The Evangelical Universalist Forum

The Imperishable Body in Heaven

This all started with 1 Corinthians 15:42 “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body:”

So, the context is the resurrection body, the spirit body that Paul says is imperishable. I don’t see how that relates to Adam. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul contrasts Adam with Jesus, and in verse 46 says “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.” Paul is not seen as a spirit that is imperishable.

Hmmm :thinking: :neutral_face:

Well, just refer to 1 Corinthians 15:42-49, and you will see the obvious contrasts.

As I argued before, constant evangelical jargon that we even go to a place called “heaven” when we die seems hugely lacking in the OT and NT. Do the apostles ever preach that Jesus comes or dies so that if you died tonight, you can know that you will go to “heaven”?

It seems telling that to know the furniture and laws applicable to heaven, we rely on the one NT book in the very symbolic apocalyptic genre. It might be telling us that ‘heaven’ as ‘the dwelling place of God’ comes in some sense to earth (as the prophets often said it would in the coming new age and day of the Lord). But like qaz, I doubt John’s vision of a divine cubic city descending to earth is to be taken literally or at all intended to reveal the literal nature of a place called “heaven” where we will go.

It appears the reality is that we have very little to go on to know the nature of existence after death.

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I agree!

And that makes the claim “There’s zero evidence that heaven has the same physical laws as our universe” hard to defend because there’s also zero evidence for the negative of that claim: that heaven does not have the same physical laws as our universe, as Dave said above.

Supposing Paul has in view the same Adam as Genesis, HOW can your original statement below which you have NOT answered, logically stack up…

I have spent most of this thread answering that. I don’t understand what more you are asking.

Would you agree with the traditional tenet that views Adam as created imperishable — IF you do THEN your stated logic above proves false, period!! It’s not rocket science.

That’s hilarious! Are you simply looking for a fight?

If two books of the Bible give conflicting accounts of the same person, that’s not my problem.

No fight at all lancia… you just appear to be equivocating and dodging the obvious implications of your original claim, that’s all.

No, I’m not dodging, at least not deliberately. Paul was quite clear on the contrast between Adam and Jesus. But that Adam referred to by Paul is the Adam later in his life, not the Adam earlier in his life. But they are one and the same Adam.

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Ok… I’m more than fine with allowing our respective stated points to stand and let those reading along draw their own conclusions as to what makes logical sense. :+1:

But you said “zero evidence.” One law in common is some evidence. There may be even more if a fuller description had been made. So, the claim of zero evidence is false.

I disagree. If one finds information on a law in common but no information on a law not in common, then there is some evidence that heaven has the same physical laws as our universe. You cannot logically assume that because there is no information available to us about a law in heaven, that the law is necessarily not in common with the universe.

Besides that, this business with “all the same laws” is irrelevant. Not all laws need to be in common to support my argument. Just some of them need to be.

Tell me what you mean by physical laws in addition to gravitation.

Yes, I said this.

“We also know from the second law of thermodynamics and biology that highly organized material systems like the human body ‘wear out.’ So, if such bodies were to last forever, they would be immaterial.”

The description of New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 does provide enough information to deduce that the second law of thermodynamics operates there, too.

The description of New Jerusalem focusses on the construction of things like the city, the streets, and the city wall. All of these are constructed of gold and precious stones. What makes gold and precious stones valuable? They are not only beautiful but also resistant to chemical reactions. That means they would be good construction materials because they would last. That is, they would be better at resisting entropy, which the second law of thermodynamics states would tend to increase in a system over time.

Hollywood even “speculated”, on what heaven might be like! :crazy_face:

We don’t actually know that a resurrected body - even OUR resurrected body - will wear out. Material+?

My point is, if it were material–as we know the definition of material–it would wear out. But that’s a working hypothesis, not a fact.

:smile: yep a picture paint’s a thousand words