“Children of the resurrection”?
Next Sunday’s Gospel (Lk 20:27-38), which you can find here, gives Jesus’ reply to the question posed by Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead, a passage that N.T. Wright, in his huge book The Resurrection of the Son of God, calls “far and away the most important passage about resurrection in the whole gospel tradition.” Wright felt obliged to preface his treatment of this pericope with a warning against anachronism, in particular the danger that it will be read in the light of common modern notions of the afterlife. He writes:
For many centuries it has been assumed in western Christendom that the ultimate point of being a Christian was to ‘go to heaven when you die.’ … [there was] a place called ‘heaven,’ where god and the angels lived, into which god’s people would be admitted either immediately upon death or at some point thereafter…
… since Jesus, after his resurrection, was believed to have ‘gone to heaven’ anyway, the purpose of Christian life, spirituality and hope was obviously to follow him there. That belief, expressed in a thousand hymns, ten thousand prayers and uncountable sermons, remains the staple diet of most Christians today. Within this context, the word ‘resurrection’ could be heard, as many still hear it today, simply as a vivid way of saying ‘life after death’ or ‘going to heaven’. And since (a) heaven has always been assumed, within Jewish and Christian tradition, to be populated by angels, and (b) within popular folk-religion there has always been a tendency to suppose that the beloved dead have now become angels, the two can easily be combined, and can serve as an interpretative grid for ‘understanding’ the present passage. ‘Resurrection’ thus comes to mean ‘life after death’, which (on an optimist view at least) means ‘living in heaven’, quite possibly ‘becoming an angel’. That, many readers think, is what Jesus is then affirming in his discussion with the Sadducees.
… We cannot stress too strongly that this whole complex of ideas, developed so massively and many-sidedly over the years, was simply not in the head or hearts of either Jesus or the Sadducees, or indeed the Pharisees, or indeed ordinary Jews or pagans in the first century. One might as well assume that when Herod wanted music playing in his court he had to choose between Haydn, Mozant and Beethoven….
In his reply to the Sadducees’ invoking of the levirite law of marriage for their argumentum ex absurdo against the resurrection of the dead, Jesus replies by invoking a passage from the Torah: “But that the dead are raised, Moses also mentions in the passage about the bush, when he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not God of the dead but of the living, for all live to him” (Lk 20:37-38). Here is where the modern notion of the afterlife is imposed on the words of Jesus, as Wright argues again:
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are long since dead; but Moses writes of god speaking of them as still alive; therefore this is what is meant by ‘resurrection’. Put this reading together with a too-hasty reading of ‘like angels’ in the earlier part of the passage, and we end up, as many scholars have done, with the view that this is “a spiritual resurrection, not a bodily one such as the Sadducees, or Herod, are thinking of” [Pheme Perkins]; or that “resurrection, which is here not argued but simply assumed, involves the creative power of god to transform human life into a non-physical form like that of the angels” [C.F. Evans].
In Wright’s view, this fails to recognize that at the time of Jesus the debate about the resurrection concerned the future: that is, whether there would be a resurrection. Jesus argues from the text of Exodus that the dead are still alive in some way, and this is the ground for saying that they will be raised at a later stage. To stay only with the first statement would be to avoid the question posed to Jesus and to give to “resurrection” a sense it never had at the time. Wright’s summary:
Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees, in fact, does point towards the refocusing of the resurrection hope which was to take place later, not least through the work of Paul. It speaks of a different quality of life, a life which death can no longer touch, and hence a life in which the normal parameters of mortal (i.e. deathbound) life, including procreative marriage, are no longer relevant. It speaks of an intermediate state in which all the righteous dead are held in some kind of ongoing life while waiting for the resurrection which everyone, Pharisees and Sadducee alike, knew perfectly well had not happened yet. It speaks about YHWH’s past word to Moses, in order to indicate a present reality (the patriarchs are still alive), in order thereby to affirm the future hope (they will be raised to a newly embodied life).
