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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
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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


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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).