(I’ve posted this as a comment on one of Bart’s posts but I thought it might also be interesting to discuss it in here)
Bart, I’m sorry for having to bring this up yet again but there are not just two options: ‘spiritual resurrection without a body’ and ‘physical resurrection with a body’.
Yes, I agree, Paul did NOT believe in a bodiless resurrection where the soul/spirit would float to Heaven or what ever (like the Greek believed at the time and a lot of people still do today). BUT he DID believe in ‘the dead’ (their spirits/souls?) getting raised into ‘SPIRITUAL, HEAVENLY bodies’ (whatever that actually is supposed to mean).
So there would at least be 3 options:
1. a purely spiritual, bodiless resurrection (Greek)
2. a physical resurrection with a kind of reanimated/reassembled body (Maccabeans)
3. a resurrection that results in the resurrected ending up with ‘spiritual bodies’ (the earliest Christians and Paul)
Furthermore Paul makes a difference between those who are dead at the General Resurrection and those alive at that moment: the souls/spirits of the former will get called back from the realm of the dead and clothed with those ‘spiritual bodies’ so they’re not just souls or spirits or whatever while the latter will have their current ‘natural bodies’ changed into ‘spiritual bodies’ as well so that everyone will have the same kind of body in the end.
I’m not sure you can just dismiss this as nonsense …
Kazibwe Edris said
i just can’t see that paul’s resurrected version of jesus would have holes in his hands, side and bruised face. neither can i see that paul’s resurrected version of jesus had naked and bruised jesus appearing to jewish women. it doesn’t make sense to me.
especially since Paul also does not describe him as humanoid
Xeronimo74 said
Yes, I agree, Paul did NOT believe in a bodiless resurrection where the soul/spirit would float to Heaven or what ever (like the Greek believed at the time and a lot of people still do today). BUT he DID believe in ‘the dead’ (their spirits/souls?) getting raised into ‘SPIRITUAL, HEAVENLY bodies’ (whatever that actually is supposed to mean).
So there would at least be 3 options:
1. a purely spiritual, bodiless resurrection (Greek)
2. a physical resurrection with a kind of reanimated/reassembled body (Maccabeans)
3. a resurrection that results in the resurrected ending up with ‘spiritual bodies’ (the earliest Christians and Paul)
Xe
Having a little trouble following you. If Paul does not believe “in a bodiless resurrection where the soul/spirit would float to Heaven”
how then could that idea be one of the options? It seems your making modern assumptions about the ideas of a first century
Palestinian Jew. Gary Habermas of Liberty University has spent considerable time arguing that Paul believed in a physical ressurecton. I think you can find video of this on you tube. A soul/spirit is unnecessary for a physical Resurrection.
Suppose for the sake of argument, that Apocalyptic Jews and early Christians did not believe in a soul
The problem seems to be that you’re assuming “the soul/spirit” has a static definition. Yet when Paul talks about the Resurrection of the dead, he speaks of it as getting into a new garment. Consider too that the punishment for original sin is death; a return to the dust. Why does a body need to be resurrected, if it’s true “body” is there all the time. The implication is a rejection of the Platonic
belief that the body is a prison for the mind. Paul’s conception seems to be one of adding the spiritual body to the physical.
And why would Paul use a word derived from modern sci fi to describe events and people in his day?
spiker said
Xeronimo74 said
Yes, I agree, Paul did NOT believe in a bodiless resurrection where the soul/spirit would float to Heaven or what ever (like the Greek believed at the time and a lot of people still do today). BUT he DID believe in ‘the dead’ (their spirits/souls?) getting raised into ‘SPIRITUAL, HEAVENLY bodies’ (whatever that actually is supposed to mean).
So there would at least be 3 options:
1. a purely spiritual, bodiless resurrection (Greek)
2. a physical resurrection with a kind of reanimated/reassembled body (Maccabeans)
3. a resurrection that results in the resurrected ending up with ‘spiritual bodies’ (the earliest Christians and Paul)Xe
Having a little trouble following you. If Paul does not believe “in a bodiless resurrection where the soul/spirit would float to Heaven”
how then could that idea be one of the options? It seems your making modern assumptions about the ideas of a first century
Palestinian Jew. Gary Habermas of Liberty University has spent considerable time arguing that Paul believed in a physical ressurecton. I think you can find video of this on you tube. A soul/spirit is unnecessary for a physical Resurrection.
