Body / Soul Connection - Why does the body need to be resurrected?

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Hi, Why does the body need to be resurrected? What is the significance of the resurrected body? A Muslim asked me why the body needs to be resurrected. So there must be body and soul connection. I know the Pharisees believed in the resurrected body and the Sadducess didn’t.

If we are burned in a fire (or creamated), we don’t have a body. I think the verses below say we have a temporal body that changes to a spiritual body… probably like Jesus’ glorified body when He came back?!?

51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. - 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 - NIV

Thanks!
Brian
 
GodHeals said:
Hi, Why does the body need to be resurrected? What is the significance of the resurrected body? A Muslim asked me why the body needs to be resurrected. So there must be body and soul connection. I know the Pharisees believed in the resurrected body and the Sadducess didn’t.

If we are burned in a fire (or creamated), we don’t have a body. I think the verses below say we have a temporal body that changes to a spiritual body… probably like Jesus’ glorified body when He came back?!?

51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. - 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 - NIV

Thanks!
Brian
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you showed the verse that backs up Catholic Teaching.

but philosophically speaking or metaphysically speaking. The Body must be resurrected in order for the soul to be individuated. If the Soul has no Body it isn’t individuated and it might as well not exist. Because an un-individuated soul isn’t really anything. Just like a Souless Body isn’t anything more then prime matter. So the Body and Soul must be one in heaven.

Now there is a problem of what individuates the soul after death before the resurrection of the Body but I’m not going to go into that here.
 
Because you are not a spirit, you are a human being. God has promised you eternal life; and you need a human BODY to hold and express the life. Holding and expressing life is what BODIES do.

If you remained a pure spirit, you would exist without being alive. That is not what you were made for. Our LORD wants you breathing, wiggling, smelling-- fully alive, with HIM!!!

Yes, there is a spiritual body. Since we will not have an intact dead body to slip back into (and even if we did, it could not hold life, being a dead body), our bodies will be at the same time, reassembled and reformed. The Biblical term for this is pneumatikon soma, spiritual body. And yes, the result will be a human body much like our LORD’s.

ICXC NIKA
 
Because we are not flesh which has been ensouled.
We are not souls wrapped in meat.
We are human beings. We are bodyandsoul.

One is not complete without the other.

tee
 
“Need” is a strong word. God could have done things otherwise.

However, He decided to make humans both spirit and animal - our body is part of what we are. That is, our body is not just a suit of clothes that our soul wears until death, but a part of us without which we aren’t whole. By resurrecting the body, God is simply preserving the way in which He created us. He could, of course, have arranged things so that we would have been fine without bodies (like the angels), but He didn’t.

Why is an interesting question, and perhaps we’ll get an answer to that after death.
 
Iron_Donkey said:
“Need” is a strong word. God could have done things otherwise.

However, He decided to make humans both spirit and animal - our body is part of what we are. That is, our body is not just a suit of clothes that our soul wears until death, but a part of us without which we aren’t whole. By resurrecting the body, God is simply preserving the way in which He created us. He could, of course, have arranged things so that we would have been fine without bodies (like the angels), but He didn’t.

Why is an interesting question, and perhaps we’ll get an answer to that after death.
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It is a strong word, but it describes a truth as far as we human beings are concerned.

Yes, He could rework what was left of you to be a pure spirit, an inferior kind of angel, but you would not be human, and you are made to be human. Like the old song, you were born to be alive.🙂

Why is really very simple. He already had an innumerable host of pure spirits in being; and being the supreme innovator, for reasons of HIS own, wanted some thinking bodies around.

Personally, I yearn for my pneumatikon soma so that I would be free from
death and be hugged and held by our LORD!! Remember, only bodies can hug and hold.

ICXC NIKA!
 
GodHeals said:
Hi, Why does the body need to be resurrected? What is the significance of the resurrected body? Thanks!
Brian
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http://payingattentiontothesky.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ronald_knox_x.jpg?w=450
Fr. Ronald Knox, perhaps one the greatest Catholic apologists of the last century began his explanation as follows:
First, let’s notice that for some reason the Credo we say is a mistranslation of the Latin. The Credo which is said by the universal Church hasn’t got Corporis Resurrectionem, the resurrection of the body, as its last clause but one. Its last clause but one is CARNIS Resurrectionem, the Resurrection of the Flesh. And the flesh, in theological language (which comes from the Hebrew), means a great deal more than the body.
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If you’d like to continue, the rest is here, a selection from his classic, The Creed in Slow Motion. Enjoy.

In Christ,

dj
 
GEddie said:
It is a strong word, but it describes a truth as far as we human beings are concerned.

Yes, He could rework what was left of you to be a pure spirit, an inferior kind of angel, but you would not be human, and you are made to be human.
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Indeed. We need it to be human as humans are now. All that I meant was that it would have been possible for us not to be human as humans are now. We just aren’t.
 
