Peter stumbled quite a bit as he matured. Paul hit the ground running. John and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) – in my view –found the “good part.”
The last will be the first.
Jesus did not open the eyes of the Apostles to this Truth until they had to know it. They could only handle so much at a time
That much is obvious.
You are quibbling over the translation
No, I am merely putting it in the context. That verse has been misleadingly used over and over to show that Peter knew Jesus was God. And for that he received the keys?
Like I said, no one, not even John not even the Mary said "I knew it!" when the news of resurrection arrived.
The point is that Peter was the first to receive this revelation from the Father
He did not see Jesus as God. He was simply stating that He is the future king (of Israel) He claims to be. There was no revelation there.
There is a physical body and there is a spiritual body
Yeah? And what exactly is a "spiritual body?" A spirit, by definition, has no body.
Kosta, very probably the Heavenly Kingdom is not bound to Aristotle's Third Law, the Law of the Excluded Middle, which roughly put maintains that in cases where things appear to be mutually exclusive, at least one of them must be "false." "Spirit" and "Body" seem to be mutually exclusive concepts. Yet to my way of thinking, it is better to consider them, not as mutually exclusive "opposites," but as complementarities.
The principle of complementarity comes to us (from of all places) the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory, the brainchild of Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schroedinger. The prime example in that context is the question: Is this subatomic particle I "observe" a particle (body) or a wave? The answer is: It all depends on how you look, and what you're looking for. The main takeaway, however, is that the subatomic particle is actually always both at once; and the complete description of it cannot be given by reference to only one of its aspects (particle, wave): You need both.
Earlier you wrote that you believe in the resurrection of the body, but that such a thing is "irrational." If you are going to use reason as your yardstick to "measure" divine realities, I think you'll be endlessly frustrated. Our facility for understanding the world of nature has little if any bearing on our ability to explicate the divine. A different language other than reason is necessary....
I was reading somewhere the other day an interesting definition of faith: Faith = reason plus revelation (or prophecy). That, to me, is the greatest complementarity of all....
Thank you so much for your fascinating posts, dear kosta!