A Spirit Hath not Flesh and Bones.
“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.” Luke 24:39. These are the words of Christ as on one occasion he met with his disciples after his resurrection; and as he then possessed a spiritual body, which is given by the resurrection, it is claimed that his words prove the existence of spirits utterly disembodied in the popular sense. But we inquire, What did the disciples suppose they saw? Verse 37 states: “They supposed they had seen a spirit;” and on this verse Greenfield puts in the margin the word phantasma instead of pneuma, and marks it as a reading adopted by Griesbach. They supposed they had seen a phantom, apparition, specter. This exactly corresponds with their action when on another occasion Christ came to them walking on the sea, Matt. 14:26; Mark 6:49, and they were affrighted and cried out, supposing it was a spirit, where the Greek uses phantom in both instances. The Bible nowhere countenances the idea that phantoms or specters have any real existence; but the imagination and superstition of the human mind have ever been prolific in such conceptions. The disciples were of course familiar with the popular notions on this question; and when the Saviour suddenly appeared in their midst, coming in without lifting the latch, or making any visible opening, as spiritual bodies are able to do, their first idea was the superstitious one of an apparition or specter, and they were affrighted. Now when Jesus, to allay their fears, told them that a spirit had not flesh and bones as he had, he evidently used the word spirit in the sense of the idea which they then had in their minds, namely, that of a phantom; and though the word pneuma is used, which in its very great variety of meanings may be employed, perhaps, to express such a conception, we are not to understand that the word cannot be used to describe bodies like that which Christ then possessed. He was not such a spirit as they supposed; for a pneuma, such as they then conceived of, in the sense of a phantom, had not flesh and bones as he had. Bloomfield, on verse 37, says:— “It may be added that our Lord meant not to countenance those notions, but to show his hearers that, according to their own notions of spirits, he was not one.” DID PAUL BELIEVE IN THE DISEMBODIED SPIRITS OF MEN?
Acts 23: 8: “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both.” Paul declared himself, in verse 6, to be a Pharisee; and in telling what they believed, in verse 8, it is claimed that Paul plainly ranged himself on the side of those who believe in the separate conscious existence of the spirit of man. But does this text say that the Pharisees believed any such thing? Three terms are used in expressing what the Sadducees did not believe, “resurrection, angel, and spirit.” But when the faith of the Pharisees is stated, these three are reduced to two: “The Pharisees confess both.” Both means only two, not three. Now what two of the three terms before employed unite to express one branch of the faith of the Pharisees? The word angel could not be one; for angels are a distinct race of beings from the human family. Then we have left, resurrection and spirit. The Pharisees believed in angels and in the resurrection of the human race. Then all the spirit they believed in, as pertaining to man, according to this testimony, is what is connected with the resurrection; and that, of course, is the spiritual body with which we are then endowed. “It is sown,” says this same apostle, “a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 1 Cor. 15:44. That the term spirit is applied to those beings which possess a spiritual body is evident from Heb. 1:7, which reads, “who maketh his angels spirits.” Angels are personal beings, but their bodies are spiritual bodies, invisible, under ordinary circumstances, to mortal eyes. Hence they are called spirits. So of God, John 4:24: “God is a spirit;” that is, a spiritual being; not an impersonal one, as much in one place as another.