Q: In the last column, you wrote about what Jesus did after he died. Was he a person or a spirit?

Answer: Christians have been thinking about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus since the beginning of Lent. The accounts of his post-resurrection activities are important to the question asked by the reader. What was the nature of the resurrected Jesus?

We have scriptural evidence that the resurrected Jesus was involved in human activities. They gave Jesus a piece of fish and some honeycomb, and He ate it, Luke 24:4243, says. According to Luke 24:39, Jesus said, Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have. And John 20:27, he said to doubting Thomas, Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe. When Jesus appeared and disappeared in several places, He baffled people and seemed to be a spirit. In some situations, it was strange that he was not recognizable by his disciples and Mary Magdalene. The faithful are led to believe that he maintained his physical body with spiritual powers or as Thomas Aquinas said, Christs body, though real, was glorified.

Paul believed that faithful humans could be born again with a spiritual body like Christ. He writes about the different kinds of bodies in 1 Corinthians 15:45-47, The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven.

Noted here are a few verses from 1 Corinthians 15:3554 to present a broader view of the question: How are the dead raised and with what kind of body? What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed. God gives it a body as he has determined. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. The dead will be raised imperishable. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true, Death has been swallowed up in victory. For Paul, the resurrection was the foundation of the faith.

Q: Could you write more about the soul?

Answer: This answer will be a brief overview. The soul has been defined in several ways. Some people believe that it is the living being. Others belief that it is the part of a person that guides behavior, and it lives after the body dies. The concept of the soul could be 200,000 years old. Some Hindus and Buddhists believed in the immortal soul. In Jesus time, people believed in a resurrection after death not the immortality of the soul. In Genesis 2:7, we find, And God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. The word soul in some passages in the Bible simply meant life; however, did this verse mean that God gave man a soul?

The doctrine of a separate soul was a Greek concept. Socrates believed in the immortality of the soul of a virtuous person. He thought that the soul brings life and is imperishable. Plato believed in the immortality of the soul which had existed before the body. Later, Augustine thought the soul acknowledged truth; therefore, it was immortal. Some of the early Christians accepted the Greek idea that the soul was created by God and placed in the body at conception. Presently, Judaism, Christianity and Islam proclaim that immortality is achieved by the resurrection of the body on the day of judgment.

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.

Pray that we understand our need to support and protect each other with guidance from God, health professionals and good common sense.

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Everyday Religion: What was the nature of the resurrected Jesus? - Winston-Salem Journal