[This post was created from a comment (#2976) in the Prophecy and realism thread.]
"There seems to be some confusion. First, as someone who holds that there is yet a future fulfillment of NT as well OT prophetic and apocalyptic writings I am not denying that ANY such prophecy has been fulfilled already (particularly in the events surrounding the first advent of Christ). Such a view would be not only nonsense, but also thoroughly unbiblical."
I agree with you. So where we differ then, is the amount of prophecy which you and I place in the past.
"However, it is clear that the early church held the belief of a yet future second coming, in which the kingdom would be consummated (the details of which of course have been variously understood, though bodily resurrection was universally recognized within orthodoxy). Thus the Nicene Creed states regarding Jesus Christ:"
I agree with you again, however, whenever someone brings into the argument the Nicene Creed (or any other creed) as support for his or her position I am greatly troubled. I mean no offense to anyone, but the Nicene Creed is not superior to Scripture, nor on equal footing with it. It is a "statement of faith" - all you can use it for is to show me what the people who wrote it believed. Nothing more, nothing less. My background is Eastern Orthodox - I respect creeds and tradition, I am with Jaroslav Pelikan when it comes to studying them and taking them to heart, but I do not worship them or consider them Truth.
Regarding the resurrection, in John 5 Jesus said: "Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."
The resurrection of the dead has never been about bodies coming out of the ground, rather it has been about bringing mankind into God’s Parousia, God’s presence. So when Paul says "But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep" (1 Cor. 15) that tells me that the resurrection is not about bodies coming to life..it’s about something better, something higher, us being with God in our spirits, because God is spirit and physical bodies coming to life to spend eternity with a spirit God makes no sense whatsoever. Jesus was the first fruit of the resurrection. Many others have been resurrected bodily before him, therefore Paul’s words are very revealing on the nature of the resurrection.
There is also apparently a nonsensical silver lining in this argument: which resurrection are you speaking of, the first, the second, a general resurrection? This is historically important in light of what happened in A.D. 70.
Virgi Vaduva
Re: Why do we still have to wait until the end of history?
"I mean no offense to anyone, but the Nicene Creed is not superior to Scripture, nor on equal footing with it. It is a "statement of faith" - all you can use it for is to show me what the people who wrote it believed. Nothing more, nothing less."
Amen, brother. And said like a true Protestant! Of course, I quoted it, if you’ll notice, precisely for this reason: to demonstrate what the early church believed. I also, however, believe it is generally faithful to Scripture.
"Regarding the resurrection, in John 5 Jesus said: "Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."
And he goes to say a few verses later, "Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out — those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned."
You will have a hard time arguing for a purely spiritual ‘resurrection’ from John’s Gospel, where the resurrection on the last day plays such a prominent role, and it is vividly anticipated in the very physical, astonishing resurrection of Lazarus.
" So when Paul says "But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep" (1 Cor. 15) that tells me that the resurrection is not about bodies coming to life..it’s about something better, something higher, us being with God in our spirits, because God is spirit and physical bodies coming to life to spend eternity with a spirit God makes no sense whatsoever."
It is very ironic that you would quote Paul’s argument against the very hellenistic disdain for the moral/spiritual significance of the body, which still deeply influenced the Corinthians (e.g., 1Corinthians 6:12-20), and their neo-platonic ‘eschatology’, which had no place for the physical body in the after life, to question the corporality of the resurrection body. You are using Paul to argue against Paul! That Paul calls Christ the first-fruits of the dead is hardly an argument against physical resurrection - unless of course you deny the actual, physical resurrection of Christ. But on the basis of this assumption (that indeed he was raised) Paul argues that we too, in precisely the same manner, will also be raised.
But if you deny the bodily resurrection of Christ, you deny the gospel, the church, and particuarly your own tradition. What do you have left, but your own peculiar, private interpretation of scripture?
Re: Why do we still have to wait until the end of history?
How so? There is no "vividlly andicipated" physical resurrection anywhere in the new testament (I am not arguing from John’s gospel alone) as far as I can see. In fact, there is an imminent, at-hand, soon-to-be, expected PRESENCE of God coming into the world. That is what brings one to life: being in Christ, and in God’s presence. You are attempting to condense the greater narrative on mankind’s history into a theological-frame that is specific to a very western idea of what redemption is about: saving hell-bound people so they can live eternity in comfort in flawless physical bodies.
Your solution: physical resurrection attempts to solve the wrong problem: spiritual death. The redemption storyline has very little to do with Adam and Even dying physically. Their deaths were fully and wholly spiritual in nature, i.e. "the day you shall eat, you shall die." Thus, the solution to the "death problem" is not a physical one, but one of higher meaning.
