On not fleshing out body language
In yesterday’s post on the resurrection (dealing with the fourth of the 39 articles) I referred to Paul saying:
What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed (1 Cor 15:50-51 NRSV)
In the comments on that post Peter Kirk dissents from my view that one cannot ascribe flesh to Jesus’ risen body (and indeed wishes to ascribe blood to it too!) and refers me to St Luke’s gospel:
Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:36-39 NRSV)
I think this interesting scriptural collision (I nearly called this post “When Scriptures collide”) deserves more than a debate in the comments on that post, and it raises, for me, some more general interpretative issues. I should note, whether others agree or not, that Peter and I both agree on the empty tomb, and that there was a real transformation of Jesus’ body in the resurrection. I am not going to re-argue those important points here.
First, I want to note that there are (at least) three options (and combinations thereof) available in dealing with conflicts (whether real or apparent) between scriptures.
- The different scriptures represent different views of the resurrection held in the early church and are both equally of importance.
- The scriptures must be harmonised. One way of doing that in this instance is to say that Luke effectively has a two stage process. Jesus takes again his body of flesh and bones in the resurrection, and transforms it in the ascension. I find that unsatisfactory, because there is nothing in the text of Luke-Acts to suggest Luke held such a view.
- One text should be hermeneutically privileged over the other, and guide its interpretation.
In this case I begin essentially by taking the third course. This is a well-worn path, and noticeable examples from the past might include the way in which texts like “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30) are used in a theological framework against texts like “the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him” (1 Cor 15:28) to refute the Arian view.
In this case, I note that Paul’s argument is a major piece of theological reflection on the views the Corinthians are putting forward, whereas Luke’s statement is a single isolated narrative detail. Moreover, Paul is particularly dealing with the question of what appropriate language we may use to describe resurrection. His use of terms such as flesh (σὰρξ), spirit (πνεῦμα), “soul / natural life” (ψυχή) and body (σῶμα) are actually being defined by the argument, and by the ways in which they are combined or opposed. Thus his statement that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” belongs not to an incidental comment, but to his definition of resurrection, and what “body” might mean when used in that context.
By contrast, in Luke’s account “flesh and bones” (σάρκα καὶ ὀστέα) is simply contrasted with “ghost / spirit” ((πνεῦμα). Leaving aside the fact that different authors do not necessarily use the same vocabulary in the same way, there is a lack of the defintional nuancing here that the additional vocabulary of Paul brings to the discussion. Luke is pursuing a dramatic narrative better served by this simple contrast which serves to stress the reality of the event he is portraying.
We may also, linguistically take this a step further. Describing how Jesus is with God takes us into the difficulty all language faces in describing God, where we have to admit that our words must necessarily be difficult and inadequate. How do we describe a body that has no physical earthly locality? Such descriptions must perforce strain the normal semantic domain of the word body. All our language about God is by way of analogy (St Thomas (ST 1.13) is still worth reading on this) and that is, it seems to me, also true of what we predicate of the risen Jesus.
Trying to univocally impute bones, flesh and blood to this body flies in the face of Paul’s affirmations that the stuff of this risen body is spirit, not flesh and blood or soul / natural life. What we normally mean by body includes those things, of course, and also patterns of eating, sleeping and defecation (which would seem to be the normal corollaries of having flesh, blood and bones). We apply that language ordinarily to that which has physical location in time and space. Paul develops a different vocabulary of body at the stretches of what is describable, and creates effectively a new analogical use of the term, and we would do well to follow him, both in acknowledging the limits of our language, and in reticence about what may be said.
July 28th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Doug, thanks for debating this with me. But you don’t convince me.
On matters of the historical events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, if any text is to be “hermeneutically privileged”, I would say it should be the synoptic gospels, based on eye witness accounts with relatively little theological interpretation. And, unlike some, I take this event in Luke as being a normal event in history, reported just like any other event in Jesus’ life. Jesus effectively said “I have flesh and bones”, and it seems to me that to deny this is to deny the truth of the gospel.
But I don’t see any real contradiction with what Paul wrote, because Paul was not writing about the events of Jesus’ life but about the eschatological resurrection bodies of believers. Sure, he implies that these will be like Jesus’ resurrection body. But he does not deny that these bodies have flesh, bones and blood. Rather, “flesh and blood” is an idiom for normal human physicality. His point is that this physicality must be transformed, added to not subtracted from, “the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable” (v.53 TNIV), before it can inherit the Kingdom.
So I see Jesus’ resurrection body not as a body minus flesh and blood, but as a body of flesh and blood which has been changed by the addition of immortality. Both Luke and Paul are right. It is not a ghost without flesh or bones, but a physical body and more than that. It is a body with a physical locality at least until the ascension, which ate and presumably slept and defecated. Yes, our language about God is analogy, but this is not language about God, but about a transformed man.
I take this seriously because it seems to me that you are very close to a docetic view of Christ, that he only appeared to be human. I want to insist that he was fully human, and remained so after the resurrection, with nothing subtracted from his human nature.
The authors of Article II of the Thirty-Nine, which you recently looked at, may not have had the physicality of the body chiefly in mind when they wrote that Christ “took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man”. But I don’t see how he can have perfect “manhood”, never to be divided, if after the resurrection he no longer has flesh, bones and blood.
I assume by “St Thomas” you mean Aquinas, not the doubting Apostle who also had important insights on the physicality of Jesus’ resurrection body.
