1. No, nothing you said suggested to me that you had anything but an orthodox understanding of the resurrection: I only said that because, having read your gmail chat display, I was reminded of how my friend explained the passage and, in the excitement of recollecting a truth discovered, I hastily shared the insight. Like you, I have on several occasions felt the force of Revelation's twenty-first chapter. In fact, this same friend once read the passage during the Liturgy of the Word and nearly wept, for not having prepared himself to read, he was not ready for the power of St. John's words. This same year we had both been writing on our quizzes and notebooks as perpetual reminders Ecce omnia nova facio.
I emphatically agree with you on the importance of the visible world in the economy of salvation. For by his Incarnation our Lord took on matter for the sake of our salvation, not only repairing the adverse effects of the fall but also further involving the physical world in glorification of God and redemption of the human race. Indeed, since man is a union of body and soul (not just a soul in a body) and since Christ came to save us (not just our souls), how astonishingly appropriate it is that the body participates in the redemption of the person. Whether in fasting or in feasting, in shedding its blood or in some gentler way, the body can and is acted upon by grace in order to lead the heart into the bosom of its Creator.
Also, I commend and encourage you in your efforts to resist the anti-cosmic spirit of Gnosticism, especially in the shade by which it haunts the bride of Christ. While I did not grow up in a Christian community noticeably under the shadow of Gnosticism, it was not until college that I really saw the profound significant of the Incarnation on how one views the material world as well as that special way in which visible and created forms can embody invisible realities. I think studying poetry - specifically John Donne's love poetry - was a great blessing in this respect.
2. The Protestant question What good is apostolic succession without the apostolic gospel raises the more fundamental question What good is apostolic succession or, to say that another way, What is the episcopate for. This second question it seems to me is prior to the first and once we have found the answer to the second, the first will become more clear. It is certainly the case that, at first glance, truth is more to be prized than apostolic succession. For instance, when Arius taught his dangerous heresy, he was, despite being a validly ordained presbyter, worthy of excommunication from the Christian church. Yet the question remains, why did the early Church preserve a succession of ministers in which each could trace the origin of their ministry directly to the apostles? One reason, as you already mentioned, is that these bishops and presbyters preserved the gospel free from heresy and, when errors came, it was their duty to resist them passionately and publicly. Another reason seems to be that they preserved those special gifts which had been given to the apostles by Christ for the sanctification of the world. For example, consider the following passage:
Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." (John 20:21-23)It would appear that, unlike Peter's earlier question about forgiving your brother (where one human forgives another insofar as that human has been sinned against), the Holy Spirit was necessary for this new kind of forgiving, since were God not involved Christ's words Receive the Holy Spirit would have been irrelevant. And so if the forgiveness offered to the converted nations by the apostles requires God the Holy Spirit, then the apostles were offering true forgiveness. They are forgiven our Lord says, because they are truly forgiven by God himself through the ministry of the apostles, whose task it is to carry on the mission of Christ and reconcile mankind to the Most High. And yet, would our Lord hand over his mission to the apostles, saying As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you, without providing them the means by which to fulfill their appointed and seemingly impossible task? Certainly not. Moreover, the means of sanctification having been provided, how is this gift perpetuated in the household of God? To ask that question another way, would Christ bless the early Christian community with such divine gifts only to withdraw them in the second generation?
The evidence of Scripture suggests something else. In Acts 8, for example, Luke tells us that Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles' hands (Acts 8:17-19). And in his letters to Timothy, Paul writes Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, as if this action were the means by which special gifts not only could be but in fact were passed on from one person to another (1 Tim 5:22). In fact, we may be certain that Timothy had the apostolic gifts from Paul himself, for the apostle explicitly reminds Timothy of the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands (2 Tim 1:6). And whether or not different gifts were communicated through the same means, of this we may be certain: the apostles laid their hands on others and the gifts of the Spirit were passed on.
This brief digression then reaches this conclusion, that the duty of those in the episcopate is, besides fulfilling their obligation to preach to gospel free from error, to reconcile the sinful world to the sinless God, using and passing on those special gifts which were given to the apostles by Christ. Both truth and goodness are the prerogatives of the bishops and presbyters. Therefore, the apostolic successors without the apostolic gospel (supposing such a thing occurred) would be unable to fulfill their divinely appointed task, as a person with only one leg is unable to walk.
Also, I would love to read and discuss what your friend wrote about Clement. At the moment, I have not read any secondary literature on Clement's beliefs.
3. When you asked "Does this mean [Christ] was a spirit before, like the Father and the Spirit?" did you mean before the Incarnation? The eternal Word who was with God in the beginning and was God must have been, like God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, not just a spirit. For God is not one spirit among many, but rather he is himself Spirit, the Immaterial One, Lord of all spirits, permeating each with His immaculate omnipresence.
Pax, etc.
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