1. "When they rise from the
dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Mk 12:25).
These words have a key meaning for the theology of the body.
Christ uttered them after having affirmed, in the conversation
with the Sadducees, that the resurrection is in conformity with
the power of the living God. All three synoptic Gospels report
the same statement, except that Luke's version is different in
some details from that of Matthew and Mark. Essential for them
all is the fact that, in the future resurrection, human beings,
after having reacquired their bodies in the fullness of the
perfection characteristic of the image and likeness of God—after
having reacquired them in their masculinity and
femininity—"neither marry nor are given in marriage." Luke
expresses the same idea in chapter 20:34-35, in the following
words: "The children of this age marry and are given in
marriage, but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that
age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are
given in marriage."
Definitive fulfilment of mankind
2. As can be seen from these words, marriage, that union in
which, according to Genesis, "A man cleaves to his wife, and
they become one flesh" (2:24)—the union characteristic of man
right from the beginning—belongs exclusively to this age.
Marriage and procreation do not constitute, on the other hand,
the eschatological future of man. In the resurrection they lose,
so to speak, their raison d'être. "That age," of which Luke
spoke (20:35), means the definitive fulfillment of mankind. It
is the quantitative closing of that circle of beings, who were
created in the image and likeness of God, in order that,
multiplying through the conjugal "unity in the body" of men and
women, they might subdue the earth. "That age" is not the world
of the earth, but the world of God, who, as we know from the
First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, will fill it entirely,
becoming "everything to everyone" (1 Cor 15:28).
3. At the same time "that age," which according to revelation is
"the kingdom of God," is also the definitive and eternal
"homeland" of man (cf. Phil 3:20). It is the "Father's house" (Jn
14:2). As man's new homeland, that age emerges definitively from
the present world, which is temporal—subjected to death, that
is, to the destruction of the body (cf. Gen 3:19, "to dust you
shall return")—through the resurrection. According to Christ's
words reported by the synoptic Gospels, the resurrection means
not only the recovery of corporeity and the re-establishment of
human life in its integrity by means of the union of the body
with the soul, but also a completely new state of human life
itself.
We find the confirmation of this new state of the body in the
resurrection of Christ (cf. Rom 6:5-11). The words reported by
the synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:34-35) will ring
out then (that is, after Christ's resurrection) to those who had
heard them. I would say almost with a new probative force, and
at the same time they will acquire the character of a convincing
promise. For the present, however, we will dwell on these words
in their pre-paschal phase, referring only to the situation in
which they were spoken. There is no doubt that already in the
answer given to the Sadducees, Christ revealed the new condition
of the human body in the resurrection. He did so precisely by
proposing a reference and a comparison with the condition in
which man had participated since the "beginning."
Renewed in resurrection
4. The words, "They neither marry nor are given in marriage"
seem to affirm at the same time that human bodies, recovered and
at the same time renewed in the resurrection, will keep their
masculine or feminine peculiarity. The sense of being a male or
a female in the body will be constituted and understood in that
age in a different way from what it had been from the beginning,
and then in the whole dimension of earthly existence. The words
of Genesis: "A man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to
his wife, and they become one flesh" (2:24), constituted right
from the beginning that condition and relationship of
masculinity and femininity, extended also to the body, which
must rightly be defined as conjugal and at the same time as
procreative and generative. It is connected with the blessing of
fertility, pronounced by God (Elohim) when he created man "male
and female" (Gn 1:27). The words Christ spoke about the
resurrection enable us to deduce that the dimension of
masculinity and femininity—that is, being male and female in the
body—will again be constituted together with the resurrection of
the body in "that age."
Like the angels
5. Is it possible to say something more detailed on this
subject? Beyond all doubt, Christ's words reported by the
synoptic Gospels (especially in the version of Luke 20:27-40)
authorize us to do so. We read there that "Those who are
accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection
from the dead...cannot die any more, because they are equal to
angels and are sons of God" (Matthew and Mark report only that
"They are like angels in heaven"). This statement makes it
possible above all to deduce a spiritualization of man according
to a different dimension from that of earthly life (and even
different from that of the beginning itself). It is obvious that
it is not a question here of transforming man's nature into that
of the angels, that is, a purely spiritual one. The context
indicates clearly that in that age man will keep his own human
psychosomatic nature. If it were otherwise, it would be
meaningless to speak of the resurrection.
The resurrection means the restoring to the real life of human
corporeity, which was subjected to death in its temporal phase.
