Unending Future

Body Life

     Let me misquote Paul to illustrate a point. In his letter to Rome he mostly says:

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your soul through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

and

“We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our souls.”

     In Paul’s letter to Corinth he says:

“It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

     This last passage is not misquoted, but often misunderstood. So what did I misquote?

     The first passage ending actually says “give life (zoopoieo) to your mortal bodies (Greek: somatos=bodies; thanatoute = dying)." As you can probably guess, the second ends with “the redemption of our bodies.”

     These three passages (Romans 8:11 and 23 and 1 Corinthians 15:44), among a number or others refer to our human bodies being changed into something eternal. But what?

     That’s how the last passage is often misunderstood. In fact, New Testament translators have had trouble representing what the Greek versions were saying. The Greek for the terms, “natural body” and “spiritual body” are “soma psychikon” and “soma pneumatikon.” The contrast between the present body and the future one is not between physical and non-physical or corporeal and non-corporeal.

     The “natural” (psychikos) body refers to the body given to us at creation. “God shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being (King James Version says living soul).Genesis 2:7. Here “being” or “soul” uses the Hebrew, “nephesh” which means the same thing as the Greek “psyche.” So the “natural” body mentioned by Paul means the one we now have and everyone has by birth while the “spiritual” body of I Corinthians means the transformed eternal body we will one day have when we are resurrected - a body enlivened, empowered or energized by the Holy Spirit.

     Our eternal bodies will not be less corporeal, but more so. Theologian N.T. Wright likes to use his own word for it, transphysical, meaning transformed physical. C.S. Lewis in his book, The Great Divorce, provides a memorable picture of it. As the main character nears his eternal destiny, he notices the grass is much larger and harder than he expected and it hurts his feet. He is considered a ghost compared to the solids who have already entered their final destiny. And the closer he comes to his destiny, the larger and more solid he grows. This, of course, is only an imaginative picture, but it captures the idea of the resurrection body much more so than the popular one of wings, robe, and halo floating in the sky.