Re: Jesus was a spirit

At 01:21 AM 10/20/2005, steven@bowness.demon.co.uk wrote:
>janmatch@earthlink.net wrote:
> > Jesus is fully God and fully man - he is the God-man. He has a
> glorified "spirital body" - he is not "a spirit".
> > ~ Janice
>
>Of course! That is indeed what Paul is supposed to have believed. But ,
>in that sense, Jesus had a spiritual body *before* the resurrection. He
>was God Incarnate after all. Wright tries to empty Paul's liking of a
>spiritual body to the heavenly bodies we see in the sky - not then
>believed to be made of earthly substances. Wright trie to turn spiritual
>body into little more than the flesh and blood body of a very spiritual
>person. By 'spiritual body', Paul meant a body made from heavenly
>substance. He says so :- The first man was of the dust of the earth, the
>second man from heaven. We will be changed. , and change what we wear,
>just as we change money. Paul uses the word 'allaso', the same word as he
>uses in Romans 1:23 'And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into
>an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted
>beasts, and creeping things.' Paul does not mean that the corruptible man
>was simply the old God , made of the same substance, but transformed. He
>means one thing was swapped for another thing. And just as Hebrews 1:12
>uses the same word, in the same analogy Paul uses about wearing things
>'And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but
>thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.' The heavens and earth
>will be changed like garments are changed - rolled up and discarded and
>replaced, not transformed. After all, a new creation is new, and not a
>warmed-up old creation. Wright's book has been praised a lot by Christians
>on sceptical discussion sites, but very few arguments from the book have
>been put forward. I guess the book is for praising not quoting. Sceptica
>attitude to the Bible is quite different. It is for quoting, not praising.
>When people say that Wright says Paul teaches something, we just quote
>what Paul says.... ~

### Excerpt from item below: ".. It may further be noted that the pagan
world was awash with points of view associated with those who thought
matter was evil and at the root of all of man's problems. Platonic thought,
as Murray Harris puts it, supposed that "man's highest good consisted of
emancipation from corporeal defilement. The nakedness of disembodiment was
the ideal state."

http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html [Snips]

Factor #3 -- Getting Physical! The Wrong "Resurrection"

As we have shown <http://www.tektonics.org/lp/physrez.html>here, the
resurrection of Jesus, within the context of Judaism, was thought by
Gentiles to be what can be described as "grossly" physical. This in itself
raises a certain problem for Christianity beyond a basic Jewish mission. We
have regularly quoted the dictum of Pheme Perkins: "Christianity's pagan
critics generally viewed resurrection as misunderstood metempsychosis at
best. At worst, it seemed ridiculous." It may further be noted that the
pagan world was awash with points of view associated with those who thought
matter was evil and at the root of all of man's problems. Platonic thought,
as Murray Harris puts it, supposed that "man's highest good consisted of
emancipation from corporeal defilement. The nakedness of disembodiment was
the ideal state." Physical resurrection was the last sort of endgame for
mankind that you wanted to preach.

Indeed, among the pagans, resurrection was deemed impossible. Wright in
Resurrection of the Son of God quotes Homer's King Priam: "Lamenting for
your dead son will do no good at all. You will be dead before you bring him
back to life." And Aeschylus Eumenides: "Once a man has died, and the dust
has soaked up his blood, there is no resurrection." And so on, with several
other quotes denying the possibility of resurrection. [32-3] Wright even
notes that belief in resurrection was a ground for perseuction: "We should
not forget that when Irenaeus became bishop of Lyons he was replacing the
bishop who had died in a fierce persecution; and that one of the themes of
that persecution was the Christians' tenacious hold on the belief in bodily
resurrection. Details of the martyrdom are found in the letter from the
churches of Vienne and Lyons to those of Asia and Phrygia. The letter
describes how in some cases the torturers burnt the bodies and scattered
the ashes into Rhone, so that no relic of the martyrs might still be seen
on earth. This they did, says the writer, 'as though they were capable of
conquering god, and taking away their rebirth [palingenesia]'."

Judaism itself would have had its own, lesser difficulty, albeit not
insurmountable: there was no perception of the resurrection of an
individual before the general resurrection at judgment. But again, this,
though weird, could have been overcome -- as long as there was evidence!
Not so easily in the pagan world. We can see well enough that Paul had to
fight the Gnostics, the Platonists, and the ascetics on these counts. But
what makes this especially telling is that a physical resurrection was
completely unnecessary for merely starting a religion. It would have been
enough to say that Jesus' body had been taken up to heaven, like Moses' or
like Elijah's. Indeed this would have fit (see
<http://www.tektonics.org/tsr/tsr914.html>here) what was expected, and
would have been much easier to "sell" to the Greeks and Romans, for whom
the best "evidence" of elevation to divine rank was apotheosis -- the
transport of the soul to the heavenly realms after death; or else
translation while still alive. So why bother making the road harder? There
is only one plausible answer -- they really had a resurrection to
preach. ......." [end excerpt]
Received on Thu Oct 20 03:23:08 2005