Eschatology and interpretations of the book of Revelation are speculative because we know so little about future and do not know which parts of the visions behind the Revelation have been purely symbolic. It is wise to be careful about what we say. Maybe your attitude is a sign of wisdom.
Something can be said about the future based on the texts in biblical scriptures, assuming that those scriptures draw a reliable picture. I do not believe that any single verse or chapter can give a sufficient understanding, the messages need to be built as a summary of the revelations and claims in all the scriptures. For some reason, a growing proportion of theologians studying Bible have come to the conclusion that the traditional view of âus going to heavenâ is partly a misunderstanding. Below is a link to a short text written by N.T. Wright:
Why do you think He has a bodyâglorious or not? His post-Resurrection appearances were to re-assure His disciples and to confirm that He had risen (both spiritually and physically â thus the request to touch Him). Letâs just assume that much of the âimageryâ used for God in the Bible is âdivine condescensionâ to humans like you and me who cannot fathom the Reality. Itâs not a matter of retaining His humanity. It is a matter of assuming His place in the Godheadâfrom which He had descended for the purpose of creating the only way to salvation and restored commune with God for those who choose to receive Him.
There is much where we have to acknowledge how little we understand about God and the future. Yet, if our interpretation is that Jesus will return and establish a kingdom that lasts for a long time, there is an expectation of Jesus returning bodily.
I listened to a theologian teaching about heavens and our future related to âheaven(s)â. One point that jumped up from the teaching was how different our image of heavenly things and the future is compared to the jews and early Christians 2000 years ago. After Jesus went, believers were waiting for Jesus return and the heavenly kingdom to come on Earth, not us going to heaven. The stress was on living on renewed or recreated Earth in a bodily form. Also Jesus was expected to rule in a bodily form on Earth. This belief is condensed in the creeds. Apostlesâ Creed tells that we believe in âthe resurrection of the bodyâ. The âbodyâ here is a word that means the material body: bones, muscle and fat. The theologian wanted to stress this by rewording the creed to âthe resurrection of fatâ - exaggerated and not exact but maybe you get the point. Not that I believe that we must resurrect with the extra fat we have gained during this life (that would not be a better body) but I do believe in what the Creed tells.
But anyway⌠I think God has everything â the power to be whatever He chooses as He desires. I certainly think God in the person of Jesus limited Himself to a human body according to natural law. That is certainly an important part of being human in this universe. But I donât think those limitations and natural law apply to our spiritual body. So if you equate being human with such limitations which I donât expect to apply to us then I donât see why they would apply to Jesus either.
I think that capability may vary considerably between people.
Agreed.
This statement, however, is rather problematic. âGodheadâ is not a Biblical term, so even though I am Trinitarian, I see no reason to believe in any such thing. But your belief puzzles me⌠you think Jesus left this âGodheadâ thing you talk about?
Well, He âleftâ in the sense of becoming one of us â or One of us. But there are moments in the gospels that emphasize some sense of Him belonging elsewhere and knowing it â âI have meat to eat that you know not ofâ âŚHe (Jesus) tells a man that He had seen this individual while that individual was sitting under a tree â something the man would be startled by since he thought (likely) that He was alone under the tree. Jesus did seem to have limited Himself (Jesus that is) at times I suppose we could pull all sorts of details â He walked on water and then had to ask (on another occasion) âWho touched Me?â â as if Someone who saw a young man under a tree and walked on water would not know who had touched HimâŚbut the question here seems to be âDid Jesus retain His humanity after resurrection?â â and I kind of think âWhy?ââŚâBefore Abraham was, I Amâ â âI and the Father are OneââŚâHe who has seen Me has seen the FatherââŚHe also spoke of returning to His place in the heavens as well. There was never a statement of unity (of this nature) between Jesus and human beings. After all, humanity is fallen and in rebellion against God. It does say that Jesus was tempted in all ways like we are tempted â with, of course, an important difference. The interlude on earth was to make a way for us to acheive Godâs righteousness by affirming the forgiveness made available to us by the sacrifice Jesus made for us on the crossâŚ
Indeed! And that was while He was on the earth. That is why I donât understand your talk of âassuming His place in the Godhead.â That part was not changed. The teaching of the church has always been 100% human and 100% God â BOTH! But⌠I donât think this means Jesus was superhuman⌠only that God can be whatever He chooses, discarding power and knowledge as He chooses. I think theology which uses its definitions of âGodâ as if they were constraints upon God is misguided.