Consequently, the climax of your redemption story is "bodies coming out of the ground" - that climax completely ignores the Jewish aspect of the story, i.e. the Temple, and animal sacrifices is what kept man "dead" thus doing away with the separation between man and God symbolized by the Temple and the animal sacrifices is "doing away with death" and bringing life to mankind.
Ok then, so why did Paul call Christ the "firstfruit of the dead?" There was a "first something" about Christ’s resurrection. It wasn’t about his body coming to life because many others have been resurrected bodily before him. What was that "first?" I am interested in your understanding of this text.
Now if that wasn’t ad-hominem, then I don’t know what it was. :) When did I deny the bodily resurrection of Christ? And "peculiar" interpretation of Scripture? What should I be bound by in order for my interpretation to not be considered "peculiar?"
Also, I have another question for you: can you tell me where Christ’s resurrected physical body is right now?
Virgil Vaduva
http://unfinishedchristianity.com
The Resurrection of the Body
Virgil, my friend, I ask that you read my posts more carefully. :) I stated that if you denied the bodily resurrection of Christ, then you were denying the gospel, etc. I wasn’t claiming that you did. It appears, however, that you do. Or don’t you? I honestly can’t tell. You seem to be defensive against this charge, and yet you deny the doctrine of corporal resurrection with regard to the saints (which, as Paul would argue, would by necessity mean that neither is Christ thus raised, 1Corinthians 15:16).
Regarding the elemental doctrine of resurrection, you write, "You are attempting to condense the greater narrative on mankind’s history into a theological-frame that is specific to a very western idea of what redemption is about: saving hell-bound people so they can live eternity in comfort in flawless physical bodies."
Really? I just don’t see it this way at all. Recall the very Western response of the Greek Epicureans and Stoics to Paul’s preaching regarding the resurrection (which was undoubtedly bodily, cf. Acts 13:22-37) in his sermon on Mars Hill. Remember, it was the hellenistic eschatology that saw no need for the body (which was merely a prison of the soul) in the afterlife. Moreover, if anything, the Western tradition has underplayed the doctrine of bodily resurrection, seeming to believe that our redemption ends with our souls departing to be with the Lord in some disembodied state, strumming harps on clouds, etc (N.T. Wright, if memory serves, makes much of this).
Certainly we will leave the body at death to be with the Lord; yet now we groan for our heavenly dwelling, when the ‘mortal may be swallowed up by life’ (2Co.5:1-5) in our glorified bodies (1Co.15:51-54). And Paul’s response to the Corinthian skepticism over the resurrected body (‘how will the body be raised’)? "How foolish!" (1Co.15:36). How very ad hominem…
"Your solution: physical resurrection attempts to solve the wrong problem: spiritual death."
My solution of course is not merely physical. But it entails the physical, just as spiritual death entails physical death (thus the morbidity of Genesis chapters 3 and following, with each genealogy ending with "…and he died," and the book itself ending with, "…in a coffin in Egypt"). I believe that our redemption in Christ is comprehensive, regaining Paradise Lost in toto (cf., Revelation 22:3; Gen.3:14-19). Part of that curse of course is physical death: "from dust you came, and to dust you will return". This is the (giant) fly in the ointment, over which Qoheleth bemoans in lamenting the ‘futility’ of this damned life ‘under the sun’ (e.g., Eccl.2:16; 3:18-19). Christ’s redemption is not merely spiritual (as understood as abstracted from the physical, corporal, and earthly), it is cosmic! So, quite the contrary to your assessment, the death of the saints is a huge tension in redemptive-history, resolved in the biblical doctrine of the resurrection, which is part and parcel of the renewal of all things (Rev.21:5).
As Paul writes in 1Co.15, "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man." To reduce ‘death’ here to a metaphorical sense only, connoting spiritual death specifically, violates the context of 1Cor.15 (where the debate is precisely over the possibility of the resurrection of bodies, 1Co.15:35-42). Moreover, it contradicts Paul’s similar language in Romans 5, where physical death is clearly in view when the apostle writes, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned," (5:12) and continuing in verse 14, "Nevertheless (though there was no law that imposed a death penalty against transgression, v.13), death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come." To state the obvious, death’s reign (from Adam to Moses) is evident in the fact that all the patriarchs, the heirs of God’s promises died (having yet to receive their inheritance).