Suppose for the sake of argument, that Apocalyptic Jews and early Christians did not believe in a soul
The problem seems to be that you’re assuming “the soul/spirit” has a static definition. Yet when Paul talks about the Resurrection of the dead, he speaks of it as getting into a new garment. Consider too that the punishment for original sin is death; a return to the dust. Why does a body need to be resurrected, if it’s true “body” is there all the time. The implication is a rejection of the Platonic
belief that the body is a prison for the mind. Paul’s conception seems to be one of adding the spiritual body to the physical.
And why would Paul use a word derived from modern sci fi to describe events and people in his day?
“Paul’s conception seems to be one of adding the spiritual body to the physical.”
two comments on this:
1. Paul seems to think that the current body of THOSE ALIVE at the General Resurrection will be changed into that ‘heavenly, spiritual body’ (whatever that’s actually supposed to be or mean)
2. and that ‘the dead’ (what are they if not spirits/soul at that point?) will be ‘called back from the realm of the dead’ and resurrected right INTO those new, heavenly, spiritual bodies (without first reanimating or recreating the corpses)
Kazibwe Edris said
“Do you think Paul wrote those?”isn’t g herbamas a christian apologist who assumes that paul had the same idea the synoptics had about jesus’ alleged resurrection?
Yea I don’t know if he ASSUMES. And his apologetics shouldn’t a reason to discount his work. I don’t think it would be unusual to claim
that people share the same ideas. Just for example, when talking about Apocalyptics, Bart Ehrman has often argued that John The Baptist, Jesus, His disciples, and Paul were apocalyptic Jews.
Xeronimo74 said
…..So there would at least be 3 options:
1. a purely spiritual, bodiless resurrection (Greek)
2. a physical resurrection with a kind of reanimated/reassembled body (Maccabeans)
3. a resurrection that results in the resurrected ending up with ‘spiritual bodies’ (the earliest Christians and Paul)Furthermore Paul makes a difference between those who are dead at the General Resurrection and those alive at that moment: the souls/spirits of the former will get called back from the realm of the dead and clothed with those ‘spiritual bodies’ so they’re not just souls or spirits or whatever while the latter will have their current ‘natural bodies’ changed into ‘spiritual bodies’ as well so that everyone will have the same kind of body in the end.
I’m not sure you can just dismiss this as nonsense …
I agree with you. I don’t think Paul was referring to reanimated physical bodies, but some kind of spiritual body. 
I understand that Paul was an apocalypticist who believed that Jesus was that Son of Man who would come to overthrow the forces of evil and set up his good kingdom. He explains his theory of the resurrection: that at the sound of the last trumpet, the dead will be raised incorruptible and we (alive at the time) shall be changed (1 Cor: 15:52-53). Passages from 1 Cor. 15 are still read at funerals today bringing comfort and hope to the bereaved. Jesus and Paul both thought this would happen in their own lifetimes. When it didn’t, the church modified the belief from a Kingdom on Earth to an individual plan of salvation where the soul went to heaven. I am wondering how this change in thinking evolved. Papias, writing between 110 and 130AD, still had an apocalyptic view and got a little carried away with his literal interpretation of the utopia the kingdom would be. For that he was accused of being naive. Yet the idea that Jesus will return to judge the quick and the dead appears in the early creeds from the 300s. What does the Roman Church hold now? Did the Reformers like Luther and Calvin have any thing to say about all this?
“When it didn’t, the church modified the belief from a Kingdom on Earth to an individual plan of salvation where the soul went to heaven. “
Would any kind of conscious modification have even been possible at that stage? I imagine an organic process, with different explanations being advanced, considered and possible accepted, when the reality that Jesus wasn’t coming back in a lot of people’s lifetimes became apparent.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert