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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What historical information could make you lose faith?
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I certainly have.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
@Boogie
Well I am not a Christian but assuming a God that wanted to bring "us" back. If he is limited to 100% of the exact same atoms "we" had before death makes the task impossible or nonsense. You would have to believe "he" can make a new body with the same brain and memories as the old one. And of course "he" could make as many of those as "he" wanted. So which one is "You"? (But that last question is rhetorical I like what you said about not over thinking this)
Posts: 434 | From: Arizona | Registered: Oct 2009
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
I certainly have.
You answered my question "what makes you think we're making it all up" by "I KNOW we're making it all up". That's not an explanation, it's an assertion. You're not providing any support for it.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Sir, the answer is (in) the question. And the next one: Who thinks what you think?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Oh, I see.
quote:
...a fixed refusal of everything that was in any degree other than himself. He had passed from Hegel into Hume, thence through Pragmatism, and thence through Logical Positivism, and out at last into the complete void. The indicative mood now coresponded to no thought that his mind could entertain. He had willed with his whole heart that there should be no reality and no truth, and now even the imminence of his own ruin could not wake him
I hope you have not really embraced the same standpoint as Wither in That Hideous Strength. If you have, God have mercy on your soul, and besides, in that case I see no point in attempting to engage with others' views - in fact I can't see how you can believe it's possible.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
I can't bring myself to believe in the idea that our 'immortal' soul is housed or encased in a mortal body.
I don't believe the soul is immortal - myth or fact, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden before they were able to eat of the tree of life - lest they live forever. Jesus also spoke about the one who can kill the soul.
I believe that immortality is give, not inherent; and 'that you may have life' and 'eternal life' refers to the new state of immortality that comes with salvation.
[ 24. November 2014, 16:15: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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fullgospel
Shipmate
# 18233
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I grew up in a church that taught that Jesus' body is still in the grave, the "resurrection" was the memory of him inspiring the apostles. (TEC, 1950s). One of the few sermons I remember specified that any good person, theist or atheist, goes to heaven. (Good, of course, meant middle class values.)
That church turned me into an agnostic (maybe there's a God maybe there isn't, but it doesn't matter) because I saw no point spending a morning sitting on uncomfortable benches and enduring a boring program if whatever God might (or might not) exist didn't care.
Later God came to me in what I guess people call visions. So my faith is not at all based on the historical story, nor on the church program, but on experience.
The story helps keep us focused on what god are we talking about, what personality characteristics and values and goals and nature of broader reality. But don't most people who keep going to church feel personally touched by the experience - even if just a hint of peace or that somehow it will all make sense? The story is a vehicle that gets them into some sort of connecting with God, but the connection is what matters. (Just thinking out loud here.)
For me, this is a wonderful comment.
I really like hearing of your experience(s) and how you have reflected on them - what you made of it all; and make of it now.
So thank you Belle Ringer.
I reminds me of a tradition that says, (singeth)
"You ask me how I know He live ? He lives within my heart."
It is also interesting to note, that the Pureland (tradition) of Buddhism also speaks of Amitabha Buddha dwelling in the hearts of those who have received him.
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on the one hand - self doubt
on the other, the universe that looks through your eyes - your eyes
Posts: 364 | From: Rubovia | Registered: Sep 2014
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MLE
Apprentice
# 18280
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
CNN reports that the Mormon church has quietly published some articles on its website addressing some historical controversies in the church. The one making waves is an admission that Joseph Smith had 30-40 wives in total, including at least one teenager and several who were already married to other men. Also that his first wife was not happy with it and did not consent to most of them, contrary to previous claims. The article is here.
The reaction among Mormons seems to be mostly that A) they kind of already knew this and B) they're still going to stay part of the LDS church.
To critics of the church it confirms some of their accusations - that Joseph Smith invented polygamy to indulge in his own desires, that the church lied and covered up the truth about its early history.
