I don’t think we will have glorified bodies in Heaven, if you mean the place where we go when we die. Christ does have a glorified body, but my body will stay in the ground until the resurrection. Perhaps therein lies the rub. Heaven is temporary. Heaven prefigures the New Heavens and New Earth. Our bodies, complete with sexual capacity will be wholly resurrected, just like Christ’s. But again, this doesn’t happen at death. Sexual identity is not a result of the Fall.

Finally, the same concept of typology does bear on the relationship of Israel and the Church, but it always looks forward. Theonomist types tend to look backward in redemptive history for their view of politics, etc. It takes a great deal more maturity and ecclesiocentricity to look forward for a view of politics. Israel had a king because they were weak. They had hard laws because they were hard-hearted. Christ has saved us from these temporal crutches. His political revolution isn’t national or legislative, because those things are small and base. The gospel doesn’t change laws (or if it does, it’s secondary). It changes the very desires of men. This is ultimately the goal of contemporary politics, as well. Our politicians are after the hearts of men. If they could legislate heartfelt conformity they would. And so the gospel is their greatest threat.

This brings us back again to the psalms and weekly communion. The Lord’s service pounds at the gates of secularism each Sunday. We can deny that, but at some point our impact, especially if it is unintentional, unpolitical, and totally spiritual will bring Nero to our door. We can tell him our view of politics is spiritual, but that is the very thing he covets- access to the root of loyalty and desire- that is why death is the solution to political dissonance.

Rusty

By the way, thanks for listening. It’s a privilege of blogdom to have access to men of your caliber, and I don’t take it for granted!

i have to admit, much of what you say seems good to me.

but then you seem, at least to me, to take a left turn at albequerque: “The church’s job is ultimately about making heaven on earth.” it is your meta-narrative that bothers me immensely.

heaven on earth is when we are gathered around word and sacrament as weak vessels and as the world buzzes around us (i am often remided of this in my little presby church-away-from-home when we take the elements: the front of the church has angled windows through which we can observe all sorts of buzzing creation, like cars and sun and wind and hitch-hikers. and as i contemplate the ridiculous notion that heaven on earth is this pathetic display i am reminded of how the flesh just doesn’t get it). and it is the flesh that wants it here and now. heaven on earth is about all sorts of glory-filled things. all that stuff i view as i take the elements is good stuff, but were i to tell it that heaven is happening on *this* side of the window pane it would, predictably, guffaw at me, just as i do to myself as i raise the bread and wine to my lips–it’s weird experience, indeed, to be at once a citizen of both kingdoms.

in this way, eschateology matters a great deal: is it here and now (a theology of glory) or later (a theology of the Cross)? and more to the point of your phrase above, at whose hands does it come…ours or heaven’s? yes, the second adam is making all things new “one soul at a time,” but it’s an already/not yet tension. it’s something already done but only seen with the eye of faith, to be consummated later. think of abraham narrative: it’s a heavenly promise to be waited patiently upon, not a task one to be taken up by human might.

yes, our approaches differ. but different from how you might see this difference, it makes all the difference.

zrim

Wait, there’s more. In heaven we will have glorified bodies. I assume that means we will still be individually male and female. And yet one of the points of being different sexes — procreation — will be gone. So here we have these physical bodies capable of reproduction and the equipment will be — to mix metaphors — put out to pasture.

I think the difference between us is the degree of continuity or discontinuity between this age and the age to come. This difference also bears on the way we regard continuity and discontinuity between Israel and the church. Eschatology matters.

The goal is heaven on earth. Paul distinguishes the spiritual from the material, and I don’t deny that spirit is different from matter. But the end isn’t spirituality without materiality, the end is resurrection- materiality redeemed. Spirit without matter is the definition of death to a man.

The church’s job is ultimately about making heaven on earth. This is the intention of earth that Adam screwed up. And the second Adam is fixing that mistake one resurrected soul after another. I think I only differ from you guys in the way I approach spirit and matter.

yes, exactly.

i wonder if rusty presumes that a spiritual/material dichotomy is an auotmatically low view of the latter or presumes a nasty gnosticism? but perishable does not mean bad from my POV…not one iota. but do we really have to lend eternal value to that which is temporal in order to make the point? i think this to quite overstate it and over-correct for systems that would degrade that which was pronounced “very good.”

not all dichotomies seek to denigrate one class over another. many, like this one, actually seek to simply set them in perspective and right order. further, in this one, the stark edges drawn actually set up for a high view of material.

no, rusty, the raft upon which we float is good yet sinking. it’s not sinking because it is intrinsically evil but because it’s a got a hole in it–nothing too profound there. we won’t get to our destination unless we quietly slip on our lifejacket and attend to the good goings-on on the raft while at once also looking ahead. the raft needs, nor can it accept, redemption from the likes of us. that groaning will cease at the hands of Another.

zrim

i am not so sure i follow your question. but i do believe that only God is spirit, but that would be true pre- and post-incarnation (so would angels), so maybe that doesn’t meet your criterion(?).

but i think we have gotten to that inevitable point where i can see our essential differences, which i suspected anyway.

you are welcome…and thanks.

zrim

You say, “it ‘was finished’ 2000 years ago only if you read such to be spiritual and yet to be consummated materially.”

Name two entities- since the incarnation- that are only spiritual vs. “material.” (two, because angels would be an answer I might grant)

Thanks for the interaction.

yes, braiding hair is cultural. but i have always read the point to be larger than how a woman should wear her hair, namely don’t make a specticle of yourself and play by the rules of your time and place in order to gain a hearing (for the Gospel, that is, not a place at the cultural table). further, if we are to apply eternal categories to paul’s instructions on temporal matters (i.e. how men and women should wear their hair) then it should be true across time and place that head coverings are in order, no questions asked, right?

“You say not yet, I say 2000 years ago.”

mmmm, i say “already/not yet.” but, yes, you are correct on our essential disagreement. i make visible/invisible distinctions. it “was finished” 2000 years ago only if you read such to be spiritual and yet to be consummated materially.

zrim