WellâŚMitchellâŚwe likely are talking about the same thing but interpreting what each other says differently. Complex topicâŚI think that what I mean by âassuming His place in the Godheadâ is just âa termâ for âgoing back to where He came fromâ but I donât mean He ceased to be God while on earth âŚthe concept of a complex nature to the âOne Godâ was part of the thinking of the first century AD/CEâŚbut in terms of retaining his humanity afterwards â may need more definition. He was not âhumanâ before He came to earth and, except for His ability to empathize with our struggles (yeah He can do that), there is no reason for thinking He retained humanity afterwardsâŚBecoming âone of usâ was not a âbonusâ or a âstep upâ by any meansâŚ
The part I put in bold is not logically connected to what is before it. Further, I canât think of anything in scripture that supports any of it â in fact in Luke 24 we read that Jesus assured Thomas that He wasnât a ghost by pointing out that He had âflesh and bonesâ in the âDoubting Thomasâ event after the Resurrection.
So the premise here fails: Jesus made the effort to show Thomas and thus the others that He was still very much human. His body was more than our âmerely humanâ bodies, but it was and is not less than that.
Think of it as the difference between a copper wire just sitting on a shelf and one with electricity running through it.
This is just speculation. There is no reason to think that the second law of thermodynamics doesnât apply, or any other physical laws, because there is no reason to think that the body Jesus now has is anything but the one that rose from the grave. Itâs just operating with some new attributes and capacities. The one thing that can be stated for certain is that Jesusâ resurrected body is no longer a closed system with respect to this universe, i.e. it has âoutside connectionsâ. Apart from those connections, itâs the same material as it was before.
Because Heâs still human â fully human as well as fully divine. The divine doesnât overwhelm the human; if it did, there would be no promise that we would be like Him (as the scripture says) because if our human nature were overwhelmed by the divine we would hardly exist any longer.
If He were not still fully human, then He could not be Redeemer, because the Old Testament tells us that a Redeemer has to be close kin to both parties. Being Redeemer was not a one-off action, it is a continual office in the old sense of that word.
Interpreting Revelation should always begin with the fact that the main reason it got included in the New Testament was that Christians reading it in the late first and through the middle of the second centuries saw what it was talking about happening around them. It is thus by definition not about the future except insofar as it is about the entire end times, whether you count the end times as beginning with Jesusâ ascension or the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.
Humans have bodies. Jesus is human. Therefore Jesus has a body.
He never let His place in the Godhead; the Trinity cannot be severed into pieces.
And it is about âretaining His humanityâ, because by the Bibleâs definition of a Redeemer if He doesnât have a full and complete human nature then He cannot be our Redeemer.
But it goes deeper than that: according to the Old Testament, the definition of a human soul is a living body with life breathed in by God. If Jesus does not have a human body, then He does not have a human soul, and we are doomed because then He is only God and does not stand with us as one of us.
And so it must be! If Jesus is not fully human then He is not a Redeemer.
There most certainly is! He made the point to Thomas that He had flesh and bones. What youâre proposing is that He put on an act for Thomas, and if that was an act then there is no Resurrection! Nowhere in the early church is there any hint that the apostles handed down any teaching that Jesus did not remain fully human in the Heavens. This verges on heresy, as though Jesus was just âwearingâ a human body and wasnât really human.
That is an interpretation that may be partly true and partly not. Every generation since Jesus left have waited for his return and tried to fit the events happening around them to the signs told in the scriptures. That is almost self-evident for the Christians living in the first centuries. Yet, the reasons why Revelation gained acceptance is probably not that people saw the events happening around them.
One reason is probably the writer. Many believed (and still believe) that Revelation was written by John the Apostle. Even if it was written by the other John (the Presbyter), the writer was respected and what he wrote as a vision given by the Lord was certainly taken with respect. The idea was that what was written originated from the Lord and therefore, needed to be taken seriously, even when the text was full of mental pictures (visions) that were hard to interpret.
The second reason was probably the links between the OT and Revelation. We often read the book like an âisolatedâ writing while the early Christians, especially those with a Hebrew/Jew background, were relating everything written to what the OT told. The Bible of the early Christians was the OT and they knew those scriptures much better than we do. Revelation links events told in the Genesis and prophets to the expected and hoped second creation and forms a bridge between the past and future.
As the return of Jesus seemed to take more time than the first followers hoped and expected, and there were hard persecutions, there was a growing need for a writing that would tell about what was happening in the future, in a credible way.
There are probably also other reasons but I assume these are among the most important ones. The interpretation that Revelation only tolds about events happening at the time of the writing and in the historical church may be old but probably was invented much later. I am not an expert so these are just my interpretations based on what I have read.