It makes me wonder what I would have to learn about the founders of Christianity (or a specific denomination) that would cause me to lose my faith. Does it matter that Christianity's founders lived 2000 years ago, while Joseph Smith's behavior was out of line with contemporary standards in the 1800s when he engaged in these actions? I'd like to think that it does - but then I wonder if it's just the same sort of rationalization that Mormons are doing.
So - is there anything you could learn (or that the church could reveal) that would make you lose faith?
Posts: 3 | From: New York | Registered: Nov 2014
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MLE
Apprentice
# 18280
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Posted
I don't believe in the resurrection and don't see why that should invalidate Jesus's teachings. I call myself a Christian on that basis.
Posts: 3 | From: New York | Registered: Nov 2014
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Someone else mentioned software. My analogy was of a novel - 'incarnated' in ink and paper, thrown into the fire and then later rewritten. The novel remained in the mind of God.
The analogy is certainly correct in that a novel that exists only in the mind of its author is not actually a novel, and a human being who exists only in the mind of God having no physical instantiation is not actually a human being.
Otherwise, I'm not sure the analogy works.
While the question is open, novels look rather like universals. The same novel exists in a large number of different copies, just as the universal 'human being' is instantiated in a large number of different humans.
Human beings, and souls presumably assuming souls are a separate thing, are concrete particulars rather than universals. The analogy thus far is highly inexact.
quote:
If the analogy is to software, the whole 'person' continues to exist in the computer's hard drive - or even in the mainframe of a network = the mind of God.
The computer's hard drive here is analogous to the human body; the network presumably to the entire physical world. Software existing in hardware is a rather different analogy to the divine ideas existing in the mind of God.
I'm inclined to think that God can by fiat declare that God's recreation of a person is that same person, in the same way that Shakespeare can declare that Falstaff in Henry IV and Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor are the same character. On the other hand, I don't think Shakespeare can bring Falstaff's dead body from Henry V onto stage in Merry Wives of Windsor (not without some sf-type rationalisation or getting postmodern). God can't bring a human being into the world and declare that it's Jesus when Jesus' corpse is still around.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
- I just want to know where God will get my new body from.
There's more harm than good comes from worrying about such if you don't mind me saying.
I just think if I'm resurrected then ![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif) yipee. If I'm not then there won't be any worrying about it, because when the brain packs in then that will be that.
Then there's -- what if I'm resurrected and get the ol' eternal fire treatment? That kind of faith is likely to fill me with dread and is therefore not terribly useful.
In fact when it comes to historical information that makes me want to walk away from faith then some of the vengeful, judgemental and brutal parts of the bible can have that effect. Not sure that losing an attachment to Jesus quite works like that though. I don't feel it can be cast off in an intellectual way.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I haven't read the trilogy for 40 years and have been thinking of doing so. I loved it. And no, I'm not a solipsist.
(Hmmmm, is this a false dichotomy I see before me?)
Back to ALL of us making it ALL up ALL of the time. Please demonstrate an exception! We are Homo narrativus, Terry Pratchett's Pan narrans. We make up stories. Fictions. Whether they be limited companies or laws of motion or God. Or closed, wooden, dead dogmata based on the scant words of God dumbed down.
And I'm a fully paid up oecumenically creedal Christian with no buts. Jesus is more than even the synergy of His teachings, which I miserably fail to follow. And Jesus was a member of our story telling species. He was an utter consummate master at it. And a slave to it. Although a pretty liberated one. For His time. And enough for any. Prince trumps toad after all.
I do not doubt one fallible, erroneous word of the gospels and Acts. I know that in our making it all up, working it all out for ourselves, we are thought doing so by God who yearns for us and kicked us, draws us to an outer orbit and beyond. Some photon!
If anyone can come up with a half way decent story that rationalizes all that to electrons swapping photons, great. Materialism is infinitely more credible than the Gods of the Jews - including Jesus - as it is. But there is no sign of such a story. Nowhere in literature yet. And we aren't remotely capable here. Not even as remotely capable as science is of creating life.
So sorry to disappoint, in all my deconstruction I find that faith, the least of impossible gifts, remains unscathed.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
this is the very first time you've used the word software on this thread so I can only guess where that allusion is meant to be....
