OK, evidently a miscommunication somewhere. What I was trying to say was that if Jesus meant literally “today [the thief] will be with [Jesus] in paradise” then there’d be a problem since although Jesus died on the cross on Friday, he wouldn’t be in paradise (heaven) for 2 more days (given he wasn’t risen from the grave until Sunday).

Well… he’d still be with the father in heaven.

Does paradise work on Earth time? Do they have days in heaven? (If so, eternity seems a long time to be around.) Maybe, when we die, either because we are unconscious or because we have entered a completely different dimension, time as we know it stops too? So, knowing that his fellow victim was going to die that day, he said he would be in paradise. Pure speculation, of course.
Eric.

I’m not sure about the intermediate state the dead are in now, but when Jesus returns to judge the world he will bring in the new heavens and the new earth - a new universe. It will be just as physical as this one and time will be part of it. If our hope of ressurection is unconciousness then we have no hope at all.

Dannii Willis - 05 October 2008 05:24 PM

If our hope of ressurection is unconciousness then we have no hope at all.

Dannii, my mention of unconsciousness was a reference to the possibility of an intermediate state prior to resurrection. I think the term is ‘soul sleep’. Personally, I’m happy to wait till I get ‘there’.

Here’s a moderate preterist perspective.

- The OT saints went to ‘paradise,’ which would have been where both Jesus and the believing thief went.

- No man could enter heaven before our forerunner, Jesus. Rev 4-5 show His ascension. He open the New Covenant scroll, releasing the gospel ‘horsemen’.

- The 5th seal shows the OT saints asking for vengeance but they are told to wait a little longer. They would only enter with a corresponding NT harvest, following the biblical principle of two witnesses (martyroi).

- After the Jewish Christians are ‘sealed’ (a perfect number) they are harvested in Rev 14, a massacre allowed by Christ as the central Angel with a sickle. The harvest was ripe.

- These saints are then seen standing before God’s throne on the the crystal sea. The 24 governing angels had vacated their thrones one by one as they carried out their tasks (Trumpets, Bowls, etc.) Then the saints moved in. God’s people are no longer under angelic government. We no longer require tutors.

- The resurrection that the NT writers were referring to occurred in the first century. They refer to it as being imminent. Jesus said some who heard His words would see His coming before they died. John would remain alive until Jesus came in judgment. It was the saints receiving the kingdom and being resurrected. Now the church governs the world from heaven, and its heavenly ‘Temple’ pattern is being measured out on the earth.

- Now, ‘blessed’ are those who die in the Lord from this event on, because we go straight into Christ’s presence.

- This was the first resurrection. The rest of the dead (the wicked) won’t be resurrected until the last day, after the ‘millennium’, the gospel age. Then the second resurrection will take place.

- This all follows the Garden, Land, World pattern set down in Genesis. Jesus resurrected in the garden; the firstfruits (a key word) church resurrected from the Land, and we wait for the final resurrection of the united church from the world.

I see this threefold division in 1 Cor 15:

“But each one will be raised in his proper order:

Christ, first of all; (AD30)

then, at the time of his coming (parousia), those who belong to him. (AD70: see Matt 10:23)

Then the end will come; Christ will overcome all spiritual rulers, authorities, and powers (during the gospel age), and will hand over the Kingdom to God the Father. For Christ must rule until God defeats all enemies and puts them under his feet. The last enemy to be defeated will be death.

Angus said:

Now, what about our spiritual bodies before the resurrection? The Bible seems to indicate in numerous places (eg 1 Cor 15:6; 1 Cor 15:20; 1 Thes 4:13-18; 2 Peter 3:4) that when we die we will ‘be asleep’ until final judgement.

I think it is an exegetical error to take the expression to ‘fall asleep’ or be ‘asleep’ as meaning anything other than to die or to be dead.  It was a standard way of speaking of death in the first century Ancient Near Eastern world, not a theological explanation of what happens to the human soul when we die.

Admittedly, Martin Luther held the understanding that the intermediate state was a kind of spiritual sleep (known as ‘soul-sleep’) but others, including Calvin, held that the believer goes to be with Christ immediately upon their death, in a kind of interim state where spirit and body are separate until the resurrection.  Hence:

The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Beside these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledges none.  [Westminster Confession 1646, chapter XXXII, Of the State of Men after Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead]

Once you get past reading too much into the language of ‘sleep’ in the New Testament, this view makes better sense of all that it says about death and resurrection for the believer (IMO).

. . . if Jesus meant literally “today [the thief] will be with [Jesus] in paradise” then there’d be a problem since although Jesus died on the cross on Friday, he wouldn’t be in paradise (heaven) for 2 more days (given he wasn’t risen from the grave until Sunday).

The assumption in this is that Jesus was in the tomb spiritually and physically for three days.  But was he?  Or, having completed his work on the cross, was he spiritually with his Father immediately, in an intermediate state of ‘body-spirit separation’ (while his body remained in the tomb), from which he progressed to a fully resurrected state on the third day?  If this is what happened, then Jesus has actually preceded us in the same process that we will undergo: death - intermediate state - bodily resurrection.

