Did Paul see Jesus at the road to Damascus?

Mark Quayle said:

I like this, though I have my doubts concerning the terminology. Haha, I can hear some of my opponents accusing me of parsing, were I to use those words —the 'uncreated energies' being visible, but not the 'divine essence'. But as I understand you to be saying, I agree with you.

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As a computer programmer, specifically a systems programmer specializing in embedded OS development, and as a clergyman, I have no qualms about parsing. I mean, what’s wrong with interpreting the syntax and semantics of a statement? (Technically, syntactic analysis is what we call lexing or lexical analysis, where we have a program called a lexer, which is usually generated along with a parser by the UNIX utilities lex and yacc, which breaks down a statement into tokens according to syntax and then sends the tokens to the parser, which then reads the tokens and derives the semantics of the statement from them).

One theme I see concerning the Creator is the 'newness'. Only God can do new, and when we see him as he is, "when we've been there 10,000 years..." he will still be new to us, full of depth and discovery.

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This is what Metropolitan Kallistos Ware was suggesting.

The only question I think is whether or not in the Parousia, we will retain a linear perception of time.

Theosis, at least as I understand it to mean, is also distinct from Sanctification. But it is an interesting concept. (One of my more Arminian-leaning, semi-Wesleyan thinking, uncles, said at my suggestion that it almost seems as though the Bride of Christ's (Body of Christ, etc) unity with Christ, and indeed with the Godhead, makes her seem almost the "fourth person of the Trinity" he laughed and said believes her to be exactly that. I know he wasn't ignorant or stupid enough to see that God in any of his particularities, parts, attributes etc is not Created.) I don't see it even nearly possible that what Christ is doing in us, (which I consider to be the 'construction of the Bride' (my speculative belief —not Reformed and not Orthodoxy)), brings us anywhere nearly to perfection on this temporal economy. Our transformation, at seeing him as he is, does perfect us, but even that does not make us HIM, but only his body, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Yet there is something to the notion that we become one with God, as the Son is one with the Father.

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My interpretation of John Wesley, who was fairly extensively connected to the Eastern Orthodox church (he was even secretly, and technically uncanonically, ordained a bishop by H.G. Erasmus of Arcadia, when Bishop Erasmus was visiting Great Britain; later, in the wake of the Oxford Movement, many Anglo-Catholic priests were secretly reordained by Orthodox and Old Catholic bishops as they had concerns about the legitimacy of Anglican apostolic succession).

The Liturgist said:

So actually @timewerx you are in obviously mistaken on this point, because the Gospel According to Matthew, in Matthew 1:1, and the Gospel According to John, in John 1:1-17, introduce our Lord as Jesus Christ, and the reason for the naming of Him as Jesus, which translates to “YHWH Saves” (Joshua, from the Old Testament, had an old Hebrew version of this name, and some Messianic Jews and Christians like to call Him “Yeshua”, but “Jesus” or “Jesu” are equally valid forms of this name), is given in Matthew 1:21. And Saint Matthew the Apostle and St. John the Apostle were both disciples of our Lord, who knew Him personally. St. Mark the Evangelist got his account from St. Peter the Apostle, and St. Luke got his account from St. Paul, which He would have received both from the other Apostles, such as Peter, and others who had met Jesus and were members of the Seventy, for example, St. James the Apostle (indeed I believe St. Luke is regarded as one of the Seventy).

