ddd3dturner

Why is there a tradition of Jesus’ body being gone from the tomb? How do Christians explain this?

To do an actual resurrection, God wouldn’t need the physical body, even for appearances to physical humans unless there is some rule that God follows, like:

Rule #1 on resurrecting the dead: If there is a body or part thereof, then I must disappear it, before or during the resurrecting. If the only parts available are atoms, and those are being used by other entities that would be troubled by the sudden disappearance of atoms from their bodies, then I excuse myself from rule 1.

Did the later Christian writers believe God needed the physical body to work his magic? What does god do, mumble incantations over it? Does he need a hair or cell or something to throw into the resurrector?

Surely Christians don’t believe God needs the physical bodies to resurrect people. That would leave a lot of people out; Christians who’ve been burned up in fires, eaten by animals that have very acidic digestive systems, OT faithful who’ve been eaten by dinosaurs, etc.

The resurrection would have been more convincing if Jesus had dragged the old corpse around with him: “See, here’s my old body, its dead and here am I, Jesus, with a new spirit body.� He could have even shown it to the Roman court reporter of the day—that would have been convincing. As it was, they would have been justified if they’d put him down… zombie killin’ style.

zombie

n 1: a dead body that has been brought back to life by a supernatural force


You just don’t want those zombies biting you. I guess that’s why Jesus ate with them, to assuage their fears. “See, I’m not going to bite you, I eat food, just like you.�

Ok, so let’s say Jesus’ physical body was re-animated and he wasn’t a traditional zombie, and that he appeared to people all full of holes and covered in blood. Where is he now? Did his physical body die again? If so, when and where? Did he take it back to heaven? Do physical bodies automatically become spirit once you pass a certain cloud level? If so, Why haven’t pilots or astronauts observed this?

Diogenes the Cynic

This is an interesting set of questions that haven't occurred to me before. Did Jesus take his physical body to Heaven? If so, why? Does he still have it? Can a physical body exist on a spirtual plane? If he took his physical body with him, what happened to it once it was in outer space? Did it freeze and implode? I suppose he could have used his super powers to keep it from freezing but the question still remains as to why he had to drag it with him at all.

Mountain Man

They don't explain it since they are not allowed to ask such questions. It is a very common theme in mythology to have a god die and then come back to life. It usually happens around spring time.

Diogenes the Cynic

The empty tomb is a fairly late development and was part of Mark's attempt to explain why the apostles did not know about the resurrection or understand who Jesus was. Mark's Gospel ends with the women running away from the tomb in fear and not telling anyone what they saw.

cognac

Raymond Brown made a distinction between a physical resurrection and a bodily one. This is based on his interpretation of Paul. Brown says the resurrection was bodily but not physical. He points out how Paul says, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" in 1 Corinthians 15. (See his comments from Introduction to the New Testament p525.)

The point of resurrection is that death is overcome, it's not the end. The formula goes something like this: sin entered the world and therefore death. Jesus resurrection marks the end of death. All believers will be raised to new life.

ddd3dturner

"Raymond Brown made a distinction between a physical resurrection and a bodily one."

The common definition (at least the one most easily accessed by me) for bodily includes physical, which is also listed as a synonym for bodily:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bodily

bod·i·ly
adj.
Of, relating to, or belonging to the body.
Physical as opposed to mental or spiritual: bodily welfare.

adv.
In the flesh; in person: bodily but not mentally present.
As a complete physical entity: carried the child bodily from the room.

About any word can be tortured enough to force it to spit up a meaning that one desires for a particular explanation, but that doesn't result in a shared understanding. That creates a new language, not shared by outsiders.

So, I guess a non-christian would have to learn Raymond Brown's language to understand Raymond Brown's distinction between bodily and physical. Why can't he use our language?

"This is based on his interpretation of Paul."

Is this shared by many Christians? Is it a standard interpretation?

"...the resurrection was bodily but not physical."

This doesn't work in my language. It is logically fallacious.

