Steven Carr

But obviously none of the Gospel stories describing the physical, flesh-and-bones nature of Jesus's body.

Why did the Corinthians become Christians is they did not know what happened to Jesus's body after the resurrection?

Paul states that God gives the seed a new body which has nothing to do with the old one. How many times must Paul say that as well as the natural body, THERE IS ALSO a spiritual body, before you will accept that Paul thinks the natural body will fall away, and be replaced by a brand new body, created by God?

How can Paul talk about 2 bodies if he thinks the body which came out of the ground is the body which went in?

How can Paul write you do NOT plant the body which will be, if he thinks the Jews planted the body-to-be of Jesus in the ground?

Where Paul refers to the spiritual beings being made out of Heaven, having a flesh which is not that of man, and says Jesus became a life-giving spirit. It's all in 1 Corinthians 15, you just have to read it without apologetic blinkers.

Perhaps you can tell me where Paul ever says that the resurrected body is made out of earthly flesh and blood.

Just one verse... just one verse, yet you cannot ever do so. All you can do is say that Paul thinks bodies before the resurrection are made out of flesh-and-blood, and say 'body' is the same word, so Paul thinks it is the same thing. This is apalling logic, especially when Paul says 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdonm of god', something you try to turn into 'Mortals cannot inherit the kingdom of God'.

The whole point of Paul saying metaphorically that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God would be detonated if he believed that flesh-and-blood literally inherited the Kingdom of God. Who writes metaphors to emphasise the exact opposite of what they believe to be true?

Steven Carr

From Romans 8:18-23 'The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.'

Who are the sons of God? What will be revealed?

If Paul thinks his resurrected body (as a future son of God) will be continuous with his present body, what will have to be 'revealed'? Surely everybody can see what his future body will look like if he is going to be like Jesus and still have recognisable wounds or other features after the resurrection?

Surely Paul thinks his earthly tent will fall away and be replaced by something created by God (that will be the revelation).

This ties up beautifully with what he writes in 2 Corinthians when he describes his present body as a tent which will be replaced with a new one.

Steven Carr

It is not at all clear that this is at the resurrection, rather than when Jesus comes down from Heaven. Remember, Paul did not expect all the Christians he was writing to to die. When Jesus came, Paul would still be in his mortal body (which had not died), so he would be transformed and (as an ethereal object) rise to the heavenly realm.

Paul did expect a transformation of the bodies of Christians , still alive. Dead Christians would get new bodies.




Your Talmudic plant analogy is not the same as Paul's who emphasises that the seed dies and is given a new body by God, elements emphasised by Paul , but missing from the Talmud, which simply emphasises the glorious nature of the resurrected body, not that it has a new body given to it by God.

A plant looks nothing like the seed. How can people say that the point of the analogy is to emphasise continuity?

Layman

Not so obviously, but irrelevant. The point is continuity between the old and new body. Which is something that Paul clearly believed.

Why would Greek corinthians have a problem if all Paul taught was that the soul lived on after death?

Your absolute refusal to cite or discuss the actual text, despite my requests that you do so, can only be chalcked up to the fact that you realize that the text destroys your position--which it so obviously does. Either that, or you are just too lazy to find and cite to the relevant passage. I'm simply not going to argue with your spin on what Paul says when you refuse to cite to or quote what Paul actually says.


Where does he say this?

Where does Paul refer to heavenly bodies having flesh?

It is you who needs to doff his skeptical blinders.

I never said that paul said it was. My point throughout this whole thread is that Paul believed in continuity between the old and new body.

Now I have to conclude that you are simply lying about my position. Because I have time and again told you, and stated explicitly in the first post, that this thread is not arguing about WHAT the new body is, only that it has continuity with thd old body. Just admit that and perhaps we can move on to a new discussion.

I've already explained time and again that "flesh and blood" is an idiom that does not negate a physical body or continuity between old and new.

Remember, Paul is clear about TRANSFORMATION. Why does Paul say the old body will be transformed if it's not going to be transformed?

Layman

You are missing the entire point. Judaism, and Paul, saw value and goodness in creation. Gnostics, and Greeks, saw physical creation as evil and therefore saw the soul escaping the body as the culmination of experience---it was a good thing.

What CJD has shown is that Paul's thinking is with the former. Creation is good, though fallen. But what Jews like Paul look forward to is when God tranforms creation so that it can be reconciled to himself.

Layman

I'm glad to see you've retreated from your initial position that this only referred to the then present. Obviously Paul is talking about the return of Christ. But for Paul the return of Christ WAS the resurrection. And you've created a conundrum for yourself. Your position has rested on the hyper-literalistic comment about "flesh and blood" not being able to inherent the kingdom of God. NOW, you appear to actually be arguing that some "flesh and blood" WILL inherit the kingdom of God. Which is it Steven? You are all over the map and obviously scrambling.

