I don’t think Jesus ever had two bodies either. I think he had a body, it died, and he was given a new body. Just like we are promised we are give a new body. I agree with the old continuing with the new. Just that its our personality, our experience and memories that are carried on. Not literally the same corpse with a magic level added to it.
What I did was share one possibility. I’m just as fine with it being our corpses brought back. What I did was share similar stories of God taking away bodies ( corpses and alive ) and those same people showing up later on in visions able to communicate and be seen by others and that nothing in the story of the gospels or epistles undermines that.
I don’t think you’re going get anywhere as long as you stick to calling the “old” and the “new” bodies. There’s such a thing as a “flesh and blood” body (sarx, in Greek) and there’s such a thing as a “spirit” body. Both are physical and both are alive, but “sarx” and “spirit” do not refer to the same thing.
There are two kinds of resurrections:
(a) The first kind is a restoration of life to an apparently dead sarx, such as Lazarus. Lazarus’ sister, Martha, tells Jesus that if he had come sooner, Lazarus would not have died.
(b) The second kind is the transformation of a dead sarx into a living spirit.
(c) Before death, there’s a physical body: i.e a sarx. After the death of a sarx, there’s a physical body that isn’t moving. After the first kind of resurrection, there’s a living, moving sarx. After the second kind of resurrection, there’s no sarx, but there is a living moving spiritual body. All bodies are physical.
(d) I’ve never heard or read of any instance in which a stinking, rotting corpse was resurrected. [Zombies are–like unicorns and flying pigs–fiction.] I’d welcome anyone’s proof that I am wrong.
P.S.
In the Transfiguration, how many bodies did the three apostles see? Answer: Three.
How many were living, moving, physical bodies? Three.
How many were sarx? One: Jesus.
How many were not sarkoi? Two: Moses and Elijah.
If Moses and Elijah were not resurrected sarkoi, what were they? They were spiritual bodies.
P.P.S. A “vision” has no substance. Anything that has substance is not a vision.
That was a movie, though. Interesting but fanciful plotline, to be sure…
In the first century A.D./C.E., there was a problem —
—first of all, the body had been laid in a known tomb at the beginning of a holiday during which all aspects of “work” (evidently strictly defined) were verboten
—second, at the moment when “work” could be done and someone came to anoint the body in the tomb, the tomb evidently was found to be empty…several witnesses asserted that they had seen Jesus alive and kicking (well…He did not kick, so far as known)
—third, while many of that era didemphasized text** hope/expect that a Jewish man who would be both God and messiah would soon appear — they were not expecting one to be crucified and then …
— fourth, the concept of a resurrection was a physical one in the theology of the times. Not spiritual so much. BUT the physical resurrection was for that future time – not come yet, evidently…not so much people individually rising from the dead. I suppose Lazarus also would have fallen into that category (i.e., rose from the dead and they saw him afterwards), but Lazarus died again at some point.
I am sure this film “The Body” is interesting…but finding a body (recognizable??) in a Jerusalem basement 2,000 years later (the whole body?) is great but hard to find plausible even as a fictional story line.
I totally agree that it is fanciful and hardly credible. I made my own skepticism clear. But the question is why would the Christian faith of people collapse because of such a discovery. Mine would not.
Why would it destroy the faith of people if a body were discovered? Ask the authorities who requested the guard by the tomb at the time of the crucifixion.
from 1 Corinthians 15:13-17 ----13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
To answer the question I asked above — the guard was requested because Jesus said He would rise from the dead. Someone took His words seriously…and they were thinking of something physical.
If that resurrection had not happened — why would anything about Jesus subsequently have been taken seriously by His disciples? He said He would rise, He did not? The Messiah was not suppose to be crucified. This guy was.
I am sure that Judaism in that era had as many varied beliefs as it does now…but again, too many plot twists to overcome …for someone who was not expecting a Messiah who was crucified anyway. (another long story)
Christians do charitable deeds (and etc) to show that we love Jesus, not to atone for our failures (too many of them) or to try to earn something…because Jesus’ death and resurrection covered all that.
I would have to look it up. But I am afraid your name will be listed as an example.
It is not arrogance to know what you are capable of. If one can do CPR then it is not bragging to tell people that one can. It is not bragging to say I can do calculus and physics, because I can.
I would however say it is bragging for you to sit in judgement of other people because I know you are not capable.
It would be bragging if I said I could never lose my faith. This is for the simple reason that I cannot know everything that will or could happen to me. But I can certainly judge whether I will lose my faith in the case of particular circumstances which I anticipate and consider – knowing what is certainly not a challenge to my faith.
I am not impressed. Other people do charitable deeds (and etc) because they actually care about people.
From 1 Corinthians 15: 35 But some one will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. 41 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.
42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 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.
