‘But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”’ (1 Cor 15:35). From the beginning, Christian consideration of the future resurrection has been marked by speculation. Certain of Augustine's speculations, taken up by Lombard, influenced late medieval doctrines of final resurrection and were overcome only with some labour by Calvin in the early editions of his Institutio. Calvin set a rule for later Reformed theology when thinking about resurrection: ‘we keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’. This rule was developed in programmatic fashion by Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75) in his treatise Resurrectio (1545) and in a very different, scholastic fashion by Francis Turretin (1623–87) in his Institutio theologiae elencticae (1679–86). This article examines both of these treatments in order to see how Calvin's rule was worked out in an anti-speculative direction, as well as, further, how this tended to an anti-Lutheran dismissal of the ubiquity of Christ's humanity.
The doctrine from Augustine through the Middle Ages
Christian teaching on the resurrection of the dead at the last day has been the subject of a great deal of speculation in the history of theology. While the New Testament urges the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a model or prototype upon which the future resurrection of believers is based, and thus seems to constrain speculation about its attendant features, certain differences between Christ's resurrection and the final resurrection also tend to encourage it. Foremost of these is the difference between the bodily state of Christ, raised from the dead on the third day, and that of believers, most of whose bodies will, at the end of time, have decomposed into their constituent elements, let alone the thornier problems introduced by being eaten by animals or other human beings. This speculative moment in the doctrine of resurrection is, therefore, a necessary and inescapable one. No amount of attention to the risen Christ will, in itself, answer the question how or if God will reassemble decomposed bodies at the end.
Yet a powerful strand of speculation influenced the history of the doctrine through Augustine. His treatment of final resurrection in the Enchiridion (ca.420) is highly speculative in its orientation. This is determined in part by the fact that he is answering questions put to him by one Laurentius that are themselves speculative in nature: what of miscarriages? (will they be raised?), what of those born with extra limbs (will they be resurrected with the regular number?), or conjoined twins? (will they be raised as two separate bodies?) and so on. Through being taken up wholesale into Lombard's Sentences (ca.1155–8), the theological textbook upon which later medieval thinkers produced commentaries by the dozen, Augustine's speculations deeply formed theological attention to this doctrine in the Middle Ages.
This, to be sure, took place alongside other efforts, which placed much more emphasis on the prototypical character of Christ's resurrection for humanity's future. Thomas Marschler has elaborated the different forms of causality the resurrection of Christ was held to possess in regard to the final resurrection.Footnote 1 Even in Lombard's Sentences, the interpretation of the ‘voice of the trumpet’ (1 Thess 4:16) as the voice of the risen Christ returning in glory focused attention on how the still-incarnate Christ was the cause of the future resurrection.Footnote 2 Others developed this question in more comprehensive ways. Bonaventure, for instance, emphasised Christ's resurrection as the exemplary cause of our own.Footnote 3 For Aquinas, the humanity of Christ is the instrument through which the divine Son mediates saving grace to all humanity; thus, the risen Christ makes human beings like himself in his suffering and death until at last they attain his full likeness in resurrection.Footnote 4
The later Middle Ages, here as elsewhere, produced greater quantities of speculation. These distracted from the centrality of the causality of Christ's own resurrection for that of believers. To give two examples: Richard of Mediavilla (d. ca.1308) grounded the future resurrection ‘speculatively’ in the soul's natural desire to be reunited with the same material body for which it acted as form in this life.Footnote 5 Durand of St-Pourçain (d. 1336) argued that Peter would still be Peter if his soul were reunited to the body of Paul, since the rational soul is the singular form of human beings and all matter is pure potency capable of any corporeal form.Footnote 6 These suggestions, let us note, arise from the speculative difficulties associated with the final resurrection and the state of the bodies to be resurrected: they are decomposed. Meditation on Christ's resurrection does not in itself resolve these problems, though Reformers such as Calvin would argue that theological attention is more properly devoted to the site of revelation rather than to speculative and useless questions.
