RESURRECTION (ante), in the significatiOn of the word and the Scripture doctrine concerning it, implies that in some true sense the identity of the body will be preserved in the future life. As to what is necessary to constitute identity, various opinions are advanced. 1. The re-assembling of all particles that had ever been in the body. 2. The preservation of some, however few, from which divine power will construct a body adapted to the soul's higher condition. 3. The continued existence of a "vital germ." 4. The evolution of a "spiritual" body at the moment of death. 5. The existence of a formative principle of life which constantly gathers the matter which it needs for a body wherever it may be—this implies that the continuance of the vital principle constitutes identity, and that the principle of bodily organism, which now appropriates earthly materialS, will at the resurrection have higher materials on which to act. 6. The entrance
of the spirit into a new body to which it will impart the same personality as it had given to tha old; personal identity, it is said, rests in the consciousness. There are several things taught in the Scriptures concerning the resurrection body of the righteous, the full meaning of which cannot yet be known. What is clearly revealed is that it will be: 1. different from the buried body, as the plant is different from the seed sown; 2. Spiritual, in distinction from the psychical bodies of earth; 3. Theorruptible, glorious, and powerful; 4. Like the glorified body of Christ in heaven. Concerning the resurrection body of the ungodly, Scripture is almost silent, saying scarcely anything more in relation to it than that the unjust also shall rise after death.