The empty tomb and Mormonism’s aversion to cremation

[drumdude]

It seems to me these two beliefs are at odds.

In traditional Christianity, Jesus was God. And God is a spirit being. He is not a physical man like he is within Mormonism. Jesus could just turn his body into a spirit an vacate the tomb.

So how did the empty tomb under Mormon theology work? Mormons clearly believe their physical body in mortality is physically linked to their perfected body. Because of the belief that burial is preferable to cremation.

Teleportation? Walking through walls? Why does having a body matter if you can just act like a spirit when it’s convenient?

[Dr. Shades]

So how did the empty tomb under Mormon theology work?

The stone at the entrance of the tomb was rolled away, allowing him to walk out.

[Physics Guy]

The canonical Christian gospels do not describe the Resurrection itself. I'd be surprised if any ancient non-canonical sources do, either, because even though I'm no expert on them, I think I'd have heard about something like that, and I haven't.

The gospels indeed agree that the empty tomb was found open. They all emphasise this. Anyway the implication is that Jesus could just have walked out normally after coming back to life. He wouldn't have had to teleport, in the canonical story.

A couple of the accounts (Luke and John) mention the linen strips that had wrapped Jesus's body being found in the tomb. In the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead, Lazarus is able to walk out of his tomb, but can use some help to unwrap himself. It's not clear how helplessly bound Lazarus was, or how tied-up Jesus would have been. So I think there may have been some notions that Jesus somehow just dissolved his way out of the wrappings, leaving them behind, but I think one can just as well imagine him unwrapping himself normally.

Otherwise the New Testament is ambiguous about how ordinarily physical Jesus's body was, post-Resurrection. On the one hand several passages emphasise that he could be touched, and that he could eat, and that he was not a ghost. On the other hand several passages describe him appearing and disappearing unexpectedly. They don't explicitly say that he just appeared out of nowhere, or vanished, but they have him suddenly being there in a room that was locked. And then Luke's Ascension accounts have Jesus "taken up" into heaven; in Acts, the disciples are left staring up into a cloud. So Jesus's exit is not a teleportation, but it is apparently a levitation.

My understanding is that later Christian controversies strengthened the mainstream Christian emphasis on Jesus's physical body, because it became a kind of political issue. The authoritative Church structure that emerged, and exerted version control on Christian doctrine, was based on chains of personal contact back to the Apostles who had personal contact with Jesus. Paul managed to wangle his way into the inner circle based on purely visionary contact, but the Church had to do all it could to suppress that precedent because anybody at all could make that kind of claim. So there was a lot emphasis on Jesus having been flesh and blood, even after the Resurrection. Those who had known him personally in the body were the sole sources of valid traditions about him; he was not a spirit who might continue appearing to anyone, starting up rival movements.

There was still Paul, plus the whole Logos and Trinity deal, which did kind of imply that Jesus might pop up again anywhere, anytime, anyhow, the Tao that runs through all things. This rather opposite tradition didn't completely die out.

"I am the light that is over all. I am the All. The All came forth out of me. And to me the All has come.
Split a piece of wood — I am there. Lift the stone, and you will find me there.”

So we get Joseph Smith having his own Paul-like vision, all those centuries later.

Whether it's a coherent but hard-to-imagine concept like curved spacetime, or just nonsense, the Christian picture of Christ as normal human but God has been two-sided from the beginning. It isn't just Mormons who have looked more at the flesh-and-blood side, when they thought about their own resurrections, and avoided cremation. I doubt everyone thought that God would need to have their undisturbed bones in order to raise them to eternal life. There were acknowledged saints who had been burned, after all. The general feeling seems to have been, I think, that if being raised bodily was good enough for Jesus then Christians should follow suit, and leave a raisable body.

[Moksha]

Mormon science reasoned that the zombie-like remains of the non-cremated cadaver would be more amenable to being Celestially restored. This helped guide their cremation policy since it spared a step for God's matter replicators.

[Doctor Steuss]

So how did the empty tomb under Mormon theology work?

The stone at the entrance of the tomb was rolled away, allowing him to walk out.

To add, this is found in John 20:1.

Now on the first day of the week Mary Mag′dalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

[drumdude]

I guess growing up catholic I didn’t think he actually woke up, pushed the stone, and walked out. More emphasis was put on the verticality of the resurrection. He literally descended down into hell and then ascended into heaven, as in the Nicene Creed.

I guess Mormons believe he was just phase shifting between the spirit world and mortal world after his death?

[Chap]

I guess growing up catholic I didn’t think he actually woke up, pushed the stone, and walked out. More emphasis was put on the verticality of the resurrection. He literally descended down into hell and then ascended into heaven, as in the Nicene Creed.

I guess Mormons believe he was just phase shifting between the spirit world and mortal world after his death?

