Uncle Menno

One of the questions Paul is responding to is "With what manner of body shall they [the resurrected ones] come?" He goes on in verses 39 and 40 to distinguish the various kinds of bodies, pointing out specifically that the earthly body is distinct from the heavenly body.

His clincher on this point--that the earthly body is not the resurrected body--comes in verse 50: "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable...For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed..."

I think Paul is speaking of the general resurrection here, which he seems to see as following the principle of the resurrection of Christ. If the body is simply reanimated as the same old body, why would Paul insist that "we will be changed"? In what would such change consist if the resurrected body was exactly what it was before death? I find Paul to be emphatically denying that the resurrected body--the spiritual body--was identical to body as it was before death--the natural body.

It seems that there were, as Pliny notes, different modes of crossing the perceived boundary between death and life. Our view of that boundary differs from theirs, our descriptions of it differ accordingly, and I think Paul's views on the matter are much closer to Pliny's than to ours. The historical question is not what we mean by such talk today, but what they meant by it back then.

aa5874

But, the church writers refer to a bodily resurrection of Jesus. The Jesus stories are abundantly clear about the resurrection of Jesus, his dead body was revived. His body was not in the tomb and this Jesus did meet physically with the disciples after his resurrection, gave them instructions about fishing, and did eat fish and bread with the disciples, to show that he did NOT resurrect spiritually but physically by consuming food.

Now, according to the church writers, "Paul" was a founder or co-founder of many churches all over, sometime around the mid-first century, and "Paul" was preaching that Jesus was resurrected. The church writers claimed Marcion's Jesus, the phantom was false, that Jesus did indeed have a real human body.

The canonised epistles reflect that Paul believed in the same Jesus that had a body, a real human body, so much so that "Paul" claimed over 500 people saw Jesus after he was resurrected. "Paul" claimed that his gospel would be in vain if Jesus was not resurrected.

And, if it was that "Paul's" Jesus was like Marcion's, then he would have been declared an heretic.

arnoldo

You have an interesting theory that there was a difference of opinion of the Gospel writers and Paul regarding the nature of the life,death and resurrection of Jesus. Nothing can be further from the truth—both the gospel writers and Paul preached that Jesus had a real earthly existence, was crucified, and rose from the dead. Paul clearly states this in the following verse:
The only group that disputed that Jesus had a real physical existence,death and resurrection were the Gnostics whose doctrine was popular,according to the following source, for the following reasons:

Diogenes the Cynic

Paul doesn't "clearly" state anything of the sort. I'm not getting into whether Paul thought Jesus had a historical existence (I'm a very firm agnostic on the question), but any assertion that Paul ever explicitly claimed a physical resurrection is patently untrue, and the assertion that Paul believed it is contraindicated by the passages cited above. He explicitly said physical bodies can't be resurrected. He explicitly said that dead bodies are transformed into spiritual bodies. If he believed in an exception for Jesus, he never said so, and it would have been a rather glaring exception not to mention.
The question of his existence is for another thread, but there were certainly other groups besides the Gnostics who denied any physical resurrection -- most notably the Jews.

GakuseiDon

I think that is right. Paul believe that the body that is raised is different from the body that goes into the earth. It is changed into a spiritual body. But their use of 'spiritual' body is not quite the way we see it. "Spiritual" bodies were still physical, but they were made of non-corruptible material, like air, fire or ether.

The question is: did Paul believe that the physical body remained in the earth when the spiritual body gets created, or is the physical body left in the earth? I think that Paul regarded it as a transformation, so that the physical body is converted into its non-corruptible state. (I don't see this as much different to the later idea of a transfigured or glorified body.) One hint is in 1 Cor 15:51:

1Cr 15:51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed--
1Cr 15:52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

"We shall all be changed", even "if we shall not all sleep". The change will be that the bodies will put on incorruptibility. Does it make sense that the spirit becomes incorruptible? No, since that would already be the case. But it is the body elements that will be transformed: the flesh (earth and water) into spirit (air, fire or ether).

Uncle Menno

Here is the relevant language from the Apostles' Creed, which is generally accepted as one of the oldest statements of orthodoxy:

Not the slightest hint there about the kind of body involved. The Creed later attests to the belief in:

Not the slightest hint about the nature, as it were, of this resurrected body.

The Nicene formulation also has zero/zip/nada/zilch about the nature of the resurrected body.

In fact, there has always been a great deal of discussion--not to say controversy--about how the idea of returning from death to life was to be interpreted. Such discussion was not limited to Christians, cf. Pliny.

And there is certainly no passage anywhere that states unequivocally that Jesus's resurrected body was nothing other than the body he had before his death.

The accounts about the appearances of Jesus after the crucifixion are filled with mysteries: on the one hand, he ate and drank like a "normal" person, but on the other, he could move through closed doors and otherwise appear and disappear at will, which no "normal" eater and drinker could ever do and which he is not recorded as having done before the crucifixion. He "walked" for several miles and hours alongside people who claimed that they knew him well, yet they failed to recognize him--in fact, the scripture suggests that they didn't merely fail, they were actively impeded from recognizing him. (Luke 24:16) If his exact physical body had been reanimated, why couldn't they recognize him immediately?

I don't think these accounts are nearly as unequivocal as your account seems to presume.

aa5874

The empty tomb, as written by the authors of the NT and the church writers, clearly and unequivocally shows that these writers believed or wanted their readers to think that Jesus did indeed come back to life with the same body that was crucified.

And in addition, after the so-called resurrection, there are these passage in John 20.29 It is extremely clear that the authors of the NT and the church writers endorsed or wanted the readers to believe that the same person that was crucified did rise after crucifixion with the same body.

You are confusing the capabilities of Gods and the bodily resurrection. When Jesus was on earth, according to the authors he could transfigure, that is, he could change his appearance at will.

The changing of his appearance and his bodily resurrection are two completely different issues.

arnoldo

The notion that Jesus and Lazarus shared the same kind of resurrection is interesting however that is not what the Gospels or Paul’s letters document. Some Islamic thought on Jesus however is along the lines of your argument that Jesus retained the same kind of body before and after his crucifiction.

Toto

In what way is a body made out of air or ether a physical body?

Uncle Menno

Just to be clear, the argument that Jesus and Lazarus shared the same kind of resurrection is not one that I'm aware of making. Such an argument does seem to follow, however, from the notion that resurrection is only and precisely the reanimation of the physical body so that it resumes its previous life path.