Recall that the Abraham did not receive what was promised him (i.e., the land of Canaan, see Heb.11), and he was buried in that land, having yet to receive it as promised. How then is God faithful to Abraham (for the promise was made to him and to his ‘seed’)? As Jesus argued against the Sadducees, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of the living, not the dead. The promises made in the covenant with Abraham are not violated by death, because of the hope of the resurrection - even as Abraham, in hope against hope, offered up Isaac, the son of promise, implicitly trusting that God can raise the dead. In the same way, Job confessed in faith, "And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes— I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:26-27)
You write, "Consequently, the climax of your redemption story is "bodies coming out of the ground" - that climax completely ignores the Jewish aspect of the story…"
Really? How so? Resurrection from the dead is a very Jewish hope. But if it is so ‘western’, and so foreign to first century Judaism, why then was this doctrine so tenaciously held among the Pharisees in Jerusalem (Ac.23:6-8; 24:15-16)?
And if this resurrection is merely understood as spiritual life with God, what does it mean when Jesus and Paul (and John in the Apocalypse) discuss the resurrection of the wicked? Obviously here ‘resurrection’ must be understood differently.
You write, "There was a "first something" about Christ’s resurrection. It wasn’t about his body coming to life because many others have been resurrected bodily before him."
Yet you are overlooking the crucial, theological distinction between Christ’s bodily resurrection and those of widow’s son, Lazarus, et al. As Paul argued in Romans 6, "since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him." Lazarus, however, died again. The resurrection body of Christ, and, as the first fruits of this eschatological ‘harvest’, ours likewise, is immortal, imperishable, etc. (1Cor.15:38-42). After all, if he is the first-fruits of the resurrection, then, as the harbinger of the coming crop, as was his resurrection, so ours will be also (i.e., bodily). On the other hand, if he is the first-fruits, and ours is a spiritual (re)union with God, how does this apply to the sinless Christ, God incarnate? When was he thus resurrected? When was He in need of this ‘resurrection’?
"What should I be bound by in order for my interpretation to not be considered "peculiar?""
You and I, it would apprear, would agree on this issue: Scripture. Scriptre binds us, it binds our consciences. But how to interpret the Scriptures? According to Scripture: scripture interprets scripture. And if Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, such that his corpse was not found, but his scars ‘touched and handled’ by the apostles to whom He appeared after Easter, and if indeed Christ is the first-fruits of the resurrection, it seems inescapable that ours will follow suit. Paul says elsewhere concerning Christ’s coming, He then "will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body," (Phil.3:21). The Scriptures seem quite clear on this point.
Lastly, you ask: "can you tell me where Christ’s resurrected physical body is right now?"
Well, I don’t think his flesh and blood resides in the cups and wafers at an altar. Not that I wish to be pedantic, but, what does the Bible say? In Acts 2:32-33, Peter declares, "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God…" where Scripture repeatedly tells us He sits enthroned with all authority, power, and principality under His feet (Eph.1:20; Col.1:3; Heb.1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2; 1Pe.3:22). Where is heaven you might ask? How does an Incarnate God occupy the celestial ‘realms of glory’? Frankly, I think such questions are ultimately vain. I am reminded of Augustine’s response to critics who asked what God was doing before creation: preparing hell for people who asked such questions! Who said ad hominem arguments were so bad?
Re: The Resurrection of the Body
Sorry for just now getting around to respond. You covered way too many points to deal with at once and my time is limited, but I will address as many as possible.
Am I that confusing? I do believe in a bodily resurrection of Christ. I see that being necessary to the historical context of the narrative. "Glorified bodies" still does not explain why Jesus is being called "the first fruit of the resurrection." I submit to you that he is called such because he was the first to defeat sin, Law and Death (Hades). His physical resurrection was simply a manifestation of the deeper, spiritual events taking place behind the scenes. His resurrected "glorified" body still had wounds in the hands, it was still disfigured from the beating so much so that Thomas and other people did not even recognize him, so a "glorified body" hardly seem to equal a "physical regeneration."
Are you sure about that? You seem to be assuming that I deny the resurrection, when in fact I question your interpretation of it. Throwing in what the pharisees believed is a red herring. When you consider Paul’s words and teaching on the resurrection, you need to consider his work as a whole. Quoting verses from 1 Cor. 15 will do little to convince me that "glorified bodies" means "physical bodies." How can it when Paul just said "we will leave our bodies to be with the Lord?" You either leave your bodies or don’t. On top of that, in Romans Paul says some things that you would likely consider very "peculiar."
In Romans 7, Paul speaks about the relationship between the Law (Jewish Law) and sin. In verse 9 he writes: "I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died." Now, Paul was born Jewish, so he was always under the law. The questions to answer therefore are:
When was Paul not under the Law?
When did Paul die?
Why did Paul die?
What kind of death did Paul die?
Consequently, regarding the resurrection (which is the centerpiece of Paul’s presentation) we should ask the questions:
When was Paul alive?
