Resurrection

• Resurrection: pt 1

  • resurrection is the most important and significant event in Christianity -> Paul was adamant that resurrection was the central fact of Christian Faith
  • Jesus is resurrected after the crucifixion
  • Augustine and Paul believe in a physical resurrection
• Cannibal Problem for Physical Resurrection:

  • What if one person cannibalised another person so that their dead body became part of the cannibal’s body? Such cases generate the puzzle of how both bodies, that of the cannibal and the cannibalised, could possibly both be raised
  • God is omnipotent and will solve this
  • logically impossible for God to resurrect two people from the diffused parts of their earthly body if some parts of each of their bodies belong to both of them. It is logically impossible for one part that belonged to two bodies to be used in the resurrection of more than one body
• John Hick believed that God created a replica body after death and dismissed the idea of a seperate soul
• Spiritual resurrection:

  • claim instead that resurrected bodies are non-physical, or simply just souls with a physical appearance
  • Docetism is an example of a Christian sect which believed that Jesus was spiritually resurrected in a non-physical body which only had the appearance of being physical
  • Docetism was influenced by Gnosticism, a philosophical tradition which blended various schools of thought including Christianity and Platonism
  • although they thought Jesus was fully divine, they denied that Jesus was human.
• Spiritual resurrection:

  • However, Docetism was considered a heresy as it goes against the Bible “the word was made flesh” (John) and undermines the meaning of Jesus’ sacrifice during the crucifixion if the human suffering wasn’t real but just an appearance.