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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Herman Meester <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] hell
  • Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 12:30:01 +0000

On 18/03/2006 11:19, Herman Meester wrote:
...

-The resurrection of the body, needless to say, is impossible ...

Is anything impossible for God? Jeremiah 32:27. This is not something logically impossible, just something requiring a miracle. Of course there is some need to establish continuity between a dead body and a resurrected one, which could perhaps be thought of as the disembodied and perhaps "sleeping" soul. Yes, there is an issue here of exactly how this happens, but this does not make anything impossible.

... - unless
this earthly body becomes a heavenly body: such as the soul. The
immortality of the soul, then, is applied to the body too, but this
body is of course not earthly - it must be turned into something
higher by God. After all, even in Antiquity they knew that the earthly
body is a source of uncleanness, unthinkable that that body would end
up in the heavens: it would fall down.

This is a very Greek notion, not a Hebrew Bible one.
-Exactly this is what the apostle Paul says.
Paul doesn't believe, of course, in the literal resurrection of dead
bodies - dead is dead. ...

Paul most certainly did believe in the literal resurrection of dead bodies, as witnessed for him by the literally dead and resurrected body of Jesus which he saw. Read 1 Corinthians 15, especially vv.3-8.

... However, God can turn a dead body into a
heavenly body.
Only in second century Christianity did the Church fathers, in the
Docetic controversy, stress their view that there really is a literal
resurrection of the dead body from the grave. Only the Western
churches accepted this doctrine (and disagree with Paul), which to
this day plays no role in the Eastern churches.

It is abundantly clear from the New Testament that from the very start the Christian message was that Jesus had been literally resurrected. In many places it is also clearly taught that believers can expect a similar literal resurrection. The western churches do not in the slightest disagree with Paul and the other NT authors on this.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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