Resurrection in flesh vs. heaven

[The Mikado]

Christianity made a gentle arc over the millennia from one to the other, that is, from thinking that the Faithful would be raised back up on Earth with new, incorruptible bodies at the end (see the countless early Christian tombs with the inscription resurgam, I will rise again) to the belief that the souls of the faithful would go to heaven, which had hitherto been seen as more of a celestial realm of God than an actual abode of the dead.  Thoughts on this change? 

[King]

I'm not so sure about that.  Millenialism is still very popular and that consists of a 1000 year reign of Christ on Earth.  Heaven is still just soul holding area for many Christians.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I think there's been this tension in understanding since early Christianity.  The was a major shift in Western (or at least Protestant) Christianity on this question between the 17th and 19th centuries. The archaeologist James Deetz studied this in terms of the evolution of New England gravestones.  The  imagery goes from a skull and wings and 'here lies' (the idea being that the person is there dead, to be resurrected) to an angel with 'in memory of' (the idea that the real being of the person is already gone and is a heavenly angel).  Even though the Apostle's Creed refers to 'the resurrection of the body" growing up in the church I always though after death there was only a disembodied existence.  Not until my religion classes in college did I realize that resurrection was an altogether different thing than belief in the immortality of the soul.  Resurrection seems like a harder idea for me to believe because there is this discontinuity - that a person who ceased to exist in at least some sense is brought back. On the other hand, resurrection does not depend upon a problematic split between the body and soul as separate entities, and it considers material existence to be valuable enough for God to redeem and renew.

[The Mikado]

On the other hand, resurrection does not depend upon a problematic split between the body and soul as separate entities, and it considers material existence to be valuable enough for God to redeem and renew.

This last sentence is really what inspired my original post.  There seems to be a strong infusion of Platonism into Christianity regarding the body/soul separation.  While an older-school Christian would say that his body and soul would be saved, the Heaven one would say some Platonic stuff about the body being the sinful, fleshy prison of the soul and Heaven being the soul's escape from its Earthly prison.  There's a pretty big difference there.

[MyRescueKittehRocks]

The older-school is closer to what is said in scripture.

1Thessilonians 4:15-18
1Corinthians 15