Gender and the Resurrection
One of the great debates in Christian eschatology has been the kind of body we are to receive in the resurrection. While it is said, in one fashion or another, to be the same body which is raised that we had in our life, it is also said to be transformed – as St Paul puts it, we shall have a “spiritual body”: “It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body” (1Corinthians 15:42). What that means has been constantly debated by theologians since the foundations of the Christian faith. The Church allows for a multitude of solutions, however it has made it clear that this must not be used to view the eschaton as a rejection of this-worldly being, as if the physical world will be abandoned for some heavenly, other-worldly realm with no connection to this world – this was the error of the Gnostics, and one of the first errors the Church officially anathematized.
Related to this is the debate on the relationship between gender and the resurrection body. Is gender an accident which will be removed in the eschaton, or is there something essential about gender? Both answers have been given by patristic authors; Origen, and many who followed his ideas, believed that we will have genderless bodies in the resurrection. In part this was because Jesus said that in heaven we will be like the angels.[1] They also cited St Paul who famously said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Others, following St Jerome, believed that a denial of gender in the resurrection removes too much of our personal identity, an identity which is related to, though not reduced to, our bodily form. He and others like him also had Scriptural authorities they would use such as this in Job, which predicts a restoration of our flesh so that in our flesh we shall see God: ”For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! (Job (RSV) 19)” (Job 19:25-7).[2]
In both positions there is good to be had. Those who deny gender in the resurrection certainly can use this to criticize abusive gender discrimination. However, it can also be abused because it starts to lead us into a dangerous position about this-worldly affairs, leading to a gnostic rejection of the world and its forms as being fundamentally unreal and so unworthy of being saved. Those who affirm gender distinction therefore provide a firm foundation for an incarnational theology which understands salvation as being involved with the world and not apart from it. However, it certainly allows for an abusive understanding of gender, to make the proper essential distinction and turn it into a think of value and worth.[3]
How exactly should we view this question? With my incarnational view, I believe that there is something essential to our bodies and how it represents ourselves, that gender is also a distinct quality of the person which cannot be denied in the resurrection. However, this must be used not to separate the genders, and to make one or the other “superior of worth.” Passages in Scripture like Galatians 3:28 must be seen as a value statement, not an anthropological statement about the nature of the body in the resurrection. We cannot ignore the inherent goodness of the order of creation, and the way in which we exist in creation itself, an existence which is not genderless. But we must be careful and not assume too much about our current understanding of gender; we must not think we now know the full meaning and value of gender – this, to be sure, can be said to be the problem of those who tried to reify social roles as they understood them in their society and put them into the heavenly realm. If their closed-views led to abuses in the past, new assumptions, with incomplete and imperfect social models, can only result in new abuses in the future.
Footnotes
[1] “And Jesus said to them, ‘The sons 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, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him’” (Luke 20:34 – 38).
[2] The LXX reading is quite different and yet also gives further credence to the resurrectional interpretation of this verse: “For I know He is everlasting, He who is about to set me free on the earth, and to raise up my skin that endures these things; for these have been accomplished for me by the Lord; which I myself am conscious of, and my eyes have beheld, and not those of another, all has been accomplished for me in my bosom.” (Job 19:25-7, Orthodox Study Bible, edited not to be in verse form).
[3] This is how many scholars view the Origenist controversy in the 4th century, and see St Jerome as building up a position which reified social positions of men and women in 4th century society; thus his affirmation of gender was also an affirmation of the social structure of his time. “Elizabeth Clark, who has written brilliantly about the Origenist controversy of the 390s, has argued that attention moved fairly quickly away from the doctrine of the resurrection and toward over-procreation, sexuality and sexual difference. Building on the ideas of Peter Brown, she suggests that Jerome, Theophilus of Alexandria, and other anti-Origenists wanted to defend a kind of gender and class essentialism – that is, to elevate to the courts of heaven the differences between male and female, married and chaste, leader and follower, that were naturally found on earth and, in certain ways, enhanced within the monastic movement,”Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 90. I think this might be an exaggeration of Jerome, but I think there is an aspect of truth in this argument, and it is one which we must be weary of as we try to understand gender and its significance to the human person.
