Corporeality is the end of the works of God

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, portrait by Georg Adam Eger, 1775

"Corporeality is the end of the works of God" is a famous quotation from Friedrich Christoph Oetinger's work "Biblisches und Emblematisches Wörterbuch", published in 1776. Oetinger distinguishes the corruptible physical body from the incorruptible body, which he calls the sidereal or etheric body. This incorruptible body, the resurrection body, is meant by the "end of the works of God". In his remarks, Oetinger refers to the writing of the Dutch philosopher and mathematician Bernard Nieuwentyt, translated into German in 1732, on "Die Erkänntnüss der Weissheit, Macht und Güte des göttlichen Wesens", in the twenty-ninth and last reflection of which "the possibility of the resurrection" is spoken of. Under the keyword "body, soma" one can read in Oetinger's writing:

„Few see as far as Nieuwentyt, who shows that in every human being there is a double body, a hidden sidereal or etheric body and a manifest one. Nieuwentyt, pag. 824, shows that the visible body consists of blood and solid parts, which are produced in a certain order from bread and water. He shows that one's own body is of a quite different kind. The basic formation, or Spiritus Rector, retains its own attributes, not in corruptible parts, but in incorruptible ones. This own body is bodily, and being bodily of the flesh and blood of Jesus is the highest perfection, otherwise the fullness of God would not dwell bodily in Christ. Corporeality is the end of the works of God, as is clearly evident from the City of God, Revelation 20.“

– Friedrich Christoph Oetinger: Biblisches und Emblematisches Wörterbuch, p. 407