From what death were the Jewish people to be resurrected?
What kind of life was Paul to get?
These are the kinds of questions and answers the emergent dialogue should focus on when discussing the resurrection of the dead.
That’s a noble attempt at resolving differences, but if it was true, then all Christians would all agree on all things at all times. Scripture does not intepret Scripture…people do. And people go to schools where they are told what to believe about so and so, and where they are told what is true and what is false…by people who interpret Scripture based on what they were told in other schools. That is why you have your interpretation of Scripture, and I have mine…and we supposedly both allow Scripture to interpret Scripture.
Well that’s a copout…
If resurrection of the dead is about physical bodies coming out of the dirt and remain physical for eternity, and if Christ’s physical body coming to life is so important in your theology, you should be able to tell me (or at least speculate) where Christ’s body is right now. Is it in outerspace, floating among the stars and planets? Is he still ascending to "heaven?"
Re: The Resurrection of the Body
"How can it when Paul just said "we will leave our bodies to be with the Lord?" You either leave your bodies or don’t."
We leave our bodies at death, of course. But according to 1Cor.15 and 1Thess.3 the dead in Christ will be raisedupon His return? Now why would that be, if they were already with Jesus in heaven? Because the redemption of their bodies, as Paul puts in Romans 8, does not take place until the ‘revelation of the sons of God’ in the day of the Lord, which I take to be the consummation of our redemption. At that time, Paul tells us, the dead in Christ will be raised first, and then those of us who remain at His coming will be ‘gathered to Him’ in the air. What then, in your interpretation, does it mean that the dead in Christ are raised first and then we who remain are transformed? Are some ‘resurrected’ and others ‘transformed’, metaphorically speaking?
"When was Paul not under the Law?"
After ‘the coming of faith’ (Gal.3) - a faith appropriated by the apostle after his ‘christophany’ on the road to Damascus.
"When did Paul die?"
Upon his union with Christ through faith (see Gal.2).
"Why did Paul die?"
The Law justly put him to death ‘in Christ’. Thus he writes, "through the Law I died to the Law…" in Galatians.
"What kind of death did Paul die?"
He died to the Law. This was a legal death (Rom.7:1ff.) then, as well as a mystical death subsumed in the ‘mysterious’ union with the crucified and resurrected Christ (Rom.6:1ff.; Gal.6:15). This death is efficacious in ending the Law’s curse (cf. Gal.3:13) and in justifying the sinner from sin (Rom.6:7). Moreover, this baptism into his death, in which we have crucified the flesh, is not only forensic but also transformative (6:17, 18, 22), and henceforth we live new lives of obedience through faith (e.g., Gal.2:20).
"Consequently, regarding the resurrection (which is the centerpiece of Paul’s presentation) we should ask the questions:
"When was Paul alive?"
You mean, apart from the Law (7:9)? I understand him to mean that his conscience and his ‘record’ of transgressions (penalized on pain of death) were spotless before he became conscious of the Law and its obligations (cf. 5:13). Then, encountering the Law, his flesh was stirred to transgression, and as a result he was condemned by the Law (to death). As a result, "the body is dead as a result of sin" (8:10), which I understand to mean, the body is subject to death. Even now, after our union with Christ, the ‘body is [as good as] dead’, yet the spirit is alive because of the righteousness of Christ (8:10; cf. 5:17), and the Spirit will raise our bodies up in the future just as He raised Jesus’ (8:11; cf. 6:5).
"From what death were the Jewish people to be resurrected?"
National, spiritual, and physical (cf. Ro.11:11-15)
"What kind of life was Paul to get?"
I don’t think I understand the question. Eternal?
"If resurrection of the dead is about physical bodies coming out of the dirt and remain physical for eternity, and if Christ’s physical body coming to life is so important in your theology, you should be able to tell me (or at least speculate) where Christ’s body is right now. Is it in outerspace, floating among the stars and planets? Is he still ascending to "heaven?""
Physical is tricky. I prefer the term corporal. Paul says we will be spiritual bodies. Both spriitual and corporal. I don’t necessarily eschew the term physical, but I think there is too much physics tied to it, if you will (e.g., will the resurrection body be subect to the laws of matter, as in the law of entropy?). They will be bodily, and in some sense have continuity with our present bodies (as did Jesus’). As to their location, I still think your question is silly. Where are the souls of the dead located? What happened to the body of Elijah, or Enoch? Where is the bodily resurrected Jesus (whom you affirm)? He is seated at the right hand of majesty. But where’s that? Uranus? Is the throne of Jesus, the heavenly Jerusalem, in or beyond our galaxy? What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Obviously the locale of the incarnate God is beyond our celestial spheres. How’s that?