Half-Life

Take a look at this passage from Paul's 1 st letter to the Corinthians. You will notice that the very first line of this passage is a question. This was most likely asked by someone questioning the Christian nonsense. Paul calls it a "foolish" question and proceeds to answer the objection. Now, 2,0000 years later, it seems apologists are STILL calling objections foolish and coming up with wild explanations, just as Paul started.

Paul REALLY went out on a limb with this one:

But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"[e]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As 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. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we[f] bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

Any thoughts?

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...=15&version=31

Tinker Grey

I'm going to write from the top of my head. I'm sure someone will be along to correct me shortly ...

I think in part Paul's writing derives from his training as a pharisee. You may recall that a distinction between the pharisees and the saducees was that the former believed in a resurrection while the latter did not.

The second important thing to remember is that synagogues existed largely because of the pharisees. The saducees had control of the temple and sacrifices and were, by-and-large, high and mighty muckety-mucks. As much as the NT vilifies the pharisees, they were educators of the people. They consorted with the man of the street. However self-righteous they may have been or not, they had already begun to ween the people away from the Temple. For most, getting to the temple to offer sacrifices was beyond the means of your average day laborer. I believe Rabbi Telushkin (author of Jewish Literacy and Biblical Literacy) wrote that pharisees taught that the carrying-out of ethical precepts (mitzvah) were to be considered a sacrifice as much as, say, an unspotted lamb.

This is relevant because the early churches that Paul founded were founded out of the synagogues he interacted with as he travelled the empire. Various commentators make much various passages in I Cor. as being understood in this context. So while the corinthian church had gentiles, much of what the understood and were taught derived from a jewish standpoint.

Anyway, you may also recall that while Greeks believed in a mind/soul duality, the Jews did not. This, I think, accounts for Pauls obsession with explaining how the physical body of life here-and-now would become the body such as it would be "in the resurrection".

Having grown up in the west, when I was a Christian, it struck me as strange that Paul would obsess on this. After all, "the Father is spirit and those who worship him worship him in spirit." If being spirit was good enough for the father, ought it not be good enough for us. Why should it matter about the body?

But, of course, we in the west grew up on and assume much of what we think from the greeks. Paul did not (apparently, even though he was well-educated). I guess therefore that I Cor. 15 addresses the concerns of a largely jewish congregation. The question arises then perhaps because of the influence of greek philosophy on the jewish congregants.

Oddly, having deconverted, I agree this duality is a perception of convenience and probably not real. But, I am neither a psycholinguist, neurocognicist, nor philosppher.

Does that help?

Toto

I don't think this was apologetics. There was no real fixed Christian doctrine at the time to defend.

This passage has been used to defend the idea that Paul and early Christians believed in a spiritual resurrection, not a physical reconstitution of the physical body.

But there is a lot that is not known. Paul claimed to be trained as a Pharisee: Hyam Maccoby doubts that. We don't know which century this letter was written in, or if some later theologian added to Paul's letter, or clarified what Paul wrote.

What questions does this raise in your mind? If you are a modern materialist, this all looks like outdated spiritualism.

Steven Carr

The people scoffing at the idea of alleged god choosing to raise a corpse were converts to Christianity.

It is not Paul's 1st letter to the Richard Dawkins foundation. It is Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians.

Early Christian converts believed Jesus was alive, but still scoffed at the whole idea of alleged God choosing to raise a corpse.

Steven Carr

The earliest Christians believed Jesus was still alive, but that his body had been left behind.

The earliest reference to the resurrection is in 1 Cor. 15. There we learn that the Corinthians accepted the resurrection of Jesus, but still disbelieved that a dead body could rise.

This is impossible to explain, if they had been taught that Jesus dead body had risen. After all, modern Christians have no problem with the idea that God can raise dead bodies, because they have heard stories of how the body of Jesus was raised.

The Corinthians worry is easy to explain if they believed that Jesus was a god. Jesus had been a spirit before he became a human , and became a spirit again after he died. Gods can do that. However, we are not gods, and so the Corinthians wondered how we could follow Jesus , when our bodies , like the body of Jesus, would stay in the ground.

The Corinthians knew that God could breathe life into dead matter. God had breathed life into clay and created Adam as a living person. So if they believed God could make dead matter live, why did they believe God would choose not to make their dead bodies alive?

