This research discusses biblical, patristic, and medieval commentary on the doctrine of the Resurrection and its implications for how the concept of human identity was perceived in the early centuries of Christianity. It will be seen that the sometimes vexed discourse of the Resurrection seems to have owed something to widespread cultural concern to sort out the nature and position of humanity in the cosmos and that personal identity was one of the key issues of such discourse.
The doctrine of the Resurrection was the centerpiece of Christian faith from its formative stages. It was the decisive elaboration of Christianity's distinctive religious identity in canonical scripture, and it is described in the four canonical gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the letters of Paul. Details differ from account to account. For example, Matthew describes a dramatic Resurrection wherein an angel dislodges the tombstone and terrifies the guards, and Jesus presenting himself to Mary Magdelene and his mother and instructing them to dispatch the disciples to him (Matt. 28). In Mark, the angel explains the fait accompli to the Marys, and Jesus selectively appears to various disciples and ascends into heaven. Luke's treatment is more extensive, explicating the Resurrection as a fulfillment of Jewish prophecy about the Messiah (e.g., 24.44). The Acts account focuses on the benefits to mankind of the Resurrection: "And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive" (Acts 15.22).
The tremendous importance that Christians assigned to the idea that the crucified Jesus conquered death (and what one has learned since the first century AD are the laws of the biophysical universe), ascended bodily into heaven, and by his death affected the experience of life for the whole of humanity speaks to the doctrinal significance of Resurrection doctrine. The Resurrection speaks to the specialness of Jesus as a human being and points in the direc...