The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

XII. Japan’s Hatano-Resurrection Is From “Nothingness”

Even in Japan, in the Far East, an echo of dissent from the traditional concept of life and death was heard from the noted Japanese Christian scholar SEIICHI HATANO, ¹⁰² late professor of Christianity at the University of Kyoto. He too is on record as contrasting the customary Innate Immortality theory of both East and West with the Biblically Christian doctrine of resurrection as the beginning of our immortality. Dr. Carl Michalson, in his Japanese Contributions to Christian Theology (1960), quotes Professor Hatano as saying: CFF2 1028.7

“‘In Buddhism and in Western philosophies of immortality, life after death is understood at a purely cultural level. There, life after death is regarded as a continuation of this life, a condition of interminable successiveness, hence viewed as something painful, in the nature of punishment. The Christian doctrine of life after death, by contrast, is a doctrine of resurrection. In resurrection, man regains a life that has been lost. He comes into being from nothingness.’” ¹⁰³ CFF2 1029.1

1. DEATH IS COMPLETE “DESTRUCTION OF LIFE.”

As to death, Hatano asserts that death is not continuance in life, but “destruction of life,” from which must come resurrection:
“Death for a Christian does not mean a shifting from one mode of being to another but the very destruction of life, the drifting of being into nonbeing. ‘All the thinkers of Christianity have been trying to evade this notion of death as the complete destruction of life. Where they succeed, the notion of resurrection means next to nothing.’ ¹⁰⁴ CFF2 1029.2

Resurrection, then, is from “nonbeing” into life. Otherwise resurrection is meaningless. The implication is obvious. CFF2 1029.3