Book Note | Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity

Candida R. Moss. Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity. Yale University Press, 2019.

“But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’” (1 Cor. 15:35). Many would summarize Paul’s answer quite simply: “A better body.” The perishable will become imperishable, the dishonored glorified, the weak powerful (1 Cor. 15:42-54). Correspondingly, Christian reflection on resurrection has frequently taken it for granted that the resurrected body—whatever its substance—will be the best possible body the resurrected person could have.

But by what standard are these changes judged to be “better”? Such a question already brings to the surface assumptions about “better” and “worse” bodies. It also raises questions about identity, for the Christian affirmation of resurrection requires that the person who rises is somehow the same person who died. To assert that a resurrected body will be rid of weakness assumes that weakness was not really integral to the person’s identity.

Candida Moss sets out to interrogate these assumptions and examine how they have shaped readings of the biblical texts. She argues that the Pauline theme of resurrection as improvement has influenced Christian reflection so strongly that it has drowned out or distorted other themes discernible in the New Testament. Furthermore, engaging with critical disability studies, she asks whether these neglected themes hold latent within them resources for a constructive theology of resurrection that does not erase certain kinds of bodily difference.

Each chapter uses a New Testament text and its interpretations as an entryway into rethinking what “perfection” might mean in the context of resurrection. Chapter 1, “Identity,” focuses on John’s account of the marks on Jesus’ body (John 20:24-29). What are these marks, and why are they preserved? One common answer states that they are open wounds. They thereby establish not only that the body before Thomas is the same one that was crucified, but also that what stands before him is a “real,” living body and not some sort of phantom. Moss argues that this interpretation misses the mark on two counts. First, tangible bodies with fresh wounds were not necessarily understood to be “real” and alive, as shown by stories of people touching bodies that were actually phantoms. Scars were different: because of the living body’s self-healing activity, scars were proof of real bodily life. Second, fresh wounds did not typically function in the ancient world as identifying marks; once again, this was done by scars. For example, battle scars could indicate valor and whip scars slavery. Reading Jesus’ “marks” within this context, Moss suggests that John set a precedent for resurrection that was followed by few in his wake: “bodily anomalies and imperfections can be transfigured rather than obliterated” (p. 38). And perhaps therein lies an opening for maintaining the connection between other people’s identities and their “bodily anomalies and imperfections.”

Chapter 2, “Integrity,” considers Jesus’ call to amputate bodily members that cause one to sin (Mark 9:43-48). Most discussions of resurrection ignore this passage, since Jesus is not thought to be recommending real bodily amputation. Moss suggests that this assumption is so widespread in biblical scholarship because most scholars publishing today live in places where therapeutic (medical) amputation is rare and extreme. They also assume, based on thin literary evidence, that most amputation in the ancient world was punitive. Moss shows that therapeutic amputation was common in Mark’s world, and auto-amputation in particular could be seen as an impressive sign of valor. Having argued that a literal interpretation of Jesus’ advice would have been plausible to his ancient hearers, Moss turns to its eschatological implications. Ironically, here she finds scholarship reversing course and speaking of this supposedly metaphorical amputation being healed in the resurrection. But Jesus’ point would lose much of its force if the amputated members were going to be returned. Jesus’ advice, Moss admits, “reproduces a traditional negative evaluation of disability”: sin is so serious that one should even make oneself disabled in order to avoid it (p. 56). Yet the scenario envisioned by Mark’s Jesus, who clearly has a robust healing ministry, seems to involve amputated bodies entering the kingdom. Might this story, too, like the marks on Jesus’ resurrected body, open the door for a resurrection that does not remove bodily “disability”?

