So, I'll happily admit that I posted this at tentmaker before I knew this forum existed. Perhaps you guys can help?
One of Ray's main ideas seems to be "first the physical, then the spiritual" - how God is creating us in His image, and because God is spirit, Ray seems to strongly believe that our physicality is linked with our carnal minds, both of which will be done away with (either at the resurrection or in the judgement/LoF, I can't remember).
I find this difficult to understand. It seems an awfully long winded way to do something to create a whole reality only as a means to an end, only to entirely destroy it and save just the purified essence. Like, buying a complicated and expensive coffee machine just to get the smell of fresh coffee in your house! Likewise, the messages regarding resurrection often seem to revolve around sowing seeds; sown perishable, raised imperishable. Yes, our resurrection bodies will be very different, but surely there is continuity there? A seed is different to a tree but there is nevertheless something of the seed in the tree. Given that our creation contains great beauty, that God will be all in all and knowledge of Him will fill the earth like the waters cover the sea, doesn't this suggest physical-and-then-so-much-more, rather than utter destruction of all that is material and re-implantation into some totally new spiritual body? Didn't the resurrected Christ eat with His disciples specifically to demonstrate that He wasn't just a ghost or some ethereal thing? Didn't his spiritual body bear the scars of his resurrection? If God is spirit - invisible - and we are to be like Him in that way, what was Jesus' resurrected body all about?
And if everything physical is going to be destroyed, how can there even be any meaningful continuity for us between this age and the next? If all concepts of movement, dwelling places, nourishment and so on are done away with for some 6th dimensional craziness (however wonderful), how is any of my earthly experience going to have any bearing, and therefore how can I be in any way the same person?
I have been taught that the idea of our spirits wafting off to a transcendent and ethereal plane when we die is a platonist imposition; that Hebraic tradition is very happy with our physicality and that God can and will redeem creation (in some pretty mind boggling way), not just use it as a scrapbook to be destroyed when it's served it's purpose.
The metaphor I've thought useful previously is like a caterpillar and butterfly; it is the same "thing", but organisationally is totally different, and much improved/beautified. Nevertheless, it isn't just some essence of caterpillar infused into a totally new butterfly - they are the same thing, it is transformed.
I also feel like to totally denigrate our physicality is to insult God's creation. Yes, I understand that he is creating us in his image and this may involve ignoble vessels designed for destruction, but God is making all things renewed. Overall, the scriptures to me seem to speak not of trashing the physical (at least not permanently) but of utterly restoring it and then some.
I would love to hear your wisdom on this!