It is the same with the resurrection of the dead: the thing that is sown is perishable but what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit.
If the soul has its own embodiment, so does
the spirit have its own embodiment. The
first man, Adam, as scripture says, "became a living soul" [Gen 2:7];
but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit. That is, first the one with the soul, not the
spirit, and after that, the one with the spirit. The first man, being from the earth, is
earthly by nature; the second man is from heaven. As this earthly man was, so are we on earth;
and as the heavenly man is, so are we in heaven. And we, who have been modeled on the earthly
man, will be modeled on the heavenly man.
Paul's
First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verses 42-29. Jerusalem Bible
It is especially in Paul’s discussion of the resurrection of the body (in the context of his assessment of the weakness, suffering and perishability of human existence) that Paul’s holistic conception of the human being becomes most apparent. Paul’s discussion of the resurrection of the body makes it most clearly evident that Paul considers the sōma to belong constitutively and inseparably to human being-and-living, both now and in the telos (goal, end).
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul identifies human
being-living as experienced through a “psychic body” (sōma psychikon) or a
“spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon; 1 Cor. 15:44–45). English translations have
consistently mistranslated 1 Cor. 15:44, making a contrast between a “physical”
body and a “spiritual” body, importing a physical-spiritual dualism that is not
Paul’s. In this text Paul contrasts two forms of bodily animation, one
“psychic” (psychikon) and the other “pneumatic” (pneumatikon), as a way to
strike a midpoint between the Hellenistic body-soul dualism of his audience
(which rejected bodily resurrection, period) and a naïve physical resuscitation
model of resurrection. The bottom line for Paul is that human existence in
either condition—whether in the present age or the age to come—must be bodily
(“embodied” sounds too dualistic), whatever the precise animation and whatever
the precise “physical” character. That psychikon here does not refer especially
to the “physical” feature of the current body is indicated by Paul’s supportive
scriptural citation of Genesis 2:7 in 15:45, which draws attention to the first
human as being made bodily into a psychē zōsa, translating the Hebrew, nephesh
chayyah, “living being.” Even the subsequent distinction between the “earthly”
body and the “heavenly” body (vv 47–49) is not one of physical versus spiritual
(or material versus immaterial), since for Paul the heavenly is a kind of
substance or form (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:39–41). Both kinds of bodily material
require animation—and vice versa, both animations require bodily form—for there
to be life. The only mode or form of human existence that there is, in either
dimension, is bodily existence.
Paul’s exposition of the character of and
transition between these two modes is also instructive. The two modes are
characterized elsewhere as “body of humiliation” as opposed to a “body
co-formed to the body of [Christ’s] glory” (Phil. 3:21), or as “bearing the
image of the human of dust” compared to “bearing the image of the human of
heaven” (the second Adam, 1 Cor. 15:47–49). The most crucial language of
resurrection, then, is transformational language, emphasizing continuing within
discontinuity. Paul says “we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51, 52) and that
our body will be “transformed” (metaschēmatizō; Phil. 3:21), such that it will
be “co-formed” to that of the “image of God’s son” (symphytos, Rom. 6:5;
symmorphos, Rom. 8:29; Phil. 3:21). Further, this is described as the
“redemption of our body,” linked inseparably with the liberation of all
creation (Rom. 8:18–25; Phil. 3:21; 1 Cor. 15:24–28). And so Paul can speak of
this as a “glorification” (Rom. 8:17, 30; cf. 2 Cor. 4:17). Just as Paul does
not speak of the replacement of all creation but of its transformation, Paul
also speaks not of an exchange of bodies, even less an escape from bodies, but
of the transformation of bodily life. And in continuity with Jewish
resurrection hope, Paul understood resurrection not just as bodily but also as
involving the restoration of a people within a transformed creation. Paul on the Human Being as a “Psychic Body”:
Neither Dualist nor Monist, Gordon Zerbe, 2008
As
Christians for whom Jesus is Lord and Savior, when we die do we go to that
place, Heaven, and sit on clouds and praise God? Do we get a new body when we
get to that place, one that is perfectly formed and without blemish?
Paul
doesn't seem to think so or say so.
Zerbe's article, which seems scholarly, makes the point that it is not
the body which changes but what animates the body (soma)--the natural (sarx) or
the spiritual (pneuma) in 1 Corinthians 15.
This is what happens when we are born {again, from above), we receive
God's Holy Spirit into our self, our body and soul. Now it is Christ who lives in me, the same
body with the same soul. The psyche does
not go away, the body does not change:
the spirit gains supremacy.
John
Paul II thinks of it this way
According
to the words of 1 Corinthians, the man in whom concupiscence prevails over
spirituality, that is, the "natural body" (1 Cor 15:44), is condemned
to death; instead, he should rise as a "spiritual body," as the man
in whom the spirit will gain a just supremacy over the body, spirituality over
sensuality. It is easy to understand
that what Paul has in mind here is sensuality as the sum of the factors that
constitute the limitation of human spirituality, that is, as a power that
"binds" the spirit (not necessarily in the Platonic sense) by
hindering its own power of knowing (seeing) the truth and also the power to
will freely and to love in the truth.
However, what cannot be at issue here is the fundamental function of the
senses that serves to liberate spirituality, namely, the simple power of know
and loving that belongs to the psychosomatic compositum of the human
subject. Since the subject of discussion
is the resurrection of the body, that is, of man in his authentic bodiliness,
"spiritual body" should signify precisely the perfect sensitivity of
the senses, their perfect harmonization with the activity of the human spirit
in truth and in freedom. The
"natural body" which is the earthly antitheses of the "spiritual
body," by contrast indicates sensuality as a force that often undermines
man inasmuch as, by living "in the knowledge of good and evil," he is
often urged or pushed, as it were, toward evil.
Man
and Woman He Created Them, Audience 72, Section 4, February 10, 1982 John Paul II
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