One doesnt need to have flesh and bone to remain human. Scripture clearly teaches a transformed body.
I think you do need a human body to be human though. Mortal or immortal, being human is an embodied experience. I have embodiment on the brain these days because of this book.
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Iâm not exactly convinced. You can have a body, but my point is that upon the resurrection, it is a transformed, eternal body. No flesh, no bone, or anything that wears away through the ages of time. Something like that. Perhaps Iâll try to look at that book, but right now my reading is stacked as it is.
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It could be imperishable flesh and imperishable bone. Resurrected Jesus seemed to look pretty normal. No one noticed anything weird about him walking the road to Damascus.
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On this occasion I have to agree with you, K! Getting a brand new body (of whatever stuff) justifies everyone getting any missing pieces replaced ⌠and for good reason!
If someone dies at 60, does he go to the afterlife looking 60, while those who die at 99 keep looking like that?
What is the official age that we should all have? Itâs a little awkward, right?
But if we get a new body, made of new stuff, we can all look X39i years old⌠whatever that might be! Nobody knows⌠because itâs a new body!
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But is that the same thing? Are our new bodies going to be composed of the same atoms and chemical structure that will somehow be impervious to radioactive decay? Probably not. I think itâs going to be fundamentally different.
True. Good book. Jackson Wu had an interesting series of blog posts on it:
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There is both continuity and discontinuity between our bodies now and in the resurrection. Most theologians regard the resurrected Jesus as the exemplar of what that might be, which is how @Christy is approaching it. Paul uses the metaphor of seed and mature plant to describe the relationship between the present and the future body. Can you look at a seed and guess what the plant will be like? In that sense, I think you could argue for some kind of fundamental difference between âthenâ and ânow,â but what will it be? We can only speculate, but in the meantime, both of you are describing opposite sides of the same coin. (Me, too.)
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I like that.
I think the body is just a âphysicalâ metaphor that we can experience with our physical bodies, see with our eyes, hear with our ears, feel with our hands. When God sees us, He sees our spirits. But we cannot see spirits so we recognize people by their bodies/faces/voices. When Jesus was resurrected, we recognized those physical features that humans recognize one with. You recognize an apple tree by the apples that grow on it. What about it seed or sapling form, is it still an apple tree?
What makes a individual? Is it the voice we hear, what if that was removed? Is it the body they have, what if
that was severed? Is it the face they have, what if it was disfigured? Or it is the personality they have, the gifts God blessed them with to honor Him with.
If a person was blessed with the ability to sing, and they honor God with that voice, I believe that is what will be âresurrectedâ in the second coming. What about a person that is strong and can dance? It will be that ability/gift that is resurrected. What about the person that is kind hearted? It will be these gifts (manifested in our flesh) that will be the âearthly thingsâ that will be resurrected so we can do the same thing in heaven with our gifts, and glorify the Father for eternity with the gifts and blessings He graciously bestowed on us.
I think there will be some âbodyâ that we are given, some form of âfruitâ that others will be able to see, to recognize us by, but more importantly glorify the Father with. Gifts that the spirit cannot do. The spirit cannot give to the poor, cannot do any action. God made our flesh for a reason, it can do things the spirit cannot. It can create artful masterpieces. God loves creating, we love creating, our spirit does anyway, our flesh loves to destroy, so we must yield to our spirit, through Him.
What of those that get cremated or died in an explosion? What of those who died as a baby, or born without arms? I think when the constraints of our flesh is gone, we will have a form or be able to âexperienceâ people and recognize people in some manner.
Our bodies were intended to be able to do something, and I think a glorified body will be one that does this thing 24/7. Kind of like animals or stars. They were created with a purpose and do their purpose. Though we were created with a purpose, we can chose not to do it. This makes it even grander, when we do chose to do what we were created to do. But we can also fail. Our lives we basically recognize that our flesh is doomed to fail, so that He may be glorified and when our flesh finally fails (in death) we will be able to be like the animals and starts do, what we were created for. That is what a glorified body is, a body that canât fail, a body that does the will of the Father.
In heaven our free will is absent from us, but only because we gave it up willingly. We gave up our free will, for His will.
On earth, there are 2 people, those who just want His will, but we still have free will and often chose the wrong will. Then there are those, who donât want His will, and want only their free will for eternity. Some call those two âsavedâ and âunsavedâ. When we die, we have the choice to give up our free will for His, as the saved wanted all along, and we go to paradise to live under His will. And the other choice to keep our free will (as the unsaved wanted all along) in a place separate from God, referred to as hell.
It was reading those posts that made me want the book. But I had to wait a bit for the more affordable Kindle version to come out.
Yes, I agree that there has to be some kind of continuity, but I donât know what that continuity is. I certainly donât think it has to do with chemical structure.
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Would you want to exist without a body? What would be the purpose?
Google says:
nir¡va¡na
nÉrËvänÉ,nirËvänÉ/Submit
noun
(in Buddhism) a transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the subject is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. It represents the final goal of Buddhism.
synonyms: paradise, heaven; More
another term for moksha.
a state of perfect happiness; an ideal or idyllic place.
Does Google have a soul?
I would not, no. Was there something I said that implied otherwise?
I wonder what a dragonfly larval form would say if someone knew how to ask if it would ever want to live above water?
Thereâs at least one species of dragonfly that lives underwater for 5 or 6 years⌠hunting little fish, and insects, traveling through the viscous âuniverseâ we call a pond.
Then one day, he feels the extraordinary desire to climb the underwater portion of a reed⌠slowly but surely ⌠heading to the bright light of the waterâs surfaceâŚ
His friends are shouting through the water: stay away from the light! stay away from the light!
But our friend doesnât give any heed to their desperate tone. And then, at the very brink of the water, the creature pauses and then continues onward⌠up into the air ⌠he feels so free⌠so unencumbered! All he wants to do now is grab hold, and just sit ⌠meditating⌠his mind is soon spinning⌠as his larval form comes to a surprising end.
He is changing within ⌠and when the larval skin finally breaks open, we have the insect equivalent of a super sonic jet! He is in flight ⌠the watery world below is now completely alien to him ⌠and he is in flight to parts of the Universe he never even imagined.
[Epilogue: Spoiler alert - He is not meant to live much longer ⌠and like all analogies ⌠the comparison breaks down.]
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I think the primary functional difference is that in Heaven we will all be sexually sterile thus no need for legal marriages. And that we will metabolize alcohol much faster.
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Having already had a human body , without one , would we lose our humanity or draw from it ?
Iâm no longer a child , but I still draw on the lessons of childhood .
Iâm not saying you are right or wrong , just a thought on it .
1 Corinthians 15:50
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
I thought we were back to the Barbie and GI Joe discussion until your last line. Well played, sir. Haha
Whatâs the warrant (or compulsion) that the human body - for the end of days - must be flesh?
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While the body will be transformed it still will be physical but without any ills or problems. The traits that make us human will still be there but be transformed into glory as Christ body was when he rose from the dead. He was able to eat and be touched and it shall be the same for us.
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