The Resurrection: Would it change your belief?

[StCsDavid]

Mike Dye:

I am not a scientiest as you may have already guessed BUT trust me I have already found the body of Christ …Body Blood Soul and Divinity! Maybe you should look for his body where it is

AMEN!

 

[Thomas_More_1]

Gee, what do you have to believe to be called a Christian?

Be nice, and sing about Jesus?

I’m with St. Paul on this one: if there was no Resurrection, then Christians are the most useless of idiots. Pathetic fools.

But He did rise! And so our faith is not in vain.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Thomas More:

Be nice, and sing about Jesus?

That sounds very close to me. You are paraphrasing Christ’s Two Great Commandments:
Luke 10:25-28:

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test him and said, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”

He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

 He replied to him, "You have answered correctly; do this and you will live."

Use “be nice” as code word for love your neighbor and self.

Use “sing about Jesus” as code word for giving praise and thanks to the Lord, one form of expressing love for God.

Alan

 

[JimG]

Mike Dye is right. The body of Christ has already been discovered. It can be found in any Catholic church.

Really, if the resurrection had not occurred, the Church would never have been born. Does anyone imagine that the apostles who abandoned him at the crucifixion would have done anything but gone back to their nets and their former lives, if there had NOT been a resurrection?

 

[Thomas_More_1]

That sounds very close to me. You are paraphrasing Christ’s Two Great Commandments:

Alan, what you call a paraphrase, I call a simplification and reduction so radical that it destroys the spirit of the commandments.

We are to love our neighbor even when it means not appearing so nice. People who are out to be nice are attached to the idea that others should see them as “nice.” We should be attached to doing God’s will.

Singing about Jesus, without having an interior spiritual life, and without knowing who Jesus even is, hardly qualifies as loving the Lord with everything we have.

When I was a Hindu, I knew plenty of other Hindus who were nice folks, and who sang about Jesus in the mandir/temple (as Hinduism tends towards syncretism, they have no problem singing about Jesus, though most don’t believe in his uniqueness/incarnation/atonement/resurrection or even necessarily his teachings, except the ones they like anyway). In what reasonable sense could these very nice and good people be called Christians?

 

[OriginalJS]

No, it would not change my belief, even if they could prove they had the remains of Christ’s physical body. I have several reasons.

First, as I understand it, the Church today does not teach that our physical bodies will be resurrected, that is, we cannot expect to be resuscitated corpses sometime in the future. We will receive heavenly bodies, like Christ. Christ came to be like us, but no where is it written or taught that He would retain the limitations of an earthly body in heaven.

Second, in Mark 13 Christ tells the disciples that they shall see the son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and at verse 30 says that the present generation shall not pass until that is done. Christ didn’t lie.

Third, Christ came again at Pentecost during the present generation in the form of the Holy Spirit, which gave life to the Church.

Fourth, Christ did not leave, he is with us today - he did return and he is here now. People feel Christ with them all the time - ask people who go to perpetual adoration if they don’t think Christ is with them.

Christ is one of the Trinity, the Trinity is God, God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.

All this transcends the remains of a physical body.

 

[JimG]

Yes, our physical bodies will be resurrected bodies, but will be restored all the preternatural gifts which they do not currently have.

Christ did not come at Pentecost in the form of the Holy Spirit.
Rather, the Holy Spirit came, a distinct Person from the Son.

Yes, Christ is with His Church today, sacramentally in the Eucharist, spiritually in the Gospels, and always in His grace. But he will also return physically at the Last Judgment and we will be raised from the dead–we will get our bodies back.

 

[OriginalJS]

JimG,

Then how do you explain Christ saying that he would return in clouds of glory before the present generation passed away? Mark 13:30. It has close to 2000 years since that prophesy.

Also, as for Christ being a distinct person, there is only one God, not three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one.

 

[JimG]

OriginalJS:

JimG,

Then how do you explain Christ saying that he would return in clouds of glory before the present generation passed away? Mark 13:30. It has close to 2000 years since that prophesy.

Darn, now you are making me think too hard and having to look things up!

Chapter 13 of Mark starts out with a discussion about the destruction of the Temple (“Not one stone will be left upon another. All will be torn down.”) That actually did occur in AD 70.

I seem to recall hearing a Scott Hahn tape about the terrible events during the Roman destruction of the city of Jerusalem in AD 70. Christians were spared, because they were not there. Heeding Jesus warning, they had fled the city ahead of these events, which did occur during the lifetime of Jesus’ hearers.

So perhaps Jesus starts out the discourse with a literal forecast of the destruction of Jerusalem (which was in fact heeded) and then merges into an eschatological discourse on the end times. I’m not sure. But perhaps others with more biblical knowledge could assist here.