So the idea that it was St. Paul who introduced the idea of calling Jesus Christ “Jesus” is erroneous. Indeed, even among liberal Christian scholars, I have not seen that argument, because we have fragments of the lost Gospel of the Hebrews, which may or may not have been the lost Aramaic version of the Gospel of Matthew, and we also have the Gospel of Thomas, which some people deny is of Gnostic provenance or has Gnostic interpolations, and which among liberal Christian scholars it is almost the liberal Christian orthodoxy to say that the Gospel of Thomas is the oldest. Although I think the idea that it is free from Gnostic influence is wishful thinking, both because of some of the content, and because it was found at Nag Hammadi among explicitly Valentinian and other Gnostic texts, and it is a Coptic codex, and the Apostle Thomas spoke Aramaic, and established the Church in Edessa, Mesopotamia, and India, where he was martyred (where there were pre-existant communities of Jews). Although, bearing in mind that I consider it at least corrupted, insofar as most of it corresponds to the Synoptic Gospels, it is possible the Gospel of Thomas is a corrupt Egyptian Gnostic translation of a Syriac sayings document that the Apostle Thomas and his disciples St. Addai and Mari, who were among the Seventy, used in preaching the Gospel, because we know the Syriac Diatessaron, a Gospel harmony* which was used by most Syriac Christians until the Peshitta translation was completed (there were earlier Syriac translations, for example, one attributed to Philoxenus, which were too difficult for most Syriac speakers to understand; Peshitta literally means “Simple”), was written by Tatian in the mid Second Century (who later went off the rails and started a Gnostic cult under the influence of another group of Syrian Gnostics, I think the Encratites, just as Tertullian, a great Latin Church Father, who coined the word “Trinitas”, later tragically joined the Montanist heresy).

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I am specific about The Christ introducing Himself (first person) as Jesus and it only ever happened with Apostle Paul.

Ligurian said:

To the church of Philadelphia (brotherly love)

Revelation 3:12 Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God: and My new name.

Revelation 14:1 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with Him an hundred forty four thousand, having His Father's name written in their foreheads.

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The word "name" is mentioned many times.

However, I'm specific about the name "Jesus" mentioned by Christ Himself.

timewerx said:

I am specific about The Christ introducing Himself (first person) as Jesus and it only ever happened with Apostle Paul.

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I get that, and that’s not a rational statement to make, because, aside from the fact that you have no way of knowing that, and Matthew, Peter and John did not learn His first name from Paul,

the scriptural text plainly says our Lord was named Jesus, that was the name He had from birth, and it was only to His disciples that he revealed that He was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and he did this at the Transfiguration, when he asked Peter “Who do you say I am?” Unlike other claimants to the title of Messiah, our Lord did not flaunt his claim to be the Messiah, because this is contrary to His humility, because God is humble (surprisingly), to the point where he put on our mortal human flesh and allowed us to kill him brutally on the Cross, so that He could give His life as a ransom for many, trampling down death by death through His resurrection, and as Fr. John Behr put it, show us what it means to be human.

timewerx said:

The word "name" is mentioned many times.

However, I'm specific about the name "Jesus" mentioned by Christ Himself.

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Right, and the thing is, you have no basis for saying it only ever happened that He introduced Himself to St. Paul as Jesus.

My name is Eugene, it was given to me by my parents, and I introduce myself to people as Gene or Eugene.

Clare73 said:

If we share in Jesus' inheritance, what does that imply regarding the Godhead, when we are his body in the two-in-one enfleshment of the marital union (Ephesians 5:31-32)?

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Well, I think you answered your own question, albeit the marital union should not be regarded as sexual or as a literal marriage; the Church is also called the Body of Christ, and we are said to be grafted onto that Body.

Ligurian said:

Revelation is not linear, and it's part of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Revelation 12:17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the Commandments of God, and have the Testimony of Jesus Christ.

Audience and Pre-conditions

John 13--John 16 is the Passover Sermon to the Galilean Apostles, which is followed by the John 17 prayer to the Father for these men and those who believe Jesus through their word.

John 14:15-17 is the prerequisite for John 16:13.

Matthew 13:10-11 And the Disciples came, and said unto Him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given.

John 8:31-32 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue in My word, [then] are ye My Disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.



Jesus is speaking to the Twelve, here:

John 15:26-27 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, [even] the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning.

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You frequently talk about a “Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven” but there is only one Gospel, which is handed down to us from the Apostles primarily in the four books of the Evangelists. The rest of the New Testament consists of writings selected by the early church to provide context and exegesis of those four books, although there is enough material that one could hypothetically extract a narrative Gospel text that corresponded to the four canonical Gospels using the other books in the New Testament and some in the old.

The unity of the Gospel is attested to in Galatians 1:8 , where the Apostle Paul says that if anyone preaches a different Gospel from the one taught by the apostles, let them be anathema.

Clare73 said:

If we share in Jesus' inheritance, what does that imply regarding the Godhead, when we are his body in the two-in-one enfleshment of the marital union (Ephesians 5:31-32)?