Not only did I read what you said, I responded. So far you haven't yet responded to my argument that you get Paul wrong. Naturally, you needn't if you'd rather not.
Someone else mentioned software. My analogy was of a novel - 'incarnated' in ink and paper, thrown into the fire and then later rewritten. The novel remained in the mind of God.
If the analogy is to software, the whole 'person' continues to exist in the computer's hard drive - or even in the mainframe of a network = the mind of God.
As to getting Paul wrong, I don't think I have. On the contrary I think Paul was getting at something like the above.
I can't for the life of me see how you think you have established that. Dafyd has very obligingly raised some of the pertinent objections to your analogies wrt to the soul already. I myself have no energy to pursue that tangent too much further.
Instead, let's recap our exchanges on this thread so far wrt the original source of our difference.
My intervention here began with an objection to your telling seekingsister here that her conception of the resurrection of the Lord as involving the transformation of his mortal body was incompatible with Paul's teaching in 1 Cor 15.
Your position throughout has been that the nature of the resurrection of our Lord (and by extension our own) is such that, were his dead body to have been discovered thereafter, it would provide no reason whatsoever to doubt his resurrection and that Paul agrees with you on this.
My substantive responses to this - arguing that Paul clearly believed that the resurrection body is tranformatively continuous with the pre-resurrection body - are here, here, and here.
As I have pointed out, not only does Paul nowhere explicity or implicitly reject such a continuity between the pre- and post resurrection body, but the very analogy he uses to describe the relationship between them - a seed "dying", being buried and subsequently sprouting up as a new plant - is steeped in the concept of (transformative) continuity. The bodily resurrection of the Lord clearly mattered to Paul, like, a lot.
If, after our exchanges, you still want to argue that Paul in fact rejects such a continuity, please respond specifically to the objections I have already made to that thesis. Otherwise, I don't see where this exchange could fruifully go from here.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
P.S. Leo, you seem to keep changing the goalposts. Back here you say, "My allusion was to software".
When I pointed out that this was, in fact, the first time you'd even mentioned software on this thread you responded:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Someone else mentioned software. My analogy was of a novel - 'incarnated' in ink and paper, thrown into the fire and then later rewritten.
Again, this is the first time on this thread that you have mentioned any such analogy.
Are you aware you are doing this? If not, it might be a good idea to review what you've already said before commenting again. If you are, I'd be grateful if you'd explain what you mean by it... or just knock it off.
[ 24. November 2014, 22:21: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
*eats some crow*
WRT to the novel reference, my apologies to leo - I missed his passing reference to a John Hick theory here
*spits some feathers*
[ 25. November 2014, 01:14: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) ... and my code's gone all to Freuchie. Clearly past my bedtime. Sorry folks...
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Sorted, Chester.
And welcome MLE! Hope you find much to enjoy here. Looks like you need some practice with our ancient UBB code. There's a practice thread in the Styx and we've all used it from time to time.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Back to ALL of us making it ALL up ALL of the time. Please demonstrate an exception!
Of course I cannot, but here's my take in brief: I cannot make sense of the Old Old Story if it is nothing more than (I do not say less than) narrative.
Central to that narrative is the Incarnation, which to my mind involves God invading spacetime and achieving something at the cross (and the tomb) that could only be achieved by entering history, tangible reality, objective reality. It has everything to do with materiality.
I have been round this several times in my mind. If it's all just subjective mind-games and storytelling, the narrative makes no sense. It only makes sense if it rests on an objective, historical, incarnate truth, because at the heart of it lies the assertion of resurrection from the dead.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Then there isn't even a fag paper between us.
The core story, Immanuel, is, of course, 110% completely true.
The eyewitness accounts are 110% valid eyewitness accounts. ALL seen through a glass darkly. Through human eyes. In hindsight. And with every other visual defect.
All that came after, through the ever weakening conduit of the Church, more so.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
The eyewitness accounts are 110% valid eyewitness accounts.
