Chili

No, Mary was fully woman and therefore not human or she'd be a sinner like the rest of us. Sh'e the flesh without sin and Joseph was the imposter that needed to die (or rapture into oblivion but that is not how the story goes).

GakuseiDon

I'm not sure what Christians here would argue, but around Paul's time, it would have made sense. Heaven was thought by many to be literally above the firmament. Thus Jesus could indeed ascend physically to heaven. It wasn't so much that his body was non-physical -- it's pretty clear that early Christians did believe that it was a physical body -- but the question was how could flesh get up there? Flesh was regarded as corruptible and temporary, thus unable to exist in Heaven, the realm of incorruptibility and perfection. Flesh and matter tended downwards, and were considered base substances. Fire and air tended upwards, and so were considered "spiritual" substances. Daemons and demons were generally thought to be made out of air and fire (though some proposed an unknown ethereal substance), and lived in the air around us.

From what I have read, there was an evolution of thought on the nature of Christ's resurrected body in the first few centuries. IMO Paul would have disagreed with the 2nd C Christians on this.

Paul seems to have believed that when Christ died and was resurrected, his body transformed from flesh into spirit. Not a "non-physical" spirit form, as for example we think of ghosts today, but into a "physical" spirit form. The flesh transformed into another substance entirely. Jesus was the "first fruits" of a new kind of body, one that all Christians would obtain at death or when Christ came back from Heaven. And since for Paul the new body was incorruptible, it could inherit eternal life.

Later Christians modified this slightly, to have Christ still in the flesh, but now in a "glorified" state. Somehow the flesh itself had changed to become perfect, and thus able to enter Heaven. So there was no transformation into spirit, as per Paul, though the end result was the same -- a body fit for eternal life.

The Gnostics took their lead from Paul, but got rid of the "flesh" part altogether. Jesus **started out** as a perfected spirit. But since it was impossible for a perfected being to suffer, they ran into trouble with the idea of Jesus dying on the cross.

Now a lot of Christians have adopted the old pagan idea that our spirits leave our bodies and we enter Heaven in a ghostly spirit form, so even the "glorified" flesh idea has lost force.

Baalazel

My argument is to what the text says. Jesus is presented as having been taken up to heaven in bodily form. The problem for the present day Christian is to deal with the text as it exists today. That a lot of Christians have adopted pagan ideas is not to their credit.

Baal

GakuseiDon

What's wrong with the pagan ideas? Are you saying that those Christians aren't "true" Christians?

GenesisNemesis

No Christian is a "true" Christian. What's "wrong" with the pagan ideas is that it means Christianity was developed from pagan ideas. Seems like a blow to the biblical literalists.

Baalazel

It is not my purpose to distinguish among types of Christians. Bible John serves that function on IIDB. It interests me that you avoid the main thrust of the reply, the function of text in interpretation, in favor of what can only be counted as a throw away line even by me. Had it not been there would you have replied at all?

Baal

GakuseiDon

Well... probably not. I guess I was in a garrulous mood. Fair point.

Baalazel

I had to look up garrulous. Thanks, I love new words.

Baal

GakuseiDon

No problem. "Garrulous" is the perfectly cromulent word in this situation.

OripahsTrebor

Lol, I like the word "cromulent".