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Henry,
I have come across this issue in my work on the Eucharist. It comes up because the body of Christ that is present is the resurrected/glorified body. In other words, the spiritual body Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15. Now, it seems that the only way to have a complete understanding of what a spiritual body is like is to be one, but we are still able to say a few things, even if some are only by negation.
First of all, Paul chooses the metaphor of a seed and a plant. The seed and the plant are in one sense radically different realities. There is, nevertheless, an undeniable continuity between them. They are the same organism, and, in the seed, there is all the potential for a plant given the right conditions.
When I teach about Eucharistic presence I have my class read John 6. Yes, of course, Jesus is very insistent that we will eat his body. But people really aren’t sure what to do when he claims the spirit gives life and the flesh is of no avail. Then we go to 1 Corinthians 15, and see that the glorified body is, precisely a ‘spiritual’ body. In the resurrection it is no longer useful to make of spirit and body two separate realities.
What is essential about ‘spiritual’ bodies, both for your question (of gender) and mine (of eucharistic presence) is their potential for communion.
Pope Benedict tells us (in his little book of Eucharistic homilies, God Is Near Us), that in this life (the natural, historical one) our bodies serve as both bridges and barriers. They serve as the medium of communion, but also as that which keeps me alone and separate. He is willing to say that resurrection means, simply, that our bodies retain the first function, communion, while losing the second, barrier. That is why Jesus’ eucharistic presence can be ubiquitous. A spiritual body is not subject to the limitations of a natural one.
It is also one reason why I am inclined to support a gendered resurrection. To be created in the image of God is to be created for communion. This seems essential in the biblical understanding of ‘male and female he created them.’ If heaven is perfect communion, that part of humanity most ordered to communion (our sexuality) should be perfected, not lost.
Brett,
Right, I agree — though I think those who deny gender find this denial is in part because they see gender as a part of the temporal, fallen order, and finds its fulfillment in the temporal order alone. I disagree strongly, but it is similar to the kinds of arguments used also for “animals are in the temporal order alone,” arguments which I also find wanting.
I hate throwing Scriptural logs on a fire when there are opposing points of view, but can we apply the passages about the Transfiguration to the issue? Did Moses and Elijah appear as human men because that is how they spiritually exist, or did they appear that way simply for the benefit of the apostles present?
The problem is that one can say Moses and especially Elijah had not been resurrected — Christ is the first born of the dead, and that had not happened yet. So what was seen there is not exactly indicative of the post-resurrection change. Really, this is an issue which I think people do not realize how complex it was, and how diverse a view Christians have had (the resurrection). Bynum’s book is a good introduction on the topic.
“male and female he created them”–that is, gender exists *before* sin, and so can hardly be said to be limited to the “fallen, temporal order” as karlson seems at least to consider; it would make sense that the resurrected body would repeat and bring to completion the prelapsarian body, no?
WJ
You misunderstand or misrepresent what I have said and my point. I have pointed out the theological tradition found within patristics, an early one at that, which suggested gender is not for eternity and relates to the fall (and if you read the patristic discussions, you will see those who deny gender in eternity point out that the original temporal creation was created in such a way that if there is a fall, reproduction can happen).
Did Moses and Elijah appear as human men because that is how they spiritually exist, or did they appear that way simply for the benefit of the apostles present?
This raises fascinating questions that apply to almost any apparition or vision. Assuming that Bernadette (at Lourdes) and Lucia (at Fatima) saw the Virgin Mary, did they both see a person that — if they could have compared notes — they would agree looked the same? Would they recognize her as Our Lady of Guadalupe? I believe a distinction is made between visions and apparitions. In a true apparition, what determines the type, color, and style of clothing the apparition is wearing? I am not being facetious here, but when Jesus appeared after the Resurrection, where did his clothes come from? Will people wear clothes after the Resurrection of the Dead? Where will they come from? What will they be made of? Who will design them?
I presume one has to think of a true apparition as somewhat like a movie, in that everything that is seen has to be planned. If you see an office in a movie, someone has carefully selected the books for the shelf, the papers on the desk, the type of desk, and so on.
Since Moses was dead and not resurrected, what were the apostles seeing in the Transfiguration? They couldn’t see the soul of Moses. They couldn’t have been seeing the body of Moses. It is difficult to believe they weren’t seeing something that was crafted to look to them what they would have expected Moses to look like.
