Do you know that your savior lives?
A challenge?
Why do you believe in the physical ressurection of Jesus Christ? Why do you believe the gospel accounts to be accurate? What does the bible say about Christ's ressurection? - is it possible to interpret that the early church saw Christ's ressurection as only spiritual and not physical given that 1 Cor. 15 "seems to imply a spiritual ressurection" based on it's speaking of spiritual bodies directly after speaking of the importance of Christ's ressurection, and that the gospel accounts may have been written as they were as a means to combat gnostic teaching in the church and reiterate Christ's physicality although the church did not actually REALLY believe he rose physically from the dead? Is it possible that the historical accounting of the gospels was inaccurate but that they were still being honest because "honesty" and "lieing" in terms of historical accounting meant different things in those times than they do now?(for the record my answer to both of those is most decidedly NO and I can pretty concisely tell you why by now, but it took a little thinking and re-reading of scripture - how can YOU defend this?). What verses from the New Testament and the Old Testement can you give to support Christ's physical ressurection BESIDES the gospel accounts? Did Jesus predict his own death and ressurection (yes), where?
Why all these questions? Well, let's just say, I'm learning a lot a Community College - but sometimes I learn more from what the teacher fails to teach than from what he succeeds at teaching.
Why do you believe in the physical ressurection of Jesus Christ? Why do you believe the gospel accounts to be accurate? What does the bible say about Christ's ressurection? - is it possible to interpret that the early church saw Christ's ressurection as only spiritual and not physical given that 1 Cor. 15 "seems to imply a spiritual ressurection" based on it's speaking of spiritual bodies directly after speaking of the importance of Christ's ressurection, and that the gospel accounts may have been written as they were as a means to combat gnostic teaching in the church and reiterate Christ's physicality although the church did not actually REALLY believe he rose physically from the dead? Is it possible that the historical accounting of the gospels was inaccurate but that they were still being honest because "honesty" and "lieing" in terms of historical accounting meant different things in those times than they do now?(for the record my answer to both of those is most decidedly NO and I can pretty concisely tell you why by now, but it took a little thinking and re-reading of scripture - how can YOU defend this?). What verses from the New Testament and the Old Testement can you give to support Christ's physical ressurection BESIDES the gospel accounts? Did Jesus predict his own death and ressurection (yes), where?
Why all these questions? Well, let's just say, I'm learning a lot a Community College - but sometimes I learn more from what the teacher fails to teach than from what he succeeds at teaching.
posted by Pamela Joy at 10:37 PM
6 Comments:
Pamela,
Bravo! Well said. I just listened to a dramatization of a book by Josh McDowell countering the conspiracy theory and Gnostic nonsense in the Da Vinci Code.
Here is the link if you are interested:
The entire Audio version of Josh McDowell's book "The Da Vinci Code: A Quest for Answers" is available for free by podcast!/ downloadable mp3
http://www.pcgmedia.org/davincianswers.html
Love,
Dad
it is my understanding that the resurrection is both physical and spiritual based upon 1 corinthians 15. First the physical, then the spiritual - emphasizing that there is both not just one.
Good call Josh. It's interesting because in the chapter he quoted 1 Cor. 15:3-4, saying that didn't necessitate a believe in physicality... apparently he convienently forgot about 5-7 also part of the "utmost importance" part which talk about his physical appearances. I was rather dumbfounded when I noticed that.
I'm not positive about this, but I seem to recall a verse that states our new bodies will be like Jesus' (in that there is a physical body) not like angels which are spiritual.
Jesus also says we "will be like the angels, neither married nor given in marriage" which my prof likes to use a lot as evidence against physicality. 1 cor 15 says quite a bit on both sides of the issue.
You're right Pam, 1Cor.15 does provide arguments for both physical and spiritual resurrection. Although we have to be clear of the implications of what we are saying we believe.
Quite common to 'liberal' theology is the notion that Christ's resurrection was only spiritual, and that those who saw Him afterwards were having visions. To me, this is wuite foreign to the Bible, and I hold to the doctrine that Christ's resurrection was bodily. Indeed it is true that the resurrection body is a spiritual body, both for Christ and all Christians in due course (1Cor.15:44-49), but I cannot believe that the early church saw Christ's resurrection as merely spiritual.
Biblical evidence for Christ's bodily resurrection is found in the gospels (e.g. Lk.24:38-43 [with the disciples where He eats fish] and Jn.20:24-29 [with Thomas]).
And I perceive the gospel accounts not only to be accurate, but highly accurate. If you ask any historian with any knowledge of Biblical text, they will tell you that one of the greatest historians of all time was Luke. John, on the other hand was a first-hand witness.
There is also evidence, though less emphatically, in 1Cor.15:1-7, but what might seem to throw a spanner in the works to my view is v8 where Paul counts himself as an honourary apostle referencing himself to seeing the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, which in his case seems at first to be visionary (Acts 9:3-7) but it is probably better to understand Paul as meaning that 'out of time', he saw the resurrected Christ physically (1Cor.9:1).
The nature of Christ's resurrection body seems to straddle both the normal physical functioning (Lk.24:30,43; Jn.21:13-15), and supernatural abilities (Jn.20:19,26), and even though these are sparse pieces of evidence, they are nevertheless the best indicators we have as to what our resurrection bodies will be like, based on the assertion of faith and hope in Phil.3:21.
So I would sum up by asking, why would we cast the gospel accounts aside as being inaccurate or unreliable? There is no need. Historically, we can prove neither Christ's physical nor spiritual resurrection, although we can bring an extremely strong case for his physical. (I would also reference McDowell's work for this). However, historically, we cannot dismiss the gospel accounts for anything less than first-class pieces of data.
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