Did Jesus decompose?

[Godscreated]

 First and for most those are pictures that may not be accurate as to what happened. Jesus did not decompose nor did He have broken bones as the crucified always did and He was killed upon a tree ie, wood just as the OT prophecies tell us. Miracles in the spiritually realm are the answer, if you do not like this answer then so be it, it's your right to believe as you wish, however it doesn't make your belief real.

GC

Well, I'll  give you a point for at least trying to answer the question, and deduct several thousand for failing to reconcile it with basic biology.

How can you apply basic biology to the spiritual world in which many things we call miracles happen. We call them miracles because we do not understand them, when the impossible seems to happen we are dumb founded by the incident and when the impossible happens, ie. to our knowledge, it can only come from One who can cause the impossible to happen because He has control of all things. 

GC

[Brian37]

"Being fully man by definition doesn't mean imperfect and by nature sinful. "

Sorry, that dog won't hunt.

Adam and Eve were the only human beings who have ever existed who were free of original sin. (exception: the Catholics also claim that for Mary, Jesus' mother.) If Jesus was incapable of sining, he was not fully man, but demi-god,. Further , the temptation of Christ in the dessert, by the devil becomes worthless.  For the temptation to be meaningful , Jesus MUST have been capable  of  succumbing to temptation.

The motifs of the bible were written in an age of kings, even polytheism was written in an age of kings. So monotheistic or polytheistic the heros in those mythologies, the stories were written to garner loyalty through command and punishment motifs. 

It is propaganda designed to create loyalty to the clan. 

Non of the religions of antiquity have anything to do with modern western pluralism. They reflect the social norms and beliefs of the age they were written in.

[The Grand Nudger]

-which then, by fiat of christian belief, means that god can be tempted.  The necessary corruptibility of christ as a fitting sacrifice is equally shared by the godhead. It was for this very implication that the contingent of proto-christian believers who insisted that jesus was not a man at all were clutching their daggers.

Not only was the notion of god incarnate heretical to the putative source material, the insistence on gods humanity brought with it the frailties of human beings.

We could go around in circles about this forever, though, because christianity is, in the business of cult studies, what's known as an intentionally confusing ideology. That's the fundamental basis of mystery and unresolvable whatsits taken to indicate divinity. Of impossible but true things. The living dead, the god man, the blind made to see, etc etc etc. It also means that any given believer is constantly certain that people are confused and misrepresenting them, lol. Compartmentalization is a necessary aspect of belief in confusing ideologies, and the believers don't stop doing that when they're engaged in what would otherwise be a rational consideration of one side or the other of any article of their faiths.

The leverage of intentionally confusing postulates isn't actually limited to negative cases, though. Zen koans are another example in the set, and there's something to be said for their initial use as mysteries in christianity - they may have been intended, very much, to produce enlightenment through befuddled confusion - even though the passage of time has robbed them of that purpose and consigned them to a list of things one must simply believe.

[chimp3]

The race is on! Let's see which Christian can compose the most bullshit about decomposition.

[Abaddon_ire]

Well, I'll  give you a point for at least trying to answer the question, and deduct several thousand for failing to reconcile it with basic biology.

How can you apply basic biology to the spiritual world in which many things we call miracles happen. We call them miracles because we do not understand them, when the impossible seems to happen we are dumb founded by the incident and when the impossible happens, ie. to our knowledge, it can only come from One who can cause the impossible to happen because He has control of all things. 

GC

That is just a colossal argument from ignorance. You can't figure it out, therefore nobody else can possibly figure it out and nobody ever will in the future figure it out. Therefore god did it.

Even you must see how utterly vacuous that is.

[fredd bear]

@Abaddon_ire

Have I missed something?


This is non question for believers. I'm unconvinced that a scientific/ materialist explanation is possible.

The resurrection of Jesus is central to Christian belief. It is a matter of faith, not of reason or of science, just as all religious belief tends to be.

In a nutshell : 3 days after his crucifixion, Jesus rose from the dead. He was fully restored to life. He showed himself to his disciples. He later ascended bodily into heaven.

You ain't gonna get proof of that, nor is it likely you will convince believers it is untrue.

[Magilla]

Well, I'll  give you a point for at least trying to answer the question, and deduct several thousand for failing to reconcile it with basic biology.

How can you apply basic biology to the spiritual world in which many things we call miracles happen. We call them miracles because we do not understand them, when the impossible seems to happen we are dumb founded by the incident and when the impossible happens, ie. to our knowledge, it can only come from One who can cause the impossible to happen because He has control of all things. 

GC

Surely if something is impossible, then it cannot possibly be or occur? If there does happen to be "One" who can cause it, then it is possible.

[The Grand Nudger]

What they mean to say isn't that x is impossible, but that only their god can do it.  Sort of like how it's not impossible to reach the top shelf in my pantry.....but none of my kids can do it.

I guess it just doesn't sound as impressive that way, lol.

[tackattack]

Early christians absolutely did not realize any such thing.  There was bitter division on the issue - entire subgroups of christians were executed. Hypostatic union was a political compromise between them. In effect, it was decided that both camps were "fully right" so that they could stop killing each other and poaching adherents in the zero sum game of christian authority.

I'm not saying that there were no bloody gains, differing of opinions have led to far worse. Your summation that there was a cease fire until the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople for the purpose of growing the body of believers though is a bit of a perfunctory miss. Your post misses the obvious that there are several historical meetings that concede to the 100% divinity and 100% manhood of Jesus Christ, which has fed into modern cannon. There is no rule saying you can't be 100% a father and 100% a brother, and 100% an sexy beast to boot and you're trying to create a false dichotomy where one doesn't exist. Jesus was 100% man and 100% God at the same time.

---

"Being fully man by definition doesn't mean imperfect and by nature sinful. "

Sorry, that dog won't hunt.

Adam and Eve were the only human beings who have ever existed who were free of original sin. (exception: the Catholics also claim that for Mary, Jesus' mother.) If Jesus was incapable of sining, he was not fully man, but demi-god,. Further , the temptation of Christ in the dessert, by the devil becomes worthless. For the temptation to be meaningful , Jesus MUST have been capable of succumbing to temptation.

---

I disagree, because Christ Jesus was the Word incarnate and existed before the world began according to scripture. Adam and eve were not the first created without sin. Jesus grew in physically, experiential-ly and in knowledge after being incarnated into Human. He had 2 distinct natures that were capable of defying God's will (hence the take this cup from me) but never did, hence the value of resisting temptations and sin. I never said Jesus couldn't sin, just that He didn't. I don't believe Jesus possessed the seed of original sin because He existed before it and because no sin can exist in a 100% divine Son of God. He was not cursed to toil as were Adam and his descendants. Nor, was He cursed to be incapable to break the bonds of that original sin.


@Brian37 - He didn't survive, He died. The question was does He decompose, to which I answered probably not, but His body is gone so idk really. Incorruptibility is an unexplained phenomenon still.

[The Grand Nudger]

Early christians absolutely did not realize any such thing.  There was bitter division on the issue - entire subgroups of christians were executed.  Hypostatic union was a political compromise between them.  In effect, it was decided that both camps were "fully right" so that they could stop killing each other and poaching adherents in the zero sum game of christian authority.  

I'm not saying that there were no bloody gains, differing of opinions have led to far worse. Your summation that there was a cease fire until the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople  for the purpose of growing the body of believers though is a bit of a perfunctory miss. Your post misses the obvious that there are several historical meetings that concede to the 100% divinity and 100% manhood of Jesus Christ, which has fed into modern cannon. There is no rule saying you can't be 100% a father and 100% a brother, and 100% an sexy beast to boot and you're trying to create a false dichotomy where one doesn't exist. Jesus was 100% man and 100% God at the same time.

In fantasyland you can be 100% of anything and 100% of anything else simultaneously.  Because we're all 200% of something!

I'm not exactly relating debatable issues of the development of christian belief here, man. I appreciate that you've been left, many centuries after the fact, with squaring the circle of what two mortally opposed belief systems dictated to their adherents...it's not an enviable position....but do you appreciate that?

There were alot of decisions made in order to grow the body of believers...or at least to stop that growing body from chopping off it's own fingers. This simply had to be done in the context of the formative years of christian belief. It's not that my post misses it so much as it doesn't need it. Christians failed to agree on anything the first few go rounds. They still fail, and they've been steadily producing new fault lines every day since the first day. The current ceasefire, like the earliest ceasefires, have to do with necessity in the face of a well organized political authority.

It's not about any dichotomy -I- create. To some of the most ideologically influencial proto christians, the notion that god was even a fraction of a percent a man was unacceptable. Ultimately, the romanized demi-god narrative won out for obvious reasons.

(reasons that were even more obvious, hilariously, at the time)