Debating the Resurrection

[juantoo3]

Found this in the paper today:

Mar 20, 12:00 PM EDT
Religion Today
-excerpt:

By RACHEL ZOLL
AP Religion Writer

On Easter Sunday, Christians will proclaim the message at the heart of their faith - "He is risen" - and will affirm the hope that God will raise all the dead at the end of time.

But this belief is deeply misunderstood, say scholars from varied faith traditions who have been trying to clear up the confusion in several recent books.

"We are troubled by the gap between the views on these things of the general public and the findings of contemporary scholarship," said Kevin Madigan and Jon Levenson, authors of the upcoming book, "Resurrection, The Power of God for Christians and Jews."

The three scholars also have been challenging the idea, part of Greek philosophy and popular now, that resurrection for Jews and the followers of Jesus is simply the survival of an individual's soul in the hereafter. The scholars say resurrection occurs for the whole person - body and soul. For early Christians and some Jews, resurrection meant being given back one's body or possibly God creating a new similar body after death, Wright has said.

Madigan and Levenson, among other scholars, also emphasize that resurrection for humankind is a belief that Christians and Jews share.

Christians generally find it difficult to imagine that a faith that doesn't believe in Christ's Resurrection can believe in resurrection at all.

But "as the early church was developing, rabbis were making resurrection an article of normative belief," Madigan and Levenson said in e-mailed answers to questions from The Associated Press. "That is something many Jews do not know. Like many Christians, they are under the misimpression that resurrection is a uniquely Christian hope." (emphasis mine, -jt3)

Jews in the time of Jesus believed that resurrection was bodily and communal - in that it brought justice to the oppressed and renewed creation, wrote Madigan, who teaches Christian history at Harvard Divinity School, and Levenson, who teaches Jewish studies there. That Jewish belief was absorbed and reshaped by the earliest Christians to form part of their religion.

Most modern-day Jews don't know this. Except for the Orthodox branch of Judaism, Jewish groups deleted belief in resurrection from the traditional prayer book during revisions that began during the 19th century in response to rationalistic, Enlightenment thought. (emphasis mine, -jt3)

Yet Wright and others say *the church should teach what the first Christians believed.* Wright also has argued that the physical reality of a future world after death shows "the created order matters to God, and Jesus' Resurrection is the pilot project for that renewal." (emphasis mine, -jt3)

News from The Associated Press

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Wow, that was a really thin article. I looked up the two authors on Amazon and found some really interesting looking titles under Levenson.

Chris

 

[Dream]

Zoll Defibrillators

More articles by Rachel Zoll

What a hottie.

 

[Thomas]

Interesting. I had always assumed the Jews believed in a form of Resurrection?

As I understand it, the Jews hold a holistic anthropology, 'human' implying a corporate of body and soul, the former being the physical manifestation of the latter, as opposed to the classic Greek duality of body and soul as two distinct entities.

The three scholars also have been challenging the idea, part of Greek philosophy and popular now, that resurrection for Jews and the followers of Jesus is simply the survival of an individual's soul in the hereafter. The scholars say resurrection occurs for the whole person - body and soul.

As any Christian catechist knows.

I'm surprised that this is news ... but I'm glad it's attracting interest, anyway.

Alan F. Segal is noted as saying:

... most Americans expect the afterlife will be a continuation of life on earth — "like a really good assisted-living facility" ... But their ideas have been moulded by Western individualism, and scholars say many important teachings from early Christianity have been skewed as a result."

Traditionally the Resurrection signifies a corporate and communal event, not an individualistic one ... and Christian doctrine is corporate and communal, not individualistic ... which is why the ekklesia is central to the doctrine — without it the Mystical body exists only in a abstract and speculative sense — it is a physical representation of the Mystical Body in the created order, it represents a reality in a way no individual can accomplish.

(Theosis or divinisation is not the Christian doctrinal equivalent of a personalist philosophy of enlightenment ... )

As N.T. Wright says:

the church should teach what the first Christians believed.

This is what the Roman Church and the Orthodox Patriachates teach, so if you wanna know the real deal, you know where to look ...

Thomas

 

[wil]

As N.T. Wright says:

the church should teach what the first Christians believed.

This is what the Roman Church and the Orthodox Patriachates teach, so if you wanna know the real deal, you know where to look ...

Thomas

Oh, thank you thank you Thomas, I'll run right away over to my nearest one and only true church, but would that be yours? or mee's? or dor's? Oh I'm so confused, so many choices of the one and only true religions.

gimmee a break, tis a broken record

Why don't we go with what the first Christians believed. Well they didn't believe in indoor plumbing, or the internet, or .....