It is interesting to compare Wright’s interpretation to two medieval views. The first comes from Theophylact (ca. 1055-1107), a Byzantine bishop and theologian, apparently unknown in the West before Aquinas quoted him in the Catena aurea. Commenting on this passage in Mark’s Gospel, Theophylact wrote:
Perhaps someone will say that God said this only about the soul of Abraham and not about his body. To which we respond that ‘Abraham’ implies both, that is, body and soul, so that He is also the God of his body and his body lives with God, that is, in God’s plan.
Aquinas also quotes Theophylact with reference to Luke’s version of the words of Jesus:
If the patriarchs had returned to nothing so as not to live with God in the hope of a resurrection, He would not have said, ‘I am,” but “I was,” which is the way we usually speak of things dead and gone, e.g., ‘I was the lord or master of that thing.’ But since he said, “I am,” He shows that He is the God and Lord of the living. This is what follows: ‘But he is not a God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto him.’ For although they have departed from life, yet they live with Him in the hope of a resurrection.”
In turn, Aquinas considered a similar objection: “When those words [at the burning bush] were spoken, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not living in their bodies but only in their souls. The resurrection, therefore, will be only of souls, not of bodies.” To which Aquinas replied:
Properly speaking, Abraham’s soul is not Abraham himself [anima Abrahae non est ipse Abraham], but a part of him, and the same is true of the others. The life of Abraham’s soul, therefore, would not suffice for Abraham to be alive or for the God of Abraham to be the God of one living. The life of the whole united thing, that is, of body and of soul, is required, and that life, although it was not in act when those words were pronounced, was nonetheless ordered in both parts toward resurrection. Thus did the Lord by those words provide a very subtle and effective proof of the resurrection.
In his commentary on 1 Cor 15, Aquinas makes a similar point. After citing the Apostle: “If it is only for this life that we have hoped in Christ, we are the most miserable of all men,” he considers the objection that this is not universally true, “because people could say that even though their bodies have good things only in this mortal life, in their souls they have many good things in the other life.” Aquinas answers:
Two answers may be given. First, if the resurrection of the body is denied, it is not easy, in fact it is difficult, to maintain the immortality of the soul. For the soul is naturally united to the body, and for it to be separated from it is against its nature and per accidens; soul stripped of its body is imperfect for as long as it is without its body. Now it is impossible that what is natural and per se be finite and almost nothing, while what is against nature and per accidens is infinite, [which is what would be the case] if the soul were to perdure without its body. That is why Platonists, positing immortality, also posited reincarnation, even though this is heretical. Therefore, if the dead do not rise, it is only in this life that we have hope.
Second, man naturally desires the salvation of himself. But the soul, although it is a part of the human body, is not the whole man, and my soul is not me [anima mea non est ego]. Hence, although the soul attains salvation in another life, I do not, nor does anyone else. Besides, since man naturally desires salvation of his body also, that natural desire would be frustrated [without the resurrection of the body].
(A couple of years ago I sent the texts from Aquinas to Bishop Wright, who replied that he wished he had known them when he wrote his book and that he was happy to know the Angelic Doctor was on his side.)
When Aquinas says that without the resurrection of the body, it is difficult to prove the immortality of the soul, he was reflecting a biblical and an Aristotelian anthropology and not the Platonic idea of the soul as like a driver in a car who can be separated from his vehicle without substantial loss. I wonder if the modern assumption is not opposite to that of Aquinas: with most people finding no difficulty in the immortality of the soul, but not regarding the resurrection of the body as important at all.
It may be interesting to see what preachers make of the passage next Sunday.
Thank you Father, I thoroughly enjoyed that and I plan on sharing (sections) with my class.
Concerning the modern understanding of the soul/body, I think the general population is still living very much in that Newtonian Universe that necessitates dualism. However, modern physics is telling us that matter, time, energy and existence itself are far more complex and even gradated.
Thanks, JAK. It’s good to see Aquinas’ own texts taken so seriously in a Catholic context. I fear he’s still on the shelf since Vat II, though some pay lip-service to him.
Aquinas on man’s immortality is particularly relevant, I think, because the young people (the under 40′s) whom I know don’t even think about an afterlife, not even about its possibility. Maybe they’re afraid to. In the culture of the young this life is IT, and this is why, I think, that this culture is so very hedonistic — it’s a get-what-you- can-while-you-can-get-it worldview, and who can blame them.