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Hard to be sure, even if we have hints, just what such a thing can be in human words, nevermind even in human understanding. But I sure am looking forward to finding out!

One thing for sure. It is worth it.

Edit: Occurs to me to mention:

The temporal human body of Christ, was not (at least to my thinking), his, or him, before creation. It is an addition —perhaps then, even the glorified 'version'. Yet I consider the possibility that it was him (the glorified version) before, and that we are made in that image, he being the original from which the first human (Adam) was a copy. But I don't know. There is too much speculation there, that I don't hear many echos of in Scripture.

But anyhow, that subject, to me seems to deal with the question of the Body of Christ as we are in Heaven, and what our relationship is with God, as to divinity. Above the angels, but I can't see us being actually God. No. But certainly special and precious to him in a way no angel can be, and one with him in some way that I wonder shouldn't maybe should be obvious to us now, but we are too weak to consider it.

The Liturgist said:

I get that, and that’s not a rational statement to make, because, aside from the fact that you have no way of knowing that, and Matthew, Peter and John did not learn His first name from Paul,

the scriptural text plainly says our Lord was named Jesus, that was the name He had from birth, and it was only to His disciples that he revealed that He was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and he did this at the Transfiguration, when he asked Peter “Who do you say I am?” Unlike other claimants to the title of Messiah, our Lord did not flaunt his claim to be the Messiah, because this is contrary to His humility, because God is humble (surprisingly), to the point where he put on our mortal human flesh and allowed us to kill him brutally on the Cross, so that He could give His life as a ransom for many, trampling down death by death through His resurrection, and as Fr. John Behr put it, show us what it means to be human.

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The synoptic Gospels were written after Paul's Epistles and the name Jesus was always mentioned in the 3rd person in the synoptic Gospels.

Books of NT in the Chronological order:

Appendix 8: Chronological Order of the Books of the New Testament - Bible Study Tools


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The Liturgist said:

As a computer programmer, specifically a systems programmer specializing in embedded OS development, and as a clergyman, I have no qualms about parsing. I mean, what’s wrong with interpreting the syntax and semantics of a statement? (Technically, syntactic analysis is what we call lexing or lexical analysis, where we have a program called a lexer, which is usually generated along with a parser by the UNIX utilities lex and yacc, which breaks down a statement into tokens according to syntax and then sends the tokens to the parser, which then reads the tokens and derives the semantics of the statement from them).

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There is nothing wrong with it. It is just an insult by some who probably mean 'equivocating'. But when they say it as they do, they are obviously at odds with the person doing it, and probably making a claim as to that person rejecting "the plain meaning".

The Liturgist said:

This is what Metropolitan Kallistos Ware was suggesting.

The only question I think is whether or not in the Parousia, we will retain a linear perception of time.

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I think the expanded(?) intelligence we will possess will easily encompass linear time, and be able at will to perceive it as linear, or however we wish. My father was a NT Greek authority of some note, and his studies led to some funny comments on perspective. One had to do with what some might consider sci-fi! "What is the speed of light over billions of years, if we wish to explore the universe? What about when we are in heaven, and have the speed of thought?"

The Liturgist said:

My interpretation of John Wesley, who was fairly extensively connected to the Eastern Orthodox church (he was even secretly, and technically uncanonically, ordained a bishop by H.G. Erasmus of Arcadia, when Bishop Erasmus was visiting Great Britain; later, in the wake of the Oxford Movement, many Anglo-Catholic priests were secretly reordained by Orthodox and Old Catholic bishops as they had concerns about the legitimacy of Anglican apostolic succession).

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Wow! I had not heard of that before, to my memory. Interesting!

The Liturgist said:

Right, and the thing is, you have no basis for saying it only ever happened that He introduced Himself to St. Paul as Jesus.

My name is Eugene, it was given to me by my parents, and I introduce myself to people as Gene or Eugene.

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If you are building a case like a legal case, every tiny, seemingly useless detail can matter. It can establish a pattern that can lead to a much greater insight or an enemy.

The Liturgist said:

You frequently talk about a “Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven” but there is only one Gospel, which is handed down to us from the Apostles primarily in the four books of the Evangelists.