In the expression of Luke (20:36) just quoted (and in that of Mt
22:30 and Mk 12:25), it is certainly a question of human, that
is, psychosomatic nature. The comparison with heavenly beings,
used in the context, is no novelty in the Bible. Among others,
it is said in a psalm, exalting man as the work of the Creator,
"You have made him little less than the angels" (Ps 8:5). It
must be supposed that in the resurrection this similarity will
become greater. It will not be through a disincarnation of man,
but by means of another kind (we could also say another degree)
of spiritualization of his somatic nature—that is, by means of
another "system of forces" within man. The resurrection means a
new submission of the body to the spirit.
Plato and St Thomas
5. Before beginning to develop this subject, it should be
recalled that the truth about the resurrection had a key meaning
for the formation of all theological anthropology, which could
be considered simply as an anthropology of the resurrection. As
a result of reflection on the resurrection, Thomas Aquinas
neglected in his metaphysical (and at the same time theological)
anthropology Plato's philosophical conception on the
relationship between the soul and the body and drew closer to
the conception of Aristotle.(1) The resurrection bears witness,
at least indirectly, that the body, in the composite being of
man as a whole, is not only connected temporarily with the soul
(as its earthly "prison," as Plato believed).(2) But together
with the soul it constitutes the unity and integrity of the
human being. Aristotle taught precisely that,(3) unlike Plato.
If St. Thomas accepted Aristotle's conception in his
anthropology, he did so considering the truth about the
resurrection. The truth about the resurrection clearly affirmed,
in fact, that the eschatological perfection and happiness of man
cannot be understood as a state of the soul alone, separated
(according to Plato: liberated) from the body. But it must be
understood as the state of man definitively and perfectly
"integrated" through such a union of the soul and the body,
which qualifies and definitively ensures this perfect integrity.
Let us interrupt at this point our reflection on the words
spoken by Christ about the resurrection. The great wealth of
content enclosed in these words induces us to take them up again
in further considerations.
NOTES
1. Cf., e.g.: Habet autem anima alium modum essendi cum unitur
corpori, et cum furerit a corpore separata, manente tamen eadem
animae natura; non ita quod uniri corpori sit ei accidentale,
sed per rationem suae naturae corpori unitur... ["Now the soul
has one mode of being when in the body, and another when apart
from it, its nature remaining always the same; but this does not
mean that its union with the body is an accidental thing, for,
on the contrary, such union belongs to its very nature..."] (St.
Thomas, Sum. Theol. 1a, q. 89, a. 1 [New York: Benziger, 1947]).
Anima, quandiu est corpori coniuncta, non potest aliquid
intelligere non convertendo se ad phantasmata, ut per
experimentum patet. Si autem hoc non est ex natura animae, sed
per accidens hoc convenit ei ex eo quod corpori alligatur, sicut
Platonici posuereunt, de facili quaestio solvi posset. Nam
remoto impedimento corporis, rediret anima ad suam naturam, ut
intelligeret intelligibilia simpliciter, non convertendo se ad
phantasmata, sicut est de aliis substantiis separatis. Sed
secundum hoc non esset anima corpori unita propter melius animae,
si peius intelligeret corpori unita quam separata; sed hoc esset
solum propter melius corporis, quod est irrationabile, cum
materia sit propter formam, et non e converso. [The soul united
to the body can understand only by turning to the phantasms, as
experience shows. Did this not proceed from the soul's very
nature, but accidentally through its being bound up with the
body, as the Platonists said, the difficulty would vanish; for
in that case when the body was once removed, the soul would at
once return to its own nature, and would understand intelligible
things simply, without turning to the phantasms, as is
exemplified in the case of other separate substances. In that
case, however, the union of soul and body would not be for the
soul's good, for evidently it would understand worse in the body
than out of it; but for the good of the body, which would be
unreasonable, since matter exists on account of the form, and
not the form for the sake of matter] (Ibidem).
Secundum se convenit animae corpori uniri, sicut secundum se
convenit corpori levi esse sursum....ita anima humana manet in
suo esse cum fuerit a corpore separata, habens aptitudinem et
inclinationem naturalem ad corporis unionem. [To be united to
the body belongs to the soul by reason of itself, as it belongs
to a light body by reason of itself to be raised up.... So the
human soul retains its proper existence when separated from the
body, having an aptitude and a natural inclination to be united
to the body] (Ibidem Ia, q. 76, a. 1, ad 6).
86. To men soma estin hemin sema (Platone, Gorgias 493 A; cf.
also Phaedo 66B; Cratylus 400C).
87. Aristotle, De anima, II, 412a, 19-22; cf. also Metaph. 1029,
b 11; 1030, b 14.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 7
December 1981, page 3
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