 

[JimG]

OriginalJS:

JimG,
Also, as for Christ being a distinct person, there is only one God, not three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one.

True, but the Persons of the Trinity are distinct from one another, while being One in Nature.

The Father is a distinct Person from the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The Son is a distinct Person from the Father and the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is a distinct Person from the Father and the Son.

But:

The Father is God.
The Son is God.
The Holy Spirit is God.

There is but One nature of God; possessed totally–not shared-- by three distinct Persons.

There are not three Gods.

 

[Della]

Gnosis:

It wouldn’t alter my faith at all. I don’t believe that Jesus physically rose from the dead to begin with, nor do I think Christians need to believe so.

I have to disagree with the section I made bold. Christianity rises or falls on this one point above any other. This is why Easter, not Christmas, is the highest feast day of the Church calendar and why missing Sunday Mass is a grave offensive for Catholics–because it is the celebration of the Death AND Resurrection of Christ for the whole Body of Christ, the Church.

 

[Della]

OriginalJS:

JimG,

Then how do you explain Christ saying that he would return in clouds of glory before the present generation passed away? Mark 13:30. It has close to 2000 years since that prophesy.

Also, as for Christ being a distinct person, there is only one God, not three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one.

You are having difficulty with this passage because you don’t understand the mechanics of the End Times. Terms used for certain times in the Bible are not literal terms but meant to describe the passing of time, generally a very long time. The people listening to Jesus understood this usage of these terms that translated into English lose much of their original meaning. This is why we need to understand such things before trying to interpret passages or verses of Scripture. Since the Church was there from the beginning and was promised by Jesus to be “led into all truth” by the Holy Spirit it does know what Jesus meant by using these terms, so we can trust the Church’s interpretation over any other.

The “Last Day” referred to in Scripture is also called “the Day of the Lord”. It is the time that exists since Jesus Christ was born until the end of time when he will come again.

By saying “this generation” Jesus was referring to all those who would live and die during the time between his coming into the world and his 2nd coming. In other words, he was saying that we must constantly be ready for his return because we cannot know the day or the hour. I hope that helps!

 

[Fox]

He has risen, there won’t ever be a body.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Thomas More:

Alan, what you call a paraphrase, I call a simplification and reduction so radical that it destroys the spirit of the commandments.

We are to love our neighbor even when it means not appearing so nice. People who are out to be nice are attached to the idea that others should see them as “nice.” We should be attached to doing God’s will.

Singing about Jesus, without having an interior spiritual life, and without knowing who Jesus even is, hardly qualifies as loving the Lord with everything we have.

Just in case you went literalistic on me, that’s probably why I said “code word” to protect against you missing the point.
Luke 10:21-22:

At that very moment he rejoiced (in) the holy Spirit and said, "I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.

All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."

The childlike would have understood what you said.

When I was a Hindu, I knew plenty of other Hindus who were nice folks, and who sang about Jesus in the mandir/temple (as Hinduism tends towards syncretism, they have no problem singing about Jesus, though most don’t believe in his uniqueness/incarnation/atonement/resurrection or even necessarily his teachings, except the ones they like anyway). In what reasonable sense could these very nice and good people be called Christians?

In this sense:
Luke 9:50:

Jesus said to him, “Do not prevent him, for whoever is not against you is for you.”

If they are doing good works of loving one another and helping those in need and especially widows and orphans, then they are honoring Christ in their actions and showing faith by their works, even if they don’t call Him by that name.

Alan

 

[Thomas_More_1]

Just in case you went literalistic on me, that’s probably why I said “code word” to protect against you missing the point

This statement is confusing (well, maybe just to me). It seems like you are using the phrase “code word” to justify a very, very, very loose understanding of Christ’s commandments to love God and love our neighbor. You preceded that with using the word “literalistic” to attack my straightforward understanding of what Our Lord said.

I don’t want to assume your intentions, so if you can clarify what you mean by “code word” and “literalistic,” I will read it and try to understand your point better.

If they are doing good works of loving one another and helping those in need and especially widows and orphans, then they are honoring Christ in their actions and showing faith by their works, even if they don’t call Him by that name.

People can do good works for bad reasons (e.g. fame) but let’s leave that aside.

Even if they do the works out of love for neighbor, especially the poor, I don’t deny that they are honoring Christ even if they don’t call Him by the name. But that makes them Christians?

The only way to be a non-Christian, then, is to avoid good works?

I think that good-working Muslims, atheists, and many others who explicitly reject Christian beliefs would be very surprised and possibly offended by that statement.

I can imagine my own Father saying, “No, I do what I do because of what I believe as a Hindu. What, you think only Christians can do good?”