Saturday, December 15, 2007

Can a scientist believe the resurrection?

The Bishop of Durham, NT Wright, will be giving a talk with this title on 20/12/2007 at the University of St. Andrews Details

I have already emailed NT Wright with 3 Questions , and not yet received a reply.

Here are some further questions, which I am certain the Bishop of Durham will not discuss in his talk on the resurrection of Jesus.

Why did Paul maintain that Jesus had become a life-giving spirit at the resurrection, and implied that all Christians would become life-giving spirits?

Why did early converts to Christianity scoff at the idea that God would choose to raise a corpse?

Why did Paul think it idiotic to even discuss how bodies can come back, go on to remind the Corinthians that what was in the ground was dead, and tell them that resurrected beings were as different to earthly bodies as fish is different to the moon? (Only an idiot wonders how a fish can turn into the moon)

Why did Paul trash the idea that God would raise beings from the dust that corpses dissolve into?

Why was Paul unable to find one detail from anybody’s personal experience as to what a resurrected body was like, instead being forced to work entirely from general principles and theological reflection?

Why did Paul say that God would destroy both stomach and food to people who were allegedly converted by tales of the resurrected Jesus eating fish?

All these questions, and many more, will be ignored by the Bishop of Durham when he trots out the old tired argumemts that have been refuted hundreds of times.

2 Comments:

Blogger Troy Crider said...

Can you please provide the place in Pauls epistles that you draw your questions from? That would help. Thanks.

6:26 AM  
Blogger Steven Carr said...

Always happy to oblige.

'Why did Paul maintain that Jesus had become a life-giving spirit at the resurrection, and implied that all Christians would become life-giving spirits?'

1 Corinthians 15:45 'So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being" ; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit'

Notice the typology.


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'Why did early converts to Christianity scoff at the idea that God would choose to raise a corpse?'

1 Corinthians 15:35 'But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?'


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Why did Paul think it idiotic to even discuss how bodies can come back, go on to remind the Corinthians that what was in the ground was dead, and tell them that resurrected beings were as different to earthly bodies as fish is different to the moon?

1 Corinthians 15:36-42 'How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.

But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.

There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendour of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendour of the earthly bodies is another. he sun has one kind of splendour, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendour. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead....'

Paul is drawing up a list of categories, creating lists of things which cannot turn into each other.

And then saying that the resurrection of the dead is just like that.

Corpses are one kind of thing. Resurrected beings are another.

Just like a fish is one kind of thing, and a moon is another.

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'Why did Paul trash the idea that God would raise beings from the dust that corpses dissolve into?'


1 Corinthians 15:47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

Our bodies are presently made out of dust, but we will have bodies made out of heavenly material.

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Why did Paul say that God would destroy both stomach and food to people who were allegedly converted by tales of the resurrected Jesus eating fish?

1 Corinthians 6:12-14

"Everything is permissible for me" — but not everything is beneficial.

"Everything is permissible for me" — but I will not be mastered by anything.

"Food for the stomach and the stomach for food" — but God will destroy them both.

12:52 PM  

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