Ed1wolf,
This would go a whole lot better if, when you respond to me you would consider what I have said when you have said the exact same things in the past. Instead I feel you are ignoring what I say, and you repeat the same things that have been answered many times. What do you have to gain from this?
Your strategy is like the chess player who just makes his moves, and ignores that his opponent has an obvious response that he always made in the past when he made similar moves.
Most of the biblical evidence points to no.3 being correct. Though of course it is not exactly like the body we have on earth but apparently there are some continuities between the bodies as shown in three of the gospels. The scriptures teach that our resurrected bodies will be similar to Jesus' resurrected body as portrayed in three of the gospels. Your old body is radically transformed as explained by Paul in Chapter 15.
Oh, ppuhleeeze. We have been over this time and time again. You have never showed us one place where I Cor 15 says the body has to disappear from the grave in order for God to give us a new body. You have not shown us one place where I Cor 15 says the body that comes up is the same body. I have shown you where Paul says it is a different body.
Sigh, once again.
And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. I Cor 15 37-38
And what about 2 Corinthians 5 where it says our bodies will decay but we will have a new body that will be eternal. I quoted that to you, you quote it back, and then you just ignore it.
OK, so you think Peter and Paul are alive today in some sort of spirit body. Yes, that is what Paul seems to be expecting. I don't think it actually happened, but that is what Paul was expecting, that his body would decay and he would be given a new body, eternal in the heavens as he describes in 2 Corinthians 5.
So we may have found one point of agreement! Shout it from the rooftops! After all this effort to find something you can agree on, you finally admit to agreeing on something! You and I both think that Paul was saying that when he dies, he will have a new spirit body that he lives in while the old body decays in the grave.
Of course we differ on whether Paul thought that spirit body is eternal. In my view, Paul clearly tells us in 2 Cor that when our earthly body decays, we will have a new body that is eternal.
But, no, you say, that spirit body is only temporary, and some day will be combined with our physical earthly body that will resurrect. How in the heck can that happen? Paul's earthly body has decayed, and the atoms have been absorbed into the ecosystem, and are probably spread throughout the earth. In fact, if you do the math, you probably have atoms that were in Paul's corpse that are in your body now. Do all those atoms need to be gathered back to re-form the corpse of Paul so it can arise? What can possibly be the purpose of that? And if those atoms were historically part of many corpses, to which corpse will those atoms go in the resurrection?
Will the resurrected bodies be made of atoms? If so, do they not have the limits of the laws of physics? And if not of atoms, why does God need to bring all the atoms of Paul back together?
You switch back to the gospels, but remember, they were written after Paul. Paul shows no knowledge of them, and little if any interest in the story they tell. Paul shows no interest in an empty grave or interacting with a resurrected corpse. So how do you know that aspect of the gospels was not something they made up after Paul?
And yes, we all know what you will do here. Once more you will claim that since Paul compares the resurrected body to birds, fish, the moon and stars, and those are all physical, therefore the resurrected body is physical. Those are also all stupid! Those are also all mortal! Those are also all made of atoms and restrained by the laws of physics on atoms! Those are also all unable to talk! Those are also all decaying! By your logic, resurrected bodies are physical, stupid, mortal, made of atoms, restrained by the laws of physics, unable to talk and decaying! But if you say, no, you will accept only that they need to be physical, when one can use the exact same logic that you use to prove they are mortal, then you are using special pleading.
And yes, you will go back to the list of names that Paul says saw Jesus, but remember I see no adequate explanation for why you would think Paul thought they saw more than a heavenly vision. You believe that Acts 26:19 has the words of Paul, and there it specifically says that what Paul saw was a heavenly vision. If that is all Paul saw, how do you know he thought the others on the list saw anything more? Saying that the later gospels say so, when Paul shows no recognition of the story of the later gospels, is not, to me, an adequate ansser.
Yes, but the verses in chapter 15 combined with the descriptions of Christs resurrected body in the gospels demonstrate that while there is a radical difference between the two bodies, there is also a continuity between the two. I.e., a seed grows into the same species of tree as the seed was. Jesus' was obviously recognizable in His resurrected body. Therefore He had the same facial structure hair color and etc. He even had the same scars.
Huh? Paul says it is a different body that comes up. Nowhere does he say it is radically changed.
And if you believe the gospels, was he even easily recognizable? Luke says he walked with two disciples for a long distance without them recognizing him. John says Mary was talking to him and thought he was a gardener.
But even if the resurrected body looks much like the earthly body, why does that prove the earthly body came out of the grave? Why not simply make a spirit body that looks like the physical body?
Yes, it is extremely rare, but that is not all the evidence, there is more evidence than just Paul's witness.
Ok, but you are talking about a stinking corpse arising after being dead for three days. I would not consider one person saying he had a heavenly vision as being adequate to prove that.
Now you turn to the gospels? Ok, Paul's heavenly vision alone is hardly adequate. Again, the gospels were written much later than Paul by authors who do not identify themselves and do not state their sources. How do we know they are reliable? The first gospel, Mark, which probably ended at 16:8 makes no mention of appearances, but only says people will see him in Galilee. That's odd, for Paul says he saw a vision of Jesus and infers that others did too. Was Mark saying nothing more than that his intended audience in Galilee can expect to see visions of Jesus in Galilee? Later gospels and later versions of Mark add story of sightings of a physical Jesus, but these hopelessly contradict each other.
And of course once you understand all the strong evidence for the existence of the Christian God, such an event becomes much more likely.
It does? One would think that if God existed, and wanted people to know about this, he would have given us credible evidence of this. We have credible evidence about Ceasar. We have credible evidence about Alexander. If God wanted us to believe this, why didn't he give us similar evidence?
