Does Christianity Teach Immortality of The Soul or Resurrection of The Body?

Jesus ate supper in a resurrected body

"As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them. But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, 

"Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have."

And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them" (Luke 24:36-43).

Immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body are separate historical beliefs.

Immortality of the soul is based on Plato's Greek dualism.

Resurrection of the body is based on Jesus' Jewish Christianity.

Most in Western Christianity have been taught to interpret certain passages in the NT with an assumed Greek dualism of the soul being more important than the body. This is not early Christianity. First-century Christianity involves the belief in the resurrection of the body, not the immortality of the soul escaping it.

Why does this matter?

Misunderstanding immortality, resurrection, and the history behind what we believe today has huge implications on the conclusions we draw from certain passages and causes other passages to be ignored or de-emphasized with beliefs such as the annihilation of the 'physical' universe, limiting the Lord's Supper to only the 'spiritual' elements of bread and juice, and separating worship from the rest of life.

Assumptions underlie beliefs

Much of what we assume is based on the reintroduction of dualism during The Enlightenment.

Here are the crucial types of Dualism to understand as defined by Tom Wright:

Cosmological. The classic position of Plato: the world of material things is the secondary copy or shadow of the ‘real’ world of the Forms, which are perceived by the enlightened mind. In many different versions, this view filtered down as a mainline belief of the Greco-Roman and the modern Western world: that which can be observed in the physical world is secondary and shabby compared with that which can be experienced by the mind or spirit...

Anthropological. The human-centered version of cosmological dualism. Humans are bipartite creatures, a combination of body and soul, which are arranged in a hierarchy: soul ahead of body in many religions and philosophies, body ahead of soul in many political agendas.

Wright continues:

"Secular" is Dualism

… Jews in general did not divide the world rigidly into the physical and the spiritual, and even Philo [Greek thinking Jew, sp] himself shows at various points that, even if the ‘real meaning’ of a passage of scripture, or a Jewish ritual, is to be found in a spiritualized sphere, the material sense and performance are by no means to be despised or neglected. Most Jews would have rejected both in favor of a more integrated cosmology and anthropology. 

Most Jews would have held that heaven and earth, though themselves distinct, both reveal the divine glory; humans, though thoroughly at home in the space– time universe, are also open to the world of heaven, to the presence and influence of the divine. Worship and prayer are not attempts to reach across a void, but the conscious opening of human life to the God-dimension which is ever present.

Dualism is a compartmentalizing, or categorizing way, of viewing life and interpreting religious and secular meanings rather than in a holistic way. Dualism views religion as being in a separate realm from the secular and, therefore, by a different set of rules than the rest of life. It affects the way we interact in our lives through what we consider acceptable boundaries, especially in how we define some works as "religious" and others as "secular."

According to Wikipedia,

The first organized perspective of a mind-body dualism comes from the Ancient Greek Philosopher Plato (424 – 348 BC). In his dialogue, Phaedo, Plato gives four arguments for why humans have a transcendent soul in addition to their corporal bodies based in large part on his theory of forms. . . Early Christian Dualism is largely based on Platonic Dualism. There is also a personal dualism in Christianity with a soul-body distinction based on the idea of an immaterial Christian Soul...

John opposed spiritual dualism

For an example of dualism in the Bible, note the dualism that the apostle John contested in 1st & 2nd John of "Jesus having come in the flesh." This Platonic type of dualism in John's day taught that flesh was evil, and therefore the misunderstanding that Christ could not have come in the flesh was developed. Our view of leaving this evil world and escaping to Heaven is similar.

The usual response to the above quotes from Wikipedia is, "Doesn't the Bible predate Plato by mentioning a difference between soul/spirit and body?" To which I would respond that I am not disagreeing with anyone concerning "what the Bible says...." My concerns are our assumptions beneath our interpretations of "what the Bible says."

I am saying that we approach/assume the Scriptures with a dualistic worldview of soul/spirit/body and not the worldview of the original Biblical writers and hearers. And if we in the churches of Christ/Restoration Movement are to be restoring Christianity to its original form [pardon the pun], then integrity demands that we "view the Bible through first century glasses."

The author of the next quote, from a discussion on Platonic Dualism and Christianity, summarizes my response to this dualistic interpretation of soul/spirit/body: 

Who needs a body..?

My view on the differences between Plato and Christianity: Acccording to Plato's Phaedo, when our physical forms die, and our souls continue onward to inhabit a new form. The soul does not die, anymore than a note dies when an instrument stops playing.

The soul (an analogy for Plato's beloved "forms") sheds its physical prison, but is eventually tied to a new one. It doesn't work that way in Christianity. Despite its pop-cultural depiction, the Bible predicts resurrection in flesh at the end. People will get out of their graves. Plato would've found this image horrifying [that] people will get out of their graves with new, incorruptible flesh. 

This particular aspect of dualism affects our understanding of "Heaven" and earth and where and in what kind of body we will inhabit eternity. Have you ever noticed how many times in prayers, sermons, and articles we are taught a view of Heaven that is really an escape from the prison of this evil world into an ethereal bliss that we really know nothing about? How much does this contribute to our neglect and abuse of what is on the Earth now?

Jesus ate food in a resurrected body

Jesus was resurrected in a body that consumed food (Luke 24:36-43). This is not in line with the modern concept of living in Heaven for eternity in an ethereal body and sitting a pew singing "Amazing Grace" for ten thousand years.

I suggest it is because we (have been taught to) approach the NT with the assumption of immortality from dualism not resurrection of the body from the Bible.