Re: Question for Clergy / resurrection/ escatology

Thank you all for responses so far. I have kids to bathe, and cant respond
to everything yet, but this response makes me want to make a couple of
comments.

First of all, yes this discussion involves the monism/dualism question. And
after reading and thinking about this for a while, I am convinced that the
Bible teaches dualism. I think that the Bible clearly teaches a transition
state, between being alive in the physical body, and in existence until the
Resurrection. Who was in this state? Certainly all of the OT saints
because we know they were waiting in Hades for the second coming and
resurrection.

But if they were existing in "bodies" they could not have been in the
spiritual bodies that Paul speaks of in I cor 15 because Christ is the
Firstfruit of those bodies. So what state were they in? I think the
clearest interpretation is that they were disembodied souls.

My point here is not to question the physical resurrection. My
interpretation is that the body that is in the grave has no continuity with
the spiritual body. This is because I believe that the disembodied soul is
resurrected into the spiritual body.

My personal eschatology is this. Once you die, you become a disembodied
soul until the Judgement and Resurrection. At that time, believers are
resurrected into their spiritual bodies to reside with God, non-believers
are sent to eternal damnation in their disembodied spirit (maybe they are
resurrected too, but I have problems with that, but it is secondary to my
main point.)

As a preterist, I think the judgment and resurrection was in 70 AD. All of
those that died prior to 70 AD have been judged, and raised or not. Since
then, after death, believers are immediately resurrected into their spritual
bodies. There is no more Hades, Death has been defeated at the cross.
Because of this interpretation, one cannot use the bodies left in the grave
to disprove that the Judgement, and Resurrection have happened.

And my view, that there is no continuity, dispels with any problems of
amputation, cremation, organ donation etc. I am glad to see that these
things do not propose a problem with the other view, but certainly in my
view it is not a problem either.

----- Original Message -----
From: <mrb22667@kansas.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 5:08 PM
Subject: Re: Question for Clergy / resurrection/ escatology

> (I'm not clergy -- but that won't stop me from putting in my two bits)
> I remember cleaning dorm rooms one summer in between college years and
> hearing a
> radio on in the background tuned to (J. Vernon McGee?) -- I probably
> don't have
> the name correct. Anyway, I do remember being transfixed by his
> beautifally
> drawn out southern fundamentalist drawl, and he happened to be
> pontificating on
> the evils of cremation because he saw it as an attempt to thwart God's
> resurrection plans. He assured his audience that despite such intolerable
> practices, God would find each and every atom and put them all back
> together
> again. Of course, if that was to be done anyway, then that leaves me
> unsure why
> this or that practice would be so bad -- it wouldn't make any difference
> right?
> And even if nobody cremated we would still have the many war deaths and
> martyrs
> burned at the stake all of whom went through cremation of sorts -- no
> choice of
> their own.
>
> But the whole question does leave me with a head-shaking feeling that some
> point
> is being missed. To push these points this far makes it seem like we
> missed an
> exit way back somewhere. It's sort of like musing on a literal hell -- so
> if
> flesh is to burn eternally, will there be an infinite supply of oxygen,
> but even
> if so how can something "burn" forever since the chemical definition
> involves a
> consumption of fuel as it oxidizes, so if flesh is enduring forever then
> it
> couldn't realy be 'burning' could it? Or in heaven we'll be feasting at a
> banquet -- or will we really? Will transformed bodies need sustenance?
> Will
> they be bodies minus reproductive activity? (no marriage in Heaven)
>
> Secularists would enjoy pressing such points above to highlight
> absurdities of
> the traditional belief. Some Christians of intellectual bent may view
> this as
> an a priori display of the absurdity of literal translation, or the
> imposition
> of our own understandings of temporal existence onto something beyond our
> comprehension.
>
> Isn't it enough to affirm that Jesus' resurrected body is reality --
> indeed THE
> reality by which other realities will fade away in comparison. If people
> use
> the code word "physical" to highlight the reality of something, then by
> all
> means, his resurrected body is physical. If we are inclined like others
> here to
> allow some mystery with it and call it a 'bodily' resurrection that is a
> transformation into glorious immortality, then that sounds much more
> reasonable
> to me. But to begin to delve scientifically into what that may mean will
> simply
> lead to more frustration. I think the point of the gospel message is
> that
> Jesus is and was real and he is alive. I'm still struggling myself
> between a
> traditional dualism and the monism which I suspect is espoused by some
> here.
>
> --merv
>
> Quoting drsyme@cablespeed.com:
>
>> 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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>> email
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Received on Thu Apr 20 19:59:03 2006