Hi Mitchell, I appreciate your point of view, but I don’t agree.
Yet, Paul clearly distinguishes between a “natural body” and a “spiritual body.” If material form is essential to the spiritual body, then what is the distinction?
And I think we have to account for a couple of things if we assume that there is no spiritual being independent of material form.
“When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like the angels in heaven.” (Mark 12:25)
Is Jesus here merely comparing people to angels in the sense that angels don’t marry? If that’s the case, why is comparison to angels meaningful? What does it add to the prior statement? Or is Jesus pointing to something much deeper about people when they are resurrected, as with many statements he points to something much deeper than the more limited meaning the text clearly states, much as his parables do?
And then there’s the serpent. If angels, as spiritual beings, can take on various physical forms, then we can accept that the serpent that tempted Eve was Satan taking on the form of a serpent. But if there is no spiritual being separate from a material form, then the serpent could not have been Satan. Okay, you may argue that he didn’t take on the form of the serpent, but merely took control of the serpent’s body and spoke through it. But then you have to explain how this is possible, and the Bible’s only references to anything like that are God putting words in people’s mouths through the Holy Spirit.
But God’s being is, according the Bible, totally independent of material existence, of any fixed form at all. God can assume any material form he likes.
And we are created in God’s image. If God has no fixed form, than would could that mean, except that we are in essence spirit, non-material, just as God is?
I have a very hard time understanding Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 to be saying that a spiritual body is simply another physical body, but without sin.
If he is saying that, then what does he mean by vs 37-38?
“And what you sow is not the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or something else. 38But God gives it a body as He has designed, and to each kind of seed He gives its own body.”
Remember that in vs. 35-46 he is answering the questions: “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”
Thus, all his assertions about the material and spiritual bodies are tailored to those questions. And neither of those questions has anything to do with the structure of our being, but rather with the nature of our existence after we are resurrected. For according to the Bible, all resurrections will happen at the same time, which means that there is a huge gap of time between the death of many people and their resurrection. If they don’t get their spiritual body until they are resurrected, in what form do they exist during that time? You may say that they are dormant, or something, but if that’s the case, how did Jesus speak to Moses and did Moses have a material form at that time? (Matthew 17)
There’s also the malleability of matter demonstrated by all the miracles. Doesn’t this imply that matter is not the solid thing, in adherence to the physical laws of the universe, that we perceive it to be?
For me, it seems quite overwhelmingly clear that we are, in essence, what God is, pure spirit; that God did make confined to a material form, but that we must have material form to exist in and part of a material universe. And we know that God thought the material universe he created was good, and that he will recreate it after evil and death have been defeated. Thus, doesn’t it follow that God wants us—who are in essence like him—to be in and enjoy this material universe, and thus, what Paul is talking about is not the structure of our being, but the distinction between the material dimension of our being in this world and the material dimension of our resurrected being in the new world God creates?
This is why I don’t interpret 1 Corinthians 15 as you do.