“Spiritual Bodies”

I was recently in a discussion with two dispensationalist about spiritual bodies. They argued that the “body of Christ” is Christ “spiritual body”. They attached it to 1 Cor. 12:11-27 and Eph. 3:6, 4:4-16. That is what Paul means by our “spiritual bodies” in 1 Cor. 15:40-44 and what Christ met when he said we will be like the angels (Matt.22:23-34, Mark 12:18-27, Luke 20:27-40).

40 There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

i) Paul in Ephesians and 1 Corinthians is using a Body as a metaphor for the Church and how its roles for each of the members are different. The purpose in 1 Cor. 12 is that of the use of the Spiritual gifts.In Ephesians, it is used to bring together both Jew and Gentile.

ii)That is far from what glorified bodies are to be. If we are to have a body like Christ are we gonna be made out of other bodies? I won’t deal with “be like the angels” meaning. Click here for further thoughts on that.

iii) It creates an unnecessary contradiction. You think that a “spiritual body” is both physical and non-physical at the same time and in the same way. Jesus makes plain the difference between “spirits” and “Bodies” in Luke 24:39. 1 Cor. 15 is all about a physical resurrection.

iv) If you consistently read it with the dichotomy of Body/Spirit in mind, then the spiritual body is contrasted with a physical body. So, we are physically raised as spirits? I doubt that one doubts the physical resurrection of believers.

v) It isn’t very good hermeneutics to force a debate about the immaterial soul and the body in a text that isn’t discussing that topic. Most commentators don’t think Paul has that in view:

The next antithesis Paul provides has been the cause of great confusion in the history of interpretation as the polarity of Paul’s own theology has been interpreted through the prism of ontological polarities of later periods of history. Paul says that the human body is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. In the modern, post-Enlightenment context, the words natural and spiritual are often taken, popularly at least, to suggest a distinction between the material and immaterial, or between the physical and the spiritual (so NRSV). But scholars have pointed out that the material/immaterial dichotomy is a modern one and that in Paul’s world soul and spirit were not considered to be immaterial but of a lighter, thinner material than visible stuff. Still, people thought of matter in terms of very different categories of physicality, in a way that approximated the modern physical/spiritual dichotomy. But in such dichotomies both of the words Paul employs here would normally be used to refer to the thinner, invisible kinds of stuff.
The word translated natural is the adjective form of the word “soul” or “life” (thus BDAG indicates that the adjective means “of the soul/life”). The scriptural basis for Paul’s word choice here is given in the following verse when he quotes Genesis 2:7 in a modified form. There Adam is described as a “living being/soul.” Paul contrasts “natural” or “soulish” people with “spiritual” people in 2:14–15, and, as Wright points out, he is certainly not dealing with a distinction between people who are physical and people who are not! Rather, Paul’s usage suggests a distinction between people who “are living at the level of life common to all humankind” versus those who “are indwelt, guided and made wise by the creator’s Spirit.” In this passage as well the distinction has to do with the difference between ordinary human life and life empowered by God’s Spirit. The adjectives Paul uses describe “not what something is composed of, but what it is animated by. It is the difference between speaking of a ship made of steel or wood on the one hand and a ship driven by steam or wind on the other.”290 Wright follows Hays in pointing to the helpfulness of the Jerusalem Bible’s translation of the verse: “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.”
Elsewhere Paul’s language reflects what is called inaugurated eschatology, including the idea that Christians have already begun to experience the blessings and realities of the last days, including the Spirit, such that they may be called “spiritual.” Here, however, for the sake of the point he wants to make about the radical contrast between the two types of bodies, he describes a strict dichotomy between the life animated by the soul, or ordinary human life, and life fully animated by God’s Spirit, which are two mutually exclusive experiences. To live in a resurrected body is to experience a new mode of existence, life directed and empowered by the Spirit, suitable to the age to come, in a body untainted by sin and death in any sense.
As Wright suggests, Paul’s reference to a spiritual body appears to be “the most elegant way he can find of saying both that the new body is the result of the Spirit’s work (answering ‘how does it come to be?’) and that it is the appropriate vessel for the Spirit’s life (answering ‘what sort of a thing is it?’).”

Ciampa, R. E., & Rosner, B. S. (2010). The First Letter to the Corinthians (pp. 816–818). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

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