Bodily Resurrection as Paradigm for Unity Regarding Beauty
Jesus’ Bodily Resurrection
The bodily resurrection of Jesus reveals a paradigm for the unified physical and spiritual. It contradicts a denigration of the physical. Bodies are not the product of chance. God created them and they have a purpose, His purpose.
The Greeks in Corinth according to Gnosticism, joining others across the Roman Empire, denied bodily resurrection. God’s creation of the material world deems it valuable. Just like God redeems sinful mankind, He will also redeem His physical creation. God created man in His image in a physical body. Paul also commands in 1 Corinthians 6:20, “Glorify God in your body.”
In addition to creating a physical world and man in a physical body, God took human flesh and raised it from the dead. The Greeks and others were fine with a spiritual sort of phantom resurrection, Jesus as an archetype or an avatar. However, the power in Christianity, and why the Empire persecuted Christians, was because Jesus really did bodily rise.
Future Bodily Resurrection
In the future, believers in resurrected physical bodies will inhabit a new physical creation. Jesus rose as a firstfruit of that future resurrection. It is more than an archetype. It is a true, real, factual, and historical event that presupposes other future events. As such it sits at the foundation of the gospel message. God requires a belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as a prerequisite for one’s own future bodily resurrection.
As a result of a natural and spiritual split, Corinthian unbelievers justified fornication with the statement, “Meats for the belly and the belly for meats.” They considered sex to be natural or physical and as such has no intrinsic moral value. It is the consequence of blind and materialistic selection. It is, therefore, neutral. Nothing spiritual or sacred would exist on that plain.
Sanctified through Thy Truth (and Beauty)
Known Truth
Jesus, God the Son Incarnate, the Creator and Sustainer of all heaven and earth, prayed to God the Father in John 17:17: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” The Word of God sets apart someone unto God. Being set apart means a boundary, which is the Word of God, the truth. On one side of that boundary of truth is someone sanctified and on the other side is someone not.
This boundary over which someone can pass implies a law. A law implies a lawgiver. God is the lawgiver from the beginning. The distinction between the two sides of that boundary, set apart from the other, implies a penalty. Does the penalty occur? It does.
God the lawgiver established natural laws and moral laws. None of these are arbitrary. It is not that you just may or may not be sanctified by the truth, that is His Word. You are in fact sanctified by the Word, which is the truth. Every thing in the Word of God sets a person apart from something else, which would not be of the nature of God.
Think on These Things
In Philippians 4:8, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament of the Word of God, commands:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Scripture commands, “Think on these things.” One of “these things” is “whatsoever things are lovely.” This commands a person to think on something lovely because he can also think on something unlovely. When he thinks on something unlovely, he breaks that command, “Think on these things.” He is then not sanctified by the truth. As in the nature of God, truth and beauty are inextricably connected.
By definition, a fact is something true or proven true. Everything in the Word of God is true and proven true. Truth is in accord with a fact, which is also reality. Scripture is reality. Because of the nature of the Word of God, you know it is true. You are certain of its truthfulness. Since God’s Word is true, you can and should know what is beauty or loveliness by which to be sanctified.
The Contradiction
On the one hand, within the confines of the physical or natural, men deny morality or objective beauty because it is deterministic machinery. On the other, in the realm of the spiritual, men cannot know if or what exists in this realm. Morality is necessary to adjudicate behavior, but it has no objective meaning. The spiritual allows for freedom beyond the restrictions of the physical. It must be private and subjective.
The contradiction comes in the incapability of natural causes to regulate morality. They are just natural. And yet the spiritual cannot judge morality because it follows personal freedom. Neither can the spiritual judge morality because it is subjective. It isn’t knowable. Everything becomes secular through this contradiction.
God is the author of the physical and spiritual world. The sacred does not isolate to the spiritual. Truth, goodness, and beauty proceed from Him. They are knowable and objective through the whole world and everything in it.
When churches and their leaders today give a wide latitude of acceptable aesthetics, they come from at least a variety of the secular view that finds beauty in the realm of freedom from objective meaning. Meaning is assigned. It is not knowable. There are other reasons, pragmatic ones, for this treatment of beauty, including lust. But the underlying thinking comes from the dualism that finds truth only in the physical world, even if it is deterministic.
Keep Them Coming
As I write this, a few hours ago a notification appeared on my computer telling me about a film called, The Jesus Revolution. That would catch my interest anyway, but more so when I saw a name actor was in it, Kelsey Grammer. I watched the trailer and found it used a book written by Greg Laurie, the most well known Calvary Chapel pastor today. Grammer plays Chuck Smith, the pastor of the first Calvary Chapel, who tutored Laurie.
A major character in the story is Lonnie Frisbee, played by the actor who is Jesus in the series, The Chosen. Someone could call that an ironic choice since that’s how Frisbee styled himself. Years ago I wrote a post, “A Modern Revival That Wasn’t,” that would help in understanding. I’ve also witnessed closely The Calvary Chapels and other California spin-offs.
The trailer shows rock music and dressing like a hippie an important part in the Jesus’ Movement. Lonnie Frisbee visits Chuck Smith and Smith must decide he will change the entire aesthetic of his church. As a result, his church explodes with numerical growth and spawns this movement all over the world. Is the Jesus of the Calvary Chapel Movement the Jesus of the Bible? He is different than the one up to that moment in historical Christianity.
Smith accepted a new, different Jesus, an innovative aesthetic, and a novel spirituality to gather and keep massive numbers of people. It also turned away older members. The trailer reveals them to be terribly wrong in not welcoming a new kind of church, dress, people, and culture. The environment for acceptance of this new movement relates to the bifurcation of truth that required turning beauty into a subjective, private notion.
Do you think there is any individuality in the appreciation of beauty?
Thank you for sharing, I believe the movie is called, “Jesus Revolution.” It’s very interesting the Jesus Movement is getting a big Hollywood production like this. If there was any lingering doubt in people’s minds, maybe this will convince them that movement was not of God. The world, and the spirit of the world, celebrate a departure from objective truth, beauty, and historic practice.
Anonymous, Thanks for letting me know on the typo. Yes, Jesus Revolution. Good observation too. I agree.
Hi David,
I think that the individuality would lie in the uniqueness of each individual with certain parameters that confine to the glory of God. It’s a good thought. I have written music, melodies and harmonies and lyrics, that aligned with God’s glory.