For Christians of a certain age, the word ‘progressive’ has very negative and worldly connotations. The adjective simply means favouring or advocating change, but when I was younger, in a Christian context, that was perceived as meaning a rejection of Biblical truth and an embracing of liberal philosophies which denied the existence of God and implied an abandonment of orthodoxy. The term ‘progressive revelation’ may well cause shivers of nervousness in people who grew up with a fear of change formed by these notions.

Progressive revelation simply means that the truths found in the Bible were not necessarily all given at once. Progressive revelation means that God did not unfold His entire plan to humanity in the book of Genesis or, for that matter, in the entire Old Testament, but that this plan is gradually revealed to us with increasing clarity, rather like those pictures which are unveiled gradually in quiz shows so that we can see fully only as more of the picture is revealed. In some ways, nothing actually changes at all; what changes is our perception and understanding of truth as further revelation is given. In this way, the New Testament completes and ‘fulfils’ all we understand in the Old Testament; both revelations are necessary and add to the whole picture, but we cannot understand the Old Testament fully without the additional revelation of the New. There are still many parts of the revelation, incidentally, that we do not yet fully understand, as 1 Cor 13:11-12 makes plain, and we do well to remember this before we allow dogmatism to become our leading tone.

Nowhere is this more evident than in understanding the progressive revelation concerning the resurrection and life after death. Some have claimed that the Jews had no understanding of this, citing verses such as Ps 6:5 and Ps 88:11 as evidence that the grave was perceived as the end of life. Others maintain that there is a difference between the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul, claiming that Jews believed in the latter but not the former. It is evident, however, that an understanding of these issues gradually developed through the prophetic voice. There are actually three examples of bodily resurrection in the Old Testament (see 1 Kings 17:17-24, 2 Kings 4:18-37 and 2 Kings 13:20-21), but some assert that this is not the same as dealing with life after death (for those affected, it must have seemed like life after death, nonetheless!) In Isaiah, however, there is an increasing understanding of life after death: Isaiah 25:8 talks of death being swallowed up and God wiping every tear away (ideas taken up in the New Testament by Paul in 1 Cor 15:54 and by John in Rev 21:4) and Isaiah 26:19 asserts belief in a bodily resurrection, with Job not only proclaiming belief in an eternal Redeemer but that ‘in my flesh I will see Him.’ (Job 19:25-26)

This belief in life beyond the grave can also be seen in the Messianic Psalms, which deal not only with the suffering but also with the glory! Ps 16:9-10 is probably the clearest indication that the Messiah would live beyond the grave, but other psalms also confirm a belief in resurrection and immortality (see Ps 30:3, Ps 118:17).

Whilst the Old Testament revelation on these matters is expanded further by the New Testament writers’ understanding of what Christ’s death and resurrection mean in practical terms for all mankind, the psalms add to our understanding of the glory and exaltation of the Messiah, thus giving us a more rounded view of the nature and role our delivering Messiah, Jesus Christ, would have.