They must have had good evidence that God had not made dead matter alive in the case of the resurrection. They must have had good evidence that the dead body of Jesus had not been made alive. Only this explains their wondering how they would be resurrected, as it appeared to them that God did not want to make dead bodies live again.

So far this is speculation, although reasonable speculation. If the Corinthians believed God could make dead matter live, and had heard stories of the dead bodies of Jesus, Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus etc, being made alive, how could they doubt that God would make their dead bodies live again? Answer. They had not heard these stories, and had good evidence that a resurrection did *not* involve a dead body being made alive.

We have to turn to 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul answers the objections of the Corinthians.

Paul calls the Corinthians idiots for wondering how dead bodies would be raised. And he immediately stresses that dead bodies are dead. ‘You fools! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed.’

If Paul thought the Corinthians were idiots for wondering how dead bodies could be raised, when it was child’s play for God to raise dead bodies, he would have told them so. He could have used such passages as Ezekiel 37, or talked about how God breathed life into dead matter to make Adam.

Instead, he thinks the Corinthians are idiots for wondering how dead bodies could be raised, as they have totally missed the point about a resurrection.

Dead bodies will not be raised. Instead, we will get a new body, made of spirit.

The Corinthians were as idiotic for wondering how dead bodies would be raised in the resurrection, as somebody would be idiotic for wondering whether we still have to take our library books back after the resurrection.

Such questions were irrelevant, which is why Paul never answers the questions of how corpses could get back missing limbs, or how a corpse destroyed by fire could be reconstituted from smoke and ash etc.

Paul goes so far as to contrast , Adam, with Jesus. ‘The first Adam became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.’

The Corinthians were idiots for not realising that we would follow Jesus and leave our dead bodies behind. We are made from the dust of the earth, but like the resurrected Jesus, we will be made from heavenly material.


The whole chapter only makes sense when we take seriously Paul’s view that it is idiotic to wonder how a dead body could be raised. It won’t be raised. It is a non-problem. Paul says clearly ‘You do not plant the body that will be’, and talks about different kinds of bodies. Paul says there is first the natural body and then the spiritual body. The Corinthians presently have their natural bodies, and then they will have spiritual bodies.

Here is an analogy for how Paul writes. If you wonder how a magician can produce an egg from your ear, after you have seen him crack the egg open, then you are an idiot for not realising that there are two eggs. Paul writes the same way.

Why wonder how a dead body can be transformed into a resurrected body, when there are two bodies? In 1 Cor. 15, Paul stresses how there are different bodies made of different materials. Why stress that there are different bodies, if he is trying to tell us how the magician put the egg back together again?

English translations of 1 Corinthians 15 often mask Paul’s idea that after our natural body has died, we will get a body made of spirit. Just like Jesus, we will become ‘a life-giving spirit.’ People of that time believed that celestial things were made of entirely different substances to earthly things. Paul shares that view and emphasises it in 1 Corinthians 15. This makes no sense if he is supposedly teaching the Corinthains that their resurrected bodies would be made from flesh and blood, which is what the Gospels claim Jesus resurrected body was made of.

It does make sense if Paul is teaching that the resurrected body would not be made from the flesh and blood of our earthly bodies.

Paul is very explicit in 2 Corinthians 5 that we will leave this present body behind and receive a heavenly body. A new body to replace the old body. He often uses a clothing analogy. At the resurrection we will get a new set of clothes.

This means that the old set of clothes will be discarded.

The earliest reference to the resurrection, Paul’s writings, clearly indicate that the earliest Christians did not believe Jesus flesh and blood body rose from the grave.

GakuseiDon

I suspect that this was apologetics. Paul was defending the idea of a physical resurrection, which would have been unusual to the pagans of his time. The pagans believed in four elements: earth, water, air and fire (plus a fifth one called "aether" though this was thought to exist above the firmament). Air and fire were considered "spiritual" elements, as they floated upwards. Earth and water were considered "earthly" elements, as they settled downwards towards the centre. Flesh was thought to have been made of earth and water (as well as a little air and fire), so naturally descended towards earth.