"He points out how Paul says, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" in 1 Corinthians 15."

I can see how, to explain this, a Christian could be enticed to scare up different meanings for commonly shared words. According to the story, Jesus physical parts were missing from the tomb, right? That must include some flesh. So these bits could not "inherit the kingdom." I think, if I were a Christian, I'd pick on the word inherit. You could say Jesus didn't inherit the kingdom, but rather, was the kingdom, personified, or something, I don't know, I'm trying to help. That still doesn't explain why the physical body was needed out of it's tomb or what happened to it afterwards.

I can't even explain this in context of the writer's making it up, unless they didn't think of the implications that would arise from people taking the writings literally a couple thousand years later.

"The point of resurrection is that death is overcome, it's not the end."

That makes sense, especially because the definition of resurrection is:

http://dictionary.reference.com/sear...esurrection%20
"The act of rising from the dead or returning to life."

"The formula goes something like this: sin entered the world and therefore death."

Does this mean: Sin entered the world and therefore caused death? or resulted in death?

I thought death was from cellular decay and a whole boatload of other physical processes failing. I guess I don't know the language where sin... therefore death.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sin
sin1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sn)
n.
A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate.
Theology.
Deliberate disobedience to the known will of God.
A condition of estrangement from God resulting from such disobedience.
Something regarded as being shameful, deplorable, or utterly wrong.

I just don't see how this causes death. I violate someone's religious or moral law every day and I'm not dead yet. Unless a lot of progress is made soon on great new robot bodies, I'm probably going to die from the normal physical malfunctions brought about by all sorts of cell chopping free radicals.

Maybe Christians believe in 2 kinds of death; a physical and metaphysical. That's a whole different thread. Basis of consciousness, whether there is anything beyond physical and all that. Free-will.

"Jesus resurrection marks the end of death."

Really? I don't see how this could be, because people die all the time. I thought Christians believed Jesus was resurrected. I guess this would make sense if his physical body was only re-animated.

"All believers will be raised to new life."

Says who and what proof do we have? Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit or some combination says this? No proof is needed? Believers in what? Does raised mean that a buried body will come up out of the ground? Or that some entity already above ground will be elevated even higher? Floating? Or is this usage of "raised" based on some metaphysical meaning?

Thanks for your post. I'm trying to figure out what Christians believe and why; because they are all over the place and seem to be a very powerful group and I used to be one. I think even the President of the US claims to be one.

Your post helped me to understand that I need to learn a new language if I am to comprehend what Christians believe. Some kind of amorphous version of the current language that changes shape to provide new meanings for commonly understood words.

Once I was a Christian, and now I've found, that I had no idea what I believed or why, except that it was a cultural affectation foisted upon me by my parents and their parents, etc. All starting with some attempts to solve a social political organization problem.

Steven Carr

Huh? Don't understand what this means.....

Christians today believe that the body of Jesus which was resurrected was the body which went into the ground, but 'transformed' in some way.

It still had wounds, so I think the garage did a pretty poor repair job on the bodywork, but that is a different matter.

What did the earliest Christians believe?

The earliest Christians believed that Jesus was resurrected , but doubted that a resurrection from the dead was possible, and were asking with what sort of body the dead were raised.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 calls them fools for asking this question.

But it is not at all a foolish question. Quite intelligent people have seriously considered whether old, infirm people will be resurrected as youngsters, and whether aborted babies will be resurrected as people, and what will happen to people born with missing limbs etc.

So it is not at all a foolish question to wonder how God will actually restore a rotting corpse , perhaps with legs and arms missing. Will it still have wounds or will it be a perfect specimen of humanity?

One question is how the Corinthians could have such doubts about how the dead were resurrected and still believe that Jesus had been resurrected.

Had they not heard many stories about exactly what sort of body a resurrected person was seen to have?

Perhaps not.

The other question is why Paul would write the way he did in 1 Corinthians 15 to people wondering how corpses would be transformed into living people.