The US Catholic English version of the Nicene Creed includes these words:

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

The fact that the ascension of Jesus into heaven is celebrated forty days after Easter gives you the clue: the New Testament narrative is that Jesus rose from the dead, showed himself to his disciples in various ways as a physical human being still manifesting the wounds of his crucifixion for forty days, and only then 'ascended into heaven'.

See Acts 1:

1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

[drumdude]

I never focused on the whole timeline. Definitely a gap in my Sunday school knowledge lol. Since in traditional Christianity, Jesus and God are the same and are synonymous with the Universe itself, the resurrection wasn’t very impressive to me.

I guess that’s a win for Mormonism. It’s much more impressive if Jesus, a physical and limited human being, came back to life after being clinically dead.

I’m not sure how the Harrowing of Hell works, since Mormonism doesn’t believe in the traditional conception of Hell either. You could frame it as Jesus going to spirit prison, but then any ordinary person gets to go to spirit prison to preach the gospel to the unsaved.

[Chap]

Since in traditional Christianity, Jesus and God are the same and are synonymous with the Universe itself, the resurrection wasn’t very impressive to me.

I am sorry to have to keep on telling you stuff, but:

(a) I am not sure what do you mean by "traditional Christianity", but all the major churches have, like Judaism, believed that the universe we see around us is a thing created by God, just as the Book of Genesis says it is. The idea that God is "synonymous with the Universe itself" is no part of mainstream Christian theology.

(b) The incarnation of God as a human being is by no means a simple concept, as you seem to be implying that it is. Attempts to deal with the problems it poses ultimately led to the doctrine of the Trinity being adopted by all the major churches - though not in exactly the same way, as shown in the Great Schism between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity as to exactly how the Holy Spirit relates to the Father and the Son.

I am sorry to hear that you were not impressed by the resurrection. For most Christians from the early history of the church onwards, this was pretty well the central, pivotal event of the universe, God's ultimate reassurance to lost humanity that he was on their side, and that sin and death could never ultimately triumph over light and life. Did nobody make that clear to you in Sunday School?

(By the way, I am no longer a believe myself. But mainstream Christianity is, nevertheless, by no means a trivial or ridiculous attempt to give meaning to the universe in which we all have to live and inevitably die.)

[drumdude]

Since in traditional Christianity, Jesus and God are the same and are synonymous with the Universe itself, the resurrection wasn’t very impressive to me.

I am sorry to have to keep on telling you stuff, but:

(a) I am not sure what do you mean by "traditional Christianity", but all the major churches have, like Judaism, believed that the universe we see around us is a thing created by God, just as the Book of Genesis says it is. The idea that God is "synonymous with the Universe itself" is no part of mainstream Christian theology.

(b) The incarnation of God as a human being is by no means a simple concept, as you seem to be implying that it is. Attempts to deal with the problems it poses ultimately led to the doctrine of the Trinity being adopted by all the major churches - though not in exactly the same way, as shown in the Great Schism between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity as to exactly how the Holy Spirit relates to the Father and the Son.

I am sorry to hear that you were not impressed by the resurrection. For most Christians from the early history of the church onwards, this was pretty well the central, pivotal event of the universe, God's ultimate reassurance to lost humanity that he was on their side, and that sin and death could never ultimately triumph over light and life. Did nobody make that clear to you in Sunday School?

(By the way, I am no longer a believe myself. But mainstream Christianity is, nevertheless, by no means a trivial or ridiculous attempt to give meaning to the universe in which we all have to live and inevitably die.)

I do appreciate your thoughts. My background is from Catholicism where Sunday School consisted of about a year of forced education as an 8 year old. The rest of Catholic life was going to mass every week and having a couple minute homily being the only teaching.

But to push back a little: it’s a common Christian teaching that God and Jesus are omnipresent. William Lane Craig puts it this way:

William Lane Craig states that we shouldn’t think of God as being in space in the sense of being spread out like an invisible ether throughout space. He is not like an invisible gas that is everywhere present in space. This would be incorrect for several reasons. For one, it would mean that if the universe is finite, which is perfectly possible, then God would be finite. We do not want to say that because God is infinite. More seriously, if God is spread out throughout space, like an invisible ether, that means that he is not fully present everywhere. Craig argues that omnipresence is a derived characteristic: an omniscient and omnipotent deity knows everything and can be and act everywhere, simultaneously.

This is what I was thinking of when I meant he is identical with the Universe. Calvinists in particular seem to argue that God is identical to the Universe because of this property. That the Universe is simply a manifestation of God’s will.

The incarnation and sacrifice never impressed me because of this. The unlimited power of God enabled him to easily crucify himself to appease himself to fulfill whatever law He created which made the requirement. It is very self serving.

Mormonism gets around this somewhat with a much more limited physical God who is just a man.