Julian

[MOD Hat On]
This discussion is getting a bit heated in the personal department, so lets turn it down a notch. There is interesting material in this thread so please focus on the substance here and stop with the personal insinuations.

Thank you,
Julian -- Moderator BC&H
[/MOD Hat Off]

ddd3dturner

That's interesting because I grew up in the Worldwide Church of God and learned that I was a member of the one true church founded by jesus and the apostles. They even had a nice book showing how this was true, with plenty of history and various true apostles and how you could recognize which one was which by what they believed. But that's another thread.

It would be nice to see a graph or chart showing how all the one true churches stack up on the issue of why jesus came out of the tomb with a physical body.

He must have had super powers from the moment of resurrection, because he was able to roll back that heavy stone by himself, from the inside. Or were there helpers? Or did God do it? Or is it all an unknowable mystery?

ddd3dturner

Ok. That makes sense. If people needed to eat the body, of course it would have to be resurrected in physical form.

The rest of the explanations, which I'm far two stupid to understand, seem like typical (fill in the religious word here --exegetical would probably work) mumbo jumbo.

Given that I'm too brutish and foolish to fully comprehend and internalize the nuances of middle platonism, living souls, soulish, psyckikons, life giving spirits, flesh and blood, flesh and bone, bodies that are bodies yet somehow transformed, garments of flesh, spiritual material bodies, spiritual that is not non-physical, spirit as a kind of matter, transfigured flesh, 'soulish' flesh, transformation, transfiguration and transubstantiation, what am I left with?

I guess 3 options:
1. Finding the nearest Orthodox priest and leaving hubris at the door.
2. Quitting my job and entering theological school.
3. Applying Occam's razor and saying the whole thing was made up.

I can't do #1 because I was taught that my former church is the only true church.
#2 is out because certain dependants want money for college.
#3 seems mighty appealing since Christianity has nothing to offer except a lot of confusion or mindless belief (barring #2).

I guess Christians do have a nice support system but you have to pay for that.

Thanks for all your help.

Clarice O'C

Actually, cannibalism might not be too far-fetched for the ancients. What I wrote was mumbo jumbo. I was trying to use my imagination to do what Christians do, taking things out of context with a little bit of knowledge of the texts here and there and trying to be a literalist while I was at it. It was fun. My explanation of what happened to Jesus' body is as good as any, IMO.

Orthodox_Freethinker

Resurrecting without dying first would be absurd. The understanding of this verse which actually makes sense is that those living at the resurrection will experience the same transformation of the flesh as those who had previously died.

Paul does not equate this with the resurrection of the dead.

With God, transforming the flesh into a new state of being is entirely possible. It would be impossible to prove, from the words of Saint Paul, that he did not believe in the physical resurrection of Christ. Your words remind me of creationists who perpetuate the Lady Hope hoax in order to 'prove' that Darwin renounced evolution on his death bed.

Again, I must tell you that if being a 'life-giving spirit' precludes having a fleshly body then so does being a 'living soul'. You can't have it both ways.

Orthodox_Freethinker

Anyone can claim anything. The difference is in what one can demonstrate historically.

ddd3dturner

Interesting and that's a nice time line. I didn't notice the insert image button before. I'll try and rummage around and find my old graph that I was fed. I think it's in the basement in a box labelled BS. But I think that's another thread--probably already been done to death and I'm sure I'd have to enroll in some history classes and begin stacking up reams of books and papers on either side of my specially designed truth scale.

ddd3dturner

I agree, it was fun. I laughed heartily when I read that. It still makes me chuckle when I read it.

I meant that it made logical sense to me. Like this (forgive my logic--I took informal, which was more fun but less rigorous) : sane people only eat stuff primarily composed of organic molecules, Roman Catholics are sane and eat Jesus, therefore jesus is composed primarily of organic molecules. With the corollary: spirit is not composed primarily of organic molecules therefore sane people don't eat spirit.

But now, in retrospect, I realize that that may be incorrect and I was too hasty. If jesus was a spiritual material body or spiritual that is not non-physical or spirit as a kind of matter, then indeed, there need be no strictly physical (as I once understood the term and as dictionary.com defines it--antonymically to spirit) resurrection for people to be able to eat jesus.

So in that sense, a physical resurrection was not necessary. God could have made a spiritual replicant that had some edible physical element. Also, if God only needed a "seed," such as a cell or a hair, then he could have left the rest of the body in the tomb.

Seems the only reason to remove the whole body, was so that some disbelievers wouldn't be able to say he was just a disembodied spirit? or to encourage other "mostly water mobile structures" to have confidence in a resurrection?

Or maybe they just made it all up as they went along.

"The Physics of Immortality" by Tulane math professor Frank J. Tipler is an interesting read on how God or even sufficiently advanced non-gods can extract the info necessary for resurrection from the "fabric" of space/time. Something to do with the Bekenstein Bound and the Holographic Principle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Principle
I'm pretty sure you have to be outside the system (universe) to do it.

If God needs a "seed" to resurrect then does that imply that he is not outside or capable of being outside the universe? Gee, that's awfully limiting and seems to imply that something outside would be greater than God, therefore God must not need any "seed."

Huh. I'll have to mull this over a bit.

Orthodox_Freethinker

The problem with assuming that Saint Paul did not believe in the physical resurrection of Christ is that such an assumption is inconsistent with the whole of his theology. Why would he go from persecuting Christians to believing that Jesus is the triumphant Messiah if he also believed this man to be a rotting corpse?

Steven Carr

Because he had revelations he believed were from God that Jesus was still alive?