Today’s atheists (unlike Buddhists) seem to equate belief in human immortality with belief in the existence of God, as if these are the same question. They are not. But the lack of belief in immortality of today’s young — and, I might add, the middle-aged — is certainly related to belief in the existence of God. If there is no God, then it would follow that there is no justice in either this life or the next, This implies, again, that this unjust life is all there is, so get what you can when you can get it. For some this implies that all is permitted. There is no sin. only “mistakes”.
I’d be interested in hearing what the teachers here have to say about what today’s students believe about human immortality. Kids who like science fiction might think differently from the others. The Matrix is having its effect.
And since (a) heaven has always been assumed, within Jewish and Christian tradition, to be populated by angels, and (b) within popular folk-religion there has always been a tendency to suppose that the beloved dead have now become angels, . . .
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I disagree with both points.
Gerolyn: So does N.T. Wright. He’s describing popular conceptions that prevent people from understanding Jesus’ point in the Gospel passage. Or is it that you don’t think the two points are held by many, perhaps most, people?
Or is it that you don’t think the two points are held by many, perhaps most, people?
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That’s it.
I disagree with the statement that “heaven has always been assumed, within Jewish . . . tradition, to be populated by angels”.
The only thing that can be assumed about Jewish traditions about the afterlife is that they’re nebulous.
And I disagree with the notion that “within popular folk-religion there has always been a tendency to suppose that the beloved dead have now become angels, . . . ”
If simple Christians didn’t believe in the resurrection of the body, why did they bury the dead facing east? Were they lying when they proclaimed in Creeds their belief in the resurrection of the body? Why is the supposition that the dead become angels not reflected in epitaphs, on sympathy cards, in the words of consolation we offer at wakes, funerals, gravesides? Where is the supposition illustrated in folk-art or in folk-music or in folk-customs? We just got past All Souls Day / Day of the Dead / Hallowe’en / Samhain, and not a word about how all those Ancestors are Angels.
Gerelyn, I think the problem you’re having is in what you presume is meant by “popular folk-religion.” You’ve never heard anybody say, in response to the news of a death, something like “God must have needed another angel”?
Just last night, in our RCIA group, we were discussing this very topic — that is, the popular misconception that people become angels when they die, and how it’s not what the Catholic Church believes about either the resurrection of the body or angels. I found this post helpful, but I wish I’d seen it yesterday!
Thanks, Mollie!
Problem solved.
Wright says: “since Jesus, after his resurrection, was believed to have ‘gone to heaven’ anyway, the purpose of Christian life, spirituality and hope was obviously to follow him there. That belief, expressed in a thousand hymns, ten thousand prayers and uncountable sermons, remains the staple diet of most Christians today. Within this context, the word ‘resurrection’ could be heard, as many still hear it today, simply as a vivid way of saying ‘life after death’ or ‘going to heaven’. And since (a) heaven has always been assumed, within Jewish and Christian tradition, to be populated by angels, and (b) within popular folk-religion there has always been a tendency to suppose that the beloved dead have now become angels, the two can easily be combined, and can serve as an interpretative grid for ‘understanding’ the present passage. ‘Resurrection’ thus comes to mean ‘life after death’, which (on an optimist view at least) means ‘living in heaven’, quite possibly ‘becoming an angel’. That, many readers think, is what Jesus is then affirming in his discussion with the Sadducees.”
I disagree with most of Wright’s premises here. For one, the Christian tradition, and Jewish for that matter, has not been clear about the place that is to come, its location, such as on a new, transformed earth or a heavenly domain, but it has been clear that it is somewhere. Such as Jesus saying to the repentant thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise,” or the Rich Man and Lazarus in some place. Or even Enoch being given a tour of the heavens, where God and his angels dwelled.
