Does Christ have a Body Currently?

Recently I was talking theology with a Catholic friend of mine. (Growing up in the South, I haven’t had too many Catholic friends. Up until the last two or three years, I could say “my Catholic friend” and people would know who I was talking about.) My friend made the comment that Jesus is still incarnate, that is, He still has a physical body. I hadn’t really thought about that before. I was a little surprised, not because I thought he was wrong or because the position seems silly. I was surprised because I had  always imagined Jesus as not having a body in heaven. Not that I had given it too much thought, but my knee-jerk imaginations were of Christ without a body (ghost-like).

I had no reason to reject the Catholic view, and honestly I immediately began believing it. I realized I had no reason to disbelieve it, and a few reasons to believe.

Anyway, I was reading Colossians a few days ago and came across this verse: For in him [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Notice that the verse says that the fullness of the deity dwells bodily. The verb is present tense. So, I wonder, could this be implying that Jesus is still incarnate?

To my more orthodox readers, I want to say that I grew up in a Protestant denomination that looked down up any systematic theology. In fact, it simply refused to do it. Of course, refusing to do systematic theology meant resisting complex doctrines of the Trinity (and refusals to even use the term Trinity since it isn’t in the Scriptures), but using complex (and faulty) reasoning to condemn the use of instruments in worship. So, don’t be shocked at my ignorance about traditional trinitarian and Christological thought–I am but the product of my upbringing.

Anything But This!

As regular readers of this blog will know (if such a person exists), I am and have been a libertarian. Recently I’ve been worried about this position, but the worries are (currently) mainly theological, no philosophical.

But I won’t discuss that in this post. I just wanted to establish that I am not a socialist or leftist who thinks the more government, the better. Up until just recently, I had a bumper sticker on my car that said, “GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE ANSWER!” (To quiet any grumblings, let me just add that I took it off because it was falling off, not because I disagreed with the sentiments.)

I want to ask a question, and if anyone has an answer I’d like to hear it. Why is the political right okay with socialized (public) education, socialized police forces, socialized firefighter departments, socialized military, socialized transportation systems (including roads), etc., but are so opposed to socialized medicine?

What economic or political arguments could be given to legitimize all the former  government controls, but make socialized medicine problematic?

What am I missing? It seems blatantly inconsistent to me. (More inconsistent than reading the 2nd Amendment strictly, while allowing the president war powers that can meet a strict reading of the U.S. Constitution!)

Reliability of Scriptures and the Inerrancy of Scriptures

Let me first begin by saying that in this post I am not denying the inerrancy of Scriptures. Instead, I simply want to point out that, even if the Scriptures contain errors, they are still reliable.

Before I make my point, let me first say why I consider my point important. I have noticed (in myself and in others) the tendency to act as if an error in Scriptures would undermine our whole faith. If Genesis really isn’t a historically accurate picture of the creation of the universe, for example, then we have no hope left. I think the reasoning is that if the Scriptures are wrong on *any* point, then the Bible isn’t God’s Word, because God wouldn’t speak falsehoods. And, if the Bible isn’t God’s Word, then it isn’t reliable in matters of faith.

So, here are my thoughts on this subject:

1. Even if the Bible contains errors, it can still be reliable. Our eyes sometimes makes mistakes–we see a distant tower as round when it is square, or we might see something out of the corner of our eye when nothing was there, or a near-sighted person might see a blurred image of color in the distance, when it is really a person. But we still consider our eyes reliable. If we see fire, we walk around it. If we see the edge of a cliff, we don’t walk over it. And so on. (Someone might reply that our eyes make mistakes, but the reason they are still reliable is that we know the situations they fail and so can withhold trust in *those* circumstances. But I don’t think this is thoroughly accurate. Take our hearing as an example: sometimes our hearing fails us in ways we aren’t aware of, e.g. someone is speaking to us and we think they say one thing but they really said another thing. We might even act upon the thing we *thought* they said. The point is that, on the whole, we consider our hearing reliable even though it fails us, and it fails us sometimes when we aren’t aware that it will fail us.) So, overall, I see know reason why we can’t find the Scriptures reliable even if they makes mistakes in some cases. The Gospels might not get Jesus’ words exactly right, but they can still be a reliable source of his teachings.
2. Even if the Bible contains errors, we can still think of it as given to us as a guiding instrument by God, i.e. it can still be God-given. This will probably be even more controversial than my first point, and I’ll admit I haven’t thought about it as much as my first point. But most Christians would agree that our bodies were designed by God, and, furthermore, that our body parts were designed by God for specific reasons. For example, it is thought that our eyes were designed by God to see. But our eyes can occasionally fail us, as I gave examples of above. But, the eyes, despite occasional mistakes, are still God-given instruments for seeing. So, likewise, I see no reason that we can’t view the Bible as a God-given instrument for guidance in the faith, even if it is occasionally wrong.

In general, I think we have set the bar too high with regards to Scripture. By this I don’t mean that Scripture isn’t inerrant and infallible–I’m not denying that. I mean that we have set the bar too high as far as what the denial of inerrancy and infallibility would mean. If the Bible is errant and fallible, it can still be reliable overall, and it can still be a God-given instrument for our guidance in the faith. (For that matter, so can the Church and its leaders: they can be God-given instruments for guidance in the faith, without having to be perfect.) It can be harming to people’s faith to give them an all-or-nothing–inerrant Scriptures or our religion is false–and then send them out into the academic world, where their faith becomes extremely vulnerable.

This is similar to the history of philosophical thought on our senses. It has been tempting to set the bar so high with knowledge that it is an all-or-nothing situation with regard to our senses: either they are perfect, or they are unreliable. Of course, lowering the bar (which was probably only raised by philosophers, not by common usage…though don’t quote me on that!) means that we can have a middle ground, reliable but imperfect senses.

Anyway, I would be glad to hear any thoughts–especially criticisms–of my views here.

Blog Update

I think I’m going to rewrite some old posts for further clarity. Many posts were written hastily (my Government and Slavery posts and my David Hume posts are the ones that stand in the fore of my mind), and I’d like to clarify some of my points.

I have decided that, when I update them, I will repost them so that they show as new posts. I haven’t decided if I’m going to delete the older posts or just leave them for posterity. I’ll probably just leave them on the off chance that someone has linked to them on the website (I know that several of my posts have been linked to, but not all of them). So, be looking for old posts rewritten.

They Cut The Count Of Monte Cristo In Half–And He Didn’t Even Bleed!

I just thought to compare the number of words in the unabridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo with the abridged version that I read in high school. This book is one of my favorite novels of all time–definitely top three, maybe number one!–so you can see why I’d be appalled at what I learned.

Unabridged Version: 444,702 words

Abridged Version: 188,129 words

Difference: 256,573 words

They cut away 58% of the book!

So, if any of my readers have read both the abridged and the unabridged version, would you kindly give me your thoughts on how much worse, if any, the abridged version is.

I know need to buy the unabridged version and read it. I’d always assumed that they had only cut out, say, 10-20% of it, not 58%!