Where Do The Children Play?

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[Paul] "Let them eat angel food cake."

It’s a fair jab. The phrase plays on the Synoptic saying that in the resurrection people “are like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:35–36)—a line from Jesus, which Paul never quotes but whose eschatological outlook he shares. The sarcasm lands because the texts themselves are thin on positive content. They mainly tell us what ends (death, and with it the need for the institutions that sustain life against mortality: marriage, procreation, the ordinary cycle of generation...

But the original "good" blueprint is not celibacy.

Correct — the original “very good” creation in Genesis 1–2 is not celibacy. It includes male and female as image-bearers, the institution of marriage (“a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh,” Genesis 2:24), and the blessing to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). Sexuality, companionship, and procreation belong to the pre-fall order as God pronounced it good. The later teaching about no marriage in the resurrection does not rew...

Paul's "resurrection body" is celibate?

Paul does not state it in so many words, but his view of the resurrection body is consistent with a future in which marriage and sexual relations no longer occur. The clearest New Testament statement on the subject comes from Jesus, not Paul: in the resurrection people “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34–36). That teaching treats marriage (and the sexual and procreative life that belongs to it) as belonging to the presen...

Did the idea of "the flesh is against the spirit and the spirit is aga...

No. The specific formulation is first clearly articulated by Paul, but it draws on earlier Jewish and broader cultural ideas rather than appearing from nowhere. The wording you quote is essentially Galatians 5:17: the flesh (sarx) desires what is contrary to the Spirit (pneuma), and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh; the two are in conflict so that a person does not simply do whatever he or she wants. Paul develops the same contrast elsewhere (especially Romans 7–8 and other passages in G...

What is Pauline Christianity?

Pauline Christianity (also called Pauline theology or, more technically, Gentile Christianity) is the form of early Christianity shaped by the teachings of the Apostle Paul, primarily through his New Testament letters (the undisputed ones being Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, and 1 Thessalonians, with others traditionally attributed to him).<grok:render card_id="a794f1" card_type="citation_card" type="render_inline_citation"><argument name="citation_id">1</argument></g...

In your view though, did not Paul's philosophy of a literal "sinless" ...

Partly, but with important qualifications. Paul’s expectation of a future, transformed, essentially “sinless” (or sin-conquered) reality did generate a real tension with present human nature—especially embodied, sexual, and socially embedded life—but it was not a blanket hostility toward human nature as such. It was hostility toward human nature as currently enslaved by sin and death. What Paul Actually Taught Paul’s undisputed letters present a sharp dualism of ages: The present age is dominate...

Could you please include ancient Near Eastern references as prototypes...

Expanded summary: Ancient Near Eastern prototypes and contrasts, followed by Western Christian developments<grok:render card_id="8f3827" card_type="citation_card" type="render_inline_citation"><argument name="citation_id">75</argument></grok:render> Ancient Near Eastern prototypes (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan/Ugarit, etc., c. 3rd–1st millennium BCE): Gods were routinely portrayed as kings ruling the cosmos or pantheon. Examples include Anu/Enlil (and later Marduk) in Mesopotamia, El and Baal in U...

In your view though, did not Paul's philosophy of a literal "sinless" ...

Partly, but with important qualifications. Paul’s expectation of a future, transformed, essentially “sinless” (or sin-conquered) reality did generate a real tension with present human nature—especially embodied, sexual, and socially embedded life—but it was not a blanket hostility toward human nature as such. It was hostility toward human nature as currently enslaved by sin and death. What Paul Actually Taught Paul’s undisputed letters present a sharp dualism of ages: The present age is dominate...

Would you say that the American Dark Romantic writers were about hones...

Yes, in a significant sense—particularly honesty about the darker, messier sides of human nature and experience.<grok:render card_id="f79dd1" card_type="citation_card" type="render_inline_citation"><argument name="citation_id">0</argument></grok:render> American Dark Romanticism (roughly the 1830s–1860s, overlapping the American Renaissance) is typically associated with Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville (sometimes with Emily Dickinson as a related figure). It emerged part...

This is a fundamental insight of some Eastern religions?

Yes. The idea that the apparent other is ultimately not-other, and that fully seeing through the pretense dissolves the separate self, is a central insight in several Eastern traditions, especially non-dual ones. In Advaita Vedanta the individual self (jīva) and the world of multiplicity are appearances produced by māyā. The core teaching is that Ātman (the innermost self) is identical with Brahman (the absolute). Realization is not the acquisition of new information about an external ultimate; ...