The resurrection is clear enough, that it is the resurrection and transformation of the whole person. I think Wright is worrying about something that is not too problematic, at least if proper teaching and catechizing would take place. As a boy, I was certain that I would be resurrected, but since the resurrection took place at the end of time, I was confused. What did happen to those people who had already died? Were they resurrected? This was not explained well to me, that there is an interim period (Phil. 1:21-23; 2 Cor. 5:1-10) in which the souls of the righteous are with God – could it be called heaven? – and they are spiritual beings – like angels? – until the resurrection of the last days.
Most people, it seems to me, are not confused about the resurrection of the last days; they are confused by the location and being of the departed prior to the last days. “Angels in heaven” might be the improper formulation, but they are simply trying to say that they believe their loved ones are with God.
Thanks, Fr. Komonchak, for this very interesting post.
What would have been the conception of the resurrection for a Jew of Jesus time – one who, unlike the Sadducees, thought that there would be an afterlife. Did Jews of that time have a mortal body/immortal soul view of humanity? It seems from this post that the resurrection was something to happen in the future; were the dead, such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, supposed to be just … dead … until that future event? And then, perhaps, it would not have been a bodily resurrection, given that the body decays?
If folks don’t mind my saying so, I find Wright’s use of ‘god’ with a lower-case G somewhat off-putting.
Mr. Martens: Your condition is often not fulfilled: “if proper teaching and catechizing would take place.”
The question, I think, is not so much about the place but the condition of those who have died but “live to God,” to use the Gospel’s phrase. It is some sort of intermediate state, it seems, but short of the resurrection of the body it can’t be the full and fulfilling enjoyment of God. To paraphrase Aquinas: My disembodied soul is not me, and neither is that of any of my beloved dead. There should be something uncanny about the idea of a disembodied soul. I think in popular imagination, we simply assume that the immortality of the soul suffices, and we can dispense with that other bit about the body. I think what St. Augustine wrote about his own time is true also of our own, even among Christians:
?On no other point is the Christian faith so contradicted as on the resurrection of the flesh. He who was born to be a sign of contradiction (see Lk 2:34) raised his own flesh in order to respond to such an objector. He could have healed his own members so that their wounds would not appear, but he kept the scars on his body in order to heal the wound of doubt in the heart. On no other point is there such strong, such persistent, such obstinate, such contentious opposition to the Christian faith as there is on the resurrection of the flesh. Many pagan philosophers have argued at length about the immortality of the soul and in their many and various books they have recorded their opinion that the soul is immortal; but when it came to the resurrection of the flesh, they were steadfast in denying it” (Enar. in Ps 88-2, 5).
At another point, thinking of Christians who make light of the resurrection, he wondered that they must think so poorly of the body.
Weren’t the “pagan philosophers” whom Augustine refers to here the Platonists? Plato had a very dim view of the body — among other bad things, to him it was a “prison-house”. He is, of course, still read in Western colleges, and his image of the dead as bodiless spirits is no doubt a default one for many if not most college educated people.
“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”
These words from Zuzu’s teacher in It’s a Wonderful Life is evidence enough of beliefs Wright describes about the afterlife in popular culture. Enough that we don’t have to trace it back through the centuries?
And on another point, St Paul muddies the whole discussion of the “resurrection of the body” when he starts talking about “spiritual bodies” as opposed to “fleshy bodies.” I am not sure the quotes from St Augustine are consonant with those remarks in 1 Cor 15. And Aquinas just sidesteps it, at least in the passages here. Does he talk about the body as being flesh?
Mr. McK: St. Paul’s contrast in 1 Cor 15:35-50, is not between “spiritual bodies” and “fleshy bodies,” but between “the psychic body” (soma psychikon) and the pneumatic body (soma pneumatikon, that is, between a body animated by a soul (psyche) and a body animated by the spirit (pneuma. This remains mysterious, but it avoids the danger of thinking that a “spiritual body” is a contradiction-in-terms. Of course, St. Paul himself was impatient with those who wanted to know with what kind of body the dead would rise (1 Cor 15:35-36).
