Resurrection: Why Bother?

[hume]

8/6/06:

Cullman again: "If we want to understand the Christian faith in the Resurrection, we must completely disregard the Greek thought that the material, the bodily, the corporeal is bad and must be destroyed."

www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1115&C=1216

The N.T. teachings about bodily resurrection do seem to exclude certain views about human nature.

Murphy calls for "reconsideration of the scope of God's final transformative act ... Paul hints at this in Romans: 'For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God' (Rom. 8:19-21 NRSV)." [from "Scientific Perspectives on Christian Anthropology," in CTI REFLECTIONS, volume 8.]

Now that's an exciting idea, a truly epic vision: the transformation, literally the resurrection, of the whole creation. However, as alluded to earlier, from the Platonist / Gnostic point of view, bodily resurrection seems pointless at best. If death is our happy moment of release from the physical world, why would we want to go back to being physical creatures -- back to what we'd escaped from?

It's not that resurrection and dualism are necessarily inconsistent -- just that the N.T. discussions about resurrection display an urgent and excited tone that can't be accounted for if the writers believed that the soul has no need of the body. Reading passages like 1 Cor. 15 or Romans 8, we are reminded of the ancient teaching that "God saw all that he had made and it was very good."

"If the body is important enough to be resurrected in some form for eternity, to be the apparently essential vehicle for that eternal relationship with the divine that lies at the heart of the Christian promise, it ought to be seen as fairly significant in this life. Because of the deeply rooted dualism [of our culture], however, to the extent moderns believe in eternal life they seem much more comfortable with the idea of a disembodied immortal soul than a resurrected eternal body."

www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=335

N.T. Wright: "It is fascinating to me that most contemporary Christians find this idea strange and new, since it is *so* front and center -- in Paul particularly ... We tend to think of a new state which will be a less solid thing. But what the New Testament is talking about is a new creation which would be a more solid thing, whatever that will be like ... [Many] think that actually the resurrection of the body is a kind of fancy, early Christian way of saying a spiritual survival--which is precisely the opposite of what it is."

www.beliefnet.com/story/148/story_14843.html

[Josh]

8/10/06:

Yeah, where you pick up this attitude most, I think, is funerals. There's a lot of talk about how so-and-so doesn't have to suffer anymore now that they are 'free of their body', and how great it is that their spirit is now free to sing with the angels (that means they are now enjoying an angelic-like existence).

It's very common, and I know the pastor who veers this way means well, but, you're right, it's not really a Christian way to speak at a funeral.

It seems a shame not to mention the resurrection at a funeral- not to mention the glorious new body that so-and-so will inherit (or, more precisely, become).

Part of the reason it doesn't come up enough at funerals, I think, is that it doesn't come up enough in Church in general. It needs to be preached and taught, and, frankly, it needs to be something we 'encourage one another with, as we see the Day approaching' (can't remember that reference).

[Josh]

8/14/06:

A article on this subject (from a Christian dualist- as opposed to Platonic or Gnostic, perspective):

Funeral Faux Pas:

www.equip.org/free/JAF100.htm