Now one will go on and say well that is different. Is it? Every single book, every single science, math, language, has been updated evolved, developed a new understanding except one book, we'll keep taking that Bible back to its original source and stone homosexuals and all the rest..

 

[Thomas]

Oh, thank you thank you Thomas, I'll run right away over to my nearest one and only true church, but would that be yours? or mee's? or dor's? Oh I'm so confused, so many choices of the one and only true religions.

Easy. Go back to the source, and then look at the motivation behind later denominations diverging from the path.

As the says, many of the modern versions of Christianity teach according to their own agenda, which bears scant relation to what was originally taught.

gimmee a break, tis a broken record

In your opinion. It's a truth that bears repeating ... often ... the very fact that the publication of a book arouses such interest in something I thought everybody interested in Christianity knew, proves the point.

Why don't we go with what the first Christians believed. Well they didn't believe in indoor plumbing, or the internet, or ...

Poor argument, Wil. What identifies a 'Christian' is neither temporal nor technological, is it?

Every single book, every single science, math, language, has been updated evolved, developed a new understanding except one book, we'll keep taking that Bible back to its original source and stone homosexuals and all the rest..

There's a difference between the secular and the sacred sciences, isn't there ...

Thomas

 

[wil]

What identifies a 'Christian' is neither temporal nor technological, is it?


There's a difference between the secular and the sacred sciences, isn't there ...

Thomas

What defines a Christian in my mind is actions. Which would eliminate about 99% of them as being Christian.

Yes there is a difference between the two, one is progressing in the direction of more knowledge and understanding, the other is entrenched in the past and refuses to move forward despite new evidence.

 

[Snoopy]

Every single book, every single science, math, language, has been updated evolved, developed a new understanding except one book, we'll keep taking that Bible back to its original source and stone homosexuals and all the rest..

The Quoran? The Vedas? The Pali Canon?...

s.

 

[Snoopy]

actions

I agree.

s.

 

[wil]

The Quoran? The Vedas? The Pali Canon?...

s.

my bad, I can't speak to what other religions are doing or not doing.

 

[Snoopy]

my bad, I can't speak to what other religions are doing or not doing.

Hey my knowledge is both wide ranging and deep in it's over-arching ignorance. I just kind of thought these examples show the Bible isn't the only document still sort of frozen in amber. That needn't be a criticism though. (Hasn't the Bible been fiddled around with quite a bit over the centuries? Or am I making that up?). I don't expect Jane Austen's novels are going to be updated, evolve or "improved" upon, for better or worse, they too are "frozen in amber." Needn't stop critical appraisal, other works being derived from them or made in response to them though, need it?

s.

 

[Virtual_Cliff]

I don't expect Jane Austen's novels are going to be updated, evolve or "improved" upon, for better or worse, they too are "frozen in amber." Needn't stop critical appraisal, other works being derived from them or made in response to them though, need it?

s.

And the same goes for Shakespeare. You see a play from about 400 years ago, but you get caught up in the human drama just as much - or more - as if you were watching a soap on the telly. So with the Bible: I can't read the story of David's reaction to the loss of his son Absolom without crying. The eternal truths don't change, although people's interpretation of them may.

Wil, I think that to build a new order based on the the principle of love, you don't have to tear down the old orders. Rather you do better by building on them, by standing on the shoulders of giants, as it were.

-Cliff

 

[Thomas]

What defines a Christian in my mind is actions. Which would eliminate about 99% of them as being Christian.

My point is I think you have a profoundly 99% of whom ... or rather, what's you definition of a Christian?

Yes there is a difference between the two, one is progressing in the direction of more knowledge and understanding, the other is entrenched in the past and refuses to move forward despite new evidence.

Oh, come on Wil ... I think Segals' comment applies here:

But their ideas have been molded by Western individualism, and scholars say many important teachings from early Christianity have been skewed as a result."

Christianity is founded in the Eternal Truth of the Absolute, and manifest in and made known through a metaphysic of the person ... and provides the means by which one might transcend self ... your 'truth' is founded on the empirical and the contingent, and as such is locked in upon itself as its own paradigm ... until nature comes knocking on the door ...

The biggest mistake we make is in assuming we are somehow better than our forebears ... we might have learnt to hide our faeces and dazzle ourselves with the glamour of our technologies ... but we're deeper in the doo-dooh now than we've ever been.

I'm honestly not sure whether this planet will sustain my children, now in their 20s, into their old age we have led them to expect, and which we assumed as a right. (By which I mean the affluent West, of course — the 'third world' as we call it has been footing the bill for our creature comforts for a number of years now ... )

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

Hi Cliff —

Wil, I think that to build a new order based on the the principle of love, you don't have to tear down the old orders. Rather you do better by building on them, by standing on the shoulders of giants, as it were.