If gender is not something intrinsic to a person’s very being, then it is difficult to understand why the Church insists that women cannot be priests.
David
Go here to this link concerning Samuel in I Samuel 28 appearing (like Moses at the transfiguration) after his death and note the footnote…:
http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/1samuel/1samuel28.htm
It is possible that there is an interim bodily form something like a movie ghostlike reality that could appertain prior to the resurrection of all at the end of history in the renewed universe. With the resurrected glorious body finally, Aquinas said that the happiness of heaven wil increase “not intensively but extensively”… and I would add that there being an interim form that is non glorious, wraithlike and not tactile would not upset that time frame and the two qualities of Heaven as described by Aquinas.
The other occurence to ponder is the dead who rose and appeared to many after Christ died…where did they go?…what was the quality of their bodies if they were then taken up to a lower heaven like Elias and Enoch since no secular history of the period records the below mentioned people as the dead come back who continued within civilization…
Mat 27:51 “And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
Mat 27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
Mat 27:53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”
Did they have real but non glorious bodies like Lazarus after he was raised and thus like Elias they went to a lower heaven or did they have ephemeral bodies like Moses at the transfiguration and Samuel at Endor if in fact both of these latter men had the same ephemeral bodies?
Whenever I see attempts to “understand” scripture and scriptural events through analysis, I’m reminded of Stanzas Concerning an Ecstasy Experienced in High Contemplation by St. John of the Cross. Here are a few stanzas (in translation):
I entered into unknowing,
and there I remained unknowing
transcending all knowledge.
I entered into unknowing,
yet when I saw myself there,
without knowing where I was,
I understood great things;
I will not say what I felt
for I remained in unknowing
transcending all knowledge.
That perfect knowledge
was of peace and holiness
held at no remove
in profound solitude;
it was something so secret
that I was left stammering,
transcending all knowledge. …
Muennemann
You are doing though what St. Thomas did when near the end of his life he said all his writings were “as straw” compared to what he experienced in mystical contemplation. But for all the drama of his statement, why did he compare the two areas? They are separate; and mystical experience pertains to a miniscule number of people and even of monks (per Merton) pre-death throughout history…and it’s occurence is not always because the receivers were good but in some cases because they were “bad” (Saul the pharisee and killer becoming Paul during a vision/ and the OT Saul seeing Samuel from the dead). It’s a good thing we have a lot of scriptural analysis from Aquinas and a lesser but substantial amount from St.John of the Cross despite your above verses from the latter…because most human beings throughout history are not going to experience mystical experience but they are going to need scriptural analysis which is why the Church in her main organs is mainly concerned with analysis and not concerned about mystical experience. And Christ gave the latter, scriptural analysis, to the two men on the way to Emmaus and they later noted… “were not our hearts burning within us as he opened the scriptures unto us.”
So mystical experience of God is wonderful but is only caused by God in very few (good and bad) and is not caused by any human (monks can only dispose themselves toward it but not cause it and may never receive it) but it is less relevant to 99.999% of Christians than analysis of scripture is.
[note-- somehow this comment got lost and I only saw it now -- ed]
Henry, has Origen’s view been held by anyone of note since then? I’m frankly surprised that that view has any “stickiness” at all… it seems to run square in the face of Catholic anthropology.
Chris,
Erigena is one who follows that route — to quote Bynum, “He uses Galatians 3:28 (‘neither male nor female’) to argue that Christ rose without biological sex and so shall wee.” (Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 143).
This made me think about what Mark Twain had to say about another field of study: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
I have long thought it interesting that Mary Magdalene, in the Gospel of John, does not at first recognize the risen Jesus, but takes him to be the gardener. This would seem to imply that Jesus looked like an ordinary, unremarkable person, not a prince or king or the Jesus of the Transfiguration.
Also interesting is the encounter between Jesus and Thomas, in which it appears Jesus has not merely scars from the wounds of the crucifixion, but holes. (Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”) This seems to contradict the idea of a “glorified body” having imperfections removed. Jesus apparently has a gaping wound where his side was pierced — a hole into which Thomas can insert his fingers.
Of course, it may be utterly mistaken to make anything at all out of these physical details, since the Gospel of John is so full of symbolic meanings that what we take to be physical details are actually theological symbols.
