Yes. We know there are more dimensions than the four we are familiar with in our spacetime because we have objective evidence for God’s interventions in his children’s lives, but we do not see his scientifically detectable ‘physical presence’. So we have good reason to believe in spiritual realities.
Scripture tells us that his resurrected body was physically recognizable and that it had physical evidence of his crucifixion, but also that it had a different relationship to our known dimensions and associated physical laws. Hence Paul’s characterization of it being a ‘spiritual body’ is quite compatible with the descriptions of his post-resurrection appearances in the Gospels and Acts 1.
I’m confused here. If it wasn’t Jesus’s natural body, then how do you explain crucifixion marks? Yeah, I get it that the body wasn’t just like normal body but brought back to life, but it was surely the same body that Jesus was using during his earthly life? Wasn’t the tomb empty?
If Christ’s Ressurection was anything other than physical then it was a waste of time and the death of our physical bodies is final and, as Paul states, “we are the most to be pitied”. God must be seen to have full power over His creation, both in life and death and beyond. Otherwise He is not God, and does not deserve our worship.
Richard
Read all of 1 Corinthians 15. There are different meanings of the word “physical.” There is physical as in bodily, like in the phrase “physical exercise,” and physical as in natural, as in the phrase “physical laws.” Paul says the resurrection must be physical in the sense of bodily but not physical in the sense of natural – to a spiritual body not to a physical/natural body. A body which is not made of the stuff of the earth, subject to the laws of nature, perishable, and bound to the earth, but of the stuff of heaven, imperishable, and capable of everything the physical/natural body is capable of and more, like going to be with God who is spirit.
So our resurrection is to our bodies in state they were at death with missing heads and limbs like from a zombie movie, perhaps crushed, burned, or crawling with worms? The resurrection can only reanimate but not heal wounds? There is only ONE rational explanation for the presence of Jesus crucifixion wounds in His resurrected body, and that is Jesus knew they were needed in order for Thomas to believe. So a resurrection to a spiritual body according to our needs? Yes. But a resurrection to a physical/natural body stuck with how we are buried? No.
Missing body? The stuff of our body is part of the natural cycle and becomes a part of other living things even people. It is irrelevant because our bodies are not the matter we are made of. All of the matter in our bodies is constantly being replaced when we are alive anyway (98% every year). So the stuff of that dead body is irrelevant and what happened to it doesn’t matter. It is only the form that is important.
I am not sure you have the correct understanding of Paul here. Paul is talking as much about sin as He is physicality. Christ’s resurrection is being preached as the cleansing of sin and our resurrection state will be sinless. There are many who see this passage as a confirmation that there will be a future physical resurrection of the faithful. I am not convinced of that either.
In short, the nature or form of our resurrection is by no means clear cut or even within our understanding. All we need to understand, at this point, is that death has no hold over us and is not to be feared. In the meantime we live this life and leave the next to God. Too many people dwell on the future and forget to live in the present.
Richard
In case you were wondering, no I’m not one of those who obsess over what happens to body after death. In fact, I find those who, for example oppose cremation, as blasphemous and superstitious.
I accept your explanation regarding the marks.
But why empty tomb? What happened to Jesus’s earthly body? Do you not believe it was that same body that became transformed, even if that’s not what’s going to happen to ourselves?
And I think Paul says it over and over in 1 Cor 15 in so many different ways that it doesn’t leave any wiggle room on that one. Paul’s meaning is quite clear and directly addressing the question of what kind of body is the result of the resurrection. But apparently sometimes people will believe what they want to believe no matter what.
That is simply unknown. There are after all a lot of things which are unknown and that is the least of them.
No. I don’t believe in wizardry and necromancy. Matter is what is because of the mathematical space-time structure it is a part of and I don’t think God alters the fabric of the universe, breaking the laws of nature He created – EVER. God created them for a reason and has absolutely no reason to break the laws He created as if He didn’t know what He was doing when He created them or He has no integrity or consistency – and certainly not for the ridiculous reasons given in these religious stories. In the laws of nature there is no mechanism or rationality in the conversion of physical to spiritual or visa versa. Like I said, the matter of that body has no importance whatsoever and to say that God broke all the laws of nature for such a reason, as if they had no importance is too preposterous. It is far far far far far more likely an invention of religious people to exaggerate their own importance.
And no this is not a matter of scientists exaggerating their own importance. It is a matter of experimental procedures giving the same result EVERY time we do them – even when we don’t like those results and don’t want to accept them.
That’s right. There was continuity and discontinuity between the old body and the new resurrection body. And the spiritual body doesn’t mean non-physical. The post-resurrection appearances make that clear. Otherwise we’re talking about Christian Gnosticism.
1 Corinthians 15:44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall[b] also bear the image of the man of heaven. 50 I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
What this doesn’t say is sometimes that word is translated as “natural” rather than “physical,” because as I explained before there are two different meanings of the word “physical” and clearly in the above Paul is not using the word in the sense it is used in “physical exercise,” where it means bodily because otherwise saying the resurrected body is not physical would be a contradiction.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
31
Merely physical resurrection cannot step in and out of physical reality.