imageYannick Clément, with a bit of advice from Manny Carreira, a Spanish physicist and Jesuit priest, clarifies:

Then, he suggest[s to] me to add a footnote to explain what I mean by “dematerialization” of the body at the time of the Resurrection. Here’s what he told me : “Perhaps no single word is adequate to avoid possible misinterpretations. When I write on this subject I feel more comfortable saying that “the entire human reality -soul and body- begins to exist outside the space-time frame where physical activity takes place”, as described by science. This is the way the Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses it (nos. 996-1000 especially). Since the spirit is independent -by its very nature- from space-time constraints, we can say that the body exists in a similar way as the spirit does.”

And here’s what I wrote in the footnote that I add in my paper (based mainly on what M. Carreira told me) : “This expression should be understood in the sense of a “vanishing of the body”. And it’s important to note that, on a religious level, words like “dematerialization” or “vanishing” doesn’t mean that the body of Christ would have been “destroyed” in favor of a surviving of his soul only (like the idea we can have of a ghost, for example). Effectively, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (particularly #996–1000) indicates that, at the time of Jesus’ Resurrection, his entire human reality (body, spirit and soul) begin to exist outside the space-time frame where physical activity takes place, as described by science.”

And this made me think about Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, and how (in borrowing from Wikipedia):

spiritual beings that have been restored to glorified bodies will have the following basic qualities:

  • Impassibility (immortal / painless) — immunity from death and pain
  • Subtility (permeability) — freedom from restraint by matter
  • Agility — obedience to spirit with relation to movement and space (the ability to move through space and time with the speed of thought)
  • Clarity — resplendent beauty of the soul manifested in the body (as when Jesus was transfigured on Mount Tabor)

And as many of you know, I’m not Catholic. And this accords well with pretty much most conservative Anglican theology. As an Episcopalian (a U.S. Branch of Anglican Communion) this is close to how I look at it. However don’t forget the hullabaloo that erupted in 2002 when a survey of Church of England’s clergy revealed that a third of the of them doubted or did not believe in the physical Resurrection of Christ. Here is a story from The Telegraph.