If we do take all of this to be accounts of actual happenings, then we have to acknowledge (it seems to me) that these things were “staged” to conformed to the science and cosmology of the day. We do not now believe that heaven is in the skies, so the Ascension of Jesus, to take one example, is witnessed by the Apostles as Jesus floating up into the skies, when of course we know that no matter how high into the atmosphere and beyond you go, you will not reach heaven. The Apostles didn’t know that, however, so seeing Jesus go up into the clouds would have made sense to them as Jesus returning to heaven.
David
The question of the wounds of the martyrs (and Christ) in the resurrection (or even other issues such as age, what happens to aborted children in the resurrection, etc) were all a part of the long debates (and with many different answers given). On the one hand, they are the symbols of glory; on the other hand, they appear to be imperfections in the body, flaws from its natural beauty. Of course various answers came about, including the idea that they will be seen and known — and they will be seen as beautiful instead of flaws to perfection. That, however, brings about questions such as: how would you see the wounds of someone eaten (by a lion, by fish, etc)? Because there would be too much to go through, I will just state that I think there might be a way that the body will be perfect and yet the wounds known… with the addition of other ways of sensation.
Henry,
It’s fascinating, but it’s highly speculative. Just the matter of what is going on when Mary Magdalene doesn’t recognize Jesus could be written about endlessly without being definitively explained. And of course even if what we discern in biblical accounts about the resurrection of the body are genuine hints, the actuality may be beyond or current ability to conceive. On the other hand, someone I used to know (a Christian Brother) used to speculate that life after death was basically just “more of the same.” Who knows?
Bill:
Thank you your response to St. John’s Stanzas.
My experience and my belief are the opposite of what you describe, almost point-by-point; let me try to explain.
I don’t believe Aquinas “compared the two areas” of his Summa Theologica and his awakening experience, because I don’t believe the two are contradictory or disjoint. In “Thomas Aquinas: Friar, Theologian, and Mystic” Karl Rahner writes: Thomas was a mystic. He knew about “the hidden Godhead,” Adoro te devote, latens deitas (Devoutly I adore thee, hidden Deity). He knew the hidden God. He spoke of the God who pervades and determines everything in silence. He spoke of a God beyond everything holy theology could say about him. He spoke of the God he loved as inconceivable. And he knew about these things not only from theology but from the experience of his heart.
Awareness of the Mystical in everyday experience is thrust upon a few people like Saul/Paul; their awakening happened “in Technicolor.” As you correctly point out, this won’t happen for most of us. A few of us will attempt to force ourselves into mystical experience through drugs or aestheticism. A few more will find a good spiritual director and realize our experience through patient and persistent prayer and meditation. The great majority will never notice the true nature of our everyday experience nor give a damn about it.
I do not believe that “most human beings throughout history are not going to experience mystical experience,” nor that “they are going to need scriptural analysis.” The mystical experience is right here and now; most people simply accept the “common wisdom” that mysticism is a Technicolor experience, and miss the real show entirely. We’ve allowed ourselves to be duped into expecting our mystical experience to be like the Transfiguration or like the visions of the Revelation. So we go about our lives, perhaps (as traditionalists) struggling to believe dogmas and obey rules in hopes that God will reward us and emerge from an esoteric heaven. Perhaps (as liberal intellectuals) we will try to analyze “theological facts” and hope to understand God or to “know God’s mind” so that we can have a collegial relationship with God. As if!
As I read the encounter on the road to Emmaus, the two apostles experienced no enlightenment at all despite Christ’s “analysis” as you call it. It was only in the breaking of the bread, in that totally ordinary right-here experience that their eyes were opened and Jesus vanished from their sight.
Henry
There is arguably in line with the debate that you mention… the support of veiled prophecy that Christ will keep his wounds forever and that is in the law itself… given in Exodus 21 (Mat 11:13 “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.”) wherein a Hebrew slave who is given a wife by his master may leave after 6 years but without her; but he may choose servanthood to stay with the wife because he loves her and his master. When he makes that choice of love, an awl is to be driven through his ear to the lintel as a sign of his being a servant forever. Remembering that the Church is the Bride of Christ given to Christ by the Father (“those whom thou gavest me I guarded”..Christ to his Father in prayer in John), Exodus is saying in a veiled manner through the law that Christ loves the Father and the Bride and is willing to have a scar forever in light of that love…for the Jews that scar was in the ear since Aquinas noted that veiled prophecies must have differences in order to be veiled at all…so imagine Christ as the servant and the Father as the master and the Church as the bride in the following passage:
Exodus 21:4
“But if his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall remain the master’s property and the man shall leave alone.
