The Parousia and the General Resurrection

The Orthodox Church confesses the bodily, visible, and unexpected Second Coming of Christ (the Parousia) and the general resurrection of all the dead in a real body — the same body that died, transformed and made incorruptible. Both are dogma, confessed in the Creed. This file sets out the teaching and its patristic grounding, and distinguishes the Orthodox understanding of the resurrection body from every reduction of it to the mere immortality of the soul.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Second Coming (Parousia)

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed confesses of Christ: “He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose Kingdom shall have no end.” The Second Coming (Parousia, “presence/arrival”) is not a metaphor for a gradual spiritual influence but a concrete, historical-eschatological event, and the tradition marks it with several features (Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, ch. 10, “Christian Eschatology”; trans. Seraphim Rose, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1984):

  • Bodily and visible. Christ will return in his glorified human body, visibly and unmistakably: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11); “every eye shall see him” (Revelation 1:7). The Parousia is not a hidden or “spiritual” coming discernible only to initiates.
  • In glory, to judge. He comes “with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30) to render the Last Judgment on the living and the dead (see The Last Judgment).
  • Unexpected. “Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36); the Lord comes “as a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). This governs the Church’s discouragement of date-setting (see The Antichrist and Sober Eschatology).
  • Preceded by signs — the preaching of the Gospel to all nations (Matthew 24:14), widespread apostasy, the appearance of the Antichrist, and cosmic disturbances — though the tradition preserves significant patristic diversity on the interpretation of the signs and has not dogmatically fixed a detailed timeline.

The Church already commemorates this future coming as accomplished in her worship: the Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom gives thanks for “the Cross, the tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious coming again” — remembering the Parousia in the past tense because, in the Kingdom’s own reality, it is already given (see Inaugurated Eschatology and the Kingdom).

The General Resurrection

At the Second Coming all the dead will be raised. The resurrection of the body is a non-negotiable dogma, confessed in the Creed’s closing article: “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.” Its features are drawn directly from Scripture and the Fathers:

  • Universal. All the dead will rise, both the righteous and the unrighteous: “all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth — those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28–29; cf. Acts 24:15, “a resurrection… of the just and unjust”). The resurrection itself is universal; the judgment that attends it is not uniform.
  • Bodily and real. The resurrection is not the liberation of the soul from the body but the reunion of soul and body. The risen body is the same body that died — not a new or purely spiritual substitute — yet transformed: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption… it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). “Spiritual body” (soma pneumatikon) does not mean immaterial but a body wholly animated and glorified by the Spirit, incorruptible and immortal. The pattern is Christ’s own risen body, which could be touched and which ate and drank, yet was glorified and no longer subject to death (Luke 24:39–43; John 20:27).
  • The restoration of the human person. Because the human being is a psychosomatic unity, and death its unnatural sundering (see The Christian Understanding of Death), the resurrection is the restoration of the whole person — not the escape of an immortal soul from an outgrown body (Platonism) but the reconstitution of body-and-soul in incorruption. This is why the disembodied interim state, however blessed, is not the human being’s final and complete condition (see The Particular Judgment and the Intermediate State).

The Patristic Witness

The Fathers ground the resurrection in the Resurrection of Christ and defend its bodily reality against every spiritualizing reduction:

  • St. Athanasius: Christ’s Resurrection is the guarantee and firstfruits of the universal resurrection. Because the Word dwelt in a human body and raised it from death, all human bodies are given a share in that victory; death is destroyed at its root (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 21–32; trans. NPNF II/4; see St. Athanasius).
  • St. Gregory of Nyssa: the risen body will be the same body, reconstituted by God from its own elements, but freed from every consequence of the Fall — disease, corruption, and the passions. Gregory defends both the identity and the transformation of the risen body against the objection that its scattered matter cannot be recovered (Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection; and On the Making of Man 25–27; trans. NPNF II/5; see St. Gregory of Nyssa).
  • St. Maximus the Confessor: the resurrection completes the cosmic recapitulation — the overcoming in Christ of the divisions that fracture creation, and the gathering of all things into their fulfillment (Maximus, Ambiguum 41). The resurrection of the body is not an isolated marvel but the hinge of a renewed cosmos (see The Transfiguration of Creation).
  • St. John of Damascus systematizes the confession: “We believe also in the resurrection of the dead. For there will be truly, there will be, a resurrection of the dead, and by resurrection we mean a resurrection of bodies. For resurrection is the second state of that which has fallen” (John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.27; trans. NPNF II/9). He insists that it is this body, the very one that lived and died, that rises — else it would be a creation of a new man, not a resurrection.

The Resurrection Body and the Age to Come

The resurrection is not the end but the threshold of the age to come. The risen and glorified body is the mode in which the saints will “always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17), see God “face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12), and participate fully in the divine life — theosis consummated (see Theosis). What the resurrection body will be like in detail the tradition does not presume to describe beyond the pattern of Christ’s own; St. Paul rebukes the question “with what body do they come?” as impatient (1 Corinthians 15:35–36), and the Fathers follow him in confessing the fact while confessing ignorance of the mode. What is certain is the substance of the hope: the whole human person, body and soul, raised incorruptible in Christ, for a life that has no end. The character of that risen life — heaven and hell as the one divine love variously received by the risen — is the subject of Section 07.

See Also

References

  • Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation 21–32. Trans. NPNF II/4. c. 318.
  • Gregory of Nyssa. On the Soul and the Resurrection; On the Making of Man 25–27. Trans. NPNF II/5. c. 380.
  • John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.27. Trans. NPNF II/9. c. 743.
  • Maximus the Confessor. Ambiguum 41. 7th century.
  • Pomazansky, Michael. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Trans. Seraphim Rose. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1984.
  • Scripture: Acts 1:11; Revelation 1:7; Matthew 24:14, 30, 36; John 5:28–29; 1 Corinthians 15:35–44; Luke 24:39–43; 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17.