Steven Avery

And when the skeptics here argue against the traditional ending of Mark, and its wide and vast attestation, they will argue that the traditional ending really could not have been the ending , because Mark didn't know about the resurrection. How do we know that Mark didn't know about the resurrection (in his fictional writing in a far-off land according to Vork) .. well you see, it isn't in the ending of Mark. Ahh... circularity, aren't you a wonderful tool.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

GakuseiDon

Early pagans made a similar argument. From Minucius Felix:

"Yet I should be glad to be informed whether or no you rise again with bodies; and if so, with what bodies--whether with the same or with renewed bodies? Without a body? Then, as far as I know, there will neither be mind, nor soul, nor life. With the same body? But this has already been previously destroyed. With another body? Then it is a new man who is born, not the former one restored"

The answer was:

who is so foolish or so brutish as to dare to deny that man, as he could first of all be formed by God, so can again be re-formed; that he is nothing after death, and that he was nothing before he began to exist; and as from nothing it was possible for him to be born, so from nothing it may be possible for him to be restored? Moreover, it is more difficult to begin that which is not, than to repeat that which has been. Do you think that, if anything is withdrawn from our feeble eyes, it perishes to God? Every body, whether it is dried up into dust, or is dissolved into moisture, or is compressed into ashes, or is attenuated into smoke, is withdrawn from us, but it is reserved for God in the custody of the elements.

The body is reformed, but somehow transformed from corruptible material to incorruptible.
In Middle Platonism, there were 4 basic elements: earth, water, air, fire. Earth was the base, and earthly objects moved in a vertically downwards direction. Water and air moved in a horizontal direction over earth, and fire moved upwards.

Middle Platonists believed in a dual level universe: a sublunar realm below the firmament and a supralunar realm above the firmament. The sublunar realm extended from the moon to the earth, and consisted of matter, changing and decaying, impermanent. The supralunar realm was eternal and perfect.

Creatures like angels and demons have a "spiritual" body. But "spiritual" in this sense was a substance similar to air or fire (though Tertullian called its nature "unknown"). Demons were laid down by their vices, and were somehow "earthly", and couldn't rise above the firmament, where only eternal and incorruptible matter could reside.

Similarly, "earthly" bodies couldn't rise above the firmament (though in some cases they appeared able to do so temporarily when accompanied by angels)

When the Lord returns and crashes through the firmament, the sublunar realm will be eliminated, and the temporary and corrupted matter of the sublunar realm will come to an end. The heavens, hell and earth and death will be destroyed by spiritual fire. The heavenly city of Jerusalem will descend from above the firmament.

When the Lord returns, existing Christians' bodies will be transformed from an earthly body (made of earth elements) to a spiritual body (made of air or fire or some unknown spiritual elements - it is an actual body, just not one made from earthly matter). Thus they will be able to meet the Lord in the air.

Those that had died will be given a spiritual body that is generated somehow from the "seed" (e.g. a seed of grain) of their physical bodies. (IIRC a Jewish belief of the time was that the body left behind a bone that didn't decay - perhaps Paul thought that this contained the seed from which the spiritual body could be sown).

Origen and the Ascension of Isaiah talk about the "putting on of garments". Adam was a soul who put on a garment of flesh. The saints will be given "garments of the upper world":

And there I saw Enoch and all who were with him, stript of the garments of the flesh, and I saw them in their garments of the upper world, and they were like angels, standing there in great glory.

Jesus was the first fruits of this resurrection. I believe that Paul believed that Jesus died in the flesh and was resurrected with a "spiritual" material body.

CJD

<sigh> Orthodox Freethinker, anyone who can read without their eyes crossed can see that Paul nowhere assumes a physical/non-physical dichotomy. But then there's Steven Carr. We've all run into him, and a few of us get him to stop posting back. It should not surprise me, however, that he comes back time and again with the same rag doll.

This just simply betrays a misunderstanding of how "heaven" was primarily understood by the early Jewish Christians. It is a "higher" plane of reality, an archetype or blueprint for which the earthly is a replica. It was considered even "more" real than the flesh you can pinch with your own fingers. The faulty assumption here is that "spiritual" somehow means "non-physical." It does not. It means "higher," "elevated," etc. (this is not as close to middle platonism as one might think, G.Don, despite the commentary of a few early church fathers). Granting your question, however, the answer is simple: Jesus dragged his physical body with him as a way to say, "Matter is good; God created it. And what you see in me now you too will receive on that final day when all of God's people are vindicated in the face of God's enemies."

Best,

CJD

Clarice O'C

How about this. The Roman Catholics ate the body. Nowadays it's called 'transubstantiation.'