5
If, however, the slave declares, ‘I am devoted to my master and my wife and children; I will not go free,’
6 his master shall bring him to God and there, at the door or doorpost, he shall pierce his ear with an awl, thus keeping him as his slave forever.”
Christ is no slave to the Father in reality but the Hebrew slave was also not what we think of as a slave and could go totally free after 6 years with no cost. Christ could have gone back into being the eternal Word but chose rather out of love to be Incarnated forever even in the renewed world at the end of time out of love for the bride given Him by the Father…the bride being all those who reach Heaven.
PS therefore the awl hole in the ear forever equals the fact that Christ will have all his wounds forever and remember that the two at Emmaus recognized Him in the breaking of the bread and probably because they then saw the wounds.
David
Aquinas said we all in the renewed world will get back our bodies at the age of each person’s peak developement: the infant who died as infant will come back at whatever their peak would have been had they lived longer. Most people die as elderly and they too will come back at whatever each one’s peak was. And thus they will receive their peak and that will be glorified. This might explain why Christ was not recognized right away repeatedly after the resurrection as at Emmaus and on the beach when it was only Peter who recognized Him. He could have looked several years younger or older than they were used to…whichever of those two (younger or older) were His peak.
Muennemann,
We differ. But I’d simply urge you to stay aware of the problem of elitism with your view which I see in this comment of yours: “The great majority will never notice the true nature of our everyday experience nor give a damn about it.”
Keep in mind that Christ said that if He were lifted up, he would draw all men to Himself. We see this with Judas who I believe is in hell but we see Christ drawing Judas as Judas receives an influx of grace and weeps for his sin and returns the money and throws it back into the temple but as Aquinas noted Judas did not take the next step which was to trust that “God delights in Mercy” as one of the prophets had said and thus Judas knew as a Jew. So we see God working on Judas even after the betrayal and on everyone and I think old age is when the rubber meets the road for much of humanity as to calling on God but even prior to then, do not over estimate how godless most are since Christ is working on each of them everyday and thus he told the pharisees that even on the Sabbath, God works… which stunned them…” my Father worketh even until now and I work.”….said on the Sabbath.
Bill:
The interpretation, that the disciples recognized Jesus at dinner in Emmaus “because they then saw the wounds” seems contrary to Luke’s verse. “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” Luke uses the word dienoichthesan, repeating the Greek rendering of of the Adam and Eve story, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”
I find it hard to believe that their eyes being opened had anything to do with Jesus’ physical form or appearance. If that were the case, surely Luke would have questioned his sources closely and recorded it. To me the many verses describing the disciples’ recognition of Jesus (or not) had much more to do with them than with Jesus.
Returning to Henry’s topic, the focus on gender entrenches the dualistic perception that everyday and mystical experience are separate. I think we’d be better off learning to live our genered existance here-and-now with integrity and passion. Speculation about gender in resurrection seems at best an amusement, and at worst an impediment to our embrace of Resurrection itself.
Muennemann
We agree on gender and disagree on why several had a hard time recognizing Christ physically. Peace.
Aquinas said we all in the renewed world will get back our bodies at the age of each person’s peak developement . . .
Bill,
And how did Aquinas know this???
David
Largely reason working within faith though he cites Ephesians 4:13 which in his translation read: “Until we all meet . . . unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ.” His view is perfectly rational aside from that unless the renewed world at the end of time is to be partly filled with millions of aborted pre borns plus infants plus a majority being the elderly walking about. Aquinas’ view (all quotes from Supplement/ST/question 81) seems much more reasonable and orderly and aesthetic in the deep sense:
First to Henry’s issue: ” On the contrary, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xxii): “Those are wiser, seemingly, who doubt not that both sexes will rise again.”
Then to your point:
“Now human nature has a twofold defect. First, because it has not yet attained to its ultimate perfection. Secondly, because it has already gone back from its ultimate perfection. The first defect is found in children, the second in the aged: and consequently in each of these human nature will be brought by the resurrection to the state of its ultimate perfection which is in the youthful age, at which the movement of growth terminates, and from which the movement of decrease begins….Therefore all will not rise again of the same quantity, but each one will rise again of that quantity which would have been his at the end of his growth if nature had not erred or failed: and the Divine power will subtract or supply what was excessive or lacking in man.”