The point is, they were giants, and cos we can't attain even the 'old order', we cry 'sour grapes' and invent 'new orders' (or new denominations, indeed) tailored to our shortcomings ...

Thomas

 

[wil]

I don't expect Jane Austen's novels are going to be updated, evolve or "improved" upon, for better or worse, they too are "frozen in amber." Needn't stop critical appraisal, other works being derived from them or made in response to them though, need it?

And the same goes for Shakespeare. You see a play from about 400 years ago, but you get caught up in the human drama just as much - or more - as if you were watching a soap on the telly. So with the Bible: I can't read the story of David's reaction to the loss of his son Absolom without crying. The eternal truths don't change, although people's interpretation of them may./quote]I agree on both counts. Although that would be relegating the bible to be a good book of fiction, which does not need to be updated.

And yes the bible has been updated some, both critically and nefariously. But it is about time for the entire canon to be looked at, and footnotes which indicate hyperbole, allegory, metaphor, fictional accounts, as many deem it to be historical record...one which the historical record questions.

 

[_Z_]

For early Christians and some Jews, resurrection meant being given back one’s body or possibly God creating a new similar body after death,

the latter makes a little sense, the resurrection of all the dead upon earth does not. we are left though with the idea that the righteous are born again [problematic ethically], you would need a big planet to put everyone on and what then would happen as we multiply? eventually we are all standing on each others heads.

the only logical conclusion i can think of is of a rebirth in eternity ~ but with a physical body?

then there is the problem of the immortality, after a while everything would have been done a zillion times over, and why would we need to do anything ~ apathy would set in, i can only imagine what that would be like after a few million years, but it wouldn’t be heaven i am sure.
for me ‘heaven’ would be without a material body nor its concerns.

 

[Snoopy]

then there is the problem of the immortality, after a while everything would have been done a zillion times over

I think you might be assuming that the being has memory of previous manifestations. If not, Groundhog Day need never occur.

s.

 

[_Z_]

I think you might be assuming that the being has memory of previous manifestations. If not, Groundhog Day need never occur.

not at all, i am assuming that in one lifetime after a few million years everything would have been done to exhaustion ~ and that would be like groundhog day except each day would be new but with the same old stuff going on in one way or another. the trick for immortality is to not do things.

 

[Thomas]

Hi Z —

Well we're discussing a Mystery, not a known quantity ... so there are no definitive answers, but there are firm guidelines.

the resurrection of all the dead upon earth does not.

Why not?

we are left though with the idea that the righteous are born again [problematic ethically],

Why?

you would need a big planet to put everyone on and what then would happen as we multiply?

Although bodily, we will be both immortal and incorruptible, and might discover that our material bodies are not bound by the physical world in quite the way they are now; that we have no authority over our physical being is because we are subject to temporality and corruption ... we are subject to the material at present, there is no need to assume we shall be under the same determination ... size, for one ...

Reproduction, as we know it, might well be a post-Adamic consequence, and not a given. Immortal and incorruptible also implies we shall rediscover what we think 'physical' to be ... as one can assume we will have overcome concupiscence, sexual relations as we understand it might not even be on the agenda ... bit of a rude awakening for those who think that sexual orientation/activity is a primary marker of their being ...

the only logical conclusion i can think of is of a rebirth in eternity ~ but with a physical body?

That's what the man said.

then there is the problem of the immortality, after a while everything would have been done a zillion times over, and why would we need to do anything ~ apathy would set in,

No, apathy is a post-Adamic condition — a negative state, so no apathy, no sloth, no gluttony ...

There is a strong argument that the good never repeats itself precisely, so no, no 'eternal repetition', each 'time' different ... and the source of infinite delight ...

i can only imagine what that would be like after a few million years, but it wouldn’t be heaven i am sure.

Again, looking from the viewpoint of the damaged, we must make sure we do not project that damage into our future.

Look at it another way ... that which we call God is Infinite and inexhaustible, so if you began a journey into God, there is no end, and no exhaustion ... just constant unfolding, constant joy at the discovery ... every moment new ...

for me ‘heaven’ would be without a material body nor its concerns.

But that would be only half the picture, wouldn't it? That assumes God cannot create a perfect material realm ...

... and you would no longer be human ...

Thomas

 

[Snoopy]

not at all, i am assuming that in one lifetime after a few million years everything would have been done to exhaustion ~ and that would be like groundhog day except each day would be new but with the same old stuff going on in one way or another. the trick for immortality is to not do things.

I bow to your knowledge of how the universe will pan out over eternity

s.