Paul, for instance, specifies that a series of witnesses, starting with Peter and ending with himself, saw the Risen Christ (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). Several verses later in this same chapter, he insists that neither Christ’s raised body nor that of the person “in Christ,” at the End, had or would have a fleshly body. Instead, he says, the saved body is a “spiritual body,” a different substance than flesh and blood. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” (verse 50).

Even the bodies of those who are alive when Christ returns will be transformed into something “spiritual.” His point in going into this description was to argue against some Christians in Corinth who did not understand final redemption as an historical and communal future event (verse 12). Unfortunately, Paul did not go on to explain what he meant by a “spiritual body,” and for centuries thereafter Christian commentators argued bitterly over how to interpret him.

The Gospel of Luke, by contrast, is at pains to emphasize that Christ’s risen body was exactly what Paul said it wasn’t. “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And then, to clinch his case, Luke’s Jesus eats a piece of fish. In Graeco-Roman antiquity, ghosts don’t eat (Luke 24:39-43).

Luke complicated his presentation, however, in his sequel, the Acts of the Apostles. In that work, Christ ascends skyward (Acts 1:9), and Stephen, later in the story, reports that he sees Jesus “standing at the right hand of God” (7:56). God dwells in the highest heaven, and now, Luke says, so does Jesus.

But this claim stands in tension with the one that Luke had made back in chapter 24 of his gospel. In antiquity’s map of the universe, the type of flesh that I sit in now was relegated solely to the realm between the moon and the earth, which (people imagined) stood at the center of the universe. The higher up, away from earth, one traveled, the more that “flesh” improved. Celestial flesh such as stars had was better, both morally and materially, than the mortal, morally labile flesh that humans lived in. According to the canons of contemporary science and philosophy, then, Luke’s flesh-and-bone Jesus must have morphed into some other bodily medium on his way up to the highest heaven. Ancient commentators, needless to say, argued fiercely over this question as well.

And finally, in John’s gospel, Jesus’ raised body is continuous with his crucifixion body (doubting Thomas is able to put his finger in Jesus’ wounds), but it’s clearly not normal flesh: Jesus can walk through locked doors with it (John 20:19).

My point in reviewing these New Testament texts is simply to note that even the most ancient sources disagree with each other on how they conceptualized the risen body of Christ. As Christianity continues and develops, these disagreements continue and develop too. (By the second century, in fact, Christians argued furiously about whether Christ had ever had a fleshly body at all; and they could point to passages in Paul’s letters – Philippians 2:6-8 was a favorite – to support the claim that he did not.)

Modern Christians will sometimes insist that, interpretively, we have only two options: either the original disciples really did see the Risen Christ, or they were lying. But this is not so.

There is an obvious (and metaphysically more modest) third option, namely, that the original disciples really did think that they saw the Risen Christ. That belief can be true (that is, they really did believe that they saw Jesus) quite apart from the status of Jesus’ physical remains.

It is that belief – not the status of Jesus’ physical remains – that initiated and sustained the Christian mission. And it is that belief – not the status of Jesus’ physical remains – that embodied the original message of Christianity, that the Kingdom of God is at hand. What do any of these claims mean? It depends on how you interpret them. But it is this human webbing of belief and interpretation – not the status of Jesus’ physical remains – that defines and sustains Christian communities.

That’s the long answer to this week’s question. The short answer is, No.