St. Thomas’ reading of 1 Cor 15 is slow and detailed and doesn’t sidestep anything.
re: “A couple of years ago I sent the texts from Aquinas to Bishop Wright, who replied that he wished he had known them when he wrote his book and that he was happy to know the Angelic Doctor was on his side.” (Fr. Komonchak)
That’s great to hear. I have long wished that there was greater engagement between Catholic scholars and Bishop Wright. I attended a short series of lectures by Wright at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore a few years back, but other than that I have not seen much. I would love to see a more serious Catholic dialogue with his work along the lines of the conference that Wheaton College held last spring where there was some real give and take. I think it would be mutually enriching, and greatly so.
re: “I’d be interested in hearing what the teachers here have to say about what today’s students believe about human immortality.” (Ann Olivier)
I’m a high school teacher and I find that my students only have very vague, underdeveloped ideas about what lies after death. They just don’t think much at all about the afterlife because they don’t think that much about death. Most of them have not ever had anyone close to them die and our culture insulates us so much from the reality of death that they’ve never really had to think seriously about it. To the extent that they do have ideas about the afterlife I would say that they think mostly about a disembodied spiritual state (and a fairly boring one at that). The idea of a bodily resurrection is very alien to them. They are usually quite shocked when I point out that they have been at least nominally professing faith in this idea for years via the creed, the liturgy, and many other Christian prayers.
re: “If folks don’t mind my saying so, I find Wright’s use of ‘god’ with a lower-case G somewhat off-putting.” (Jim Pauwels)
Wright discusses his reasons for doing this in several of his books. Basically, he thinks we throw the word “God” around too casually, assuming that we all mean the same thing by it when in fact we often mean very different things. One of the central points of his whole project (which is of course entitled “Christian Origins and the Question of God“) is to remind Christians that our understanding of the word “God” must be radically and thoroughly redefined around the person of Jesus Christ. He fears that most of the time when scholars (and Christians) say “God” they in fact have fairly deist notions in mind. Better, he thinks, to speak of “god” and reserve the capital “G” for those occasions where he is referring to God in the proper Christian sense.
“The idea of a bodily resurrection is very alien to them. They are usually quite shocked when I point out that they have been at least nominally professing faith in this idea for years via the creed, the liturgy, and many other Christian prayers.”
David T, –
Hmm. Maybe we need to study just what the kids are thinking or not-thinking these days. An old friend who was a theology teacher used to say that when kids looked bored in class it was a sign of hostility, that they were resisting what they were being taught, turning it off. I wonder. Death is a very off-putting topic. All the more reason to help them find hope in the face of it. I also wonder how many priests these days actually believe in human resurrection.
“Concerning the modern understanding of the soul/body, I think the general population is still living very much in that Newtonian Universe that necessitates dualism. However, modern physics is telling us that matter, time, energy and existence itself are far more complex and even gradated.”
Even more, the very concept of time applies only to the world of our experience; ideas of heaven as “after” have little basis. Meanwhile, we see the timeless in the midst of time, each one of us having a timeless essence — something auguring heaven.
Ann,
Interestingly, I am talking with my 12th grade classes about conceptions of heaven and hell right now. The students are interested in talking about death and the afterlife, but it is very evident to me that they haven’t been asked to do this very much and for most of them it all seems very abstract and theoretical. I see one of my tasks as trying to make it more real and relevant for them. I agree with you that there is a tremendous opportunity to share with them the hopeful message of Christianity regarding death. This is all the more necessary because of our cultural aversion to thinking about death.
Your question about priests is a good one. I often feel that I am fighting an uphill battle with the students because the major emphasis they hear in preaching is on a spiritual heaven, not on the resurrection. One of the reasons I appreciate N.T. Wrights work so much is that he makes clear how our belief in the resurrection of the body (and, more broadly, in new creation) helps define what the task of the present Christian life is. His recent work on how living a life of virtue is an anticipation and actualization of our future resurrection is spot on. (See http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/fuller.edu.1957822762?i=2140586481 )
Last year I read Jospeph Fitzmeyer’s book The One Who is to Come about the historical development of the concept of the messiah within Judaism and Christianity. This discussion is reminding me that I was disappointed with the concluding paragraphs of the book:
“[Jesus'] mission differed too, because it was no longer deliverance in a political or economic sense, but solely in a spiritual sense… The Christian Messiah, then, is known as the one who fulfills the role of Deutero-Isaiah’s Suffering Servant of God (Isaiah 53), who has not only suffered and died for humanity, but was also raised by God to give it hope of sharing a blissful afterlife with Him in the Father’s glorious presence.”