Christocentrism in Calvin's developing doctrine of final resurrection
In the Reformation concerns were voiced strongly against speculative elements in the theological tradition. Speculation was particularly scorned in reflection on the inner life of the Trinity, for example, or in questions of merit and human moral powers in se. The Reformers urged that attention be turned once again to what has been revealed of such matters in scripture, and that this be considered a boundary beyond which theologians may not pass. The decidedly anti-speculative John Calvin, in his treatment of the subject in his 1559 Institutio, thus proceeds directly from the shape of the New Testament witness, in contrast to the medieval heritage, which tended to begin with a discussion of the twofold difficulty and necessity of believing in resurrection.Footnote 7
In Lombard's approach in the Sentences, he begins with a quote from Augustine that underlines the equal difficulty and necessity of believing in the truth of the future resurrection, a truth then established by citation of the biblical authorities Isaiah 26:19 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18.Footnote 8 In the earliest edition of his Institutio (1536), Calvin begins in precisely the same place. His brief treatment, other than paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4, alludes to Augustine's speculations in the Enchiridion (23.88) on being eaten by animals or turning to dust.Footnote 9 By the 1539 Institutio, however, Calvin has found his key. Beginning, again, with the difficulty and necessity of believing in resurrection, he resolves the impasse by direct contemplation of the risen Christ, with his usual visual language at play:
Here we have before us the term and completion of our blessedness. And the first point to note is that the resurrection of the flesh by which we enter into possession of eternal life is assured us…. This is not only difficult to believe but entirely unbelievable, if we wish to assess it according to human reason…. For who is there who could be persuaded that the bodies which we possess, of which some perish in the earth, others are eaten by birds [and so on …] must at some point be reconstituted in their wholeness? Nevertheless, the Lord has done away with this difficulty excellently, not only by witnessing to this future resurrection in various sayings but by giving us visible certainty of it in Jesus Christ…. For this reason, if we wish to properly understand how that resurrection will be, we must ever look for it in Jesus Christ, who is its mirror and substance.Footnote 10
Here, by contrast with Lombard, one finds a determination to shape the doctrine by what is revealed of the risen Christ, who is the exemplar of humanity's future resurrection, rather than by speculative questions. In the 1559 version of his Institutio, finally, Calvin begins straightaway with consideration of the incarnate and risen Christ himself: the ‘sun of righteousness’ (Mal 4:2) who has shone upon us in the gospel and seated us with himself in the heavens (cf. Eph 2:6). In the hard labours of our present pilgrimage, therefore, we must ‘keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’, in the language of Colossians and Hebrews, to attain our promised final beatitudo.Footnote 11 Discussion of the difficulties of believing is deferred.Footnote 12
This determination to ‘keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’ was, further, joined to a rejection of the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's risen humanity.Footnote 13 Here Calvin aligned himself with Bullinger, and Zwingli before him, against the developing Lutheran confession. Bullinger and Calvin would sign a common confession on the Lord's Supper in 1549 (the Consensus Tigurinus).Footnote 14 The remainder of this article takes up two further Reformed treatments which follow Calvin's rule to ‘keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’ in different ways. The first belongs to Heinrich Bullinger himself, in his treatise Resurrectio (1545); the second to the seventeenth-century Reformed scholastic Francis Turretin, in his Institutio theologiae elencticae (1679–86). In both thinkers it is shown how the avoidance of influential speculations in the history of theology is achieved by consideration of the risen Christ and, further, how this pushes against a Lutheran notion of the ubiquity of the risen Christ's humanity.
Bullinger: a programmatic anti-speculative doctrine of final resurrection
In 1542, the Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger published a commentary on Matthew's Gospel, appended to which was a lengthy locus on resurrection.Footnote 15 This treatment was extracted and published separately, as well as being translated into German.Footnote 16 What Calvin sets forth as a rule – ‘we thus keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’ – is here pursued programmatically. In this treatise consideration of our future resurrection is determined both in structure and in content by Christ's own rising from the dead, rather than, as in Augustine's Enchiridion, by speculative inquiries. The work is divided into twelve chapters: the first four address Christ's resurrection, ascension and seating (sessio) at God's right hand; a fifth chapter treats the ‘fruit’ and ‘use’ of the bodily ascension of Christ, including our own spiritual regeneration and the promise of our future resurrection and ascension; chapters 6–12 treat, in turn, the future resurrection of Christians.Footnote 17
