The Society's teaching that Jesus was a spirit without a body and materialized different bodies to appear to them is the docetic heresy confronted in the gospels (cf. "Feel and see me, for a spirit (pneuma) does not have flesh and bones", Luke 24:39) and in Ignatius (cf. "For I know and believe that he was in the flesh even after the resurrection; and he came to Peter and those with him, he said to them: 'Take hold of me; handle me and see that I am not a disembodied demon (daimónion asómaton)'. And immediately they touched him and believed, being closely united with his flesh and blood", Smyrnaeans 3:1-2); the purpose of these stories is to refute the belief that Jesus was raised as an incorporeal spirit, lacking a fleshly body. The motivation of docetism is the Platonic belief that matter is evil and the highest form of being is as a pure spirit. Paul's position was somewhat intermediate between these two beliefs. The point of 1 Corinthians is that Jesus was resurrected bodily, but that his body was transformed from a "physical body" (sóma psukhikon) to a "spiritual body" (sóma pneumatikon) -- the "earthly" (epigeia) to the "heavenly" (epourania), a transformation that is likened to a plant growing from a seed that is "buried" in the ground (15:35-44). Thus, the body is no longer fleshly (as assumed by Ignatius and other anti-docetists), but the resurrected person is not bodiless either; Paul distinguishes this state as the "nakedness" the dead person experiences between death and resurrection (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:1-4). In various Jewish and early Christian writings, receiving a heavenly body is likened to receiving a garment, such as an angelic or white robe. There were two common ideas on how the resurrection would occur: (1) The dead person would merely be restored to his/her former body, (2) The body would be transformed into angelic form. Paul's opinion was close to (2). The Society however goes beyond Paul to claim that Jesus was a spirit who materialized bodies and whose post-resurrection state lacked any continuity with his earthly state.
