RE: Question for Clergy

I don't we can completely answer what our resurrected bodies will be like,
since the apostle John confessed, "it doth not yet appear what we shall be"
(1Jn 3:2).

I suppose the question ought to be turned around. If the resurrection does
not bring forth the self-same body that was laid to rest in the grave, in
similar form and deformities, then how is it that Jesus' body still bears
the marks of the crucifixion? (John 20:25-27)

Since the marks in Jesus' resurrected body are the "red herring" which leads
to all the other speculative questions concerning the general resurrection,
it is fair to ask whether this is a faulty premise. Perhaps a "fallacy of
generalization" is at work, if one takes Jesus as the special case and tries
to reason that all other resurrected bodies will retain all their
deformities in the same way. It is more likely that the marks in Jesus'
hands and feet are indeed a special case, providing eternal evidence to
those who stand before him in judgment that he has borne our penalty of sin
in his own body. As others have said, resurrection is transformation not
resuscitation. God had a purpose for Jesus' transformed body to retain
those particular scars. There is no Biblical evidence that he retained(s)
the scars on his back, only those wounds in his hands and feet which are
evidence of the cross. In our case, there may not be any divine purpose in
our retaining the old deformities of the body in a resurrected condition.

I believe Job 33:24-25 is a prophetic description of one facet of the
resurrection ("his skin shall be fresher than a child's"), although
admittedly it would be difficult to prove from the text that it's not
speaking allegorically. Phil 3:21 shows that whatever body we have in the
resurrection, it is "glorious" as opposed to this present "vile" body. 1Cor
15:38-42 is also instructive that our bodies will be different, but as with
Jesus we would have to assume they are recognizable in some way to our
temporal bodies.

Jon Tandy

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of drsyme@cablespeed.com
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 2:33 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Question for Clergy

If the correct interpretation of the resurrection of
believers is that the self same body will be raised out of
the grave, in the same way that Christs body was raised,
how do you counsel people regarding things such as
cremation, donating organs, terminal illness, and
amputation?

I am asking this question in all seriousness. If the same
body is going to be raised how can this ocurr if the body
was cremated and scattered in the ocean? Surely that
"body" would be incorporated into other things, even other
people over time. If someone has a progressive illness,
would they be better off dying quickly to avoid further
deterioration; or if someone needs an amputation to save
their life, would they be better off dying from gangrene
but still have all their limbs for eternity? If you are a
cadaveric organ donor and they harvest your heart, lungs,
liver, etc after you die, what happens after you are
raised? There are many other implications to this idea,
and frankly it is foreign to me.

I must have missed the class that taught that our self
same bodies will be raised after death. I never had the
understanding that the self same body will be raised after
death, so when I came to understand the preterist view, I
quickly went from accepting partial preterism, (after I
read RC Sproals "The Last Days According to Jesus.") to
full preterism, because the biggest objection the partial
preterist have with preterists is the nature of the
resurrection body. But I already was believing along the
same lines as the preterists, long before I knew what
preterism was.
  
  
  
  
   

   
   
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Received on Thu Apr 20 18:21:55 2006