The Ascension
Submitted by jroberts on Mon, 2007-05-21 06:22.
Yesterday (or last Thursday), Liturgical Churches celebrated the Ascension; i.e., the point when 40 days after the Ressurection, Jesus ascended bodily into heaven. What do y'all think are the implications for that? Do you think of Jesus as still having His ressurected body? Do you think we'll have bodies in heaven?
Means nothing?
" First cremation is just an act, one without meaning unless we intend it to be so, and certainly one without pagan meaning unless we know what that meaning is and purposely intend it to take on that meaning."
"It is just a body, the soul is gone by then."
I think you hit on the meaning of cremation perfectly. Willingness to be cremated relies on a body-soul dualism, that's no where to be found in traditional Christianity. We're not just a soul, we're our bodies too. "Soul" and "Body" are, in traditional, Catholic, Orthodox Christianity, really just two ways of talking about the one thing, a person. It's not, "I'm a soul and I have a body," which seems to be what's implicit in a willingness to be cremated or left in a bag at the curb. This is why Catholicism has always insisted on the importance of being consecrated earth, why the incorruptibles and relics have been venerated, and why cremation has typically been banned or at least looked down on. Cremation per se probably isn't that much of an issue, but it carries behind it the assumption that "It's just a body," to which anything can be done after "the soul is gone." I have a vague sense from your previous posts that you're Catholic, maybe, or at least have Catholic leanings and sympathies. Why do you think we do corporeal things like genuflect and make the cross? We're teaching ourselves to love God in our bodies. If I can say "it's just a body" about my eventual corpse, why can't I say it now? The whole history of traditional Christianity is one fight against dualism after another.