Müller: A Camera Couldn't've Captured the Resurrection

[MikeDunphy]

It’s a good thing to agree with a “sed contra” in the Summa. Right? That is St. Thomas’ understanding of the topic. What follows in an article is an explanation/expansion of it as well as specific refutations of the objections. The “on the contrary” is contrary to the preceding objections.

Right. The OP misread the “sed contra” in question, although he did get the general idea of what St. Thomas wrote in his article.

 

[dans0622]

…It also contradicts what St. Thomas wrote about the appearance of glorified bodies.

Hello,

Thanks for your response to my other comment. According to my understanding of the linked article of the Summa, St. Thomas said that a glorified body will *not *necessarily be seen by a non-glorified body, contrary to what the three “objections” hold. The will of the glorified body has the power to make the body visible or invisible. Is that not correct? If it is correct, how does the Archbishop’s comment about cameras contradict it? It seems to be a different topic entirely.

That being said, if someone would ask me “Would a video camera have been able to record the sights and sounds of the Resurrected Lord as He appeared to the disciples?” I would say “I don’t see why not.” The notion of “transcendental experiences” the Archbishop seems to be talking about is beyond me…pun intended.

Dan

 

[JReducation]

If the archbishop was simply writing about the moment of the Resurrection, and about the first moment of each occasion after that, when He returned in the flesh to His disciples, then there is no problem.

But was he really just talking about single instants in time?

Of course, a camera, or an animal (or a man) won’t register anything instantaneously. Any sort of action in this world takes at least a little time. That is trivially true. So trivial, I strongly suspect the archbishop meant something else. I could be wrong, of course.

Put him in the context of the current school of Christology that dates back to the 1890s and you’ll see what he’s talking about.

Most of these books assume that you have read people like Schweitzer, Lane, Fox, Ratzinger, Augustine and Bonaventure.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, FFV

 

[MikeDunphy]

According to my understanding of the linked article of the Summa, St. Thomas said that a glorified body will *not *necessarily be seen by a non-glorified body, contrary to what the three “objections” hold. The will of the glorified body has the power to make the body visible or invisible. Is that not correct? If it is correct, how does the Archbishop’s comment about cameras contradict it? It seems to be a different topic entirely.

Hi Dan,

If, as Br. JR has argued, Abp. Müller is talking about the very first moment of each Easter appearance of our Lord to his disciples, then they are entirely different topics and there is no contradiction.

But in a single instant, there is no time for an image to form on film or retina, nor for any vibration of sound, so the archbishop’s comment about cameras would be pointless. On the other hand, if he is talking about the whole time our Lord was with His disciples before His ascension, then there would have been enough time to take a picture or record His voice. But the archbishop says that it still would not have been possible to record our Lord in picture or in sound, because cameras “lack the possibility of a transcendental experience”. Now cameras don’t need to have a transcendental experience to take a picture, they just need film. If we are talking about something visible.

St. Thomas says our Lord was visible after the Resurrection, Abp. Müller says He was not visible, that is the contradiction.

In the article cited by the OP, St. Thomas says that the quality of visibility is a property of the glorified body, although the body can be hidden. Note that according to St. Thomas, the body is naturally visible. Just before this in the Summa (in art. 1, re ad 3), the saint writes: The glory of the body will not destroy nature but will perfect it. Wherefore the body will retain the color due to it by reason of the nature of its component parts.

In contrast, the archbishop says that a camera could not have taken a picture of our Lord. According to him, a glorified body is not naturally visible. The disciples were perceiving Him through some sort of supernatural vision granted to them.

I think it is natural to wonder then what someone not given that supernatural vision would have seen while our Lord was present, picking things up, talking to people, etc.

In another article in the Summa (III, 54, 3), St. Thomas writes specifically about the resurrected body of our Savior:

Christ’s body in the Resurrection was “of the same nature, but differed in glory.” Accordingly, whatever goes with the nature of a human body, was entirely in the body of Christ when He rose again. Now it is clear that flesh, bones, blood, and other such things, are of the very nature of the human body. Consequently, all these things were in Christ’s body when He rose again; and this also integrally, without any diminution; otherwise it would not have been a complete resurrection, if whatever was lost by death had not been restored. Hence our Lord assured His faithful ones by saying (Matthew 10:30): “The very hairs of your head are all numbered”: and (Luke 21:18): “A hair of your head shall not perish.”

But to say that Christ’s body had neither flesh, nor bones, nor the other natural parts of a human body, belongs to the error of Eutyches, Bishop of Constantinople, who maintained that “our body in that glory of the resurrection will be impalpable, and more subtle than wind and air: and that our Lord, after the hearts of the disciples who handled Him were confirmed, brought back to subtlety whatever could be handled in Him” [St. Gregory, Moral. in Job 14:56]. Now Gregory condemns this in the same book, because Christ’s body was not changed after the Resurrection, according to Romans 6:9: “Christ rising from the dead, dieth now no more.” Accordingly, the very man who had said these things, himself retracted them at his death. For, if it be unbecoming for Christ to take a body of another nature in His conception, a heavenly one for instance, as Valentine asserted, it is much more unbecoming for Him at His Resurrection to resume a body of another nature, because in His Resurrection He resumed unto an everlasting life, the body which in His conception He had assumed to a mortal life.

The archbishop sounds more like Eutyches than Aquinas.