Nigel Tomes on 1 Corinthians 15:45 "Let's Get It Right"

[UntoHim]

Nigel Tomes of the Church in Toronto Canada explains the biblical, orthodox teaching and understanding of this crucial passage during a recent Sunday morning message.

The applicable portion starts at 39:45 mins.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozuh1gspzZQ&t=0s
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[OBW]

I bet you expected me to comment on this one. I could say "it's about time" but that is an unnecessary stab at someone who has not only been in that system for so many years as a significant teacher within it, but also clearly working to free himself and his flock from the clutches of it. Given the progress that was seen all the way back at the time of the battles over the Midwest, this should have been understood as expected, even if not immediately. Good to see that we are there now. All those treatises on various issues that he wrote (and you posted and we discussed) years back were the background for finally putting a nail in the coffin of this erroneous teaching.

[UntoHim]

I've been bugging Nigel for years to write one of his polemic papers on 1 Corinthians 15:45. I'll have to settle on this for now!
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Originally Posted by UntoHim

I've been bugging Nigel for years to write one of his polemic papers on 1 Corinthians 15:45. I'll have to settle on this for now!
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Hi,

Is it possible to have what Nigel teaches in this video posted here in writing for those of us who are hearing-impaired?

I and others have really enjoyed his other teachings that are on his thread here. This latest topic seems to be something we would absolutely love to read.

Thanks.

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi,

Is it possible to have what Nigel teaches in this video posted here in writing for those of us who are hearing-impaired?

I and others have really enjoyed his other teachings that are on his thread here. This latest topic seems to be something we would absolutely love to read.

Thanks.

On the YouTube video, does it give you written captions if you click the little "CC" button on the bottom right of the video screen? It does for me, although I haven't vetted them for accuracy.

[OBW]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Is it possible to have what Nigel teaches in this video posted here in writing for those of us who are hearing-impaired?

I and others have really enjoyed his other teachings that are on his thread here. This latest topic seems to be something we would absolutely love to read.

It might be possible to put it through some kind of speech-to-text conversion program, but the last time I looked at something like that, it was too expensive for the average person to buy, and needed to be "trained" with respect to the person it was going to convert, therefore it was too tied to a single speaker and not just generally useable, therefore even more expensive if the goal is general use rather than simply transcribing a single person's speeches, lectures, etc.

The alternative is for someone to sit and transcribe it. A lot more time and work. Unless someone has the time and inclinations, not very likely to happen unless someone at the church in Toronto is already doing it.

Thanks guys,

..don't want to put anybody to too much trouble...thought that a transcript already existed and was automatic.

Alas..

[Ohio]

Nigel, does this mean in resurrection we all receive a "life-giving spirit" spiritual body like Jesus?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Nigel, does this mean in resurrection we all receive a "life-giving spirit" spiritual body like Jesus?

One of Witness Lee's go-to questions was, "How many life-giving spirits are there?" I would point our readers to John's gospel, where an angel, a ministering spirit, comes down and stirs the water, and whosoever first touches the water gets healed of any infirmities. (5:4) This is "life" in exactly the same context as the word was used in the LC. There is one spirit, multiple manifestations: healing, comfort, aid, visitation. So in that context the answer to your question is, Yes we do.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

One of Witness Lee's go-to questions was, "How many life-giving spirits are there?" I would point our readers to John's gospel, where an angel, a ministering spirit, comes down and stirs the water, and whosoever first touches the water gets healed of any infirmities. (5:4) This is "life" in exactly the same context as the word was used in the LC. There is one spirit, multiple manifestations: healing, comfort, aid, visitation. So in that context the answer to your question is, Yes we do.

The apostles, while still in their earthly bodies, did all of these works too. They brought healing, comfort, aid, and even God Himself was manifested through them. Jesus said greater works would be done thru them than even His own.

But how does this explain our resurrected body, the heart of the Corinthians' questions? Tomes seems to be saying that we all in resurrection become "life giving spirit" like the Firstborn, yet your response points out the work of angels.

Perhaps Tomes is right. I need more than that to be persuaded. His commentary was not adequate. Yours only introduces more questions.

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Nigel, does this mean in resurrection we all receive a "life-giving spirit" spiritual body like Jesus?

Since Jesus was the only one at that point to have resurrected, His was the only example of an already-resurrected being that could be used. None of us are Jesus or the only begotten Son of God, and none of us are the lifeline for anyone to gain eternal life. Only Jesus is that person, and so only He can be said to be "life-giving". So, like Jesus, we will have a spiritual body after resurrection, but none of us are life-givers like He is, so I don't see that we would be life-giving after resurrection either.

I went back listened to Nigel's sermon from about 39:00 on, and I don't believe he asserts anywhere that we will be life-giving spirits with spiritual bodies, only that we will have spiritual bodies.

