Christianity and Materialism

It seems to me rather straightforward how the resurrection of the body works with dualism. But what of materialism? Can a Christian Materialist account for the resurrection of the body in any coherent way? The first problem that will arise is how it is that the person is resurrected given that the body is decomposed. Other problems will follow of course, but I'm interested to see if there are any Christian Materialists here who can convincingly account for the resurrection...

Thanks all,

SorenK

Er, let me first say that I don't know what a Christian Materialist is.

Next, I have heard that the Joesph guy who put Jesus in his tomb....well, the body would be cleaned and preserved with spices...

Not exactly sure about the cultural thing, but how much does a body decompose in three days?

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I meant the resurrection of humanity, not Christ (I.e., the final judgement). It seems generally accepted that at the end of times there will be a resurrection of humanity for final judgement...it is to this that I refer! The resurrection of Christ has it's own problems for the materialist.

A Christian Materialist would be a person who denies that persons have (or are) souls.. . Physicalist might be a better term...

A central tenet of Catholicism is the resurrection of the body. If our bodies are to be resurrected as skeletons, or in decomposing or semi-decomposing states the idea of resurrection becomes very ghoulish indeed. Such a resurrection would make for a great Halloween movie, but somehow I don't think that the gospel writers had "the Night of the Living Dead" in mind when they were developing the idea of resurrection of the body.

Exactly how our bodies are to be resurrected is of course a mystery best described as a miracle. Even as far back as Ezekiel, however, there is the prophecy that God can remold the bones of an ancient army back into a living army of men. Again what is described, like in the creation of Adam, is the formation of living, breathing bodies from dust or clay. The army was not to be an army of skeletons. This process is not one that can be described in terms of physics, but is the result of God's will alone.

More important to Christian thought than the 'how' of resurrection of the body is the 'why'. The very idea of the Word becoming flesh Incarnate demonstates the idea that all of God's creation is deemed to be good. Gnostic dualism would have us believe that the body is inherently evil whereas scripture stresses that our bodies are the very temples of God and are to be cherished in a manner befitting God's holiest shrine.

While the dualism put forth by such philosphers as Rene Descartes has never been termed heretical in the same manner as gnostic dualism, still it is probably better in the psychological sense at least to understand mind, body and soul as a unity. This is true to our own personal experience of ourselves.

Perhaps even the concept of Eternity may not be best described as a continuation of time into the hereafter, but as a transcendance of time centred in the here-and-now.

It seems that a materialists or physicalists would try and limit God's power in providing habitation of spirit. Well, that is not uncommon, and it has as many degrees as there are people. We all struggle with faith, at times, and what we believe God can or will do.

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Galations 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

You are using jargon to some extent. My understanding of a Christian materialist is someone who think that our existence is tied to our material form such that we actually cease to exist at the point of death and then we get resurrected annew at the end of things to live in the New Heavens and earth.
This differs from someone who believes we have a soul that can somehow exist separate from the body even when the body has died.

I believe Jesus went and preached to the spirits of the dead when he was in the tomb and also the souls of the martyrs cried out in revelation how long until we are avenged. This implies consciousness separate from the body.
Since materially we change just about every material atom of our body durign our lifetime this position is not empirically defensible. The person who is resurrected will almost definitely not be recycled from the same atoms which went into the grave. These will probably be in circulation as plants or even living human beings by this point.

I think the resurrection is a mysterious thing. We have some clues in Christs experience and some exposition in scripture also but it is not totally clear. I like to think of it like God has got our personalities all recorded on DVD. He will just create the same pattern at the resurrection and to all intents and purposes we will be the same person with same memories that died with extra refinements and modifications like Jesus had e.g. ability to appear in a locked room sounds cool or to travel through space without a space ship (as at the Ascension).

But that way of thinking is not totally perfect cause i also believe in soul consciousness between death and resurrection.

Maybe our concept of time is the crucial issue here. The eternal God can touch us at point of death of resurrection and time has less meaning than it is the same God meeting with the same person and relating to them in some special way.