Attonitus

Or maybe with Murray Harris, that although it is not theosophist has an impressive knowledge on the topic. Harris in his book Raised Immortal: Resurrection and Immortality in the New Testament, defines the spiritual body as follows: The spiritual body is the organ of the resurrected person’s communication with the heavenly world. It is a somatic form fully responsive to the Christian’s perfected spirit and perfectly adapted to its heavenly environment.

Toto

How many spiritual bodies can dance on the head of a pin?

judge

True the exact phrase is not found.
But remember Jesus said to the saducees that "In the resurrection they will be like the angels in heaven"

Now angels do not seem to have bodies of flesh and blood and yet they do have bodies.
It seesm they have "spiritual" bodies.

Steven Carr

Paul says outright it was a spiritual body, so naturally it was a spiritual body. (Paul also says outright that Jesus became a life-giving spirit)

But what is a spiritual body? I asked the question in the OP and got no answer.

Is a natural body one which can be Transfigured to glow in the dark, and walk on water? After all, Jesus only had a natural body before the Resurrection, yet it could glow.

Did Moses and Elijah have spiritual bodies?

Did the resurrected saints have natural bodies?

We await answers.

Steven Carr

But Jesus had a body of flesh and blood, sorry, flesh and bones.

Do angels have bodies of flesh and bones?

judge

One which can live in the spiritual world. whilst an earthly one lives on earth.

My own understanding which I presently think can be inferred from scripture is that an unfallen natural body can be transfigured. Thus adams could have been prior to the fall.

"Man, on the other hand, whose nature was to be a mean between the angelic and bestial, He created in such sort, that if he remained in subjection to His Creator as his rightful Lord, and piously kept His commandments, he should pass into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the intervention of death , a blessed and endless immortality; but if he offended the Lord his God by a proud and disobedient use of his free will, he should become subject to death, and live as the beasts do.."

Augustine of hippo


As this was prior to the resurrection I would think not.

I would think not but rather these were recently departed folks. This view seems to have support as Early as narsai of niblis (5th cent) and makes sense if the resurrection (of the dead from sheol) had not yet occured

judge

Hmm..maybe, maybe not.
They seem to have been created different to men and for a different purpose. whether this means there are differences in the nature of their spiritual bodies I don't know.
Man graduates from earth to heaven but this would not necesarily mean his body would be exactly the same as angels merely that both could live in the the spiritual world.
I think the point Jesus made to the saducees was more that the man who ws married seven times would not be living on earth in the rersurrection (which is where marriage is an issue)

Steven Carr

What is the spiritual world? One made out of matter?

So Moses and Elijah must have had spiritual bodies, as they had been living in the spiritual world.


So they did not have spiritual bodies, but still lived in the spiritual world.

Steven Carr

Somebody took notes on an NT Wright lecture

http://www.erickeck.com/nt_wright

How can our bodies be transformed , if we don't get the molecules back to be transformed? If we get a different body back after cremation (because God doesn't care about getting the same molecules back), then how can a spiritual body be the original body 'transformed'? The original body is gone, and can not be transformed.


Didn't Jesus know that the seven-times married man would still be on Earth after the Resurrection?

judge

Moses and Elijah had been in sheol (abrahams bosom), I presume . In the Aramaic of Luke we are for example told that the rich man was in sheol and lazarus was in abrahams bosom.
Neither of these (and they are probably much the same except one was comfortable and one was not) was heaven or the spiritual world. This was the "house of the dead" as Paul refers to it in the Aramaic IIRC.
They were waiting to be resurrected, they "slept".