raiment which Dante so ingeniously distinguishes,

words than the one above given by us, may read what Schbberlein says in the Jahrbb. fur Deutsche Theol. 1861, p. 74, upon the corporeity of the intermediate state; among other things, "The aoul which is separated in the Lord will after death be supported and surrounded by the internal spiritual corporeity, which it has worked out here below in the silent hidden way of faith through the power of the Holy Spirit."

¹ Comp. H. W. Rinck, Vom Zustand nach dem Tode, p. 133; against whom Woldemar Schmidt, De statu animarum medio inter mortem et resurrectionem, p. 31, will only allow the one passage 2 Cor. v. 1-4 to be of effect, and will not receive the arohxi Aft/x«J as a testimony on behalf of the corporeity of the intermediate state.

² Thus v. Hofmann, ii. 2, 483-486. The garment white as light is the glory of the saiuta; the palm, the adornment of their joy.

as the first raiment, from the second raiment—the resurrection body.¹ But he mistakes (if in other respects I here penetrate the meaning of the Scripture) in identifying this first garment of the soul-spirit with the self-likeness of its body in the intermediate state,² and regards the air as the material of this selflikeness, when he, who even in this matter is otherwise an incomparable theologian, sings of the soul causing its first clothing (Purgatorio, xxv. 88-108):

"Soon as the place
Receives her, round the plastic virtue beams,
Distinct as in the living limbs before:
And as the air, when saturate with showers,
The casual beam refracting, decks itself
With many a hue; so here the ambient air
Weareth that form, which influence of the soul
Imprints on it; and like the flame, that where
The fire moves, thither follows; so henceforth,
The new form on the spirit follows still;
Hence hath it semblance and is shadow called,
With each sense,⁸ even to the sight, endued:
Hence speech is ours, hence laughter, tears, and sighs,
Which thou may'st oft have witnessed on the mount.
The obedient shadow fails not to present
Whatever varying passion moves within us,
And this the cause of what thou marvell'st at." *

¹ This distinction of a stola prima and secunda (bines stola) is ancient; it occurs in Augustine (Serm. iv. in solennitate sanctorum), Gregory the Great (Dial. i. iv. ch. 25), Beda, Haymo, Anselm, Bernhard, etc.

⁸ Goschel, Dante AlighierCs Osterfeier, pp. 73, 77, 98, comp. Letztt Dinge, p. 13; Althaus, Letztt Dinge (1858), p. 33; Hebart, Die zweite sichtbare Zukunft Christi, p. 234, where it is cautiously said, "The white garments Point to corporeity;" Osiander, Commentary on the Corinthians, ii. 181, "The position and the clothing of the soul between death and resurrection is to be thought of as a mediation between the new life and the old."

* In the original, e quindi organa poi ciascun sentire.

* Cary's Dante. [The translator ventures to transcribe the marvellously accurate and beautiful German version of the passage by Kopisch:

"Sobald. der Statten eine die umfahet,

Erstrahlt die bildnerische Kraft nun ringshin,
So und so weit, wie in lebendgen Gliedern.
Und wie die Luft, wenn sie des Regens voll ist

Vom fremden Strahl, den sie in sich abspiegelt,
Geschmiicket wird mit mannigfachen Farben:

My purpose in this discussion on the soul's clothing in the intermediate state, is to leave aside the passage 2 Cor. v. 1, which even to this day is so variously explained. The heavenly habitation which the apostle refers to, is here in no respect the intermediate body, but the body of the resurrection or glorification, which he, as in 1 Cor. xv. 48, calls a heavenly one, because it originates through a heavenly agency of power, is of a heavenly nature, and has heaven as its place of residence. "We know," says he in ver. 1, " that when our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, an eternal dwelling-place in heaven." It pertains to the substance of the Christian's' believing consciousness, that when our earthly pilgrimage is at an end, we receive as our own, a body of heavenly nature and abode. The apostle transfers himself, in saying exofiev, into the period of the parousia; or this e^ofiev is an expression of the possession which, after death has resulted, is future, but certain, and therefore already as good as present. In the expectation of the parousia that fills the apostle, as of something that is immediately at hand, it cannot be surprising that the intermediate state is passed over by him, or has almost wholly disappeared from his view. In ver. 2, this certainty of ours of such a heavenly body present to us after death is founded upon the fact, or is explained by it, that with our present groaning is associated the longing

So ordnet sich die nachbarliclie Luft dort.

Zu der Gestalt, die ihr die Kraft der Seelo

Aufpraget an dem Orte, wo sie weilet.
Und dann vergleichbar einer Flamme, welche

Dem Feuer immer folgt, wo man es hintragt,

Folgt nun dem Geiste seine neue Bildung.
Dorther empfahet er dann sein Erscheinen

Und heisst ein Schatten, riistet auch ein jedes

Empfinden vbllig aus,¹ bis dass es sichtbar.
Deswegen reden wir daliier und lacheln,

Deswegen bilden Seufzer wir und Thranen,

Die der am Berg kannst wahrgenommen haben.
Nachdem uns Neigungen und andre Triebe

Festbalten, bildet sich der Schatten, siehe:

Dies ist der Grund des Yorgangs, dem du staunest."

Kopisch.]—Tn.