Why not just tell them that arms will be restored, teeth made perfect etc etc?

Let me try a modern analogy, which might provoke someone to write the same sort of way that Paul did when he was writing to idiots.

I know somebody who flew to Barcelona last month.

I have a Nissan Micra, so I suggested to my friend that we fly to Cologne in June to watch the World Cup.

But we have a big dispute about how we can fit a jet engine on to my Micra and how the air-conditioning on my car will stand up at 33,000
feet.

Personally, these sorts of questions about the mechanics of flying make me doubt that anybody can fly. (The Barcelona visit was by a very special
person indeed, who could have walked over the Channel if he wanted, so that was not relevant to we lesser souls.)

Another friend has written to me saying the following , supposedly designed to put my mind at rest about how I can transform my Micra into a
twin-engined jet, so that I can plan with confidence my flight to Cologne:-

If people can't fly, then nobody flew to Barcelona.

But our friend did fly to Barcelona , so people can fly.

You ask with what sort of engine can a Micra fly?

You idiot! What flies cannot fly unless it leaves the ground.

There are different sorts of travel. Men walk, kangaroos hop, and birds fly.

God has created different machines with different qualities.

If there are ground based machines, there are also air-based machines.

The first machine was a ground based machine, the last machine belongs to the heavens.

Having a driving licence does not enable you to fly. Motorists cannot inherit the Kingdom of the Skies. But I tell you a mystery. Motorists will be transformed . Motorists will put on flight.

-------------------------------------------------

I don't know what you think of his letter. He is not very specific about how we are going to fly, is he? Why doesn't he just tell us how we are going to fly? Has he ever seen somebody fly?

He has certainly convinced me that we motorists are going to fly, but why am I an idiot for wondering how I can get my Micra up to take off speed?

My letter-writing friend doesn't seem to have addressed that point at all, has he? Why not?

He's just ignored the difficulty of putting aviation fuel in a petrol engine.

Baffling......

Perhaps he thinks that I am not going to fly in the machine I drive around in now, but am going to fly in a brand new machine, leaving my Micra behind.

cognac

A quick point of clarification. I'm agnostic. I was not attempting to defend belief, but rather try to answer the question based on what I know of believers -- and from wasting a master's degree on religious studies. But anyway, you ask good questions.

Christians use words with their own definitions. Read I Corinthians 15 to get a sense of where this all began.

I think Christian layity is extremely confused about this concept. Just ask a believer what happens when they die? And then ask how that answer relates to their resurrection. You won't have to wait long for tortured answers.

And theologians don't do much better -- as you've seen with Brown. It's one of those unfinished theologies out of the differences between Paul's "spiritual body" and the later appearance stories which increasing get "physical." I think Richard Carrier has an interesting article on "spiritual resurrection" in the library somewhere, but I don't have the reference. Anyway, the issue is how do you go from Paul who says that the corruptible cannot inherit the incorruptible, to a belief in a resurrected Jesus eating food and having his followers stick their fingers in the holes in his hands?

Most Christians I know never ask these sorts of questions. They just accept the stories on faith.


Yes, this is confusing. Christians will sometimes say that it's spiritual death, or separation from God, that is the result of sin (which ultimately is just rejection of God). But if that's the case, then what is the connection with the physical? If sin is a spiritual problem, then shouldn't it have a spiritual solution, and therefore have no need of a physical resurrection? How do the natural and the supernatural interact, or effect one another, so that a "physical resurrection" has any impact upon a spiritual condition?


That's why it's called theology, not logic or science. In theology, you can make up anything you want.

Toto

Richard Carrier has written about this issue (physical vs. spiritual resurrection) in the book The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave

Orthodox_Freethinker

Jesus' physical resurrection from the dead confirms His Godhood given that only God can have power over life and death. If His fleshly body were left in the tomb, He would not have been understood as the triumphant Messiah but a disembodied spirit. Furthermore, His resurrection of the flesh assures our own on the Last Day.