See, "This is my body... This is my blood" (Matthew 26:26-28). Jesus sez, "take, eat; this is my body ... drink all of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant; which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."

By the time GJohn was written, Jesus was dead, and, perhaps injested by the Roman Catholics (the fathers) who found him in the tomb; they were there before the folks who found the tomb empty got there.

"The Gospel of John records that Jesus said: 'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you' (John 6:53). However, John goes on, 'This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.'" GJohn changes it to symbolism because he knew that the fathers had obeyed Jesus, i.e., what they did in the tomb before it was found empty. Note that John switches from Catholicism to Protestantism in one single paragraph, vs 53-59.

Wikipedia: "Many of those who heard Jesus' words appear to have taken them literally, as the majority were shocked and left him. Adherents to Jewish Law consider eating blood one of the worst transgressions of kashruth, the law of eating and drinking, and a violation of the noachide laws which apply to all people and not just Jews." The minority were the fathers. This is why it is said that only a minority of people go to heaven.

As well, "St. Paul implies an identity between the apparent bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ when he writes: "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:27).

Paul was the first Protestant. Paul was written before GJohn. The difference between Protestants and Roman Catholics nowadays is that Protestants eat Jesus symbolically, and:

"Catholic doctrine is that because Christ is Risen, His Body and Blood are reunited; therefore, not only is each Host both the Body & Blood, but each sip of Consecrated wine is also both the Body & Blood. The Council of Trent decreed that all of Christ, His Body, Blood, Soul, & Divinity are fully present in each species:"

Apparently God didn't need the physical body in order to resurrect Jesus, but God saw to it that they were united because God is omnipotent.

Mystery solved


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

Steven Carr

All good stuff, and it is noteworthy that Paul feels no need to make any similar arguments. His arguments are entirely to do with their being two bodies.


His arguments are more like those directed against people who doubt that man can fly because they raise endless questions about how you could fit wings onto a car, and how a car could go fast enough to fly.

Those people are idiots, not because God couldn't make a flying car, but because to fly, we will abandon cars and go into a new kind of machine.

Unlike Felix, Paul never addresses how a body could be reformed.

To Paul, this was an idiotic thing to talk about.

A body made of spirit. A heavenly body not made of anything on Earth, just as the stars and other heavenly bodies were believed to be made of stuff never found on Earth.

Steven Carr

Any chance of saying where I said that Paul believed that the resurrected Jesus was not physical. Spirit was considered a substance, you know.

Steven Carr

Jesus is today believed to have had a resurrected, incorruptible , imperishable body.

Nevertheless this can be cut up into millions of pieces. So much for being imcorruptible.

How this imperishable substance gets through the digestive tracts of Catholics en route to its final destination is a mystery to me?

It is suprising but there are Catholics who claim it is absurd to say that Jesus body was not physical present after the resurrection, and equally absurd to say that Jesus body is physically present after Transubstantion.

'Physical' is one of those words that has a lot of meanings in Christianity.

As substance does, and 'resurrected'. Moses was not resurrected like Jesus was. He just came back from death and never died again.

Similarly, some Christians claim there are 3 different forms of life and 2 different forms of death.


What a complicated web we weave, when once we practice to deceive.

Clarice O'C

It's all quite imaginative isn't it. Too bad someone couldn't dream up a nice religion, if we must have it at all.

GakuseiDon

I have him on my Ignore list.

Well... Middle Platonism encompassed a wide variety of views, esp about what existed above the firmament. Jewish Christian views differed from pagans in this respect. I agree though that it is wrong to assume that "spiritual" was thought to mean "non-physical".

Steven Carr

I'm in good company.

Lots of Christians put Paul on their ignore list too.

Paul wrote 'The last Adam became life-giving spirit'.

The Bishop of Durham, NT Wright, wrote a massive 730 page book on the resurrection, without ever finding space to quote this in full.

When he does quote part of it, he takes less than one page to start talking about a life-giving body, when Paul clearly wrote a life-giving spirit.

Spirit quickly turns into body, and our flesh and blood quickly turns into our spiritual condition.

Apologetics is little more than word-games.....

Meanwhile, poor Paul is ignored

In 2 Corinthians 5, he writes a passage which no sensible person can take as a claim that Paul thinks his heavenly body will be a transformed version of the very body he has now

1Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come

6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 We live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.


Paul wants to be away from his body, the one which is going into the ground, which is hard if he was preaching that the body which goes in the ground is the body which comes out of the ground, which is what the Gospels claim.

Paul and the Gospels totally contradict each other on this point.