Iron_Donkey said:
Indeed. We need it to be human as humans are now. All that I meant was that it would have been possible for us not to be human as humans are now. We just aren’t.
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Yeah, but need refers to present being, not to hypotheticals. Under the hypothetical conditions, which do not apply, there would of course be other needs.

Apart from being human, we are contingent beings, therefore will always experience need.

And it’s not just human “as we are now”. It’s human, period, full stop. A human being does not have a body; he/she IS a living human body. Body is what makes us human and not pure spirits, just as the cognitive mind (a product of the human soul) makes us human and not just arch-footed, large-headed apes.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
Yeah, but need refers to present being, not to hypotheticals. Under the hypothetical conditions, which do not apply, there would of course be other needs.

Apart from being human, we are contingent beings, therefore will always experience need.

And it’s not just human “as we are now”. It’s human, period, full stop. A human being does not have a body; he/she IS a living human body. Body is what makes us human and not pure spirits, just as the cognitive mind (a product of the human soul) makes us human and not just arch-footed, large-headed apes.

ICXC NIKA
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Word. I think we agree but are using different words (and mine are probably wrong, since I haven’t studied this stuff in any formal way).
 
GodHeals said:
Hi, Why does the body need to be resurrected? What is the significance of the resurrected body?
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Because the human person, naturally speaking, is the same as the living human body. Note that I do not say “soul” but “person”. In Aristotle, the “soul” is the form, the nature, the “what”. “Person” is not the “what” but the “who”. Christians today use “soul” to mean “person” but this can be confusing in a philosophical discussion.

By virtue of the “person”, the living human body is a “who”. The “who” is a singularity (unique, unrepeatable) - the “who”, unlike a nature, cannot be explained in terms of genus and specific difference.

Somehow (supernaturally), God keeps the “person” going after death in the absence of the body.

But, because the human person is the expression of a living human body, a person is incomplete without his/her body.

That’s why the resurrection of the body is necessary. The great mystery is that the resurrected body is the same body a person had before (except for a few modifications).

How can this be? Will the resurrected body be “biological” in any sense of the word? If not, how could it be the same body?

Well, we may have to wait for an answer to these questions. But I don’t think we’ll be disappointed.
 
levinas12 said:
The great mystery is that the resurrected body is the same body a person had before (except for a few modifications).
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The few modifications - impassibility, brightness, agility, subtlety.

impassibility - no pain, no death

brightness - radiance of the person (associated with the joy of Heaven)

agility - body able to move in any way the person chooses

subtlety - freedom from material obstacles (e.g., ability to pass through walls)

There is a good discussion of the qualities of the resurrected body in the Summa Theologica (see Supplementum Tertiae Partis, questions 79-85).
 
If we get a new body will that body be better than the one we have now? What about a really fit and healthy person? Will their new body be as their old one? What if someone has a deformity, or Downs Syndrome? Will they get a body that is not afflicted with those things? What about a fat person? Will they get a slender body?

Shallow questions, perhaps, but its interesting to contemplate on the nature of the “perfect” post judgement body.
 
And not to be faectious, but what about embryos stuck in IVF labs? Or aborted foetuses?
 
vera_dicere said:
If we get a new body will that body be better than the one we have now? What about a really fit and healthy person? Will their new body be as their old one? What if someone has a deformity, or Downs Syndrome? Will they get a body that is not afflicted with those things? What about a fat person? Will they get a slender body?

Shallow questions, perhaps, but its interesting to contemplate on the nature of the “perfect” post judgement body.
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You are not going to get a new different body, your body will become glorified because God is going to share is divinity with you. When that happens your body is going to be subject to your will that is perfectly aligned with God’s will. God’s will is for you to be a human being free from disorders thus you can guess what the final answer is.
 
vera_dicere said:
If we get a new body will that body be better than the one we have now? What about a really fit and healthy person? Will their new body be as their old one? What if someone has a deformity, or Downs Syndrome? Will they get a body that is not afflicted with those things? What about a fat person? Will they get a slender body?

Shallow questions, perhaps, but its interesting to contemplate on the nature of the “perfect” post judgement body.
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The pneumatikon soma is not kept alive the same way that ours is (through internal organs, etc) but receives everlasting life. So fit and hiealthy don’t mean the same in our “spiritual body” that they do now.

Deformities and defects, both external-bodied and internal or genetic (Down) will be corrected.

As to weight: well, there’s weight and there’s weight. No doubt there will be endomorphic human bodies in Heaven, if their owner was endomorphic in human life; not everybody will be “slender”. But if someone’s bodymass limited them living their life, that too will be corrected.

ICXC NIKA
 
vera_dicere said:
And not to be faectious, but what about embryos stuck in IVF labs? Or aborted foetuses?
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I would think that, in these cases, the resurrected body would be a fully developed human body (although not necessarily 33 years old). Of course, such a human body would be “glorified” as well as human.

The reason is that Heaven is a communion of persons. And a developed human body would seem to be a sine qua non.
 
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