It is however connected logically from 1 Cor 15. I just assume that everyone here know what it says about resurrection body because if we want to know what the resurrection body is like, we donât go to the gospel and start from there. On the contrary, we should start from the clear teaching from Paul on 1 Cor 15 and then we can use the story from the Gospel to validate. So what Paul is teaching on 1 Cor 15 : 35-49 :
But someone will ask, âHow are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?â You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, âThe first man Adam became a living beingâ; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I guess, it is clear that our resurrected body is of different kind from our natural body. We will have a spiritual body. Now, what kind of body is that is a mystery. But if our physical bodies are made from natural stuff (dust), then I guess our spiritual body is made from spiritual stuff (immaterial thing).
on the contrary, there is ample reasons to believe that the body Jesus now has is different from the one he had before resurrection.
I donât quite understand where logically you get this kind of opinion.
I donât see why Jesus has to retain His humanity in heaven if He is to be our redeemer. Maybe you can point to a verse in the bible that teaches this view.
I agree with you that when Jesus was on earth, He was fully human. The issue is what is the point of retaining His Humanity after finishing the task of redeeming believers.
That is of course contrary to what Paul is teaching about the mysteries in the kingdom of God. This is what Paul said on 1 Cor 15: 1 Corinthians 15:50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
If Jesus is still human, He canât be in the kingdom of God and nor do we.
That is not true. The book of Hebrew is very clear that the sacrifice of Christ is once for all. It was a one off action. (Hebrews 7:27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.)
The point Jesus made the effort to show Thomas is definitely not to show that he was still very much human, but to show Thomas that Jesus the resurrected one was the same Jesus that Thomas knew though Jesus appearance might be different.
Then Christy, perhaps you can tell me a boundary between humanity and heavenly. At what stage you can say "Yes, Jesus is definitely not part of humanity anymore because ⌠" Because if you study 1 Cor 15, it is clear that Paul differentiate between human body and heavenly body. Natural body and spiritual body.
Then I am very interested in finding out what kind of human body that is imperishable, eternal. (let the best science figure out what kind of flesh and blood body can have this kind of property).
That is funny because I never think of God as a disembodied God-mind, but as a Spirit. and yes, God is still audible, touchable and visible if He wants to.
The boundary isnât between human and heavenly, itâs between human and non-human. 1 Corinthians 15 goes into great detail about the differences between heavenly and earthly bodies, but it in no way implies the heavenly bodies are less human than the earthly bodies.
Arenât we all. How in the world would âscienceâ be able to figure out anything about the kind of body a resurrected person has if Jesus has left earth and no one else has a resurrected body to look at?
Yes, God is Spirit, but Jesus is God incarnate glorified to Lord of all, and nowhere in the Bible does it imply that he un-incarnated. The fact that God remains united with creation in human form and is prophesied to return to earth to reign as a divine human King over the New Creation is actually a pretty significant theological concept related to the telos of creation and humanity and eschatology.
St RoyâŚthis all depends on what this particular blog subject is talking about. âDid Jesus retain His humanityâŚâ ??? and what was meant by that? Did He have humanity before He came to be born in Bethlehem? Iâm just askingâŚnot saying that He didâŚJesus became human for our sake, not HisâŚBeyond all that, He was God before, during, and after His resurrectionâŚbut what does the question âDid Jesus retain His humanityâŚâ mean? Miekhie said: "My question has to do with the glorious resurrected body of Jesus, the body of Glory. Now, this glorious body is eternal. it is not susceptible to decay or diseases or death or even to any human need such as food or drink. It is not made from flesh and bone nor blood. as far as we can guess, this glorious body is not made from any atoms of this material world such as carbon or water.
Now, in what way can we can this glorious body of Jesus as a human body?"
In the end, this is highly presumptive. God is a SpiritâŚthus can be everywhereâŚwhich is why He is attending to the black holes and the Crab Nebula while watching you and me and 7 billion othersâŚso what âisâ He while doing this? He was in a human body on earth â though conceived in a special way â and rose physically which is why He appeared that way to His followersâŚbut did He go back and sit down in a physical human body? or is that imagery [as presented later in the NT] for our own comprehension? In the end, this is likely just an impossible subject which Miekhle has raised. Something that people can debate on and on and never quite settle with themselves or each otherâŚ
I think it might be important to have the same point of reference before continuing this discussion. For me being part of humanity is when we are spirits living in human bodies. When our bodies die, then we are spirits are still alive and yet no longer part of humanity. So, I guess my definition of humanity tie with the kind of body that we have. As long as we are united with our human body, then we are part of humanity. When we are clothed with a spiritual body, then we are no longer part of humanity. (heavenly perhaps) However, from your reply, it seems to me that no matter what kind of spiritual bodies we might have for eternity, we are pretty much human. If that is the case, then we might not have the same presumption, and then of course will always arrive at different conclusion because we are talking about two different things (spirit vs body).
