26. Res. & Physical Science

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lenization positively seeks to bring about/' But whether we know what namto give what we seek or not, the important thing is to seek openly and to fhelp wherever we can, in dialogue with our past as well as with the presenfor otherwise we risk remaining relatively closed. Hellenism is only one the things we have to overcome. There is also Cartesianism, HegelianisMarxism, Existentialismall the closed conceptual frameworks we ha

been saddled with. Dehellenizing is not enough, but Plato and Aristotle mbe of great help in dehellenizing; and Hegel may be of great help in dehegeanizing and demarxizing our thinking as well. The masters have a way transcending even their own systems. We cannot give all serious attention all the masters of the past, but let us begin to give some to one or two of theeven if it be St. Thomas. We have not loved the past too long. Rather we habeen infatuated only with our pre-conceived ideas about the past. Let begin to respect it for what it was in all its originality. In this way we mlearn to be original ourselves, for it is only in proportion to our ability discover the past that we will be inventive in the present and creative f

the future.OLIVA BLANCHETTE, S

THE RISEN BODY

The purpose of this Chronicle (which, however undogmatic and tentativ

is unlikely to please most readers) is to relate the Resurrection to physicscience, as wehave already insisted on relating it to history.Is our Lord's risen body still material? How is it linked to the rest of t

material universe? Where is it now? These are questions which are bouto occur not merely to any scientist but to any intelligent schoolboy. Athey to have an answer in their own terms, or are we to refuse to descenfrom our linguistic theological pulpit? I have heard a clergyman saying othe radio that he was not interested in the "mechanics" of the ResurrectioWell and good, but that happens to be precisely the aspect in which thouands of doubtless too mechanically-minded modern men are interested. W

are asking them to believe the Easter message. Should it not be at leadescribable in their own language?

The theologian as such does not perceive any difficulty, and loses himshappily in his researches into St. Paul's terminology about the last-day resurection, sarx, soma, psyche, pneumawould St. Paul have used the samcategories to describe the Easter-day happening? In any case his way of usinthese words is not ours, nor can we try to return to it. For us, a "spiritubody" strictly speaking is a contradiction in terms.

When our Lord's body rose reanimated by its soul (if the word "souis still allowable) it was not a return to its former mortal life but to

new kind of life altogether, in which the material body, though still fulpart of his human nature, was now entirely dominated by the spirit and fr


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from mortality and from all the limitations of materiality and space and time.This makes theological sense, and theologians may think everybody ought tobe content with such an account, admittedly somewhat conceptual and negative. Others supplement it by semi-mathematical language centered roundthe phrase "new dimension," which seems to need a mathematical mind tograsp it, remaining as it does notional and beyond imagination.

And yet imagination is needed, if the heart is to be touched by faith. Itis chilling, if accurate, to say to the intelligent schoolboy "We can't imaginesuch things and had better leave them alone." The older theologians didtheir best, by discussing what they called the four "qualities," quaintly named,of a risen body, especially our Lord's. They are impassibility, glory, agility,and subtility. The first three were perhaps based on a priori considerations,but the fourth was an induction from the circumstances that Christ's bodyhad passed through the stone and the closed doors. It gives us a starting-point.

What is a material body, what is matter, anyway? When I was at school,physics consisted of sound, light and heat, perhaps the laws of gravity, butlittle more, nor have I enjoyed any scientific discipline since worth mentioning. Physicists now tell us that the criterion for "matter" is tangibility: solidsbeing fully resistant, liquids more yielding, vapors and gases still more,and so on. This reminds me that tangibility was the final proof offered by therisen Christ. He must have known that the sense of touch can be deceivedor hallucinated like the other senses, as an expression of that other Thomas,in the Adora Te, reminds us; but presumably it is the most reassuring,perhaps because the very earliest, of our life-experiences. Tangibility means

that matter is always in the concrete; if there is any such thing as materiaprima no scientists seem to have heard of it. On the other hand, theyare overwhelmingly informative about the latest discoveries, not to mention thelatest speculations and theories, about the ultimate constitution of matterderived from solid-state physics, or quantum electro-dynamics, vibrationalenergy, or of the theory of dislocations, or the electro force that binds together the electron and the proton atom of hydrogen.