And remember, a number of leading scholars believes that the term "flesh and blood" actually is a reference to the living.


C.K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, at 379.


But even if you were to justify how the living--who are more "flesh and blood" than the dead afterall--could be transformed, you have to leave behind clear parts of the 1 Cor. 15 text, which speak of the "perishable" and the "dead." Paul doesn't distinguish between the two and he uses the same analogy--the seed.

You are kidding right? You have to be. Or you are desperate. Both discussions involve the resurrection. Both discussions resort to the seed analogy. Both discussions emphasize continuity with change. And the Talmudic analogy does emphasize the glorious nature of the resurrection. The contiuity is there--the body that is sown is the one that is raised. So is the glorious new nature. Remember, the Rabbi emphasizes that the wheat plant will "sprout many robes" and be much more amazing than the "bare kernal." The Rabbi then stresses how much MORE true that will be of humans who are raised from the dead.

Because that is the reality of the seed and the plant. The seed becomes the plant. The seed is transformed into the plant. How can Paul use the seed analogy if what he means is that the seed has nothing to do with the plant?

My my you've done yourself a lot of damage here.

First, you concede that "flesh and blood" CAN inherit the kingdom of God.

Second, your attempt to distinguish Paul and the Talmudic analogies to the seed is completely unpersuasive. Both emphasize the continuity with radical transformation.

Third, you continue to simply refuse to address the point I've asked about time and time again--that Paul's belief that Christians immediately go to be with Jesus upon their death but also await a resurrection in the future precludes any notion that the resurrection is entirely spiritual.

Fourth, you are still dodging Paul's use of the term "transformed." He uses it when discussing the dead body of the believer as well as those who are living. Why does Paul say the "soma" is "transformed" if it's not? Why not say, "The Soma is not transformed, because you will have a new body that has nothing to do with the old"?

Steven Carr

Because Paul is teaching that the soul is embodied in something ethereal, something never seen before and having no connection with the previous flesh-and-blood body.

On the contrary, it is you who refuse to read what Paul wrote.

I shall repeat it, ad nauseum , if needed

35But 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.

Paul emphasises that Jesus's spirtual body was not alive , until his physical body had died. How can that be, if we are simply talking of a transformation? A transformation of existing matter is not a birth.


37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.

The raised body is NOT the body that goes into the ground. Note, Paul says NOT.

You are always trying to say that Paul said you sow the body that will be. He says the exact opposite.

And Paul would have known that there would often be a discarded part of the seed left over, dead. Paul would have thought of our present physical bodies as the dead coat of the seed, through which the new plant has burst.

http://plantphys.info/seedg/seed1.html

38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

God gives it a new body. He does not take the old body and transform it. He gives it a body, as different as a mustard shrub from a mustard seed. Remember, when Jesus used the parallel of the tiny seed and the huge shrub, he was not saying that one was just a transformation of the other. He was pointing out how radically different they are.


39All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.

Paul sets up the fact that earthly bodies have different kinds of flesh , to lead into the implication that heavenly bodies have a totally different kind of flesh, no more able to be transformed into from man's flesh, as a bird can be regarded as a transformed man.


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.

One kind - another kind. Paul keeps emphasising the two different natures, not a transformation of one nature, to emphasise that a heavenly body is not and can never come from an earthly body.



41The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

Paul continues to hammer home the discontinuity of the natures of different things.


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.

Again, there is ALSO a spiritual body. Just like a plant growing from a seed, it is totally transformed. Paul would have scoffed at the idea that the resurrected body still had wounds which could be touched.

45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being" ; the last Adam, a lifegiving spirit.

A life-giving spirit. Says it all really....



46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.

One thing after the other. A discontinuity has happened.



47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.

How clearly does Paul have to say that the second man was not flesh-and-blood, or flesh-and-bones?


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.

Again a clear denial of the Jesus had flesh-and-bones after the resurrection.



49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

We too shall not be earthly flesh-and-bones.



50I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Paul clearly states that not flesh and blood. If he is using it metaphorically, he cannot do do, if he means that it is literally true that flesh and blood will inherit the earth. Metaphors don't work like that.


51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed--

NOTE Here Paul is NOT talking about a resurrection. He is talking about what happens to Christians who do not die.



52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

Note that Paul says 'we' will be changed, not the dead. He draws a distinction. And we know from 2 Corinthians that he means that our earthly tent will fall away, destroyed, and be replaced by a building from God.

1Now 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. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

Steven Carr

Paul did not think that he would be flesh and blood when he rose to meet the Lord in the air.

Read 2 Corinthians again.

The living cannot inherit the kingdom of God? Paul thought Christians living at the resurrection would not inherit the Kingdom of God?



Paul does distinguish between the two. He speaks about those who will not sleep much later.

And this is simply the normal Christian inconsistence of having people go to Heaven or Hell immediately upon death, while also preaching that there will be one Day of Judgement for everybody.

