drewjmore

Paul is the idiot.
http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?...kiel%2037:1-14

CJD

This appears to be the crux of the matter, which for all readers will be assumption. But your assumption does not make the best sense of the pericope in question. The best assumption is that he calls them fools because, just as the Sadducees quipped in Mk 12:18ff., the inquiry is a skeptic's inquiry. In other words, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" ought to be seen as a skeptical and rhetorical question: "Everybody knows the dead can't be raised. The kind of body that could be raised is unimaginable!"

"Fools!" Paul writes. Implied: "Your disingenuous question is as foolish as you!"

There are many different types of body, so Paul, and it is quite possible for there to be continuity as well as discontinuity between the various types. As you allude to, Steven, Paul would hardly go through the trouble answering this question if he thought the resurrection consisted of non-embodied souls or spirits.

You are correct about Paul's anthropological view too.

He was arguably a monist. God breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul. As an equation, this is: Breath of Life + body = Living Soul. You can't take one away. But your conclusion doesn't follow, for 15:44 simply states: "it [the body] is sown a soma psychikon; it is raised a soma pneumatikon." That is to say, "it is sown a human life common to all corruptible creation; it is raised a human life indwelt by the Spirit of God."

I don't see two entirely different bodies here (one visible, the other invisible). I see two sowings: one corruptible, one incorruptibe. Both physical. Both visible. One ordinary. One filled with God's Spirit.

Best,

CJD

Steven Carr

But that isn't what Paul then goes on to attack. He goes on to point out that there are natural and spiritual bodies.

Are you claiming that the Corinthians were sceptics and did not believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead?

Paul never goes on to attack this either.

Calling people idiots rather implies that you are going to address exactly why they are idiots.

And Paul does not attack them as idiots for thinking a resurrection is of a non-embodied soul.

He points out that they have missed the obvious point that there is a spiritual, as well as a natural body.



They sound entirely different to me.

And I never claimed that Paul stated that the invisible would always be invisible. What was eternal was what was invisible now.


Paul claims that both stomach and food would be destroyed. Clearly he denigrated the flesh, because he did not think that fleshly things, even things as totally unsinful as eating, would enter the Kingdom of God.

Eating is not sinful, yet such fleshly things would be destroyed.

Paul writes 'Flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God'. His disparaging of even the most mundane and un-sinful aspects of the flesh mean that he could not have believed the resurrected Jesus had flesh,blood or bones.

'The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.'

The resurrected Jesus was not of dust, which would remain dust. The Corinthians were idiots for thinking that dust would be resurrected. Restore the body which had been corrupted by sin? What idiot would want that?

Paul writing to the very same Corinthians

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

I'm sure the Corinthians could see dead bodies.

How puzzled they must have been by Paul claiming that those dead bodies would be eternal, while also telling them that what they saw was temporary, and only the (presently) unseen would prove to be eternal.

judge

Maybe maybe not.

Can you explain what a spiritual body is?

The gospels seem to have

1.Jesus mortal (capable of death) body during his earthly life. Flesh and blood.

2. Jesus resurrected into the same body but somehow very different as well. Now described as flesh and bone. (Remeber also that the metaphor(?) flesh and bone has an entirely different usage in the books such as those in the bible...it is not used in the same way).
We may be tempted to see them as the same because they are not metaphors we use, but we should not assume the same for the authors of the bible.
IOW it is no accident it says "flesh and bone" and not flesh and blood.

3.Jesus appearing as blinding light to Saul.

What is a "spiritual body"? One presumably made for living in the heavens.

Could this body bridge two worlds? Maybe?

One can speculate many different explanations. One can try to make them fit together, or one can try to make them contradict.

Steven Carr

Of course not. Nobody can. Not even Paul who supposedly talked to people who could touch a spiritual body.

No bones??

Luke 24
' Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."

This is not a metaphor.

I see you are still struggling with the idea that the resurrected Jesus had flesh and bones, but not blood, while the mortal Jesus had flesh and blood, but no bones. I'm not sure how I can help you with that.

Job 2
5 But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face."

Flesh and bones are just as mortal in the Bible as flesh and blood.

CJD

Resurrected from the dead in the body.

And Paul does go on to attack both those points: By what agency are the dead raised? ("How …?") and, What kind of body could that be?

The first is eventually answered with "God, through the power of his spirit does it." The second answer follows from this: "The body he does it with will be incorruptible, unlike your corruptible bodies now." The continuity is that this incorruptible body will be flesh. The discontinuity is that it is a soma pneumatikon, as opposed to a soma psychikon.

If he did, it was only implicit. Again, I think what he was attacking was what I mentioned above. But if anyone in the crowd at Corinth did think resurrection consisted of this, then his answer that the resurrection is a material resurrection (consisting of incorruptible flesh) would certainly be a polemic against this notion.

Except for that bit about both of them being flesh.

