The resurrection of the body

A friend once asked how can reasonable people believe in the resurrection of the body when they understand the process of putrification of dead things? He also asked how are the cremated supposed to rise again when their bodies have been burnt into ashes.

“From what Scripture says of Christ’s resurrected body, it is clear that it operated on transcendental laws: being present at a different place instantaneously, transcending our physical laws by walking through doors and walls, and so on.”

Luckily these question were not directed at me, so I didn’t have to answer that.

Also, as a strong believer of Epictetus’ adage – the one about sheep showing “how much they have eaten not by bringing the feed to the shepherds”, but by digesting the food and bearing wool and milk – I decided to stay out of it.

Epictetus’ point was to rather show the actions from properly digested propositions than to pompously display the propositions. I guess now is the season to digest this article of our faith about the resurrection of the body.

In New Scientist Journal of September 22, 2012, Lizza Grossman quoted the Nobel prize-winner Frank Wilczek in saying Einstein’s widely accepted theory of special relativity states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But the phenomenon of quantum entanglement seems to flaunt the speed limit by allowing a measurement of one particle to instantaneously change another, even when the two are widely separated. Einstein famously called this “spooky action at a distance”.

What quantum physics demonstrates by that “spooky action” – besides punching the theory of relativity on the chin – is that not only is matter indestructible, but its particles are ultimately inseparable. This means the particles of a decomposed or burnt body do not get destroyed but rather change composition. They can therefore be reconstituted, based on their essence, to either their former state or transformed into something else.

Scripture does not give much detail concerning the resurrected body, or what St Paul called the “glorified body” will look like.

Looking at the first fruits of our faith, our Lord Jesus Christ, it is clear that the glorified bodies will look different (the apostles could not immediately recognise the risen Christ), yet will maintain something of the essence of the present bodies.

St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians says that our bodies will be changed when the final trumpet sounds (15:51-52). St Paul compares the change in glorified bodies to the tree that does not look like its seed, or the butterfly that does not look like a caterpillar – yet there is continuity in the transformation.

Resurrected bodies, according to the Christian faith, will be imperishable, immortal, glorious, powerful and spiritual. The meaning of other qualities is clear, but what does it mean to have a spiritual body?

Our thinking is dichotomist; we recognise the duality between spirit and matter (body). Most people assume the “spiritual body” will be only a resurrection of the souls, or be ghosts in a manner of Odysseus meeting a shade of his dead mother. But this is what St Paul tries to dispute.

The Catholic commentary on St Paul in this points to the glorified body as perfect unity between spirit and matter, making for a body that transcends the dimension of this universe.

This brings us back to the weirdness – Einstein’s “spookiness” – revealed by quantum physics, which happens at sub-atomic level. The sub-atomic level is what has been called a “Timeless Dimension of Reality”. Our “time-locked universe” originated and is still held together by laws operating on the sub-atomic level through quantum realities.

Quantum realities also existed before the time-locked universe came into existence, at the so-called Big Bang. They operate on transcendental laws.

From what Scripture says of Christ’s resurrected body, it is clear that it operated on transcendental laws: being present at a different place instantaneously, transcending our physical laws by walking through doors and walls, and so on. This is the similar behaviour of particles at sub-atomic level, or quantum level, where an electron can be in two places at once, and photons at opposite extremes of the universe can communicate instantaneously.

Whatever may be the case, what is certain is that “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9).