(April 7, 2015 at 1:06 pm)Jenny A Wrote:(April 7, 2015 at 12:51 pm)emjay Wrote: No-one disputes the fact that the physical body is left behind when a person dies and the soul goes into the afterlife, but what I would like to ask Christians is what of the person goes with the soul?
Actually, there was a time in which many Christians believed that their physical bodies would come with them to heaven. That is the reason the Christian church had such a problem with cremation. The resurection of Jesus, and the bodies rising out of their graves when Jesus was cruxified are sited by those Christians for that belief. In Corinthians Paul suggests otherwise. These links lays out the arguments fairly well. Refiner's Fire What the Bible Says
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There is more Biblical support for the idea of the bodily resurrection. For example:
Matthew 5:
29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
Matthew 18:
8 Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
9 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
Mark 9:
43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
45 And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
46 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
47 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
48 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
It is better to go to heaven with part of your body missing, then to go to hell. If one were not having a bodily resurrection, how would one enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye? Or one hand or one foot?
(Notice, in Matthew 5, it is your whole body that would go to hell, meaning your body will live again.)
And, of course, you are right, that the emphasis on the missing body of Jesus makes no sense if resurrection is spiritual only, and not also involving the physical body. If the resurrection is only "spiritual," where is Jesus' body? It would have remained if the resurrection is only spiritual. There is no hint that there was a body remaining when Jesus supposedly ascended into heaven.
But, like with so many other things, the Bible is not consistent on this. For those who want more on this topic, they can start with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_of_the_dead
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