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Two of those books were written by Galilean Apostles, who were with Jesus from the beginning. The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven... those very words are what Jesus taught.

And so, this is what the Disciples heard Jesus say to them:

Matthew 4:23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
Matthew 9:35 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
Matthew 24:14 And this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

Which is called the Kingdom of Heaven, here:

Matthew 3:2 Matthew 4:17 Matthew 5:3 Matthew 5:10 Matthew 5:19 Matthew 5:20 Matthew 7:21 Matthew 8:11 Matthew 10:7 Matthew 11:11 Matthew 11:12 Matthew 13:11 Matthew 13:24 Matthew 13:31 Matthew 13:33 Matthew 13:44 Matthew 13:45 Matthew 13:47 Matthew 13:52 Matthew 16:19 Matthew 18:1 Matthew 18:3 Matthew 18:4 Matthew 18:23 Matthew 19:12 Matthew 19:14 Matthew 19:23 Matthew 20:1 Matthew 22:2 Matthew 23:13 Matthew 25:1 Matthew 25:14

John 3:3-5 John 12:44 Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on Me, believeth not on Me, but on Him that sent Me. 45 And he that seeth Me seeth Him that sent Me. 46 I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in darkness. 47 And if any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. 49 For I have not spoken of Myself; but the Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. 50 And I know that His Commandment is Life Everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak.

So it's actually the Gospel of the Father, preached by Jesus... and all about the Kingdom of Heaven.

1 Peter 4:17-18 For the time [is come] that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if [it] first [begin] at us, what shall the end [be] of them that obey not the Gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

1 Peter 1:23-25 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh [is] as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by this Gospel is preached unto you. (Isaiah 40:3-8, John 1:23)

This Gospel of the Kingdom is ancient:
Psalms 145:13, 2 Samuel 7:12, 1 Chronicles 22:10, Psalms 45:6-8, Isaiah 9:6-7, Daniel 2:44, etc. ad infinitum.

The Sermon on the Mount is bookended by Kingdom Law verses:

Matthew 5:17-19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of the smallest Commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Matthew 7:24-25 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

And it's all based upon the Law and the Prophets:

Ezekiel 34:30-31 And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, and they My people. O house of Israel, saith the Lord God, 31 ye are My sheep, even the sheep of My flock, and I am the Lord your God, saith the Lord God.
John 10:26 John 8:37 John 10:1-18
Jeremiah 3:3 And thou didst retain many shepherds for a stumbling-block to thyself: thou hadst a harlot's face, thou didst become shameless toward all.LXX
Matthew 23:8-10
Deuteronomy 18:15-19 The Lord thy God shall raise up to thee a prophet of thy brethren, like me; him shall ye hear: 16 according to all things which thou didst desire of the Lord thy God in Choreb in the day of the assembly, saying, We will not again hear the voice of the Lord thy God, and we will not any more see this great fire, and so we shall not die. 17 And the Lord said to me, They have spoken rightly all that they have said to thee. 18 I will raise up to them a prophet of their brethren, like thee; and I will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them as I shall command Him. 19 And whatever man shall not hearken to whatsoever words that prophet shall speak in My name, I will take vengeance on him. = John 12:44-50

timewerx said:

The word "name" is mentioned many times.

However, I'm specific about the name "Jesus" mentioned by Christ Himself.

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Go back and look at what I posted... see if you see why I posted those verses.
If not you, then maybe they'll help the silent reader.

The Liturgist said:

Well, I think you answered your own question, albeit the marital union should not be regarded as sexual or as a literal marriage; the Church is also called the Body of Christ, and we are said to be grafted onto that Body.

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The "body" of Christ comes from the concept of the marital union of Ephesians 5:31-32; i.e., their two-in-one enfleshment, and is indeed a spiritual literal marriage (Ephesians 5:32) of Christ and his Bride--all the born again, their union being shown in the groom being within his bride, and on which binding union (1 Corinthians 6:15-16) temporal marriage is patterned.

Mark Quayle said:

Hard to be sure, even if we have hints, just what such a thing can be in human words, nevermind even in human understanding. But I sure am looking forward to finding out!

One thing for sure. It is worth it.

