You once described Lazarus and Dorcas being brought back to life as ‘resuscitation’—do you mean that they were merely unconscious?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1993.

I am sorry that my use of the term 'resuscitation' has led to misunderstanding. In theological Latin, the term resuscitatio means 'a raising again from the dead', and it was in that sense that I intended the English equivalent 'resuscitation'.

I did not use it to signify a reviving of somebody from a state of unconsciousness, though that is how the term is nowadays used in everyday English. I believe that both Dorcas and Lazarus were completely dead, but when they were raised from the dead they were not given glorified bodies such as our Lord had at his resurrection, and we shall have at ours. Their bodies remained ordinary human bodies, and eventually died and went back into the grave again. I used the term 'resuscitation' therefore, in its Latin sense, to indicate the difference between their 'resurrection' and our Lord's full and complete resurrection.

I hope this removes any difficulty.

Yours very sincerely,