July 28th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Peter, you convince me no more than I convince you. I strongly resist any idea that my view is docetic (by applying which word to the risen Christ you use in a somewhat idiosyncratic way) or that it denies the hypostatic union. It is simply that I see a much more radical transformation of humanity in the eschaton, prefigured, anticipated and revealed in the transformation of Jesus’ resurrection.
July 28th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Well, well - physicality and all that - but let’s get this accurate as to the text. Luke does not mention blood - if he did we might suspect resuscitation rather than resurrection. The blood was spilled at the cross - and was not reconstituted except … And Paul doesn’t mention bone - was ‘flesh and blood’ synecdoche for the human in the time of Paul? or do we get that phrase from the KJV? But these things to one side, we have a body now that is meant to be empowered and indwelt by the Holy Spirit - that body is definitely flesh bone and blood - is the Spirit meant to be substantially ours? I think yes. Else why do Peter (treasure in earthen vessels) and Paul (the earnest of our inheritance) and John (the anointing) and Luke (the manifestations) and Mark (trees walking - a self portrait I think) all mention such wholeness? I am not saying that is all - but it is the critical start - and the rest is speculative. I think this gets us closer to the experience of the covenant in Israel also - an important corrective post-christendom.
July 29th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
docetic (by applying which word to the risen Christ you use in a somewhat idiosyncratic way)
OK, not “docetic”. It was some other heresy whose name I have forgotten to claim that Jesus’ humanity was only temporary up to his death - which you deny following.
was ‘flesh and blood’ synecdoche for the human in the time of Paul?
Yes, at least in Ephesians 6:12 where it is not about parts of the body. Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 15:50 Paul is not talking about body parts, but about humanity.
If the risen Jesus did not have blood, what colour were his lips? If they were white, as would be those of a human body without blood, why did the disciples on the Emmaus Road not note this oddity? Don’t say he was wearing lipstick!
July 29th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
colour of the lips? they likely didn’t notice for he was walking with them, not at them - and at supper he disappeared before they had time to notice. There are lots of possible questions - like what borrowed clothes was he wearing - but I don’t think they are the right questions.
July 29th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Peter, I simply think you’re asking the wrong questions, and therefore making the wrong statements. As for all this going on about blood, I can only say:
July 29th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
As a layperson, I would like to hear peopel wake up and start asking questions, even if they are the wrong ones.
We don’t think things through, and most of us end up with a disembodied eschatology and a confusing Jesus whom we peak of as ominpresent and omniscient while imagining him floating around “heaven” a physical body.
I have lots of questions. But I don’t know which ones are right and which ones are wrong.
So, here is one (in two parts): In the essence of the Trinity, how does Jesus’ physical body function in that eternal unity, unlimited to space and time? Has he always had a risen body in eternity? Or do I misunderstand eternity?
It seems we make a sandwich and put time the middle of it, as if there is a slice of eternity before time and a slice of eternity after time. I don’t think eternity functions that way, but I don’t know.
I say these things desiring to learn and stretch my grasp of them. I’m enjoying the three of you debating. Please carry on!
July 29th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Should be “speak” and not “peak”
July 29th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
So, here is one (in two parts): In the essence of the Trinity, how does Jesus’ physical body function in that eternal unity, unlimited to space and time? Has he always had a risen body in eternity? Or do I misunderstand eternity?
Kathy, in one sense I think those are precisely questions we can’t answer. In another, let me attempt this inadequate answer. What we normally mean by body includes a very strong sense of our own identity, a sense of real actual existences, and experience of space-time existence, ageing and decay. When we start talking about Jesus’ risen body, we are trying to say something about his identity, and his real existence as a human being, being taken up and transformed in such a way that it is now fitted for eternal and non-decaying existence. The former means that we are talking about the real body that was buried (in Paul’s language “the seed that was sown”) and the latter that we’re talking about something that is quite unlike what we normally mean by body in everyday life (in Paul’s language “the body that is to be.” I think that lies at the root of the disagreement between Peter and me, because I think he is taking things we predicate of body as we know it, and applying them to body as we can’t fully comprehend it.
July 29th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Thanks, Doug. That is precisely the tension that stumbles most of us, I think. I’m recovering from a lifetome of being taught an overly spiritualized eschatology and yet I don’t want to fall into the trap of an overly realized one. But I never want to return to the hyper-spiritualized view that makes the present body and creation cease to matter (no pun intended).
July 29th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Doug, I wondered for a moment whether to be offended at you quoting “Fool!” at me. But then I realised that you are quoting it as much at yourself, for it was you who raised this issue of “With what kind of body do they come?” by criticising the article.
Yes, we have to realise that we are not going to understand these matters fully. My point about Jesus’ lips, never intended very seriously, is perhaps going too far because it is looking for details which are not in the Bible. But I do think I am within my rights to point out that Jesus himself, as recorded by Luke, said that his resurrection body had flesh and bones. As for blood, we can only speculate.
Kathy, I am with you in “recovering from a lifet[i]me of being taught an overly spiritualized eschatology”. That is why I am sensitive to anything which sounds like a suggestion that the risen Jesus or our own resurrection bodies will effectively be disembodied spirits. But I don’t want to err too much the other way. The resurrection life must be more than resuscitated and perfected physical bodies living on a renewed earth. (Is this the view of Jehovah’s Witnesses?) But I continue to explore exactly what it will be like.
March 29th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
[...] Doug Chaplin (who is sounding more and more like an old-fashioned liberal with his denial of Jesus’ “I am” declarations) tried last year to argue for Paul’s affirmations that the stuff of this risen body is spirit, not flesh and blood or soul / natural life. [...]