Ah, so the original eyewitnesses are not part of "ALL of us"? That makes (a bit) more sense.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Back to ALL of us making it ALL up ALL of the time. Please demonstrate an exception!
Of course I cannot, but here's my take in brief: I cannot make sense of the Old Old Story if it is nothing more than (I do not say less than) narrative.
Central to that narrative is the Incarnation, which to my mind involves God invading spacetime and achieving something at the cross (and the tomb) that could only be achieved by entering history, tangible reality, objective reality. It has everything to do with materiality.
I have been round this several times in my mind. If it's all just subjective mind-games and storytelling, the narrative makes no sense. It only makes sense if it rests on an objective, historical, incarnate truth, because at the heart of it lies the assertion of resurrection from the dead.
The inside outside business interests me. Is God, at least before Jesus, outside the world? After Jesus we think of God as being present in the world, not just in the lifetime of Jesus, but in a permanent way, in the Spirit as well as the Son. And we might read that back into pre-Jesus time and find, say, the Spirit at creation.
Perhaps Jesus has changed the way we think about God, the Emmanuelisation of the deity, which I think I would describe as a work of the narrative.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Sorted, Chester.
Obliged to you, sir. I even made a mistake about which post I meant to link to. I did not cover myself in glory last evening.
For the avoidance of any confusion, leo's reference to Hick's novel analogy is here. For the record, I share Dafyd's objections to both the software and novel analogies, and I had also in mind the famous teletransporter thought experiments about personal identity I used to discuss with my students, but I'm not looking to pursue that tangent much.
Anyway, I'd still like to know how leo justifies his claim that Paul rejects the bodily resurrection (from the old body), and whether he thinks therefore that Paul would have been indifferent to the discovery of the reamins of Jesus's mortal body.
Sorry to bang on.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
How much identity is there between me today and me many years ago? It feels impressively solid at first thought, but much has changed about how I see myself, the memories I have access to and those which have changed in the recalling, my personality, my abilities, how others react to me and who those others are. There is continuity, but not sameness. If my teenage self knew that he would still be alive forty years hence, would he be fully satisfied that the man I am today would represent who he was in 1974? Is continuity with change identity? How much change is possible?
Add to that the realisation that identity is dependent also on others with whom we have relationships, and it softens or shifts the questions about life and death and what resurrection needs to deliver.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
The inside outside business interests me. Is God, at least before Jesus, outside the world? After Jesus we think of God as being present in the world, not just in the lifetime of Jesus, but in a permanent way, in the Spirit as well as the Son. And we might read that back into pre-Jesus time and find, say, the Spirit at creation
I think I tend to see God the Father as being outside our spacetime; that sort of jives with "in light inaccessible" for me.
But I also think the more you look in Scripture the more you see both the Spirit and the Son present in the world - whether it's hovering over the face of the waters, having lunch with Abraham, or in the personification of Wisdom in Proverbs 8. Nevertheless, these are all rather mysterious and intangible involvements in our world.
The Incarnation changes things because it is the Son inhabiting the world from inside, as you put it, within the very fabric of our own existence.
quote:
Perhaps Jesus has changed the way we think about God, the Emmanuelisation of the deity, which I think I would describe as a work of the narrative.
I'm never quite sure whether we have common ground when you start taking about narratives, all I can say again is that for me, it being a narrative doesn't preclude it also being objectively true (notably in terms of Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection, though as discussed above I'm willing to hedge my bets slightly on the precise mechanics of the latter), and as far as I'm concerned that objective truth is important as far as the whole thing being worthwhile goes.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
Objective truth? I am impressed by the arguments that truth is contextual and multi-voiced, and therefore not objective in the sense of being clean and motionless like a nicely lit exhibit in a museum.
That doesn't mean truth can't be true, but it does mean that it can't be bottled or written down - except in story form. And that I have to learn the knack of caring about the truth in a more relaxed way, not owning it, but sidling up to it in such a way that it might give itself to me, like a musical interpretation.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
But not all truth is contextual and multi-voiced.