I hope I am not being unfair to Father Fitzmeyer, but I felt this conclusion was an incredibly weak articulation of the Christian hope and the significance of Jesus’ dying and rising. Jesus being “raised” refers to his bodily resurrection, which testifies to the fact that our salvation is not “solely” spiritual. Jesus is the first fruits of the new creation, a transformation of the whole world. So, the now inaugurated (though certainly not completed) Kingdom of God represents political and economic as well as spiritual salvation.
This passage frustrated me because I felt that it just reinforced the “go to heaven when you die” message that is so predominant in modern Christianity. Whether this is what Father Fitzmeyer meant, I don’t know, but this particular way of expressing the Christian hope was surprising from someone whom I regard as a first rate scholar.
I’ve known of widows and widowers who have expressed a desire that God take them, so that they can be reunited with their deceased spouse in heaven. I’d think that Jesus’ words about “neither marry nor given in marriage” would be troubling to them.
As to “popular folk religion”. Who’s actually part of that? To theologians, aren’t all of us non-professionals in that category? Don’t true theologians (at least some or many of them) have a very different concept of the Resurrection than those who might take it literally?
Isn’t that why there are no sermons, etc., on the topic, because the simple folk might be scandalized?
I’d think that Jesus’ words about “neither marry nor given in marriage” would be troubling to them.
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Imho, the simple folk take with a grain of salt the professionals’ notions of what heaven will include or exclude. Rather than listen to clergymen and theologians, they might prefer St. Paul: “Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard . . .” Or Jesus: “If your child asks you for bread, would any of you give him a stone?”
The frequency of Hebraisms retained in translation may have led to some misunderstandings. E.g., if we pray “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof but only say a word and my soul shall be healed” will this not suggest to many that I am more or less my soul? In fact not long ago of a Sunday I heard a Jesuit reputed to be a scholar say that our soul is our true self. If this was not Platonism, what is?
“So, the now inaugurated (though certainly not completed) Kingdom of God represents political and economic as well as spiritual salvation.”
David T. –
Indeed. And it seems to me that this is one of the reasons that the independent Christian preachers who emphasize that virtue leads to material security, even prosperity, have booming congregations, especially among the poor. I’ve seen a lot of dissing of these preachers, but I’ve watched Osteen on TV and so far as I can see he is no heretic. Yes, he over=emphasizes the importance of prosperity, but if your’re poor, maybe its possibility can’t be over-emphasized.
What I”m saying is that the Church is missing a boat here. To assume that God will not bless those who honorably pursue the good things of the earth is to insult God’s handiwork and what people are. True, the spiritual goods are the greater ones, but we’re not angels. Osteen et al get that right. It seems to me that for a long time now the Church has emphasized abortion and social conscience to the exclusion of other Church teachings. Maybe the Church needs to listen to the poor themselves and see what *they* have to say about material goods.
Having taught many extremely poor kids, I discovered that their desire for massive amounts of money is not only a desire for security (it is that), it’s also a desire to be able to afford the beautiful things in God’s creation. I’m not sure that the powers-that-be in the Church realize that, and I suspect that it’s because the Church (not just the clergy) has never gotten over Pascal and the other Janssenists.
Fr Komonchak, you are quite right. The contrast is between the “psychic body” and the “spiritual body.” But I am not sure that clearing up that mistake gets rid of the problem I am trying to point out, particularly in the context of a body-soul unity such as Aquinas describes.
These two bodies are in the midst of a string of contrasts between the heavenly and the earthly in 1 Cor 15. It appears the spiritual is the heavenly, the psychic the earthly, then there is a body without a soul (psyche). And that is what I see Aquinas sidestepping. He has body and soul united, but does not address the disjunction of spirit and soul implied in the term “spiritual body.” The contradiction is intensified, not dismissed, by Aquinas’ remarks. But I am only talking about the passages quoted here, so maybe he gets into it elsewhere.
