Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave
You should read those verses again. That is exactly my point. The Corinthian's passage is saying we have "not" spiritually been raised with Christ yet (Paul was trying to address the gnostic point which indicated that we have been raised spiritually with Christ and therefore our bodies are not important). Ephesians is saying we have been raised with Christ, spiritually, as you say. There is a clear contradiction. The only thing you can say is that he is addressing two issues from different perspectives but I believe my original point was that Ephesians was written by a different person which maybe in the scheme of things doesn't mean anything if it is scripture.
|
1 Cor 15:12-15:
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.
Paul was addressing the view that there was no bodily resurrection of the dead, which would also imply that Jesus was never raised from the dead, he is not talking in spiritual terms in 1 Cor 15:12-15. Ephesians talks about a spiritual resurrection, but nowhere does it state that a physical, bodily resurrection has already taken place and will never happen. In Corinthians, Paul is saying that in fact there is a physical, bodily resurrection. I don't see how it's a contradiction as no where does he state that a spiritual resurrection happening excludes the bodily resurrection from happening.
Furthermore, we're assuming that there is such a thing as "time" in the spiritual world. It's possible that the spiritual world is timeless and things don't necessarily happen in order but in ways that is hard for our physical minds to comprehend. For example scripture says that our true home is in heaven (Phil 3:20) and God knew us even before he formed us in our mother's womb (Jer 1:5) and that the lamb of God was slain before the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8).
Quote:
|
I notice that you quote from different translations of the Bible EV and RSV and maybe others. I don't seem to understand why you consider them better than the oldest Codex' manuscripts. Having been trained in Greek I go back to them to double check the closest manuscripts to the originals since i do not have the confidence you do in various translations. When I read one passage from the KJV and compare it RSV or EV or NSRV I find there are discrepancies. I keep a number of versions at my finger tips to include the oldest Codex as well as a Greek interlinear NT. I Thess 5:21 "...test everything" (NSRV). Do you just accept everything as it is in one or two versions?
|
I keep a Greek-English ESV interlinear with me as well and have concordances handy. I quote verses from english translations to make our conversation easier. If you'd like to go into the Greek, I am fine with that as well.
The heart of what I was saying was not to discourage scholarly studies of God's word, but that if you are using your scholarly gift to undermine the validity of scriptures, that is much less profitable than directing your talents towards uncovering the mountain of spiritual riches contained in God's word.
It's like spending hours to find scraps of food in a garbage bin, when there's a free buffet two feet away.