Take death. Whatever scientific arguments there might be about the boundary between life and death, whatever narratives we may spin, and whatever we might say about enduring collective memories and so forth, there comes a point where a body no longer has life (this has just come home to me again as a friend of mine died yesterday and I went to view the body). That seems pretty objective to me.
I'd even go so far as to say that all our storytelling is, in the end, an attempt to make sense of that absurdity of the human condition or lessen its impact somehow - and yet it awaits us all in the end. We cannot storytell our way out of death.
Which is why the gospel narrative of destroying that last enemy, and the evidence it presents to that end, is so compelling, and why so much hinges on it resting on some objective truth.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I'd even go so far as to say that all our storytelling is, in the end, an attempt to make sense of that absurdity of the human condition or lessen its impact somehow - and yet it awaits us all in the end. We cannot storytell our way out of death.
Which is why the gospel narrative of destroying that last enemy, and the evidence it presents to that end, is so compelling, and why so much hinges on it resting on some objective truth.
Agreed.
Which is why the question still remains - is the Gospel storytelling based on a true, real, verifiable resurrection or not?
We can't know for sure. It's a matter of faith. But then so are all other life after death beliefs.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
We all die, but .. That seems to be the Gospel. Death is not abolished, but its poisonous hold on life is overcome.
I don't know if it's safe to distinguish between truth and reality. Death is a brute reality, truth is our understanding of it, the stories we tell about what has happened. And we live in the world of truth, that's where our thinking and feeling are and the meaning or lack of it. (I'm not sue about this. Distinguishing between truth and reality is just another story, really.)
The biblical stories don't describe the end of death. Jesus resurrection is unwitnessed and problematic. The status of those still alive exercises Paul.
We had an interesting discussion years ago about the story in Matthew of graves opening and the dead walking into Jerusalem and being seen by many. It's hard to defend the historicity of the tale, but easy to warm to its generous message about the retrospective effect of resurrection.
As time goes by I am increasingly content to let go of my hankering for certainty, and to believe that contextual, community voiced truth-as-meaning is what I wanted all along. Nearly there.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
hatless
I think we are at any particular point what the journey has made us.
There is a comparatively ancient Fisherfolk song (from a US group maybe?) called "The Sun's gonna shine" and it is about the Passion of Jesus. Contains the line.
"You know the things that you said and the things that you did they brought you where you are".
There is something compelling about the "you" in that. Despite the fact that, simply because of cell replacement, even our bodies cannot really be described as the same now as they were in the past. (I'm not sure to what extent that applies to all parts of our bodies.)
So I've got some sympathy with those who argue that if there is an essential "I" which can apply to our individuality, it cannot simply be a matter of matter. When the councils incorporated the term "resurrection of the body" in the ancient creeds, these findings about how our bodies actually work in maintaining and adapting were not really known. I suppose the ancient Hebrew "shalom" does a decent job in expressing that wholeness and peace involve both body and awareness coming together from some kind of inconsistency to harmony. I always find it interesting that in the John account, Jesus comes amongst the disciples with a "shalom".
I want to avoid any kind of body/mind dualism over this. We are what we are and what we become "in our bodies" (and I don't much like the "in" in that phrase.) So I'm not exactly sure how the old credal term "resurrection of the body" is to be understood today. But I believe we shall not be incorporeal, because the risen Jesus was not incorporeal, however mysterious and paradoxical some of the resurrrection accounts may appear. That's a close as I can get to expressing what resurrection of the body may mean.
But I take it that Jesus was recognised (that lovely word from Luke 24, "their eyes were opened and they knew him") and that recognition made all the difference. I expect to be recognisable to myself and to those who have known me in this life. How that's going to work in any detail I've just got to leave with God.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
To be recognised is a beautiful thing. I think it's also a feature of Jesus in his ministry. He knew people, including their secrets and thoughts. To meet Jesus was to come to yourself. You could say that all those encounters in Galilee had the quality of resurrection about them, and this quality is about more than just being, just surviving death, it has an enlarging, revelatory character.
