May 28 – LD 22, Day 1: Introduction
by Prof Herman Hanko
Read: Psalm 16, Acts 2:29-33
There are one or two
comments that ought to be made about this lesson from our Heidelberg Catechism.
The first is that this Lord’s Day is remarkably short; especially when we
consider how important it is for the Christian faith and how much time
Scripture devotes to this subject.
There is, however, a
good reason for this.
God has so determined
that the truth of the Scriptures is developed in the church along the lines of
the six main topics in dogmatics: theology (the
doctrine of God), anthropology (the doctrine of man), Christology (the doctrine
of Christ), soteriology (the doctrine of salvation),
ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church) and eschatology (the doctrine of the
last things).
In the early church, at
the time the three creeds were formulated (The Nicene Creed, The Chalcedonian Creed, and the Athanasian
Creed [all three can be found in the back of the Psalter]), the doctrine of God
was first developed and then the doctrine of Christ. At the time of Augustine
who died in 430 AD, the doctrine of man and the doctrine of salvation were
developed.
Then followed a long period
of a millennium in which the Roman Catholic Church ruled the world, and no
doctrine was developed.
At the time of the
Reformation the doctrine of the church was especially developed, but almost
nothing was said about the doctrine of the last things.
And so, you see, the
development of the truth followed the six main topics in dogmatics.
The Heidelberg Catechism was written in 1563 when the doctrine of the last
things was not yet developed. And the resurrection of the body belongs to the
doctrine of the last things.
It was especially in the
last century that the doctrine of the last things is being developed.
Nevertheless, the
essential ideas that belong to the doctrine of the resurrection of our bodies
are all mentioned here.
The second point that
needs to be made is the claim of some commentaries that the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body was not an object of faith in the Old Testament. This
is a flat-out denial of clear Scriptural evidence that the Old Testament saints
did indeed believe in the resurrection of the body.
Job, who was a
contemporary of Abraham, spoke of the resurrection of the body in Job 19:26,
27: “And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I
see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another;…”
Heb 11:19 tells us that
when God spared Isaac at the moment Abraham was ready to plunge his knife into
Isaac’s heart, that Abraham received his son back as a figure of the
resurrection of Christ and of our bodies.
Psa
16:10 tells us that David believed in the resurrection of the body: “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” This was quoted, in
fact, by Peter in his great Pentecostal sermon (Acts 2:31) as fulfilled in
Christ.
The resurrection of the
body has always been the faith of the church.