As Christianity is inconsistent here, I am under no obligation to square any circle based on that.

If dead Christians live on immediately after death, why do they still have corpses in the ground, if Jews cannot concieve of a non-physical life after death?

Steven Carr

This is , once again, exactly what Paul wrote.

2 Corinthians 5

1Now 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. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

The soul yearns to escape this body.

Nothing here at all about this earthly tent being transformed. It can be destroyed, yet there will still be an eternal house.

How can Paul talk about continuity with something that has been destroyed?

If bodies are cremated, eaten etc, as Paul knew that they are , how can there be continiuty? It makes no sense to speak of a continiuity between a pile of smoke scattered on the winds and a resurrected body?

Did Paul think only well-preserved corpses would be resurrected?

CJD

Jacob Aliet:

Implicit in this statement, Jacob, is the "straw-man" I was attacking. Paul was an independent thinker, a point that can be easily shown throughout his writings. Also, keep in mind that he was the Apostle to the Gentiles, so his extant writings naturally focus (again, at times polemically, at times conformingly, and at times independently) on a Greekish worldview.

His Jewish background, and the fact that he saw with his own eyes the resurrected body of Jesus (believe him or no).

And like I wrote earlier, that is not the lynchpin of the argument. Do you really think it is? The main point here is that we know that Greeks had a problem with matter.

Well, of course, but you would be making Paul out to be a fiction-writer as opposed to a herald of an actual and personal king. I cannot see how the former notion does any justice to Paul's practical theology whatsoever.

I am not sure you understand my interpretation. It's simple, really. A body that decays cannot live in a situation where there is no decay. So, God will provide a new body that will not decay; but we would be amiss to assume the contrast is between material/immaterial instead of material/imperishable material. Jesus' body at the resurrection was radically transformed from the old, to be sure. But why did he eat in front of his disciples after the resurrection?

I am not sure I see how this contradicts anything about the Xian message. Anselm wrote something about this . . .

Elementary, my dear Aliet. Who are you reading? Certainly not the Tanak.

Consider Job on death (chapter 14):

1"Man who is born of a woman
is few of days and full of trouble.
2He comes out like a flower and withers;
he flees like a shadow and continues not.

Death=no more?

7"For there is hope for a tree,
if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,
and that its shoots will not cease.
8Though its root grow old in the earth,
and its stump die in the soil,
9yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put out branches like a young plant.
10But a man dies and is laid low;
man breathes his last, and where is he?
11As waters fail from a lake
and a river wastes away and dries up,
12so a man lies down and rises not again;
till the heavens are no more he will not awake
or be roused out of his sleep.
13Oh that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath be past,
that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
14If a man dies, shall he live again?
All the days of my service I would wait,
till my renewal should come.

Hmmm. What renewal might Job be alluding to?

Chapter 19:

25For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
26And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
27whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!

Now, that's interesting. In my flesh I shall see God.

Exodus 3:6

And he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Besides the fact that Moses' actual face could have beheld a tangible God, remember when Jesus was recorded as saying that YHWH is the God of the living? Whatever did he mean by that?

And then the Psalmist wrote in chapter 16:

8I have set the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

9Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being[5] rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.

10For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.

Sounds pretty confident, no? To be sure, death is final in the Tanak--final insofar as the realm of the "living" is concerned. The theme develops progressively to the point that the Psalmist knows that he will not be abandoned after death, nor will he, in the end, see corruption. His new body will be incorruptible, as Paul unfolds for us in his epistles. I could develop this further, but I think you get my point.

Indeed, the samples you cite were greatly influenced by Hellenistic thought, but you must remember that matter=no good to the Greeks. The examples above portray the typical Jewish understanding that deems the physical world good, yet fallen, which will one day be reconciled unto God. Disprove this, and then you will get my attention.

No, mankind intuitively comes up with all that stuff (sophia, logos, etc.) by virtue of their being created in the image of God--via the Word made flesh.


I am sure I don't understand this reasoning. If Paul had experienced a personal encounter with the risen Saviour, then he need not appeal to anything other than his apostolic commission. Consider the other apostles, do they make appeals in their epistles to actual empirical experiences with the Christ? (I am thinking of Peter and John). You bet. What's your real point?

yadayadayada; first prove that Paul believed all matter to be evil--or at the very least--show his belief than the material world is inferior to wispy, vaporous immaterial things, and then talk to me about "Paul's Platonic mindset."

Holy Shit!?

Insofar as the Scriptures attest to your ridiculous presuppositions, you are correct. But you entirely misunderstand the Christian hope. Eternal life will not be on some ethereal, heavenly cloud. The tangible earth will be redeemed (so Scripture, everywhere), and a redeemed people will live on it. Everyday will be Sabbath rest. Everyday will be a literal feast, accentuated with some really good wine.


The history of the Christian church should show you that you are on the wrong path.

Regards,

CJD