Back on the 9th of February 2013, Tom Wright and James White discussed / debated the issue of justification in the writings of St Paul on the Unbelievable? Radio show, hosted by Justin Brierley. The discussion was titled What did St Paul Really Say? Thanks to the efforts of my friend Roy Soliman who transcribed this, the transcript of that discussion is now available here at Right Reason.
The transcript is in the articles section.
And you can listen to the episode over at Unbelievable?
Enjoy!
Does the Bible actually teach that souls live on when the body dies? Short story: no.
In part 1 of this series I looked at what the Bible does say about the mind-body question. You should read that before you read this post. In short, in Scripture there’s a fairly clear portrait of human beings as physical and mortal, returning to the earth when we die, and depending on the resurrection of the dead for any future life beyond the grave. The familiar view of human beings as immaterial souls that inhabit physical bodies and live on when the body dies is not one supported in the Bible.
But is it really that simple? The evidence we saw last time was surprisingly clear, but still, some Christian readers of Scripture are resistant to this message. There are some passages in the Bible – although not many – that seem to some Christians to suppose that actually human beings do not die when their bodies die, but they actually live on in non-material form. Their souls don’t die. Some passages of the Bible, some people think, teach dualism because they teach that the soul outlives the body.
Should Arminians believe in purgatory, or should Jerry Walls say that they create a major problem for the goodness of God? It sounds like maybe it’ll have to be one of those two options.
This might surprise some people, but embracing a biblical worldview gives us reasons to be mind-body materialists rather than dualists.
I first rejected mind-body dualism not because of any sort of scientific scepticism but because of what I started to see in the Bible when I started looking.1 For what it’s worth, I think other Christians should do the same.
How did St Paul read the creation story?
There are a couple of ways of reading the two creation stories in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. Actually there are probably quite a few ways, but I’m interested in two ways just now. I’ll call these two ways the “literal” way and the “didactic” way, as one of these ways treats the creation stories as primarily serving the function of recounting literal history just like modern historians do, and the other way treats the main function of the creation stories as teaching truths about God, God’s relationship to human beings and our place in the world, using the story as a medium of doing so.
“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him” ~ C. T. Studd
“Amazing love! How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” ~ Charles Wesley
“Being the followers of God, and stirring up yourselves by the blood of God, you have perfectly accomplished the work which was beseeming to you.” ~ Ignatius of Antioch
“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” ~ St Luke, Acts 20:281
If Christianity is true, then God died.
Did Elijah ride up to heaven in a flaming chariot, ending his life on earth?
Don’t you hate it when you’ve got a favourite Bible story and then someone who takes the Bible just as seriously as you comes along and ruins it for you? The story of Elijah and the flaming chariot is well-known. It comes from the book of 2 Kings, chapter 2. Here’s the passage, from verse 9 to verse 12:
I’m an occasional contributor to Afterlife, a New Zealand Website exploring the questions of life, death and eternity, from an Evangelical Christian perspective. My latest article there, Can These Bones Live? The Resurrection of the Body is now available.
Is it really clear that the first Christians believed in the empty tomb of Jesus and in the resurrection of our bodies, leaving all the graves empty?
Check out the rest of the article, in which I explain that the earliest Christian community maintained that in the resurrection of Jesus, his body came back to life, setting the precedent for the resurrection of all the dead.
If the doctrine of divine timelessness is true, then it turns out – perhaps surprisingly to some people – that materialist Christology – and in particular what it has to say about the death of Jesus – is given a helping hand.
Did you know that I’m an Apostle? It’s true! My ex sent me packing, and the word “apostle” in the Bible comes from a Greek word that means “sent one.” Don’t argue with the Bible, this is what the Greek means!
You probably haven’t heard anyone make an argument quite like this, because to do so would expose just how absurd this sort of reasoning is. This instalment of the “nuts and bolts” series is all about the root fallacy, one of the most common mistakes that a lot of sincere, well-meaning people make when interpreting the Bible. The root fallacy is committed where a person assumes that the meaning of a word must be bound to the meaning of its etymological root.
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