Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 06-20-2007, 01:57 PM

Was he?

http://conversationattheedge.com/200...e-last-things/

Quote:

1. What happens when a believer dies?
The text says: At death, the soul separates from the body, which returns to dust. The soul of the believer is immediately received into Heaven.

The pastor expanded on this, mimicking blowing a handful of dust & having it disperse.

I asked something about how it would work, that people’s bodies could be resurrected if the physical part of them was dispersed all over the place? Not surprisingly, that didn’t worry the pastor, I think he basically said that wasn’t a problem for God. Interestingly, there was a LCMS brochure “What about Death and Dying” given out at this class, and it says “Our bodies rest in the grave, awaiting the final day when soul and body shall be reunited.” Well, that’s different. “Resurrection” means “rising from the dead”, it doesn’t mean “re-created from dispersed molecules that used to be in the original body” or “created anew just like the original version, which has been lost forever.” I can understand “resurrection” when we’re talking about a recently-deceased body* but this would be a different word: re-assembly, re-creation, or consolidation, maybe.

*As an aside, There are at least 6 people resurrected in the Bible before Jesus: Lazarus (in John 11, not the Lazarus in Luke 16), Jairus’ daughter (in Mark 5, Luke 8, Matthew 9), the widow’s son in Luke 7:12-15, the widow’s son touched by Elijah (1 Kings 17:22), and the child (2 Kings 4:32-35) and man (2 Kings 13:21) touched by Elisha. Yet in Acts 26:22- 23, Paul says “…I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— 23that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles.” Did Paul mean, the first to rise from death to Heaven? Because Jesus wasn’t the first to be raised from the dead, back to life on earth.

Another aside: The LCMS brochure delves into death more than the text or the pastor did. It says that “death is not natural !” and that it’s a “horrible reality” and “the enemy we each face at the end of our lives” and “the awful curse that fell on creation through the sin of Adam and Eve…” It asks, “Why must Christians die?” and answers “our bodies are actually dead right now because of sin” (Romans 8:10). IMO, that’s quite schizoid - our bodies are dead right now, but death is a horrible enemy that we face, yet death is a necessary step before resurrection, which is presumably to be desired. And to say death isn’t natural - that requires a Christianese definition of “natural”.

Anyway, in the discussion on dust & resurrection, I asked where the soul comes from, and when it enters a human. The pastor said each soul is created anew. He said they’re not recycled and there’s not a pool of them waiting to enter into bodies (thus rejecting reincarnation and “pre-existence“). He said there were two theories on how the soul entered, either “Traducianism” in which the parents each contribute a part & the soul is created at conception, or “creationism” in which God creates the soul (at conception). He said he prefers Traducianism, but the Bible doesn’t describe which it is, so either could be the case, only God knows.

I mentioned that at least 30% of pregnancies are lost in the first trimester & wondered what happened to those souls, whose bodies were miscarried & never had a chance for infant baptism. The pastor said that he and his wife had had such a miscarriage, & I expressed sympathy. (I did not tell him that I’d had one, too.) He said that “God doesn’t tell us what happens to humans who die before birth. God knows. I don’t.” He added something about all the babies who were aborted, & I quickly tried to say that there were more miscarriages than abortions, but I’m not sure that got heard. (Later in this class, a woman assumed that I had brought this up because I wanted to know if we would be reunited in heaven with babies lost before birth. Turns out that had never crossed my mind. Especially those lost in the first trimester. More on this later.)

Read on, especially about what body we get when resurrected - what age is it, why?

But to the OP, did the author of Acts misquote Paul? Or did Paul get this wrong? Did the author of Acts and or Paul not know about Lazarus et al?

judge · 06-20-2007, 08:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Or did Paul get this wrong? Did the author of Acts and or Paul not know about Lazarus et al?

One finds two kinds of "resurrection" in the bible. One back to earthly mortal life (Lazarus), and one into immortality.

See Hebrews 11:35 for example.

35Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.

Chili · 06-20-2007, 09:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Was he?

No way!

The Chief priests knew exactly what was going on and did this often. They knew, for example, that if he was raised before 3 days the imposter would return and the final one would be worse than the first.

Steven Carr · 06-20-2007, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

http://conversationattheedge.com/200...e-last-things/

Quote:

I asked something about how it would work, that people’s bodies could be resurrected if the physical part of them was dispersed all over the place? Not surprisingly, that didn’t worry the pastor, I think he basically said that wasn’t a problem for God.

Read on, especially about what body we get when resurrected - what age is it, why?

But to the OP, did the author of Acts misquote Paul? Or did Paul get this wrong? Did the author of Acts and or Paul not know about Lazarus et al?

Paul didn't know about Lazarus, and neither did the Jesus-worshippers that he wrote to in Corinth, who scoffed at the idea of God choosing to raise a corpse.

The story would have been at least relevant, if only to explain how the resurrection of Jesus differed from the resurrection of Lazarus.

Paul never answered the Corinthians the way the pastor did when he said it was not a problem for God that the body turned into dust and dispersed.

In fact, Paul simply trashed the idea that resurrected beings were made from the dust that corpses dissolve into.

'The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven'.

The Jesus-worshippers in Corinth had real problems with the idea of corpses rising.

They didn't seem to have any examples of corpses rising from the dead to compare Jesus resurrection with.

I'm sure that (like the Pastor) they had no problem with God being able to resurrect corpses scattered into dust, if that was what God had wanted to do.

Paul doesn't have to defend the idea of corpses being reformed from dust, and Paul takes for granted that the Corinthians believed God formed Adam from dead matter.

So the problem for the Corinthians must have been that they knew that the corpse of Jesus had *not* been resurrected.

As Jesus was a god, it would have been easy for him to live on in spirit form.

But they were not gods, they only had bodies, and bodies turned into dust.

Paul reassures them that they will get a spiritual body , not made from dust.

Problem solved , as far as Paul was concerned, who regarded the Corinthians as foolish for thinking that dust was even supposed to be reformed.

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