II. RESURRECTION
Bodily reconstitution combined with the immortality
of the soul has been the
universally accepted version
of immortality in the Western world for almost
two
thousand years. Only recently (1968) Pope Paul VI
reaffirmed this
doctrine, thus categorically repudiating
all attempts to interpret it
symbolically.
The Christian view of the immortality of the soul
differs significantly from
the Platonic in that it is some-
thing which
results from divine grace, whereas for the
latter, immortality is a
“natural” endowment of each
and every soul. As Pope
Paul formulated it, “We be-
lieve
that the souls of all those who die in the grace
of Christ, whether they
must still be purified in Purga-
tory or
whether from the moment they leave their
bodies Jesus takes them to
Paradise, are the people
of God in the eternity beyond death which will
be
conquered on the day of resurrection when these souls
will be
reunited with their bodies” (Time, August
1968).
Most of those who accept this position as well as
those who consider it
unacceptable in such literal terms
are unaware that the belief in the
resurrection of the
dead antedates Christianity. It is an integral part
of
the Zoroastrian eschatology and it is found among the
Jews prior to
Jesus' time. Although, according to
Josephus Flavius, the sect of the
Pharisees believed
“that every soul is incorruptible, but that
only the souls
of the good pass over to other bodies,” and thus
appear
to have believed in transmigration rather than resur-
rection, Saint Paul (Acts 23:6)
attributes to them the
latter belief.
Generally speaking, the idea of the resurrection of
the body is not at all
strange if we consider that, like
the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, it was a
reaction to the popularly held somber vision of post-
mortem existence in Sheol or Hades. Man
is no more
content with a sad conclusion to the drama of his
existence
than he is with this existence being an un-
mitigated calamity. Moreover, the awakening moral
conscience
demanded not only punishment but also
rewards for one's actions in this
life. And what better
reward for a decent life could there be than
restoration
to life?
Significantly, however, what Saint Paul had been
preaching seems to differ
from the later, official Cath-
olic doctrine.
Not only did he speak of the resurrection
of the body (resurrectionem corporis) and not of the
flesh (
resurrectionem carnis), but he
insisted that the
body will be resurrected in a new, changed form.
Twice
in I Corinthians he says, “We shall all be
changed.”
In his view, God will recreate man not as the
identical
physical organism that he was before death but as a
“spiritual body” (
soma
pneumaticon) endowed with
the characteristics and the memory of
the deceased.
Yet such a view of resurrection may have been trou-
blesome. Skeptics doubted that Jesus had risen from
the dead at
all, and in order to convince them, it was
imperative to be able to say
that the disciples did
recognize Him because He was physically exactly
the
same—“flesh and
bones”—(sarka kai ostea,
Luke
24:29). Obviously, such a positive identification would
not have
been possible in the case of a changed, “spir-
itual” body. In any case, the early church
fathers did
reshape the Paulinic view of resurrection to conform
to
these requirements.
This raises, however, the thorny question as to the
condition in which the
body will be resurrected, e.g.,
as it was at the time of death, or in its
youthful
splendor. Another perhaps even more serious problem
was
whether, on the day of the Last Judgment, the
souls which were in Purgatory
or Paradise awaiting
that decisive hour would indeed rejoin the right
bodies.
The officially accepted answers to these and other
problems
are those of Thomas Aquinas.
Concerned as he was with proving the truth of
resurrection, Aquinas was
attracted to Aristotle's view
that the person is the living human body. And
faced
with the necessity of asserting the immortality of the
soul, he
had, however, to show that it was a substance
or, in his terminology,
“something subsistent.” There-
fore, in his commentary to Aristotle's De
anima,
Aquinas tries to interpret Aristotle's remark that
the
intellect exists separately as meaning that “the princi-
ple of intellectual operation which we
call the soul
is both incorporeal and subsistent.” Only in this
way
was a “synthesis” of the Aristotelian and the
Platonic
positions possible. And only if such synthesis could be
accomplished and the unity of body and soul demon-
strated can bodily resurrection, and not merely im-
mortality of the soul, be asserted as
man's true post-
mortem destiny. On the
other hand, only if the soul
is an incorporeal substance will it survive
death and
be available for the reunification with the resurrected
physical body. That it will find the identical former
body is, according to
Aquinas, quite certain because
the truth of resurrection is vouchsafed by
the Holy
Scriptures. He argues further that since man is created
for
happiness, and since it is unattainable here on earth,
there must be an
afterlife where this goal will be
attained. But the whole man, body and
soul, is destined
for happiness. Thus only resurrection, and not mere
immortality of the soul, would fulfill this promise. And
if the
soul would not return to the very same body
it left at death, it would not
be true resurrection.
Modern man has considerable difficulty in accepting
the doctrine of literal
resurrection of the body. As
Edwyn Bevin points out, “For many
people today, the
idea of a literal resurrection of the body has
become
impossible” (The Hope of a World to
Come [1930], p. 53).