Edit: Occurs to me to mention:

The temporal human body of Christ, was not (at least to my thinking), his, or him, before creation. It is an addition —perhaps then, even the glorified 'version'. Yet I consider the possibility that it was him (the glorified version) before, and that we are made in that image, he being the original from which the first human (Adam) was a copy. But I don't know. There is too much speculation there, that I don't hear many echos of in Scripture.

But anyhow, that subject, to me seems to deal with the question of the Body of Christ as we are in Heaven, and what our relationship is with God, as to divinity.

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Above the angels, but I can't see us being actually God. No. But certainly special and precious to him in a way no angel can be, and one with him in some way that I wonder shouldn't maybe should be obvious to us now, but we are too weak to consider it.

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You think maybe "above the angels" was what rubbed Lucifer the wrong way, when in the heavenly council it was revealed that the material would be elevated above the superior spiritual, and that the angels would serve as ministers to the inferior material?

Clare73 said:

You think maybe "above the angels" was what rubbed Lucifer the wrong way, when in the heavenly council it was reavealed that the material would be elevated above the superior spiritual?

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Disclaimer: there is much speculation here. I am not saying it is Biblical truth.

When you say, "material would be elevated above the superior spiritual" I agree the spiritual is superior, but I don't consider the material as we now experience it, which we know will pass away, to be what is elevated, but for the transformation of it into what I consider super-spiritual —a level, perhaps infinitely above the 'ordinary' spiritual(?)

There certainly does seem to be a pattern about Lucifer's hatred, when we read how "the angels desire to look into these things" 1 Pet 1:12, ('these things' I take to be referring to the Gospel and its implications as far as God's relationship with his Church. Well, that and any related use from the text, such as the time of his coming and his resultant glory..) We already know the angels love the elect, if for no other reason than because God loves us. (Hard to imagine that they would look up to us, in the end, but... )

Thus, conversely, Lucifer's motivation, I think. Jealousy indulged, and desperate, virulent hatred for anything God loves.

In your answer to The Liturgist, below, where you and he deal with the word, 'literal', you hint rather strongly at what you probably know about my thinking, that the spiritual is the real, compared to this vapor of temporal 'material'. What concepts we presently consider, here, such as fatherhood, communication, mind and will, —even love, are representative copies of the real thing that is of God in his spiritual economy, however poorly they may represent it. (Now while I can't say I see it described as such in Scripture, I have to think that God operates from a different spiritual place from the angels and demons and whatever other spiritual entity there may be. But there, the angels are granted access, and the elect will be permanent residents (or so it seems to me.) So, when I say 'the real thing' in the Spiritual, I am referring to that spiritual economy in which God resides. However, as CS Lewis describes in at least his space trilogy, even the spiritual world (I put with lower-case 's') is a physical world far more solid and substantial than our material world.)

This discussion could go on and on, but long story short, when I say 'literal Bride' (as one example) in Heaven, I am not so much referring to what we know of as Bride, nor certainly one who enjoys the sexual bliss of an earthly bride, but THE REAL THING, in Heaven, which our present experience is "like". It is as different from what we now experience as: being the Body of Christ is, compared to what it will be then. And not only in a matter of degree, but of type/kind of thing. Transformation.

The Liturgist said:

Well, I think you answered your own question, albeit the marital union should not be regarded as sexual or as a literal marriage; the Church is also called the Body of Christ, and we are said to be grafted onto that Body.

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Clare73 said:

The "body" of Christ comes from the concept of the marital union of Ephesians 5:31-32; i.e., their two-in-one enfleshment, and is indeed a spiritual literal marriage (Ephesians 5:32) of Christ and his Bride--all the born again, their union being shown in the groom being within his bride, and on which binding union (1 Corinthians 6:15-16) temporal marriage is patterned.

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Mark Quayle said:

Disclaimer: there is much speculation here. I am not saying it is Biblical truth.
When you say, "material would be elevated above the superior spiritual" I agree the spiritual is superior, but I don't consider the material as we now experience it, which we know will pass away,

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Our resurrection bodies are spiritual (sinless, immortal, glorified) physical bodies (with new properties as was Jesus' resurrection body). That is the "material" that will be elevated above the non-material ("spiritual") in the new heaven and new earth.

to be what is elevated, but for the transformation of it into what I consider super-spiritual —a level, perhaps infinitely above the 'ordinary' spiritual(?)