Questions about the resurrection of believers in the second half of the work are consistently answered by reference to what is said of the resurrection of Christ. ‘We must always’, Bullinger states, ‘look to’ Christ's resurrection ‘whenever we think how the resurrection of the dead will be’.Footnote 18 Indeed, humanity's own resurrection and ascension is deduced (deducitur) from these same occurrences in Christ's life.Footnote 19 These words were written only a few years after the 1539 edition of the Institutio, in which Calvin states, ‘if we wish to properly understand how that resurrection will be, we must ever look for it in Jesus Christ, who is its exemplar and substance’.Footnote 20
Bullinger begins in the usual medieval place, considering the ‘truth’ of Christ's resurrection, by which he means that it took place ‘truly’ and ‘in his true body’.Footnote 21 The two predicates are connected. Christ's resurrection took place ‘truly’ because he was truly crucified, died and was buried (the angel's words of identification ‘who was crucified’ in Matthew 28:5 attest to this). The women came to anoint the dead Jesus; ergo de corpore Christi quaestio est.Footnote 22 Thus, the resurrection took place in Christ's ‘true body’ because it was the same body that was crucified, died and was buried. As Bullinger states (drawing now on John's Gospel rather than Matthew's), ‘The Lord exhibited to be seen and handled that body which hung on the cross. For what had been fixed with nails was marked with scars. Therefore, the Lord truly resurrected in his true body.’Footnote 23 This emphasis on Christ's ‘true body’ extends to its locatedness (localitas) for Bullinger. That it can be located, or has a place, proves it is a true body that is raised: ‘The mortal body of the Lord had its own place (locus) and its – so to speak – “where” (ubi) in which it was situated; now that it is risen, it again has its own place and “where”.’Footnote 24
The ascended Christ, then, exercises authority from a particular place, namely, the right hand of God the Father. Believers may be certain that he is preparing a ‘place’ for them (John 14:2), because his glorification (here, clarificatio) has not abolished his humanity, nor has it been absorbed by his divinity. Rather, ‘he remains a true creature, that is, a true human being, and therefore, according to his nature he has a fixed place, regardless of whatever name it may be called’.Footnote 25 Though a true human being with a location, like all other human beings, this does not prevent Christ from presently exercising his reign everywhere in his creation. This, however, is due precisely to his divine nature, because insofar as he is ‘of one substance with the Father’, his power is ‘not bound to any one place but exists everywhere and works in everything’. Only in reference to his divinity can it thus be said that the biblical phrase ‘“the right hand of the Father” is infinite and is not enclosed in a place’.Footnote 26 (It is reported that Luther was thoroughly annoyed by this, having read the German translation of Bullinger's treatise in the same month in which he had penned his own anti-Swiss Reformed Short Confession of the Lord's Supper.Footnote 27)
The theological purpose behind asserting the locatedness of the risen Christ's humanity is its exemplarity or prototypicality for believers. Just as Christ was ‘truly’ raised in his ‘true body’, so too will believers. ‘Therefore’, Bullinger writes, ‘those revived bodies will be the same in substance and truth as they were before, human beings will be the same in nature as they were beforehand, except that what before was liable to corruption will in the future be pure, whole, immortal, cleansed in nature and obedient to the spirit’.Footnote 28 Commenting on Paul's words about the transformation of our bodies to be like Christ's glorious body (Phil 3:20–1), Bullinger states, ‘For you have here how the glorious body will be, exactly how Christ was when reawakened from the dead, not indeed annihilated, or wholly turned into a spirit, placeless (illocabile), untouchable, invisible, but truly a true human being’.Footnote 29
As true human beings with a place, Christians are destined, according to Bullinger, to occupy that same place now occupied by the risen Christ, namely, the right hand of God the Father in heaven.Footnote 30 Looking again to Christ, he writes, ‘But a true human being is set in heaven so we would possess the most certain and universal testimony that at some point the flesh will be revived and then the whole human being, body as much as soul, will be borne up into the heavens’.Footnote 31 If Christ's humanity is ubiquitous, everywhere, then what place will Christians possess in the resurrection?
Rather, attention to the risen Christ, in whom we see our own resurrection as in a mirror, suggests that the destiny of Christians is to rise from the dead truly and in their true bodies before ascending to the same place inhabited by the risen and ruling Christ. Bullinger's programmatic outworking of the principle of Christ's exemplarity for contemplation of the final resurrection depends, as we have seen, on close exegetical attention to the appearances of the risen Christ: it is the same body that was crucified that is now resurrected; it bears the scars of that event, and yet, it still retains a place, however odd its relationship to place may appear in certain post-resurrection appearances, and indeed, in its ascension to the right hand of the Father. This same principle informs the doctrine of resurrection in a much later Reformed thinker, Francis Turretin, though not in so comprehensive a way.
