Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul M
Its not bashing anything thread, unless people want to start collecting infractions.
Getting back to the topic.
Isnt it supposed to be the "spirit" that ascends, so its not really important where the body ends up ?
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Gnostics started saying so some time round the 2nd century AD (I think). That was one of the early contentious issues the church faced. If you ever remember going to church and having to recite the Creed(I believe in one God, etc), well the reason we have the creed is that it addresses and affirms all the key elements of Christian belief in the face of Gnosticism and other challenges that arose in the early church.
Orthodox Christian belief is that Jesus physically died, physically rose from the dead and, after 40 days, physically ascended into heaven, so that there are no earthly remains of him at all.
Further to that, orthodox Christian belief is that Christians, on death, are with God as spirits but awaiting a physical resurrection of the same kind as Jesus. "The new heavens and the new earth" at the very end of the book of Revelation is a place where the spiritual and the physical live together.