The Creed, Article 11: The Resurrection of the Dead
In brief
The eleventh article states the Christian hope for the body: "I look for the resurrection of the dead." Again the first person — "I look for" — voicing not a wish but an active expectation. What the Creed hopes for is not the survival of the soul alone but the raising of the whole person, body and soul together, at the last day.
"I look for"
The verb is one of expectant waiting — the Greek prosdoko means to look for, to await something certain to come. The believer does not merely hope the resurrection might happen; he watches for it as for the dawn. This clause and the one that follows form the Creed's ending, its gaze fixed entirely on the future God has promised.
The confession is deeply personal. Just as Article 10 had the believer claim his own baptism, here he claims his own resurrection: not the resurrection of others in the abstract, but the raising of the dead in which he himself will share.
"the resurrection of the dead"
The Christian hope is bodily. This was the sticking point for the ancient world: the Greeks could accept the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body struck them as absurd — when St. Paul preached it at Athens, some mocked. Yet the Church insists on it, because the human being is not a soul imprisoned in flesh but a unity of body and soul, and salvation must reach the whole person or it is not salvation.
Christ Himself is the ground of this hope: "all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth" (John 5:28-29). And St. Paul describes the moment: "the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52). The general resurrection is universal — all the dead are raised — and it is transfiguring: the body that rises is the same body, yet glorified, freed from corruption and death.
Why the body matters
This article is the reason the Church treats the body with reverence even in death — why it does not scatter the dead but buries them in hope, why it keeps and venerates the relics of the saints. The body is not a discarded shell but a partner in salvation, destined to rise.
Christ's own bodily rising is the pledge of ours; He is "the firstfruits of them that slept." So this clause of the Symbol of Faith is not wishful thinking but a conclusion drawn from Pascha: because He is risen, we shall rise. The resurrection of the dead is the Christian answer to the grave.