The problem with your view (if I am correct with that assumption above) is with Jesus incarnate. When He came in a human body, He never ceased to be God. God is also spirit, but different from human spirit. When Jesus took on a human flesh, then he was never part of humanity because of who He was in spirit.
Thatâs more Greek dualism than Christianity though.
Yeah, Iâm saying you didnât get that idea from the Bible and itâs wrong, because Jesus, the firstborn of the New Creation, is still the Son of Humanity, per the Bible. Do a word study on Son of Man and then read Revelation.
Then your definition is completely idiosyncratic.
Yes, because we were created humans and made image bearers by God, and then Jesus became human and fulfilled the role of the perfect image bearer and then died, resurrected, and ascended to heaven AS A HUMAN IMAGE BEARER and will come again to reign as the Son of Man. Jesus being and staying human is super central to Christian theology and eschatology, you canât just toss it to the side because you made up some idiosyncratic definition of humanity related to the composition of physical bodies.
I donât see âhuman image bearerâ anywhere in the Bible or in the creed of Nicea 325 AD. I donât see any claim that Jesus retains humanity after resurrection anywhere in the Bible or the creed of Nicea 325 AD. And I am unwilling to cut off branches of Christianity who donât accept later modifications to the creed by various sects. Nor do I see specifics of eschatology as all that central to Christianity but rather a source of division and bizarre cults.
To be sure, I insist on a compatibility with science and I donât see much reason why this forces us to take all the stories of the OT less seriously or as metaphorical. But when we are talking about the future, trying nail down fantastic claims of eschatology as literal doesnât make much sense to me either. If anything is metaphorical in the Bible it is the highly fantastic descriptions we find in the dreams of Daniel to which the text of Revelations looks very similar. And we have Danielâs own example of treating these as highly metaphorical.
So while I see no reason to believe that Adam and Eve were not real people and the story in Genesis about real events⌠(though highly symbolic rather than golems of dust and bone, with talking animals and magical fruit, e.g. the breath of God being inspiration from God speaking to them), I donât see why we have to take text about Jesus returning to rule over the earth so literally.
Accordingly this fight over whether Jesus retains humanity seems a little strange to me. I donât really know what that even means. Is it a claim that Jesus accepted the limitations of a human body for all eternity. I see no reasons to believe we even have such limitations for all eternity. For me eternal life is all about the infinite gifts of God and becoming more like an infinite God for all eternity. If that is what our humanity becomes then why would we think this has anything to do with the resurrected Jesus. That would sound more like the Adoptionism of the moonies where the messiah only leads the way in becoming more like God. Such a theological position doesnât bother me greatly but I donât see the necessity of it either.
Ok, the creed of Nicea talks of Jesus coming again, but does that really require a literal understanding? After all, the same 381AD version of the creed also speaks of Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father. If we take that literally then doesnât that confine to the Father to a human body sitting in a chair? Are we Mormons?
Of course I have no problem with Christians having a great variety of beliefs as long as they accept the authority Bible and the definition of the creed of Nicea 325 AD in claiming to be Christian. But when claims are made about some piece of theological reasoning being âsuper central,â then I am skeptical or object. So⌠as much as St. Roymond may see theological reasons for being human as requisite for Jesus to being a Redeemer (obviously I do believe Jesus was 100% human and 100% God, it is just the reasoning he used which I am skeptical about), or Cathy seeing retained humanity as necessary for the return of Jesus, I donât see these as being required beliefs in order to be a Christian.
I wouldnât say that. It is not my definition of âhumanityâ either. I think our humanity is a great deal more than what kind of body we have. I think the mind is more central. This is usually fighting the general trend that identifies humanity with a biological species. But while I disagree. Saying this biological definition is âidiosyncraticâ would be over the top.
I guess my definition would be more about physical limitations, especially when talking about Jesus being 100% human and 100% God. But then I donât think those limitations apply to the resurrected body which I why I tend to agree more with @Miekhie and @bluebird1 in this discussion.
So⌠this caused me to look up the term âidiosyncratic.â
adjective
pertaining to the nature of idiosyncrasy, or something peculiar to an individual:
The biological definition certainly isnât individual. And Miekhieâs definition being a less specific example of the same doesnât look individual to me either.