There certainly does seem to be a pattern about Lucifer's hatred, when we read how "the angels desire to look into these things" 1 Pet 1:12, ('these things' I take to be referring to the Gospel and its implications as far as God's relationship with his Church. Well, that and any related use from the text, such as the time of his coming and his resultant glory..) We already know the angels love the elect, if for no other reason than because God loves us. (Hard to imagine that they would look up to us, in the end, but... )

Thus, conversely, Lucifer's motivation, I think. Jealousy indulged, and desperate, virulent hatred for anything God loves.

In your answer to The Liturgist, below, where you and he deal with the word, 'literal', you hint rather strongly at what you probably know about my thinking, that the spiritual is the real, compared to this vapor of temporal 'material'. What concepts we presently consider, here, such as fatherhood, communication, mind and will, —even love, are representative copies of the real thing that is of God in his spiritual economy, however poorly they may represent it. (Now while I can't say I see it described as such in Scripture, I have to think that God operates from a different spiritual place from the angels and demons and whatever other spiritual entity there may be. But there, the angels are granted access, and the elect will be permanent residents (or so it seems to me.) So, when I say 'the real thing' in the Spiritual, I am referring to that spiritual economy in which God resides. However,

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as CS Lewis describes in at least his space trilogy, even the spiritual world (I put with lower-case 's') is a physical world far more solid and substantial than our material world.)

This discussion could go on and on, but long story short, when I say 'literal Bride' (as one example) in Heaven, I am not so much referring to what we know of as Bride, nor certainly one who enjoys the sexual bliss of an earthly bride, but THE REAL THING, in Heaven, which our present experience is "like". It is as different from what we now experience as: being the Body of Christ is, compared to what it will be then. And not only in a matter of degree, but of type/kind of thing. Transformation.

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I think we are agreed. . .
C. S. Lewis said best what I am trying to convey.
Marriage is constructed in such a way as to give indication of the "far more solid and substantial" spiritual reality on which marriage is patterned.
Marriage indicates the Groom's desire for his Bride, who in some incomprehensible way (perhaps simply by divine decree) he is incomplete without.

Clare73 said:

Our resurrection bodies are spiritual (sinless, immortal, glorified) physical bodies (with new properties as was Jesus' resurrection body). That is the "material" that will be elevated above the non-material ("spiritual") in the new heaven and new earth.

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Yes, VERY physical, in the same way as God is super-masculine, (not 'male' as such, (or so I like to say)), not material in our present comprehension of physical.

This also speaks to another of my favorite speculations —what if God is, or at least, his love is, the essence of every smallest physical particle? Then when we are transformed into a 'new physical' the substance is still the same. He is our very sustenance, in the most detailed and intimate way. We, his body, his dwelling place. (For the reader that will hear me wrong, this is the opposite of Pantheism —he is not his Creation, he is NOT us.)

Clare73 said:

I think we are agreed. . .
C. S. Lewis said best what I am trying to convey.
Marriage is constructed in such a way as to give indication of the "far more solid and substantial" spiritual reality on which marriage is patterned.
Marriage indicates the Groom's desire for his Bride, who in some incomprehensible way (perhaps simply by divine decree) he is incomplete without.

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Agreed. But I hesitate, as you do, to say he is incomplete, or can want. But desire is another thing, (which CS Lewis also deals with by contrast to the desire of demons to inhabit a human (which touches on the subject of 'dwelling place')).

Mark Quayle said:

Yes, VERY physical, in the same way as God is super-masculine, (not 'male' as such, (or so I like to say)), not material in our present comprehension of physical.
This also speaks to another of my favorite speculations —what if God is, or at least, his love is, the essence of every smallest physical particle? Then when we are transformed into a 'new physical' the substance is still the same. He is our very sustenance, in the most detailed and intimate way. We, his body, his dwelling place. (For the reader that will hear me wrong, this is the opposite of Pantheism —he is not his Creation, he is NOT us.)

Agreed. But I hesitate, as you do, to say he is incomplete, or can want. But desire is another thing, (which CS Lewis also deals with by contrast to the desire of demons to inhabit a human (which touches on the subject of 'dwelling place')).

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Good stuff!