I finished Robert Grant's Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought.
In this post, I'll focus on the interpretation of I Corinthians 15:50
by Irenaeus and Tertullian, and also the interpretation of Luke 24:39 by
Marcion and Origen. The issue is the nature of Jesus' resurrection
body: Was it physical or spiritual?
1. I Corinthians 15:50 states
(in the KJV): "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit
incorruption." In I Corinthians 15, Paul says that people rise from the
dead with spiritual bodies, and there were many who argued that
Christ's resurrection body had no human flesh, for the risen Christ was a
spirit. But there were also many Christians who held that
Christ's body was physical and had flesh. How did they interpret I
Corinthians 15:50, which affirms that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
Kingdom of God?
The approach of Irenaeus was to
regard the "flesh and blood" of I Corinthians 15:50 as allegorical for
carnal, sinful actions, since Paul often associates the flesh with sin.
The idea of I Corinthians 15:50, for Irenaeus, was not that our
resurrection bodies would lack flesh, but rather that we would not sin
after our resurrection. And Tertullian essentially goes the same route.
I
am not convinced by this interpretation of I Corinthians 15:50, for a
significant topic of I Corinthians 15 is the nature of the resurrection
body, not sin. At the same time, I am open to the argument that Paul in
I Corinthians 15:50 was not excluding all flesh and blood from the
Kingdom, but rather was saying that our current, corruptible flesh would
not be part of our resurrection bodies. But what about incorruptible
flesh?
2. Luke 24:39 states: "Behold my hands and my feet, that
it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as ye see me have." In this passage, the risen Jesus denies that he is a spirit and points to his flesh and bones as proof for that.
Marcion
rejected the notion that Jesus rose with a body of human flesh for two
reasons. First, like a lot of Gnostics, Marcion maintained that the
material world was evil and was created by a lower-being, and so he
disassociated the body of the risen Jesus from materiality. Second,
Jesus in Luke 20:36 likens the resurrected to angels, and Marcion
believes that means that the resurrected will have spirit bodies, like
angels do.
How, then, does Marcion interpret Luke 24:39?
Essentially, he rewrites it to say: "See my hands and feet, that it is
I; for a spirit does not have bones such as you see me having."
Tertullian interprets Marcion to be saying that the risen Jesus in Luke
24:39 is affirming that he was a spirit (even though it seems to me that
Marcion is saying that the risen Jesus had bones, which spirits do not
have). Tertullian finds that to be nonsensical. Grant notes something
else that's interesting: Although Marcion thought that Jesus'
resurrection body was spiritual, later Marcionites still believed that
the risen Jesus ate, for they justified their eating of fish and not
flesh by appealing to the risen Jesus eating fish in Luke 24:42-43.
Origen
also leaned in the direction of the risen Christ having a spiritual
body. Grant states on page 259: "[Origen's] position is rendered
precarious by his insistence that the risen Jesus had a body which could
eat. He believes, however, that had the Lord appeared with his
glorified body he could not have been seen. It was necessary for him to
give at least the appearance of his wounds." Origen's position
is essentially that of the Armstrongites, who believed that Jesus'
resurrection was spiritual and not physical: that Jesus in Luke 24 was
merely appearing to his disciples in a fleshly form, since they would
not be able to see the risen Jesus in his full glory, for that would
kill them, plus Jesus wanted to show them that it was really him whom
they were seeing. Sometimes, though, Origen said that Jesus' resurrection body was somewhere between body and soul, according to Grant.
Origen tended to interpret passages that imply a physical resurrection in an allegorical sense. Ezekiel
37 presents the resurrection of bones, but Origen views those bones in
reference to sin, for Jesus in Matthew 23:27 calls sinners "tombs full
of bones and all uncleanness." Jesus in Matthew 8:12 says that
there will be gnashing of teeth in Gehenna, but Origen does not take
this literally because he feels that to do so would be absurd: teeth are
for eating, and why would people eat in Gehenna? Origen, like Irenaeus
and Tertullian on the other side, employs an allegorical, spiritual
interpretation for passages that appear to contradict his position.