¹ In the original, e quindi organa pot ciascmt sentire.

after a clothing upon with the heavenly investiture, i.e. after a clothing with the same, which ensues immediately, and does not wait until beyond death. "For in such a case¹ we groan moreover, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven" (the immortal heavenly body). We long for immediate clothing upon, ^u although it is true," adds the apostle in ver. 3, "that being clothed" (and not clothed upon), "we shall not be found naked;" for even those who have already fallen asleep, are at the parousia clothed with a heavenly body, and at the same time with those who are alive and are clothed upon with the same, are brought to meet Christ (1 Thess. iv. 15-17, comp. 1 Cor. xv. 48). The future evpedrjaofi-eda refers to this meeting of Christ of the returned spirit, and of His people who are taken up by Him now bodily from death, and the aorist participle ivSvadfievoi confirms what will have happened there in the case of the latter: even having attained the heavenly body by means of clothing (not clothing upon), they become such, that they are not found naked.² Nevertheless we long after clothing upon; "for"—thus ver. 4 founds or explains the fact of longing—" we that are in this tabernacle'' (the present body of dissolution through death) "do also groan, feeling ourselves burdened, for the reason that we may not be unclothed" (in order that we might be clothed on the other side of death for the first time), "but clothed upon"

¹ I refer it Tivtu no longer to rov axrimvi (ver. 1), but I take it in the meaning " according to this" (in such a state of things), as John xvi. 30, Acts xxiv. 16; although, moreover, the meaning "presently," "in the meanwhile," "now," is suitable. Both meanings of the i» Tovtu (it rovro/f) are frequent in classical Greek. See the new edition of Passow on Ovro;, p. 5996.

² That tl xxX, moreover, in the New Testament usus loquendi, means "if also = although," and that xtti in this connection may belong to the chief verb of the hypothetical sentence just as well as to a special member of the sentence, needs no proof. In the only New Testament passage where u yt xxl occurs, it is in another meaning. The apostle says in Gal. iii. 4, " Have ye submitted to so immense an injury, as that which ye had received, tix.ii, for nothing, at random, without having anything substantial therefrom?" and adds, u yt xtti I/x#, i.e. if indeed it be so, that ye have suffered it for nothing, and something has not assuredly rather grown up to you therefrom, — to wit, corruption. In conformity with this use of if yt xtti, 2 Cor. v. 3 would be explicable, "if indeed we also, in putting it on (the heavenly habitation), be found to be not naked," i.e. so far as we, when

(at the parousia without previous death), "so that thereby mortality may be swallowed up" (at once transformed) "of life." The Christian does not fear death, but he sighs for redemption from this body of death (Rom. vii. 24), by which he feels himself burdened; and the dearest thing that could happen to him, and which therefore he thus longs for, is that immediate clothing upon with the body of glorification which awaits the faithful who live to see the day of the Lord,—a spiritual disposition which lies remote from our present life of experience, because the day of the Lord is more or less pushed out of its just place in our believing consciousness, and therefore the longing after it no longer fills our hearts as it did those of the first Christians.

Our interpretation of ver. 3 essentially agrees with that of Reiche.¹ Nevertheless the latter decides for the reading eKSvadfievoi: "although moreover, we, being unclothed from our present body by death, shall not be found naked." In this reading, the thought lies proportionally nearer to a corporeity of the intermediate state; and accordingly the whole passage has been recently interpreted by Ernesti.² But if the apostle looks upon death as eKSvaaaOai, and the change at the day of the coming of Christ as eirevSvaaaOai, there is left for ivSvaaaOai only the idea presented by 1 Thess. iv. 16; and the rather, as Oikosofiti, olxia, oliajr^piov of ver. 1 can in no

the Lord comes, shall not already be among those who have fallen asleep. But this view, in itself forced, and loosening the strict connection between vers. 2 and 4, is wrecked on the part. aor. ttivoaf*twt. Bengel and otliers explain siquidem etiam indutos nos, non nudos (h. e. si vivos nos) invenial dies novissimus; but this must (in spite of J. Muller's defence, ii. 413), require hltivfifoot. De Wette and Meyer translate uyt *a/,—for the rest explaining differently,—in the certain presumption to wit, (tiyt) that actually (*a/), and so on. But this apprehension of the particles corresponds rather to the rationalistic theory of their use, than to their use itself. One thing of the two, either the sentence with ti yi x,ati is restrictive (if indeed also), or it is concessive (although indeed also). Only in the latter view is a perfectly satisfactory meaning obtained.

¹ See his Comm. crit. i. 353-365, and also Kling, St. u. Kr. 1839, 511.

¹ In his Theorie rom Ursprunge der Siinde aus der Sinnlichkeit, pp' 117-121. Moreover, Koos, Flatt, Schnekkenburger, Schott, J. P. Lange, Kern, Nitzsch, Martensen, Goschel, v. Rudloff, and in the latest times H. W. Rinck and Wold. Schmidt, understand the passage of an intermedia'* corporeity.

case designate the corporeity of the intermediate state which is referred to in ver. 3. An intermediate corporeity to which these designations were appropriate, is known neither by Paul nor by the Holy Scripture in general. Rightly, Reiche rejects this reference of ver. 3 to a mortui organum quasi provisorium. There is ne intermediate corporeity which can be named a habitation, and of which an ivZvaaadai can be predicated. That self-embodiment of the soul represented by Dante, and here and there by later writers,¹ by means of an investiture of any kind of substance external to itself, and still material, however delicate and subtle it might be, is a wholly untenable fantasy. The intermediate state is actually, as referred to the resurrection and glorification, a yvfivbv eivau Not till the day of the appearance of Christ will the essential condition of man be restored as a synthesis of the soul with a body. The immaterial corporeity, which we assume on the ground of other scriptural testimonies beside 2 Cor. v. 1, is nothing else than the corporiform appearance of the soul itself, nothing else than the shadow of that which is put off, held fast, and conformed to the true internal condition of the soul. It is as little in contradiction to the assumed nakedness referred to by the apostle, i.e. bodilessness, as is the white clothing with which God's grace clothes the spirits in heaven.