The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Thoughts on the resurrection of the Body

Theology General Theology
#1

I came across this on line, and it makes some sense to me.

blueletterbible.org/faq/don_ … cfm?id=117

As the author of this article goes on to say, there are objections to this theory.

But how strong are these objections?

The resurrection of the just is spoken of in connection to Christ’s second coming, but the second coming is the revealing of a Savior who never really left:

…behold, I am with you all the days until the completion of the age. Amen (Matt. 28:20.)

What if the passages that speak of “the last trump” are reletive to those of us who are living on earth at the time.?

For forty days after His tomb was found empty, Jesus was able to apear and disapear, pass through walls and locked doors, allow His body to be touched and handled, show His wounds, eat, and breath.

His body seems to have been as material (or immaterial) as He wanted it to be at any given time, and we’re told that our resurrected bodies will be like His.

What if having a “resurrected” body has more to do with revealing yourself as materially as you want at any given time, than it has to do with having some kind of spiritual body only you can feel?

That makes some sense to me right now, and I’d be interested in what others have to say here.

#2

Another objection to the above theory might be that Hymanaeus and Philetus were condemned for teaching that the resurrection (or “a” resurrection) was past.

Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some. (2 Tim. 2:18.)

But perhaps this should be seen in the context of Phil. 3::10-12.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Hymanaeus and Philetus might have been saying that they had already obtained this, and that they were already made perfect (or that all believers had already gotten there, and all was finished when they first believed.)

This is from a second century apocrypha called “The Acts of Paul.”

earlychristianwritings.com/t … spaul.html

#3

personally, i understand that only on the Last Day, when Christ returns, will our resurrected bodies be reunited with our immortal souls. one could say that when the soul is released from the body, there is a kind of transformation that goes on, as the soul is apparently capable of doing quite a few things which one could not do while alive in a body. still, the soul is seperated from the body, and as one radio preacher put it, is incomplete without the resurrected body. kind of like an orphan, or a traveler waiting to return to his home country.

#4

Thank you Grace,

But if souls can see and recognize one another, they must have some kind of spiritual body (or form) in the intermediate state.

Paul called our resurrection bodies “spitual bodies,” and said that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.”

He didn’t say that flesh and bone couldn’t, and the resurrected Christ was at least able to have flesh and bone when He wanted to.

But what is the nature of the transformation you see happening to the soul at the last trump?

Is the soul then permenently united to a body with flesh and bone, or does it then become more versetile in what forms it can take (and how it chooses to experience and interact with it’s environment)?

If it’s permenently united to a body of flesh and bone, will it also have blood, tast buds, and internal organs?

It seems we’ll be able to eat (at least for pleasure), will we stay in that physical form long enough to fully digest and process the food we eat?

I’m not being sarcastic here, I’m really interested in your thoughts (and I thank you for your reply.)

#5

Brother Michael ~

the latter supposition would seem to make the most sense, at least to me. i would image that our disembodies souls retain some semblance of a person, and have some capacity to interact with matter. i’m thinking here, perhaps erroniously, of what most people would call “ghosts”, how they seem to have a form and the ability to interact with matter (e.g. climb stairs) yet are also not embodied in flesh and blood, and are obviously incomplete in some way, without their bodies.

when Paul writes that flesh and blood can not inherit the Kingdom, he may also have been speaking of carnality in general. as in “fleshly, wordly things can not inherit the Kingdom”. because Christ was certainly resurrected in His body, and was a Man of flesh and blood and divinity after the Resurrection, able to be handled and able to eat food, and yet able to do remarkable thing like, as you mentioned, pass through walls and doors.

in Scripture, it seems like we, too can look forward to having our souls reunited with glorified bodies, no longer disembodied and “complete” as it were. not in the same kind of bodies we left (prone to sickness, sores, degeneration, etc.) but glorified bodies, like Christ’s. our bodies, but better.

#6

That would mean that after the second coming, the resurrection body can be flesh and bone (or flesh, no bone; or flesh, bone, blood, and internal organs), whateverr the soul wants it to be (and energy when it wants to pass through walls, as Christ did.)

Perhaps the only sense in which they’re incomplete is the sense of being unable to fully interact with matter (and being mostly hidden from us until the last trump–which kinda makes us incomplete until then too.)

#7

My take is that Paul seems to be saying that our resurrected bodies will not be like our current ones. “When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.” The bodies we have now are merely the seed of what we will be. It will be a spiritual body, not a ‘natural body’, but it will be a body. And what that is may well be beyond our comprehension.

The physical is what we now know and can clearly perceive, but the spiritual is greater and more that the physical. We tend to think of ‘spiritual’ as being without real substance–etherial, formless–but I suspect that is just a limitation of our current abilities. I theorize that, if anything, the spiritual is more real than the physical. At least that would explain the walking through walls… :wink:

If you think in terms of dimensions, a 3 dimensional person (us), could interact with a 2-D world in ways that would amaze the inhabitants of that place. We could appear and disappear, appear in different forms, effortlessly “pass through” walls, etc. I don’t think “spiritual” is a dimensional reality, but the analogy is helpful–to me at least.

Sonia

#8

That’s interesting, but what’s your take on the intermediate state (if you believe in one), the timing of the resurrection, and the difference between this embodiment and the soul’s existence in the intermediate state?

#9

I guess I bear in mind multiple scenarios on all that, including the possibility that the reality is something none of us have had the imagination to think of yet … thinking we really don’t have much to go on in scripture, and it may well be beyond our comprehension.

Some possibilities …

  1. We either ‘sleep’ until the resurrection, or we bypass the intervening time and go directly there–which amounts to pretty much the same thing, since being ‘asleep’ one doesn’t usually have a sense of the passage of time.
  2. We’re immediately resurrected, “he who believes in me will never die” possibly into a state of existance where ‘time’ as we know it here, is not relevant in the same way–perhaps a separate time-stream, or a “bigger” existance. The plant grows much larger than it’s seed.
  3. (Less likely in my mind.) Our spirits return to God and remain in Him, waiting for their new bodies–perhaps somewhat like a baby in his mother’s womb.

Sonia

#10

That actually makes some sense to me.

I recently read a near death experience that I understand is typical of the majority reported.

celestialtravelers.tripod.com/nd … ullens.htm

I tried to contact this gentlman, and received the following email.

Like Carl Jung (who predicted his doctor’s death after he came back from an nde), he didn’t report having a body (and it looks like he never did finish writting that third book.)

#11

I also found this helpful.

In Greek the word soma means something like “body,” but at the same time it also means “the self.”
…One thing at any rate may be fairly clear: both John (6.63) and Paul (1 Cor 15.50) state with all possible emphasis that the “resurrection of the flesh”, the “resurrection of the body,” is not a “resurrection of physical bodies”. …To recapitulate, Paul teaches not the resurrection of physical bodies but the resurrection of persons, and this not in the return of the “fleshly body”, that is, the biological structure, an idea which he expressly describes as impossible (“the perishable cannot become imperishable”), but in the different form of the life of the resurrection, as shown in the risen Lord. Has then the resurrection no relation at all to matter? And does this make “the day of the Lord” completely pointless in comparison with the life that always comes from the call of the Lord? Baisically we have already answered that question…there is a final connection between matter and spirit in which the destiny of man and of the world is consummated, even if it is impossible for us today to define the nature of this connection.

Introduction to Christianity, by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict the 16th), p. 157-158.