Years ago, I read a book written by Paul Maier titled “The Skeleton in God’s Closet” before the “Da Vinci Code” genre existed. In it during a “dig” of Joseph of Arimathea’s sarcophagus, they found a papyrus script stating that Joseph had buried Jesus here. Near it were human bones which by all scientific analysis possible were likely Jesus’ bones. The world went nuts. In the end it was a hoax. I asked my uncle, a theologian and president of a major Lutheran university, if they really did find Jesus’ bones, would his faith “be in vain”. He exclaimed: "No it wouldn’t make a difference because when I get to heaven Jesus probably would say: ‘well yes, my bones were present on the earth, but just as we couldn’t tell you about natural selection, genetic mutation drift, or DNA when creating the scriptures, I couldn’t tell you about the 11th dimension’.” This lead me over the years to substitute “supernatural” with the “science we still don’t know” and the “science we never will know”. Despite accusations of
“scientism” it works better for me.
are we talking about why it matters that the resurrection was physical and not spiritual?
Christians do not “do” things to earn points toward heaven because Jesus’ death (physically) and resurrection ( physically) paid the penaly for people’s sins. That was my point. Heaven cannot be “earned.”
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
34
It’s about having your most extreme rationalist cake and faithfully eat it too. Doesn’t work for me.
Paul…quite interesting. I tried looking for something on the Maier book — that is, online. I did find something by Maier calling The DaVinci Code a “book of lies” and explaining why another speculation about having found the tomb of Jesus and family — was ridiculous. So I am sure that Maier had a perspective slightly unlike those …His book got some great reader reviews…
…As for the thoughts of your uncle, interesting. A few years ago I read a book by a contemporary British-Israeli archaeologist who said most views on the matter of the “empty tomb” were “based on nonsense” (his phrase) and that the only sense to be made of that reality is “a theological one” like the resurrection…note, of course, that he referred to the tomb as “empty” as in: nothing there, no choir of angels, no body, no picnic lunch to carry into the afterlife, no coffin ( i suppose) …no living thing…
…which IS, after all, my point and the point of the gospels and the messages given by Paul, Peter and others in the epistles…
empty tomb…no physical body…yes, lots of theories like Maier’s and Dan Brown’s etc…BUT …
The question is what the actual biblical text referred to. In the Bible, there is that story of Thomas saying he was not going to believe unless he saw and talked with and touched the piercings etc in the hands and feet of the risen Jesus…and then he did. Yup, the risen Jesus did some things you and I cannot do — walk through walls and so forth. But the post-resurrection appearances evidently also emphasized a physicality to His resurrected self—experienced by Thomas and other disciples. The verses that the other person cited — from 1 Corinthians 15 – also emphasized that the “resurrected” self would be different from our current self, but no less physical — just incorruptible. Maybe we can eat all the pizza we want and not gain weight?!! Well, just a thought. Nuff for now.
I can’t comment about today but I think it’s important to note that the resurrection was important in the early church because the crucifixion was a major stumbling block. It was not because of penal substitution or theology about Jesus taking on the sins of the world. It was a validation of who He claimed to be. The resurrection showed that neither Jews, nor Romans nor even death had any control over Jesus because he really was God’s Son. Without belief in a resurrection of some sort it’s more likely The Jesus movement would have died out. Imagine the Romans laughing at the Christians promoting the Son of God whom they crucified. How weak and pathetic that individual and God must be to have a few spikes hold him in place. Paul says as much directly (stumbling block to Jews, foolishness to Gentile). Many Jews expected the Messiah to liberate them from Roman occupation, not get hung on a tree and die.
None of this is to say there was or wasn’t a tomb or there was or wasn’t a bodily resurrection or there was or wasn’t some sort of blood magic involved. But at the end of the day the belief in the resurrection is what actually kept the Jesus movement alive and authenticated the message of Jesus IMHO.
There was also the belief that Jesus was the first-fruits of the eschatological raising of the dead in the end times. That didn’t work out to well which is why 2 Peter had to declare 1000 years as a day to the Lord ca 125 CE. The expected general resurrection and imminent return was not happening even though they thought Jesus had ushered it in.
I also got from Paul the explanation in the rest of 1 Cor 15 about a physical/bodily resurrection to a spiritual body not a physical/natural body – talking care of the scientific objections.
But I certainly don’t believe in any “blood magic” or “eschatological raising of the dead.” All that evil necromancy and zombies stuff makes for good horror movies and novels but not any reasonable understanding of reality.
What Peter said was not just a multiplication of a day to a 1000 years, but “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” In science we have discarded the notion of absolute time, in which case the best understanding of what Peter said is that God isn’t confined to our experience of time at all, but can have a completely different measure of time. After all, if God created the universe, then the whole space-time structure of the thing would be a part of what He created.
If the resurrection is to spiritual body rather than a physical/natural body as Paul says then why would it be a part of that space-time structure of the physical/natural universe. Besides it would also make sense of our pervasive belief that we go to be with God, that we leave the space-time structure of this universe to experience reality more like the way He does.
Of course I don’t claim that Paul or Peter understood things in quite that way but why should we expect an explanation of reality (which includes relativity and quantum physics) to a kindergarten class to be the limit of reality itself.
Nice thoughts…there was belief in a resurrection — a bodily one — but in Judaism it was not till “the end” so to speak. The expected Messiah was not “expected” to be crucified, so that was disheartening in the extreme. And then the tomb was empty…“nobody home,” so to speak. I imagine that both of those things fractured a lot of theological perspectives. Even the notion of a resurrection – not expected to be spiritual anyway and it evidently was not, since they could touch Jesus – must have needed re-working. The concluding verses of 1 Cor 15 deal with some of that.