BWC2f: Temporal Death; Resurrection of the Dead

      This continues from Part BWC2e in a series (Table of Contents in Part BWC1) presenting Walther's edition of Baier's Compendium of Positive Theology. —  From pages 223–250.

Notable Quotes: (Italics follow the original. All quotes not from Baier are from Walther's additions.)

Temporal Death:

223: Temporal death: "those things which, according to divine revelation, pertain to the end of this life and the entrance into the life or state that follows."

224: "death, which is the privation of the natural life of men, resulting from the separation of the soul and body."

224: Quenstedt: "the soul of the converted thief was with Christ in heaven, while his body remained on earth"

225: "Among the moral causes of death, the devil is to be counted first"

225: Meisner: "if death first proceeded from sin, it is not a consequence of nature as God created it, and so man was not created mortal from the beginning"

227: Satan "is rightly known as one who willed death"

228: "Natural cause of death is the radical consuming of moisture and the extinction of the native heat" [Age causes skin wrinkles, need for greater cold weather clothing, as I know from myself.]

230: "Christ, conceived by the Holy Spirit, was not subject to the necessity of death"

231: For believers "death is not a penalty…but an end of temporal misery and a transition to a better life"

231: Luther: "God, being angry, does not want to permit him [Adam] after the fall to return to that Tree [of Life], … Adam now had a better promise, that the seed of the woman [Christ] would crush the serpent's head, so that, although he was subject to bodily death, he might nevertheless retain the hope of immortality"

233: "the Papists, who…defend the invocation of saints. For thus the Council of Trent, Session 25:…'instruct the faithful concerning the invocation of the saints'"

235: Dannhauer: "Soul-sleep is a doctrine contrary to the sacred Scriptures"

236: Quenstedt: Souls kept in hidden repositories: "Roman pontiffs …, John XXII, …subscribed to and confirmed by decree, as the thing to be believed"

237: "purgatory, or the penal state of the faithful… not yet fully cleansed from sins in this life—should not be conceived as a middle state between life and damnation."

239: "The bodies of the deceased are to be committed to the earth with honor"

239: Quenstedt: "God Himself confirmed this custom of burying the dead, Deut. 34:6" [Against Cremation.]

240: "Beautifully Augustine: The earth did not cover many of the bodies of Christians,…which is filled by the presence of Him who knows from where to raise what He has created."

Resurrection of the Dead:

241: "Just as the human soul after death remains surviving, so also the body, which by death has been destroyed, will rise again and return to life"

242: "John XXIII, Pope of Rome, who, just as he denied the immortality of the soul, so also he denied the resurrection of the flesh"

242: "Resurrection consists in this: that the body, destroyed by death, is reproduced from the matter into which it was converted and is reunited to the soul"

245: "not only the pious and faithful, but also the impious and the infidels"]

245: "we do not exclude from this [resurrection] embryos that died in their mothers' wombs." [Abortion kills a human being.]

248: "They will also receive their sex, and all the parts or members they had in this life, not for the restoration of the old use, but for the integrity of the organic body"

In the next Part BWC2g…