The Resurrection, Charles Murray (1944); Watercolor on paper © Tate, London [2019]

Chapter 3, “Functionality,” traces how early Christian interpreters struggled to explain the resurrection of body parts with no apparent eschatological function. Jesus and Paul were both taken to deny the continuation of sex and reproduction in the resurrection, yet for many the concern to maintain the integrity and identifiability of the resurrected, gendered body necessitated that the genitalia remain. Moss places this idea against the backdrop of Aristotle’s ethical principle that the person, considered both as a whole and in terms of individual parts, has a telos. Resurrecting parts like genitalia without an eschatological telos violated this principle, giving headaches to writers like Pseudo-Justin, Tertullian, and Athenagoras. Given Aristotle’s principle, these authors’ willingness to develop arguments for the eschatological preservation of non-functioning body parts is striking. Today, some indulge in the “ableistic fantasy” of imagining people who currently cannot use their legs to walk being able to run, leap, and dance in the resurrection (p. 67n3). This fantasy, like Aristotle’s principle, ties value to functionality. Could early Christian rejections of this principle, at least for genitalia, provide resources for a theology of resurrection that “cracks the ableistic celestial ceiling” (p. 86)?

Chapter 4, “Aesthetics,” seeks to show how the common connection between beauty and virtue reinforced hierarchies of privilege. Moss asks who among the readers of Revelation would have been already dressed for heaven, wearing in this life the white robes presented to the martyrs (Rev. 6:11). The answer is complex. White garments were very common, but only the wealthy would have been able to keep their white robes white; most people’s clothing would have been stained and yellowed. White robes thus made wealth visible. Similarly, persons with certain diseases or engaged in lower-class professions like tanning would have already looked and smelled like those upon whom with festering sores were inflicted because they had received the mark of the beast (Rev. 16:2). Revelation could thus reinforce the hierarchies of its day precisely by promising to all martyrs—regardless of social class—a garment that only the wealthy possess right now, and by threatening the faithless with a bodily state already characterizing many social outcasts. If Revelation forces us to ask who was already modeling heavenly attire, then perhaps we should ask who is thought to be modeling heavenly bodies.

Moss points out in a brief conclusion that contemporary visions of resurrection reveal our own hierarchies. Most would shudder at a resurrection erasing differences of race, gender, or culture, yet many continue to imagine a resurrection where poverty, disability, and differences of age are removed. These, it is assumed, cannot possibly be integral to identity. The Pauline theme of resurrection as improvement has allowed our cultural biases about perfection to silently guide our theology of resurrection. Only by carefully reading passages that might run counter to our expectations, Moss concludes, can we rediscover why the resurrected body matters to our identity.

A welcome feature of Moss’ argument is that she does not force the ancients to become her allies. Even texts that should give pause to those who assume all bodily “anomalies” will be removed in the resurrection bring with them their own hierarchies. Jesus’ scars might be important because of how they indicate his superior virtue, not because “bodily anomalies and imperfections” per se are integral to a person’s identity. Entering the kingdom after an auto-amputation drives home Jesus’ point about sin precisely because being an amputee is still considered undesirable (p. 56). While some have tried to use the resurrection of non-functioning genitalia to crack the “ableistic celestial ceiling,” Moss points out that genitalia are a special case in early Christian debates because of their connection with sex. Other disabilities of function were assumed by the same authors to be “healed” in the resurrection (pp. 86-87).

This book raises an important question. If, according to Paul, resurrection involves transformation, and that transformation is for the better (at least for Christians), then by what standard—or, better, whose standard—is “better” defined? Moss does not argue that there can be no such standard beyond each individual’s own desires. Rather, she shows that, in the absence of a clear standard, the temptation to substitute culturally-conditioned standards that favor those high on cultural hierarchies, such as the wealthy and the able, is extremely powerful. This is an important caution.

Thomas D. McGlothlin (Ph.D., Duke University) teaches at the Christian Academy in Japan. His primary research interests include early Christian soteriology, early Christian understandings of resurrection, and the reception of Paul. His first book, Resurrection as Salvation: Development and Conflict in Pre-Nicene Paulinism (Cambridge, 2018), won the 2019 Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. He is currently researching Augustine’s use of Paul in describing the perfected resurrected body. He may be contacted at tmcglothlin@caj.ac.jp