Fair enough. I am not sure about any kind of 'intermediate state' in Paul, but I do think his writings on the resurrection clearly describe a tangible, physical and material reality. In other words, those who die now are not resurrected until the final day when the King will vindicate his people by raising them to resurrected life (this is the whole point about 'firstfruits', by the way).

This is way overstated. Paul never denigrates the flesh as flesh (the stuff you can pinch with your fingers). What he denigrates is the power of sin that has taken up shop in the flesh. This is what he means when he writes "flesh." Spirit, on the other hand, simply refers to that life indwelt by the spirit of God.

But he calls them idiots not because they believed this, but because they were being smug skeptics in this matter.

This is nothing more than standard Hebraic cosmogony — a two-tiered universe where the earthly follows the heavenly blueprint.

Remember, the dead bodies would be eternal because they would be raised a soma pneumatikon (a human life indwelt by the spirit of god), raised, that is, from their former status as a soma psychikon (an ordinary human life).

Best,

CJD

chapka

Actually, at least one is still a common English phrase that many people use. And you're right that they have different meanings, but I don't think the actual meanings help your case.

"Flesh and blood" is used in common speech to imply a blood relationship between people. For example, "He's your own flesh and blood" means he's your relative.

This is also how it's used consistently in the bible; to imply that someone is a relative or tribe member. I can't find it used in any other context anywhere in the bible, or in fact used at all in the New Testament.

So if Jesus had said "I'm flesh and blood," it would be a little awkward, at best; it wouldn't mean "I have a physical body," but "I'm a close relative or a member of your tribe." "Flesh and bone" seems pretty straightforward to me. I don't buy the idea that it's supposed to be deeply significant that Jesus didn't use a term to describe himself that had never actually been used to describe him in the first place.

chapka

Having thought about it, my real, fundamental problem with this "flesh and blood/flesh and bone" position is that it's a misreading disguised as a subtle reading.

I mean, think about it. If you got this passage on a reading comprehension test, and the question below was:

What did Jesus mean when he said that he was "Flesh and bone"?

a. He was related to the disciples.
b. He was a physical body, not a ghost.
c. He was a spirit, but a kind which still had bones.
d. He was tired.

The answer is pretty obvious, honestly. Just based on the passage, the meaning is clear. "No, I'm not a ghost; my body has come back to life."

I have the same problem with people who read the story of Cana and try to interpret it so that the wine can be non-alcoholic; it's clear that it's not the obvious meaning, it's the meaning they need it to be to fit their preconceptions. You can come up with complex interpretations that technically, grammatically fit the individual words of the sentence. But honestly, if you had that passage in isolation, its meaning is pretty clear.

Steven Carr

What 'kind' of body? Time to quote Paul....

But some [man] will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?

Not what kind of body. That was not the question.

And Paul goes on to say that the body that is raised is not the body planted in to the ground, because there are 2 bodies.

Now if Paul was addressing sceptics who wondered how God could re-assemble a corrupted , destroyed or partially destroyed body, he would have answered such questions - just as 2nd century Christians did. They believed the body that was planted in the ground was the body that was sown, so they had to address the question of re-assembly.

Paul never does that. He answers the direct question 'What body?' , and says it was the spiritual body which comes after the natural, perishable body.

I concede that the word can be translated 'what sort of', but that is not really what Paul answers. He answers the question 'what body', by explaining that there are 2 bodies, the natural and the spirtual, and that the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

You fools.What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

Why does Paul think the Corinthians are 'fools' for not realising that the dead body really will be dead? Why emphasise that there must be death when talking about a resurrection of the dead? Surely the Corinthians were not fools for thinking that only the dead could be resurrected from the dead.

Surely Paul is emphasising that the dead body will stay dead, and 'God will give it a body'.

'You do *not* plant the body that will be...' seems very clear to me. Paul is talking of 2 bodies.

And Paul never dreams of saying flesh will be incorruptible. Your inability to find a quote of 'incuprruptible flesh' is telling.

But I can quote Paul till the cows come home.....


Paul is the man who so despises flesh that he declares that even non-sinful , fleshly things like eating will be destroyed, and states flat out that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.

'The last Adam became a life-giving spirit'. 'While we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord'.

Paul says we will be changed, just as he says that God was changed into corruptible man.

He means we will be EX-changed.

Stomach and food will be destroyed , says Paul. Is this the man who says our stomachs will become imperishable, incorruptible? I think not.

As for Paul not denigrating flesh, Romans 8 is pretty clear that , even if you are in Christ, your body is dead.

'But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.'

So what will be alive is not the body. Even in Christ the body is dead.

judge

Really? I am not aware of it ever used in this way in the NT. AFAIK it is a metaphor for mortality, and more specifically for earthly mortals.

Had Jesus referred to himself as "fleah and blood" it would have implied he was mortal (capable of dying).

Fleah and bone I think has a meaning closer to the one you ascribe to "flesh and blood" IIRC. We find it used in this way (albeit loosely) very early in genesis where Adam calls Eve "flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone"