Appearing on the CBS Sunday Morning New to discuss de Wesselow’s book:
For many, many mainstream Protestants and Catholics, certainly evangelical Protestants, you have a notion that you need the resurrected body in the way that it’s described in Luke and John. That was not Paul’s belief. Paul did not have a belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus. And I tend to agree with Paul. But it remains something of a mystery.
As for what he said about the Shroud of Turin:
However this image was formed, it was formed in a way that’s compatible with the ancient practice of Crucifixion.
Go figure!
Did Paul really not believe in the resurrected body of Christ? Can someone cite a quote to support this claim.
I agree with Stephen. Paul was a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin, and during his time ( as it is for observant Jews in our time) resurrection was physical resurrection (Daniel 2) and not Greek philosophy. It therefore looks like Prof. Attridge is trying to adapt the NT to modern scepticism. Yet, he will be unable to explain the birth of the Church.
The earliest associates of Paul (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Clement of Rome, etc.) and the earliest extra-Biblical documents representing churches that were in contact with Paul (First Clement, the letters of Ignatius, etc.) affirm belief in a physical resurrection. Did Paul teach a non-physical resurrection, only to have so many associates and churches he was in contact with affirming the opposite? It’s far more likely that Paul held the same view they did. The evidence from Paul’s letters alone is enough to demonstrate that he believed in a physical resurrection. But even if that evidence were ambiguous, the information we have from Paul’s associates and the early Pauline churches would make it more likely that Paul held the physical view.
For some examples of early extra-Biblical affirmations of a physical resurrection, from sources representing Pauline churches, see sections 26 and 50 in First Clement and sections 2-3 in Ignatius’ Letter To The Smyrnaeans. In that passage in Ignatius, he’s responding to docetists who affirmed that Jesus appeared to be risen from the dead, but denied that He had actually risen physically. Thus, even an early group that had an interest in denying the physicality of the resurrection acknowledged that there was an appearance of physicality that they needed to explain. Later in the second century, Justin Martyr’s response to Jewish critics of Christianity assumes that both sides agree on the physicality of the Christian view of Jesus’ resurrection (Dialogue With Trypho, 108). Later in the second century, Celsus attributes to Christians in general the belief that Jesus rose from the dead in the same body that was in the tomb (in Origen, Against Celsus, 3:43, 8:49). Celsus is aware of exceptions (5:14), but he seems to think that a resurrection of the body that died is the mainstream Christian view (as opposed to a non-physical resurrection or one involving an exchange of bodies rather than a transformation of the body that died).
Regarding the evidence from Paul’s writings, see Michael Licona’s The Resurrection Of Jesus (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 400-437. Licona did a lot of research on the meaning of 1 Corinthians 15:44 and Paul’s concept of a spiritual body. Here are some of his comments:
“Moreover, it is worth observing that had Paul desired to communicate this sort of contrast [between the physical and the non-physical], he had better words at his disposal, one of which he had employed just a few chapters earlier [in 1 Corinthians 9:11] while using a seed analogy similar to that of 1 Corinthians 15….if he had desired to communicate that our resurrection body would not be physical but rather immaterial in nature, why use the former term in a sense not employed earlier in his letter or for that matter anywhere else in the Pauline corpus, the New Testament or by any known author from the eighth century B.C. through the third century A.D., while ignoring a clearer term used just a few chapters earlier in a similar seed analogy?…I located 846 occurrences of the former [the term ‘natural’ in 1 Corinthians 15:44] from the eighth-century B.C. through the third-century A.D. and could not locate a single occurrence of the term that meant ‘physical’ or ‘material.’ This discovery in itself eliminates any interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:44 that has Paul asserting physical corpses are buried while resurrection bodies will be immaterial (a la Wedderburn, RSV/NRSV et al.).” (414-415, 618)
For an online source on this topic, see Chris Price’s article here.