Post by hume on Feb 18, 2007 22:06:16 GMT -8
8/6/06:
"The body is not a mistake to be unmade or a prison cell to be freed from, but a divine work of art designed to show forth the soul as the soul is to show forth God."
-- Peter Kreeft
Was Paul a dualist? If so, exactly what sort? Short answer: I dunno. I'll toss a few suggestions on the table & hope that better-informed folks can illuminate ...
The obvious red flag here is Paul's use of the term "flesh" (which, I'm told, is a pretty accurate translation of the original Greek word, "sarx"). However, he uses the word in many different ways, and it's surely a mistake to think that every time Paul writes "flesh," he means, "the matter that makes up your body." Often the context indicates that sarx is intended to mean something like, "our fallenness," or "our unredeemed selves," or "humanity in rebellion against God."
In particular, 1 Cor. 15 reads oddly if you assume that Paul and his audience held our culture's typical view of human nature. Frankly, resurrection doesn't seem like all THAT big a deal if you believe that the dead live on in an immaterial form that encompasses everything really important about them. In that case, being resurrected into a new body would be at best a nifty experience, maybe some kind of upgrade, but it doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would cause Paul to write, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised ... and your faith has been in vain."
Or consider verse 26 -- "The last enemy to be destroyed is death." Again, if death is merely the shedding of our burdensome flesh, giving wings to the soul, this verse is unintelligible. Or again, "If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'"
Perhaps Paul emphasizes Christ's resurrection because it's the soul's salvation from sheol / hell. Perhaps ... the passage just doesn't "read" that way to me, even if we take it as given that Paul did believe in Sheol (as something more substantial than just a metaphor for the grave). Over and over he uses terms like death / body / perishable-imperishable / resurrection; yet I at least don't detect direct reference to any sort of immaterial afterlife.
Anyone who wants to portray Paul as a "hater of the flesh" will also have difficulty explaining 1 Cor. 6:13-19, "The body is meant ... for the Lord, and the Lord for the body ... Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you ...?"
"The body is not a mistake to be unmade or a prison cell to be freed from, but a divine work of art designed to show forth the soul as the soul is to show forth God."
-- Peter Kreeft
Was Paul a dualist? If so, exactly what sort? Short answer: I dunno. I'll toss a few suggestions on the table & hope that better-informed folks can illuminate ...
The obvious red flag here is Paul's use of the term "flesh" (which, I'm told, is a pretty accurate translation of the original Greek word, "sarx"). However, he uses the word in many different ways, and it's surely a mistake to think that every time Paul writes "flesh," he means, "the matter that makes up your body." Often the context indicates that sarx is intended to mean something like, "our fallenness," or "our unredeemed selves," or "humanity in rebellion against God."
In particular, 1 Cor. 15 reads oddly if you assume that Paul and his audience held our culture's typical view of human nature. Frankly, resurrection doesn't seem like all THAT big a deal if you believe that the dead live on in an immaterial form that encompasses everything really important about them. In that case, being resurrected into a new body would be at best a nifty experience, maybe some kind of upgrade, but it doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would cause Paul to write, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised ... and your faith has been in vain."
Or consider verse 26 -- "The last enemy to be destroyed is death." Again, if death is merely the shedding of our burdensome flesh, giving wings to the soul, this verse is unintelligible. Or again, "If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'"
Perhaps Paul emphasizes Christ's resurrection because it's the soul's salvation from sheol / hell. Perhaps ... the passage just doesn't "read" that way to me, even if we take it as given that Paul did believe in Sheol (as something more substantial than just a metaphor for the grave). Over and over he uses terms like death / body / perishable-imperishable / resurrection; yet I at least don't detect direct reference to any sort of immaterial afterlife.
Anyone who wants to portray Paul as a "hater of the flesh" will also have difficulty explaining 1 Cor. 6:13-19, "The body is meant ... for the Lord, and the Lord for the body ... Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you ...?"