But flesh was temporary. It was corruptible, and rotted in the ground, to become parts of other things in nature. If that was the case, how could the body be resurrected? Wouldn't it still be temporary, corruptible? This was a philosophical problem that was addressed to Christians for centuries. Justin Martyr, Tatian and other Second Century CE apologists wrote to the pagans on this issue. Here is Justin Martyr:

“In the same way, then, you are now incredulous because you have never seen a dead man rise again. But as at first you would not have believed it possible that such persons could be produced from the small drop, and yet now you see them thus produced, so also judge ye that it is not impossible that the bodies of men, after they have been dissolved, and like seeds resolved into earth, should in God's appointed time rise again and put on incorruption"

I think we see Paul defending a physical resurrection using similar reasoning:

35 But someone will say, "How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?" 36 Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. 37 And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain--perhaps wheat or some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body.

Like Justin Martyr, Paul sees the body going into the ground as a seed.

39 All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind [fn3] of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.
40 There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.

Just as there are different types of fleshly (corruptible) bodies, so there are different types of celestial (incorruptible) bodies.

42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 45 And so it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being." [fn4] The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.

"Spiritual body is not first, but the natural". This is the key here, and Paul IMHO is referring to Christ's body disappearing and being raised, as a "first fruit" of a process involving those who have "died in Christ".

47 The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is [fn5] the Lord from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. 49 And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we [fn6] shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. 50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. 51 Behold, I tell you a [fn7] mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed-- 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. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

This last bit is interesting. Earlier Paul wrote that the body has to die in order to be raised. But at the end he writes that some will be changed WITHOUT dying, and describes this as a "mystery". My guess is that Paul struck a theological problem: IF the body has to die in order for it to be raised, AND Christ was expected to return soon, then what happens to the bodies of those who had NOT died when Christ returns? Somehow they are changed without dying, which to Paul is a "mystery".

Jehanne

Moving to BC&H.

Clivedurdle

http://www.revivallakeland.org/

We can test out what sort of body this guy has!

And is there not a misunderstanding of biology and the growth of seeds in Paul's thinking?

http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=9821

Steven Carr

So why was Paul writing to Christian converts, rather than pagans?

I see. SO that is why Paul tells Christian converts that heavenly things like the sun, moon and stars are made out of different materials to things found on earth?

All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.

So that is why Paul trashes the idea that resurrected beings are made out of 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. I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God...


Seeds are dissolved into the earth? Seeds put on incorruption?

How can something 'put on incorruption' when it no longer exists?

The body of Jesus that went into the ground was just a 'seed'?

How can that be? The same body came back out.

What did JM say just before that - 'And to any thoughtful person would anything appear more incredible, than, if we were not in the body, and some one were to say that it was possible that from a small drop of human seed bones and sinews and flesh be formed into a shape such as we see?'

Was the resurrection of Jesus anything remotely like the process of development of a human being from a sperm?


Paul, of course, says nothing whatever about how things can be rebuilt by his alleged god.

That was not the problem to be solved , for Paul.

I'm sure Paul believed his alleged god could rebuild bodies, but he says nothing about rebuilding bodies.

Because Paul preached the destruction of the body, not its rebuilding.

''Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.'

For Paul, the new body was made of heavenly material, and so could not be made from the dust that these 'seeds' dissolved into.

That was why he talks about how heavenly things are different from earthly things, and why Paul trashes the idea that resurrected beings are made from what corpses dissolve into.







Paul never says bodies are changed.

The last word means 'exchanged' , rather than 'changed'

The verb 'allaso' usually occurs in the context of exchanging one thing for another thing.


For example, it is in Hebrews 1 , where the world is compared to worn out garments, and is exchanged. Garments are exchanged, not changed. You throw away the old garments and get new garments.

The verb 'allaso' is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to mean exchanged. For example, Exodus 13:13 (changing animals) , Leviticus 27:10, 27:27 and 27:33 , talking about substitions.

Or even Acts 6:14, where old customs are going to be exchanged for new customs.

So Paul's use here is quite consistent with the view that Paul believes we will exchange one body for another at the resurrection, in the way that we change clothes or change houses.

Steven Carr

But they do not turn into each other.

Paul would have thought you to be a crazy person if you thought his metaphor meant that God would turn animals into man, or turn birds into the sun.

It is Paul who puts these categories into nature, to emphasise that a corpse is not a resurrected being and never can become one.

No more than the sun can become the moon.