Identity is given in relationships, and the resurrection of Jesus makes community.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I'd still like to know how leo justifies his claim that Paul rejects the bodily resurrection (from the old body), and whether he thinks therefore that Paul would have been indifferent to the discovery of the reamins of Jesus's mortal body.
1 Cor 15 37-8 what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body (ESV) - the only continuity is the 'kernel' - in modern terms we might speak of the DNA. God creates a new body based on what it was in earthly terms but for a new dimension.
vv.40-41 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. - this new dimension is spiritual, not physical
v49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. - it is the 'image', the DNA, not the corpse
v50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable - the corpse cannot 'go to heaven'
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I'd still like to know how leo justifies his claim that Paul rejects the bodily resurrection (from the old body), and whether he thinks therefore that Paul would have been indifferent to the discovery of the reamins of Jesus's mortal body.
1 Cor 15 37-8 what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body (ESV) - the only continuity is the 'kernel' - in modern terms we might speak of the DNA. God creates a new body based on what it was in earthly terms but for a new dimension.
vv.40-41 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. - this new dimension is spiritual, not physical
v49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. - it is the 'image', the DNA, not the corpse
v50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable - the corpse cannot 'go to heaven'
exactly
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
This really speaks to me:
quote:
I know that my redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
27 I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
Job 19
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MLE:
I don't believe in the resurrection and don't see why that should invalidate Jesus's teachings. I call myself a Christian on that basis.
It invalidates some of his teachings; the ones on the resurrection for example...
Welcome to the Ship!
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
I'm afraid a lot of your response makes no sense to me, leo.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I'd still like to know how leo justifies his claim that Paul rejects the bodily resurrection (from the old body), and whether he thinks therefore that Paul would have been indifferent to the discovery of the reamins of Jesus's mortal body.
1 Cor 15 37-8 what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body (ESV) - the only continuity is the 'kernel' - in modern terms we might speak of the DNA. God creates a new body based on what it was in earthly terms but for a new dimension.
The kernel is our DNA? How do you reckon that? "For a new dimension"? I don't know what that means. But it might be worth pointing out that our DNA is very much part of our bodily substance. Nothing in this passage gives any support to your theory about what Paul means.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
vv.40-41 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. - this new dimension is spiritual, not physical.
But "the body that is sown" is our natural - physical - body, and right here in this very passage, Paul is saying that that very body, the "it" that is sown, is the same "it" that is raised as a spiritual body. That is what the text actually says. Apart from this, whatebver else Christ's resurrection body was, it was certainly also physical, unless the Gospels are completely unreliable.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
v49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. - it is the 'image', the DNA, not the corpse
Again, this gives no support to your contention, and your gloss on it - again, that our image is DNA - is incomprehensible to me.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
v50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable - the corpse cannot 'go to heaven'
Of course corpses - dead, lifeless bodies - don't go to heaven, but resurrected, glorified and living bodies inherit heaven. Where do you think Paul believed Christ's glorified body went?
[ 25. November 2014, 21:34: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
I see from your responses to hatless and myself that you're doing approach-avoidance with postmodernism. With narratives. You do a VERY good job nonetheless of creating one. I'm just reconciled to it all. Somehow. It all fits. I don't avoid anything now, I run to it. And yes, when I say we ALL make it ALL up, I don't mean our erroneous primary sense data, what our eyes see and ears hear, so no I don't doubt Matthew, Mark, John, Peter, James and Jude and even Paul as eyewitnesses. Neither do I doubt their full, broken, enculturated humanity. Or that of God Himself incarnate.
So I can stare Peter's bizarre esoterica in the face. And Paul's endorsement of altered states, slavery, patriarchy. As you say the truth, THE pivotal fact of the Incarnation changed them and bent everything they were to Itself, Himself. Even though He believed all sorts of nonsense. How could He not?
Their being truly weird by modern criteria doesn't matter at all. As modern is by postmodern.
We react. That's making things up. Telling a story. Some are more open than others. I'm trying to make up the best story that reconciles all I know.