Bob

New creation has begun in us through the work of the Spirit
The new creation may be thought of as having three stages (1) the new creation within us now (2) the intermediate anticipatory [removed]3) the final resurrection.

Upon death the Christian is clothed with an intermediatory body which is an anticipatory expression of the resurrection body that is to come.

The intermediatory body is not the resurrection body but is it is an anticipatory expression of the resurrection body.

The intermediate state then is embodied existence.

(At death non-Christians are disembodied souls – ‘naked shame’)

Although this idea seems attractive it seems slim on Biblical support relying on a certain interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5. If 2 Cor. 5 is talking about the resurrection body and the intermediatory body is thought of as an expression of the resurrection body (both being spiritual bodies) then Paul could be referring to both simultaneously as a unity.

Anyway I’d be interested in what people think about this.

Bob Cameron - 08 October 2008 01:42 AM

I think it is an exegetical error to take the expression to ‘fall asleep’ or be ‘asleep’ as meaning anything other than to die or to be dead.  It was a standard way of speaking of death in the first century Ancient Near Eastern world, not a theological explanation of what happens to the human soul when we die.

Hi Bob. I won’t dispute that ‘asleep’ was a polite way to refer to death. However, where many/most Second Temple Jews (except the Sadducees) believed in a future resurrection of the dead (that necessarily included a reassembly of their body parts eg Ezekiel 37:1-14), ‘asleep’ would seem a suitable euphemism to choose for death. Nevertheless I’ll concede that there’s evidence (eg Acts 12:15) that some believed or suspected an intermediate spirit state prior to resurrection.

Once you get past reading too much into the language of ‘sleep’ in the New Testament, this view makes better sense of all that it says about death and resurrection for the believer (IMO).

Could you provide specific verses that appear problematic with my reading of ‘asleep’ and ‘sleep’ when referring to those who’ve died (or who have appeared to have died)?

. . . if Jesus meant literally “today [the thief] will be with [Jesus] in paradise” then there’d be a problem since although Jesus died on the cross on Friday, he wouldn’t be in paradise (heaven) for 2 more days (given he wasn’t risen from the grave until Sunday).

The assumption in this is that Jesus was in the tomb spiritually and physically for three days.  But was he?  Or, having completed his work on the cross, was he spiritually with his Father immediately, in an intermediate state of ‘body-spirit separation’ (while his body remained in the tomb), from which he progressed to a fully resurrected state on the third day?

It seems to me that the NT scriptures, the early church fathers and most of Christendom since have believed that that Jesus did not ascend to the Father / heaven until ‘the third day’ as indicated in all three of our formal creeds.

Adam
My eyes/brain may well be failing me (I am only a few weeks shy of 50 after all!) but I’m not clear who/what you’re quoting in your post #22.  Can you please clarify that for me?
Bob

Bob, quote is from a book I came across. Don’t have source available.

Hi Angus

I’ll try to respond to each issue you’ve raised.

1 On ‘sleep’, it wasn’t just a Jewish euphemism, but Greek as well.  I think Paul’s use of it is reflecting popular language, and may even be picking up on the language used by believers in the churches to which he wrote (bearing in mind that they were predominantly Gentiles).

I agree that many Jews looked forward to a delayed resurrection.  The question is what happened to the spirit between the time the body died and was raised again.  I don’t know what 1st century Jews thought on this question, but the classic Reformed view (as illustrated in my quote from the Westminster Confession above) is that the believing spirit/soul does not die.  Therefore the language of resurrection is applied to the body of the believer, the spirit having been raised already in regeneration.

2 The Luke 23:43 text is one place.  Although some commentators have placed the ‘non-existent comma’ after “today”, they are very much in a minority.  It is not the way the word was normally used, and it would be somewhat redundant after Jesus had already began with the emphatic “truly”.

In 2 Cor 5:1-10 Paul speaks of his longing to be “absent from the body” and “at home with the Lord” (see esp. v8).  This is hard to make sense of if the next thing he will consciously experience after death is his bodily resurrection.

Likewise it’s hard to see why Paul would want to “depart and be with Christ” rather than “remain on in the flesh” (Phil 1:23-24) if upon his death he would actually fall asleep for an undefined period of time until the day of resurrection.

3 I don’t have any problems with the affirmations of the Creeds with regard to Jesus’ ascension.  I take the term to mean his bodily ascension, as I suspect many of the early church fathers also did.  This is quite consistent with the idea of the intermediate state as a kind of ‘temporary disembodiment’.

Regards,

Bob

Adam Olive - 08 October 2008 12:00 PM

Bob, quote is from a book I came across. Don’t have source available.

Thanks anyway Adam.
As to the idea it expresses of an intermediate body, it’s not one that I’ve come across much.  But I do think that it runs into problems with the passages from 2 Cor 5 and Phil 1 that I refer to above in my reply to Angus.
Bob