There is a mystery here, at least to me. I think it has something to do with Jim P’s comment about the spouses who wish to be united in heaven forever, but I do not quite grasp how. We will be transformed, yet somehow be the same.
Thanks to all for the stimulating reflections!
In the 14th canto of the “Paradiso,” Dante poses the question of the resurrection of the body. Solomon replies (I quote from the Hollander translation):
“When we put on again or flesh/ glorified and holy, then our persons/ will be more pleasing for being all complete.”
And he continues:
“just so this splendor that enfolds us now/ will be surpassed in brightness by the flesh/ that earth as yet still covers.”
And Dante records the reaction to his words by the other blessed in the heaven of the sun:
“So quick and eager seemed to me both choirs/ to say their ‘Amen,’ that they clearly showed/ their desire for their dead bodies.”
And, in a sentiment that, in my view, surpasses even the genius of his master Aquinas Dante adds that this desire was:
“not perhaps for themselves alone, but for their mothers (Dante uses the colloquial-affectionate “mamme”)/ for their fathers, and for others whom they loved/ before they all became eternal flames.”
The “soma pneumatikon” — our temporal relationships finally healed and made transparent for eternity?
NT Wright actually has an extended treatment of the soma psychikon / some pneumatikon distinction in his book on the resurrection. He also offers some reflections on the nature of the resurrected body based on the one example of a resurrected body that we have: Jesus. After Jesus’ resurrection, there was both continuity and discontinuity with his previous bodily state. Continuity: his wounds, his ability to eat and drink and touch people, etc. Discontinuity: he enters locked rooms, he disappears suddenly, he isn’t always recognizable even to those who knew him quite well, etc. Wright describes this as transphysicality, a state that includes what we now call the physical, but goes much beyond that and is not bound by the constraints.
As for the pastoral problem of Jesus’ statements about marriage after death (or the lack thereof), I believe that it is best to see this not in terms of a diminution of one’s bond with one’s spouse, but as an intensification and deepening of one’s bond with everyone else. We will share a spiritual oneness with all that currently we can only approach in the marital bond.
I think there is still a theological question here though. If marriage and procreation were part of the original order of the world before the fall as described in Genesis 1-2, why would they be eclipsed in the resurrection? Adam and Eve had access to the tree of life in the second creation story (meaning they would live forever), yet they were still commanded to be fertile and multiply. Why then would our restoration to the state of immortality mean the end of procreative marriage?
I appreciate the importance of stressing the point that there is a bodily resurrection. Nonetheless, it’s also important to see just how hard it is to make sense of a resurrected body.Will it be the body of someone who walks? If so, why would it walk and whence and whither? Would it touch or be touched? Again why? What size and weight would it be? Etc, etc. Just as I find it impossible to visibly picture this world without my being in it (what would be the point of view for picturing it), so I find it impossible to picture a resurrected body. Here again, it seems that what we say about it has to be understood apophatically.
I can’t remember now where I read it, but someone said that students today are more likely to believe in re-incarnation than in the resurrection of the body. Can anyone confirm this?
As for Jesus’ statement that in the next age men will not marry nor women be given in marriage, from my reading interpreters both ancient and modern relate this to there no longer being a need for replacing generations, since no one will die, and marriage was seen primarily as for the sake of procreation. I don’t think that the text has anything to do with modern notions of marriage as interpersonal communion, which, like all the other great blessings of this age, will be preserved and transcendently fulfilled in the new age.
Interpersonal communion seems like the critical issue to me. Eve comes out of Adam in response to his loneliness, or at least his being alone. That is the fundamental contrast for the City in Revelations, built on the Apostles and illuminated by the Lamb. There is no more loneliness where even the stones live and call out to God with us.
So I can grasp at why there is no more marriage or giving in marriage. And maybe that is where to look for an understanding of “body” where soul and spirit are both joined and distinct. I can’t quite see it, and only reach toward it by trusting others and hoping for more insight. Thank you all for adding depth to these ideas; I hope we all have a chance to meet in a Paradise like Dante’s, when we shall know as we are know.