When we get down to what these scientists of 1968 have to say aboutthe basic arrangements in what we call matter, it seems that there are quitea number of what might be regarded as "elementary particles": with names

such as electron, proton, muon, neutron, lambda, sigma, or omega resonance,each with its appropriate asterisk letter added. "By their very number," saysone scientist, "they forfeit their claim to be considered ultimate constituentsof matter." And in fact "we still do not understand the multiplicity of theseparticles, nor do we have a quantitative theory of their interactions. Perhapsyet another level of discovery awaits us in our search for the constitution ofmatter."

From all this my amateurish conclusion is that the scientists, howeverdeep they delve, never seem able to discover a point where mere energy

turns into matter, any more than a point where non-life becomes life. Theyjust go on tracking down ever tinier sub-divisions of matter. I suppose weshall be in order if we add that anything that is possible to a physical


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scientist is possible also to the creator of the physical universe; in fact, Hcould not only split up a given assembly of matter into its smallest particlbut would presumably be able to reassemble them just as instantaneousand this indeed without doing anything which could be called "unnaturato the nature of matter itself, or "unnatural" in regard to its creator, althoumore than natural to the human powers even of a thousand Rutherfor

andBohrs.The alert reader will have seen what I am leading up to: namely, that wh

the old theologians call the supernatural gift of "subtility" in Christ's glorifibody can be understood, or imagined, much more easily in the context modern physics. Ifwe affirm (as I think the Church always has meant to affirthat the risen body was still (and still is) entirely material, and yet livian entirely new kind of life, we have got to have an answer, not necessaria dogmatic answer but at least a credible theory in their own languato give to scientists or schoolboys when they silently accuse us of religiodouble-talk. It makes sense to say that since our Lord's risen body was no

fully dominated by his returned spirit, there could be no difficulty about passing through a stone, or through wood; this could be simply a case of dassembling its constituent particles, to pass between the constituent particlof the stone, and reassembling them instantaneously. It is still a miracle you insist on the word, but a miracle described in the language of science, antherefore not so scandalous to the undeniable, however ephemeral, phnomenon, the "modern mind."

F. X. Durrwell in his well-known book, The Resurrection, protests agaisome "liberal exegetes" who interpret St. Paul's idea of Christ's risen huma

ity as being "some impersonal power or fluid sprinkled about for the Chrtian to bathe in." For St. Paul, says Durrwell, Christ's risen body is nimmaterial substance: "it always remains in his thought, the physical bodof the Savior." Quite so, yet personally, I see no difficulty in imagining ththe risen body, being still "matter" not spirit, though now entirely spirdominated, could de-assemble its material particles and re-assemble them will. (No doubt it could even spare some to be communicated somehoto every member of the Church, and if the mystics can persuade the Churcto favor such a matter-of-fact view, I would not be among the oppositionThere seems to me no reason why we should not go further, and imagi

that this de-assembled state would be the normal or usual state of Chrisbody, from the moment of the Resurrection onwards, always of course suject to the will of the unmistakably visible and tangible risen Christ we reaof in the gospels. All too evidently such a way of imagining things can givrise to irreverent comments and comparisons; but so can any other way orendering the Resurrection into concrete details.

There is another approach which perhaps makes the difficulty stand omore clearly: the approach through locality. Our Lord is now "in heaventhe catechisms tell us. And the next question, not in the catechism but in thmind of every child and teen-ager and philosopher, is: Where is "heaven"

Not a place but a state, one says: the beatific vision. In other words, heaveis nowhere in particular. But when people ask where is heaven, what the


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26. Res. & Physical Science