From the 48:00 minute mark what he has on the screen emphasizes the physical/spiritual body only (that's what's bolded on the quote) not what's "inside" either of those bodies. At 48:23 he says:

"...okay, so, what do we know about resurrection? Resurrection....you resurrect with a body. Jesus resurrected with a body, the tomb was empty, because he was resurrected. His, the body, which was like that of Adam, became something different, but it was the same Jesus. The one became the other. He didn't leave His old body in the tomb; rather, that body was resurrected and changed and became different. Amen? What will happen to you? [laughing] Answer: the same! What can God do for you? Answer: the same. He can change your, even after death, He can change your body, current body, into a different kind of body, yet in continuity with that. It's not a total change...."

When Nigel says "the same" he seems to only be referring to the spiritual body part of it. Not that we also will become life-giving spirits in a spiritual body. Nigel says very clearly at one point that resurrection changes our body outwardly, but it's still us...."you are still you". So, since Jesus was explicit pre-resurrection that He is "the life", so He will still be after resurrection. Since none of us are "the life" pre-resurrection, neither will any of us be afterward, and we thus wouldn't be life-giving.

Nigel's whole comparison is just about the spiritual body. Not about the life-giving part of it that is unique to Jesus.

I think the confusion is that people have heard different things when they listened to Nigel and don't realize others came away with a different thought than them, but I think a careful listening shows he wasn't saying that believers become life-giving spirits.

[OBW]

Ohio,

I think that the point that Paul made was that Christ, who was life-giving, was now in a spiritual body. While he had used the example of Christ to give some kind of idea about the nature of this body, the point was not to transfer every aspect of Christ to us in our resurrection but to point to the features described in the accounts of his appearance over the few weeks between the resurrection and ascension that related to the body, not to everything else about Christ. Surely there was more than just the body of resurrection present because it made God in the person of Jesus Christ visible and tangible. So the fact that Paul makes any reference to the nature of God is not to be presumed as a statement about us when the discussion is about bodies, not divine attributes.

Consider other places where Paul talks about Christ. Does he simply talk coldly about some specific thing? No, he tends to be rather superlative. So here, he has managed to seem almost clinical for a bit, then reminds them of one of the superlatives about Christ as he continues to tell us about this body that he has reason to believe is like the one we will receive.

Besides, it is not the body that is life-giving. It is the person who inhabits it. Since neither you nor I are live-giving (in the manner that Christ is), then our resurrected body will not be housing such a person.

But, as in all aspects of discussion about what is to be in the next life, at the end times, etc., it is what it is. Too much consideration about that was never the point. Instead, it seems that Paul is trying to terminate a bunch of arguing about what the resurrected body might be like. And the only thing he had to provide was Jesus as an example. The goal wasn't to provide teaching about the body in resurrection but to end the debate so they could get back to the more important aspects of the Christian life. At some level, that is what the whole letter is about — ending disputes over teachers, what is acceptable sin to ignore, how to behave at the Lord's table, the distribution of gifts, the three-ring circus that their meetings became, and now both the certainty of and the nature of the body in resurrection.

And so the point was not to provide some certainty about the nature of our body in resurrection but to suggest that we have an example, therefore we can stop bickering about it and move on beyond it. Just like the goal of stopping the argument over teachers wasn't to settle the argument in favor of one over the other but to show that it was not relevant or useful. It seems that this was the theme of so much of the book, yet we still want to milk a single verse for special attribute for ourselves. Seems very Corinthian.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Trapped

Nigel's whole comparison is just about the spiritual body. Not about the life-giving part of it that is unique to Jesus.

Listen carefully to the transition that Nigel misses when he posts I Cor 15.44-45. He discusses Paul's comments on two types of body, the soulish or natural body and the spiritual body, the body before resurrection, and the body after.

Then Paul quotes a part of Genesis 2.7, "Adam became a living soul." But that was NOT Adam's body. Adam's body was dust, made from dust, and will return to dust. Paul did not refer to Adam's body here, rather to what Adam became after God breathed into him.

Likewise when the Last Adam became "life giving spirit," Paul was not referring to the spiritual body of Jesus, but what He had become following resurrection.

I don't agree with Nigel's premise here. He misses the transition, "So also it is written." (I Cor 15.45a) Paul's word use here indicates he is making a further point, not just expanding the previous point. To repeat, Adam's body was not "a living soul," and Jesus' resurrected body was not "living giving spirit." These two descriptions refer to something more "intrinsic" for lack of a better word.

Then Nigel quotes E.P. Sanders saying this verse is easy to misunderstand. I would say that E.P. Sanders is "easy to misunderstand" since he has numerous controversial ideas about Paul, Jesus, and Judaism. Many evangelicals do not accept his ideas. He may be a scholar, and I do not reject scholars, but "scholars" come in all flavors. Dr. Bart Ehrman has been widely referenced on this forum and he is now a professed agnostic/atheist. When it comes to "scholars," buyer beware!