Turretin: a scholastic anti-speculative doctrine of final resurrection
Francis Turretin, in his scholastic treatment of final resurrection in the Institutio theologiae elencticae, is stylistically and methodologically far separated from Bullinger's biblical humanist treatise Resurrectio. Turretin's greater familiarity with the medieval scholastic tradition does permit a looser appropriation of the early Reformed injunction to ‘keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’, but his scholastic formulation of the doctrine remains constrained at key points precisely by consideration of the risen Christ. In Turretin's own language, Christ's resurrection is ‘inseparable’ from ours.Footnote 32 ‘For once Christ's resurrection is given’, he states, ‘ours freely follows, because it is inseparable from it’.Footnote 33
Turretin's locus de novissimis opens with the question, Will there be a resurrection of the dead on the last day? He begins by distinguishing the ‘last things’ that could be discussed, including individual death, the coming of the Messiah and the end of the world and consummation of this age.Footnote 34 As part of this latter, he begins to discuss resurrection, which is not metaphorical (i.e. rescue from death) nor mystical and spiritual (i.e. regeneration and conversion), but ‘properly and bodily’ resurrection of the flesh. Resurrection of the body must be treated, first, according to its truth and necessity and, second, its object and mode.Footnote 35 Under truth, Turretin notes the uniqueness of resurrection as a distinctively Christian belief, ‘unknown to the nations’, ridiculed by the Athenians (Acts 17:32), and denied by pagan authors like Pliny the Elder (Nat. Hist. 2.7).Footnote 36 He distinguishes between the foundation on which faith rests, which is ‘the all-powerful will of God revealed in the Word’, and arguments that confirm faith, some of which are drawn from scripture, others from reason.Footnote 37 Beginning with those drawn from scripture, Turretin cites Job 19:25; Psalm 16:9–10; Isaiah 25:7, 26:19; Matthew 22:31, 25:32; John 5:28–9, 6:39, 40, 44, and 11:24–6.Footnote 38 From this summary it is clear that Turretin is working with a broad array of materials – biblical, classical, patristic, medieval, contemporary – and analysing them in scholastic fashion, rather than proceeding programmatically from a theological principle.
The first reason Turretin gives, however, as an argument for the final resurrection is the resurrection of Christ. Here we are in common company with Bullinger in substance, and in both substance and style with the high medieval tradition identified by Marschler.Footnote 39 The inseparability of Christ's resurrection from that of Christians is itself bolstered by scriptural texts: 2 Corinthians 4:14; 1 Thessalonians 4:14; Romans 8:11; and 1 Corinthians 15:12. Four reasons are then given as an analysis of this revealed connection between the two resurrections, each of which is further reinforced by scripture. First, the reason of merit: ‘Christ is our Redeemer, not only of our souls but also of our bodies. Therefore, our bodies ought to rise that they may be given the life acquired by Christ along with our souls; for which reason the faithful expect the redemption of their bodies (Rom 8:22).’ Second, the reason of efficacy, ‘from the connection of the head and members; Christ rose as the head of the church (Eph 1:20)…. For what would that body be like where the head is living but the members are dead?’ Third, the reason of lordship: ‘Christ rose to be Lord and King of the Church (Rom 14:9)…. But what kind of reign would it be if his subjects remained in death?’ Fourth, the reason of mutual communion, ‘which comes between us and Christ and makes it that conformity ought to obtain between both. So that what was done in the head would also take place according to his example in the members, and what is denied about the members is also denied about Christ…. “If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised” (1 Cor 15:13), because the head cannot be without the members.’Footnote 40
When he turns from the truth and necessity of final resurrection to its object and mode, Turretin first distinguishes a resurrection of the just and the unjust, the former of which first takes place in ‘Christ the Mediator, as the Head, through the efficacy of the life-giving Spirit (Rom 8:11) to the immortality of glory’.Footnote 41 Further questions in the locus are devoted to the precise object and mode of final resurrection (for example, Question 2, ‘Will they be raised in the same bodies (eadem numero) which died?’). In Question 9 (‘What are the gifts and qualities of glorified bodies?’) we arrive at a question which provoked a great deal of medieval interest as well as speculation.Footnote 42 Here Turretin's anti-speculative, as well as anti-Lutheran, judgements come to the fore.
