The Resurrection Appearances

     The Gospel accounts of the resurrection appearances of Jesus agree that the body of Jesus was a real body, but a transformed one. It was real. It was the same body that Jesus had before he died so that Jesus could eat and drink and be touched, and the signs of his crucifixion were visible. Yet, on the other hand, this body could appear and disappear at will, for Jesus vanished from the sight of Cleophas and his companion, and he appeared to his disciples who had gathered with the doors of the room closed. Then there is the difficulty in recognizing Jesus, on the road to Emmaus, in his appearance to Mary of Magdala, and on the Sea of Galilee. So it was a transformed body.

St. Paul

     St. Paul presents much the same message, not by way of stories but by a theological reflection on the resurrection in his first letter to the Corinthians. The Corinthians were denying the resurrection of the dead, and Paul reminds them of the resurrection of Jesus which they had accepted, telling them that “if there is no resurrection, Christ cannot have been raised.” And he concludes: “If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people.”

     Then he tries to explain something of the nature of the resurrection body. Someone may ask, he writes, “How are dead people raised, and what sort of body do they have when they come back?” And he responds, “They are stupid questions.” (1Cor. 15:35) They are not stupid questions because they ask about the nature of the resurrection body, for Paul goes on to answer them, but they are stupid because the Corinthians are posing these questions as a way of denying the resurrection. Perhaps they are conceiving it as a kind of resuscitation or return of the same kind of body, and are ridiculing it as spiritually unworthy of them. Paul goes on to explain that our body can be in two states. On earth the body is perishable, contemptible and weak. It is a body that comes from the soul or psyche, a natural earthly body. But there is another state of the body that comes from the spirit (pneuma), a supernatural state in which the body is imperishable, glorious and powerful. The earthly principle or psyche gives rise to our earthly body, but the spiritual or supernatural principle gives rise to a heavenly body. Paul is not talking about the body vs. the soul as if the resurrection would mean we leave the body behind and enjoy some purely spiritual existence. Nor is he telling the Corinthians that they will have two bodies, one after the other, the first a natural body of flesh and blood, which would decay in the grave, and the second a heavenly body that they would receive at the coming of the Lord. Rather, he is saying that the same body can exist in two states, a natural one and a supernatural one.

     Just as “the soul has its own embodiment, so does the spirit have its own embodiment. The first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a living soul; but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit. That is, first the one with the soul, not the spirit, and after that, the one with the spirit. The first man, being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second man is from heaven. As this earthly man was, so are we on earth; and as the heavenly man is, so are we in heaven. And we, who have been modeled on the earthly man, will be modeled on the heavenly man.” (1Cor. 15:45-53)

     What Paul is saying here is extremely important for understanding something of the resurrection body of Jesus. He is talking about a real, physical body, (soma), not some ethereal or spiritual reality. The psychic or natural human being has one kind of body, but the pneumatic or supernatural human being who has a life that comes from the Spirit has another kind of body.

     This is the same essential message we saw in the Gospel resurrection narratives. There it was still implicit, and here it is beginning to emerge and be reflected upon. In both cases we are being told that the resurrection body of Jesus is a real body, but in both cases we are also being told that this resurrection body is a transformed one. The challenge we face is to understand something of the nature of this resurrection body.