Immortality Of The Soul Or Resurrection Of The Dead

Oscar Cullmann

Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?

Oscar Cullmann

Page 2

Preface

The present work is the translation of a study already published in Switzerland, (Mélanges offerts à KARL BARTH à l’occasion de ses 70 ans [publ. by Reinhardt, Bâle, 1956][Theologische Zeitschrift, N. 2, pp. 126ff]. See also Verbum Caro [1956], pp. 58ff.) of which a summary has appeared in various French periodicals. No other publication of mine has provoked such enthusiasm or such violent hostility. The editors of the periodicals concerned have been good enough to send me some of the letters of protest which they have received from their readers. One of the letter— writers was prompted by my article to reflect bitterly that ‘the French people, dying for lack of the Bread of Life, have been offered instead of bread, stones, if not serpents’. Another writer takes me for a kind of monster who delights in causing spiritual distress. ‘Has M. Cullmann’, he writes, ‘a stone instead of a heart?’ For a third, my study has been ‘the cause of astonishment, sorrow, and deep distress’. Friends who have followed my previous work with interest and approval have indicated to me the pain which this study has caused them. In others I have detected a malaise which they have tried to conceal by an eloquent silence. My critics belong to the most varied camps. The contrast, which out of concern for the truth I have found it necessary to draw between the courageous and joyful primitive Christian hope of the resurrection of the dead and the serene philosophic expectation of the survival of the immortal soul, has displeased not only many sincere Christians in all Communions and of all theological outlooks, but also those whose convictions, while not outwardly alienated from Christianity, are more strongly moulded by philosophical considerations. So far, no critic of either kind has attempted to refute me by exegesis, that being the basis of our study. This remarkable agreement...