Does anyone, ANY ONE, here know anyone who isn't? Even if they are helplessly, innocently in very narrow, literalist, legalist places? Just like Jesus struggled from.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
That's as may be, leo. But our exchange began, you will remember, with my objection to your telling seekingsister that her belief in bodily resurrection was contradicted by Paul in 1 Cor 15.
Your own/others' theory about the complete discontinuity of the old and new bodies and the new "dimension" aside, would you be able to address some of my specific responses to you about how you, as you claim, can square such a theory with what St Paul says in the passages I have addressed?
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Your own/others' theory about the complete discontinuity of the old and new bodies and the new "dimension" aside, would you be able to address some of my specific responses to you about how you, as you claim, can square such a theory with what St Paul says in the passages I have addressed?
If you read what I wrote, it was not about discontinuity. Quite the reverse.
I have addressed the points you raised and suggested some reading material to help you understand.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I'm afraid a lot of your response makes no sense to me, leo.
As far as I can tell, the substance of leo's point is the unremarkable scratch-where-no-one's-itching one that St Paul was in no danger of confusing God with Herbert West.
The obscurity comes from the attempt to present this non-insight as simultaneously radical and orthodox.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Your own/others' theory about the complete discontinuity of the old and new bodies and the new "dimension" aside, would you be able to address some of my specific responses to you about how you, as you claim, can square such a theory with what St Paul says in the passages I have addressed?
If you read what I wrote, it was not about discontinuity. Quite the reverse.
I have addressed the points you raised and suggested some reading material to help you understand.
I'm sure I should feel terribly grateful, but what would really "help me understand" is if you addressed my actual objections specifically and in detail - like I've done with yours.
You say that your point was "quite the opposite" of insisting on a discontinuity, but that's news to me. What then did you mean to object to in seekingsister's post?
I've been talking about a (transformative, mysterious but real) physical/material continuity between the old and new bodies, to which you have consistently objected, citing Paul in 1 Cor. 15.
But I have answered point by point your gloss on that text (including later verses which you have not addressed) and pointed out repeatedly that if Paul had meant to deny any physical/material continuity between the pre- and post resurrection bodies he chose a funny analogy to do so.
I have also repeatedly asked you if you think Paul would have been completely at ease with the discovery of the existence of Jesus's pre-resurrection mortal body - your theory should commit you to saying it would be something between a matter of indifference to him and an absolute implication of what he believes.
The burden of proof is very much on your side, because - as I see it - your case rests on a very counter-intuitive reading of Paul. Why does it matter so much to you that Paul be read as being in agreement with your/Hick's/Robinson's theory anyway?
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
I'm not sure whether it's satisfying or not to have an explanation for the current hollywood fascination for zombies.
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Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Me neither, I suppose. But then neither am I sure whom you imagine to have furnished such an explanation.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
Well, they are a very good representation of what corporeal resurrection would be like with no spirit/soul. It is the intangible that gives something special to the tangible/material, and so one question that arises is - does this soul/spirit need a physical material body at all? The answer is - "yes", if is to "live" materially (for whatever reason), but "no" if immaterial existence is also possible.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
I'm not aware that anyone was talking about "corporeal resurrection ... with no spirit/soul" in the first place. I certainly wasn't.
[ 27. November 2014, 12:11: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Well, they are a very good representation of what corporeal resurrection would be like with no spirit/soul. It is the intangible that gives something special to the tangible/material, and so one question that arises is - does this soul/spirit need a physical material body at all? The answer is - "yes", if is to "live" materially (for whatever reason), but "no" if immaterial existence is also possible.
Why would you want to live with a third of you 'missing'? And why would the Creator bother to give us a body for 70 years if we are quite capable of living without one?
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I have also repeatedly asked
and repeatedly not understood I can't go into any more detail because I think you think literally and are ill-at-ease with metaphor.
Or you are just being obtuse.
To avoid being rude, I am not going to respond to any more seemingly hectoring questioning from you about this.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
I "literally" don't know how have the nerve to respond in that way, leo - I'll give you that much.
But I expect that's just one more symptom of my hectoring, unimaginative obtuseness.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
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