In the Middle Ages two theologians from Canterbury, Anselm (d. 1109) and Eadmer (d. ca.1126), had suggested that the glorified soul donates seven qualities or ‘gifts’ (dotes) to the resurrected body to which it returns. William of Auxerre (d. 1231) reduced these to the four dotes elaborated in later medieval tradition: freedom from corruption or passions (impassibilitas), visible brightness (claritas), ease of movement (agilitas) and material lightness (subtilitas).Footnote 43 Turretin, interestingly, does not reject this development outright; he judges that the four gifts of medieval tradition in fact correspond not too poorly (non male) to the qualities of the body enumerated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:42–4. Turretin deliberately takes up these biblical terms, instead of the traditional medieval ones, in his exposition.Footnote 44 More substantively, what Turretin does in his elaboration of the gifts is to chasten their exposition by continual reference back to the resurrected Christ. At the same time, he expounds them in a way which forecloses any Lutheran interpretation of the ubiquity of Christ's risen humanity.
Thus, incorruptibility (impassibilitas), first, is interpreted as the removal of the power of death to dissolve the body by removal of its cause, namely, sin. ‘Thus’, he states, ‘the blessed will be established in good that they may not sin, and so will be established in life that they may not die, in the image (instar) of Christ, who “once died to sin and dies no longer” (Rom 6:9)’.Footnote 45 This kind of incorruptibility is differentiated from the immortality of God, Adam in the state of innocence, the angels and the damned; it is properly an incorruptibility after the ‘image of Christ’.Footnote 46 Glory (claritas), second, is the ‘splendour and beauty of gleaming, glittering bodies’, which splendour will be nothing but their ‘irradiation’ by the beatifying vision of God and ‘by the sight of the glorious Christ exalted in his reign’.Footnote 47 Thus, Christ is both the prototype of the visible glorification of the blessed as well as the efficient cause of their own glory, ‘irradiating’ their risen bodies.
The final two qualities, ease of movement (agilitas) and material lightness (subtilitas), bring us to the anti-Lutheran aspect of Turretin's doctrine. In each he emphasises the ongoing locatedness of Christ's body through attending to features of the risen Christ's activity. The power (agilitas) ascribed to the resurrection body is twofold: both its full, uninhibited health and strength to accomplish whatever it can as a creature, and the ‘speed by which one will be able to immediately (promptissime) move him- or herself from one place to another (de loco in locum), to ascend or to descend, as is clear from the example of Christ’.Footnote 48 The spiritual character of the risen body (subtilitas), finally, does not mean the transmutation of the body into spirit, but its full obedience to the Holy Spirit: ‘there is a difference between being a spirit and being spiritual’.Footnote 49 Thus, it does not mean, as the Ubiquistae assert, a transcendence of bodily location (illocalitas); one sees this ‘from the glorification of the Body of Christ, which indeed bestows it with glory but does not remove its nature’, which includes physical location.Footnote 50
As a final, interesting example, Turretin asks in Question 13: ‘Whether the saints will praise God not only with mental words but also with spoken ones? And with a diversity of languages or only with one?’ In his vision of the eschaton at the end of City of God, Augustine had speculated, again influentially, that human beings will not then need external speech for we will see one another's thoughts. Perhaps this suggests the question whether the praise of the eschatological kingdom will be mental only or verbal as well.Footnote 51
Turretin adduces various reasons in favour of the praise of God by spoken words: God, for instance, is the creator and redeemer of bodies as well as souls and it would be more just if he were worshipped by the bodily tongue as well as the mind. The use of only one language seems more fitting than many, since Revelation (which speaks of the resurrected saints as drawn from people of ‘all tribes and peoples and languages’ in 7:9) can be interpreted allegorically anyway. The use of one language would be the undoing of the chaos of Babel; so, ‘with one speech (uno labio) God will be praised by all in perfect harmony, so that everyone will make up one people, one city’.Footnote 52 Which language will this be? Hebrew, Turretin suggests, the ‘first and noblest of all languages’, spoken not only by Adam and the patriarchs, but, importantly, also by the risen Christ when he appeared to the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, speaking hebraica dialecto (Acts 26:14).Footnote 53 The only figure resurrected to eternal life in scripture, Jesus Christ, speaks Hebrew, yet even this, for Turretin, is too slender a thread on which to rest a conclusion: ‘God does not want us to know, nor is it appropriate for this life.’Footnote 54 Ultimately a wariness of speculation wins out over a determination to give christological content to the doctrine.
