328. The “impassibility” of the resurrection body
328. THE “IMPASSIBILITY” OF THE RESURRECTION BODY
If the resurrection body will be concrete, sensible and touchable, can it walk through walls, as Christ did? (How did He do that?)
Is it “passible”, i.e., passive to shocks from outside, or is it “impassible”? Could it be destroyed, e.g., by a rock crushing it? If so, how is it immortal? If not, how is it material, sensible, and touchable?
Whether the bodies of the saints will be impassible after the resurrection?
Everything passible is corruptible. . . . Now the bodies of the saints will be incorruptible after the resurrection, according to 1 Corinthians 15:42, It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption. Therefore they will be impassible. . . .
We speak of a thing being passive in two ways. First in a broad sense, and thus every reception is called a passion (receptivity), whether the thing received be fitting to the receiver and perfecting it, or contrary to it and corrupting it. The glorious bodies are not said to be impassible by the removal of this kind of passion, since nothing pertaining to perfection is to be removed from them.
In another way we use the word passive properly, and thus Damascene defines passion as being a movement contrary to nature. Hence an immoderate movement of the heart is called its passion, but a moderate movement is called its (natural) operation. . . . Accordingly, taking passion in its proper sense there will be no potentiality to passion in the bodies of the saints after resurrection, wherefore they are said to be impassible.
The reason for this impassibility is. . . (that) the human body and all that it contains will be perfectly subject to the rational soul, even as the soul will be perfectly subject to God. Wherefore it will be impossible for the glorified body to be subject to any change contrary to the disposition whereby it is perfected by the soul; and consequently those bodies will be impassible (S82,1).
St. Thomas’ answer to the question above is that the resurrection body will be made of a different kind of matter: matter that is “impassible”, i.e., nothing will be able to harm it. This does not correspond to anything in our present experience of material bodies. But it is necessarily true, because the only alternatives to it are (a) a body that is not concrete and material at all, or (b) a body that can be harmed by other bodies, as everything material in this universe can be.
(1) It is certain, from divine revelation, that our resurrected bodies will be immortal. (2) It is clear, from an understanding of the meaning of the terms, that a body is mortal if it is passible, i.e., subject to passion in the sense of passivity, able to be changed by other bodies, so that when these two bodies touch, the form (nature) of the active body dominates and changes the form of the passive body, e.g., when a rock breaks glass or crushes a tin can, or when fire ignites paper. The destiny of the passive, receptive body is determined not by itself but by the active body that changes it. These two premises logically yield the conclusion that our resurrected bodies must be impassible.
Not all passivity in the sense of receptivity is an imperfection. This principle, quite contrary to Aristotle’s metaphysics, has revolutionary consequences: that it is not an imperfection to receive or to obey (as the Son obeys the Father). It is not an imperfection or inferiority for a woman to be more receptive than a man, either in her body (to become pregnant), or her emotions (to be more empathetic), or even in her social roles (to quietly oil the social machine, so to speak, to foster relationships rather than to individually initiate or to fight, as males of nearly every animal species are more prone to do).
Our Heavenly bodies will be perfect, and therefore not subject to any passivities of imperfection such as pain, disease, impotence, or death. An axe could not chop off a limb even if it were swung, because the matter of the new body will be a new kind of matter, impervious to harm, probably not made of atoms. But we will be “passive” (receptive) to the goods we receive from God and each other.