And David…dwarfs and overweight people will have their defects removed:
“Nevertheless if the formative power on account of some defect was unable to effect the due quantity that is befitting to the species, the Divine power will supply the defect at the resurrection, as in dwarfs, and in like manner in those who by immoderate size have exceeded the due bounds of nature.”
How can anyone of us know what is ahead of us? No matter how much study one does, no matter how much we debate back and forth the early writings, it is and will remain a mystery until we ourselves have died.
Sam
There are many factors at work here. We are given revelation which gives us some indications of things; reading and interpreting it might be difficult, but nonetheless it is a foundation for our discussion. Beyond that, we have the use of reason; this is to be employed in our discussion. While we might reason things wrong (so our use of reason is fallible), this does not mean we should not discuss these issues or try to understand them to the best of our ability. As we do so, we learn more about ourselves and God’s purpose for us. It also helps us understand the world, our bodies, and our value for being in this world now.
Henry,
I would not say it’s pointless to talk about these issues. It is fascinating. But even though they were two of the greatest minds of all times, Aquinas and Augustine, in my opinion, didn’t have any more basis for knowing what a glorified body will be like than you and I have.
If people are dwafs because of their genetic make-up, then what will determine how they were “supposed to be”? And is there an ideal height. I am 5’7″, and I know that is considered short, but I have always felt I am exactly the right height. Will I have to be taller after the resurrection of the dead? And various characteristics like ideal weight have varied over the years. In times past, and in other cultures, “pleasingly plump” women were considered to be the attractive ones. Send one of the ultra-thin supermodels to another age, and she will be considered emaciated. I believe in India, fair skin is considered more desirable than darker skin. To me that seems like a prejudice. Will all Indians have fair skin after the resurrection of the dead? It strikes me that it is difficult to sort out what is “normal” from what is not. Will all the people who did not have nose jobs on earth for one reason or another have perfect noses after the resurrection of the dead? In some ways, speculating about how God will make everything right with our bodies after the resurrection of the dead is an invitation to look down on short people, fat people, and so on, as inferior in some way.
A slightly different though: Will there be no fat people and no dwarfs after the resurrection of the dead, or will we all be able to see past physical attributes and recognize what is really important? Maybe dwarfs will still be dwarfs after the resurrection of the dead and know how to accept, appreciate, and love the fact that they are different.
David
See, your question actually brings out one of the reasons why this is important; it can help us shed our prejudices of the physical nature like this. I would myself say that people will be the same height — as for fat, it might be they will be as they want to be in that matter (since fat, though it has genetic predisposition at times, also is something which can come and go). Actually some of the things which were a big question to some of the theologians (beyond Augustine and Aquinas, who are not the only ones to consider) was the issue of fingernails and hair — since they are our body, is their combined matter included in the resurrection or not?
What are we waiting for, as David writes, “to see past physical attributes and recognize what is really important?” That waiting, that holding back, stands “between” us and Resurrection. I am desperate to break through my resistance to that recognition, yet still I cling to it. My body, its deformities, injuries, height, beauty and gender are not what’s holding me back — only my clinging.
I have no direct experience of being dead, but I expect death to be a pretty effective teacher of release from the clinging.
I have no beliefs re: death, but in your view, how does this apply to, say, early miscarriages, when there is neither personality nor much of a body ? If you’ve never consciously lived, what is there to be resurrected ? Unfortunately, death being the end is a likely scenario – it seems, at least, that our bodies soothe us into it – except for those unfortunate people who die terrifying deaths. ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d that all will be righted and such, but it may well just be wishful thinking.
Muennemann, your resurrection sounds quite a bit like Nirvana – not a bad concept of course.
I had an unbearably vivid “experience” of death – absent being sick, mind you – a memento mori of the first order, which turned out to be a blessing, giving a sense of urgency to life. Let’s just say I wouldn’t spend time discussing the minutiae of rituals again :) I worry more about life before death, but the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns does make me wonder at times…about what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. Hamlet really summarizes the entire issue perfectly.