Conclusion
There are two points to gather by way of conclusion. First, and positively, exegesis: the interpretation of scripture impinges upon the presentation of the doctrine of final resurrection at several points, in structure as well as in details. In terms of structure, the repeatedly drawn connection between the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers (e.g. 1 Cor 15; Phil 3:20–1; 1 Thess 4:14; 1 John 3:2) determines consideration of the latter materially, if not also formally (as in Bullinger's programmatic outworking). As Calvin advises, ‘Now whenever one is dealing with resurrection, let the image of Christ come to mind.’Footnote 55 And since Christ is the fullness of revelation, other portions of scripture related to resurrection (e.g. Job 19:25–7; Isa 26:19; Ezek 37:1–14; Dan 12:2; Rev 20:4–6) ought to be interpreted from the certain christological centre outward rather than the reverse. It is unwise, then, to begin with speculative questions about the resurrection of the dead in general (what of martyrs eaten by lions? what of those buried at sea? what of amputees?) and attempt to work from here to sound conclusions.
In terms of details, these should be no less christologically determined than the material movement from the risen Christ (as he is revealed) to believers (whose future resurrection is revealed only ‘in part’, 1 Cor 13:9, and remains a ‘mystery’, 1 Cor 15:51). The risen Christ has bodily integrity (e.g. his hands and feet, Luke 24:39); can see and be seen, though in a mysterious way (Luke 24:13–35; John 21:24); can speak audibly and be spoken with; and can eat and drink (Luke 24:43), though it seems he does not need to (see John 21:13–15). Pertinent to our concerns, he promised he was ‘going away’ bodily (John 14:28, 16:7) and yet would be with the disciples to the end of the age (Matt 28:20) by his Spirit.Footnote 56 He can ascend into heaven, with a promised descent in similar fashion (Acts 1:9–11). If one wonders what the resurrection body will be like (1 Cor 15:35), this is safe ground on which to begin. It does not eliminate the speculative question how God will make it that people are raised in the same bodies in which they lived – how, after all, would God reassemble all the atoms that constitute my body? and would this reassembly make that body me?Footnote 57 – but it does set it healthy bounds.
Second, and more probingly, might it not be the case that, for all of the christocentric determination of Reformed theologies of final resurrection in Calvin, Bullinger and Turretin, they remain committed to philosophical definitions of body? Turretin, for instance, states about glorified bodies in the resurrection:
For since they ever retain the nature of a true body, and these [e.g. circumscription in a place, being seen, being touched, not overlapping] are its inseparable properties, it is clear that such [e.g. transcendence of location, impalpability, penetrability] cannot be attributed to it without contradiction. For insofar as a body is extended, it is by that very fact circumscribed, and of a certain size, it is located in a certain space, visible, tangible, impenetrable, and constant in its dimensions.Footnote 58
Calvin, similarly, argues that ‘the essential properties of a body are to be confined by space, to have dimension and form’. Since the risen Christ showed them his hands and feet (Luke 24:39), the challenge arises: ‘Take away what he claims as proper to the nature of his body, and must not a new definition of body be devised?’Footnote 59 Yet this is precisely the question: what constitutes a ‘true body’, even a resurrected one?
Should not one's definition of a body be governed not by philosophical definition, and not only by exegetical consideration of the risen Christ's body and its movements, but also by Christ's words at his Last Supper: ‘This is my body’? If this is his body – indeed, his true body – the Lutheran doctrine of Christ's ubiquitous humanity bears much more force. To this I briefly suggest that the rendering of Christ's risen body in the biblical narrative, and especially its movement de loco in locum in the ascension – however the ‘right hand of the Father’ as the in locum is to be understood – seems to require continuing localisation of resurrected bodies. Perhaps it would be better here to follow Calvin in allowing pneumatology to do the work Lutherans tried to make christology do.Footnote 60
To summarise, both Bullinger and Turretin exemplify a certain anti-speculative rule for thinking about the nature of the final resurrection, given influential form early on by Calvin: ‘we keep our eyes fixed upon Christ’. Bullinger's whole treatise on resurrection is shaped by it; Turretin's locus de novissimis is decisively affected by it at both central and peripheral points. Further, this attention to the manner of Christ's risen existence determines teaching about the locatedness (localitas) of the ascended Christ in the direction of the extra Calvinisticum, and in turn, the locatedness of his body and blood vis-à-vis the sacrament in opposition to Lutheran teaching of ubiquity. While this does not – and cannot – eliminate the speculative moment in the doctrine of final resurrection, it does restrain it in a salutary way.
