While in the tomb, the body of Jesus did not decompose because decomposition is due to “weakness” of the body, said St. Thomas Aquinas. What, then, happened to his body, asks Father David Bellusci. (Pixabay Photo)
At death the human soul separates itself from the body; death, is due to original sin. Death was never part of God’s plan for his human creation. Death involves a radical rupture of body and soul, while the spiritual soul, separated from the body continues to live.
The spiritual soul (in humans and angels) is self-subsistent substance. The spiritual soul created by God is indestructible, while the body itself at death is what decomposes.
Since the human soul’s existence is “incomplete” without the body, the soul anticipates reunification with the body at the Resurrection: just souls are those rewarded with the resurrection of the body, united with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with the Virgin Mary, and angels and saints, in heaven. The wicked souls at death are judged and await eternal damnation in hell having spent their lives choosing their own selfish desires instead of God.
But how can we understand the death of Jesus when death is first of all the result of sin? And Jesus clearly did not have the mark of any sin. Nevertheless, death was certainly part of Jesus’ human experience: his torture culminated on the cross, bleeding from the large sharp thorns on his head, spiked whip lashes, and nailed hands and feet – until he died. To make sure Jesus was dead a Roman soldier even pierced his side from which blood and water flowed (Jn 19:35). Jesus was dead. And he was buried.
St. Thomas Aquinas is emphatic about Jesus having died and asserts that it is a serious error to maintain that Jesus did not die. The death of Jesus is the result of the separation of his body and soul as would be the case of any human death. However, the body of Jesus, while in the tomb, as St. Thomas maintains, did not decompose because decomposition is due to “weakness” of the body, namely sin, which Jesus, as already stated, did not have (Summa Theologiae, Part III, question 51, article 3).
With the separation of soul and body, we know that Jesus died, and we know how Jesus died, but how do we understand the death of Jesus in relation to his divinity? Death of the divine is not possible because it is a contradiction in terms. To be divine is to be immortal. Created by God the human soul is immortal and God transmits properties of his divine life into the spiritual soul.
But Jesus’ soul and body were united with the Word of God. How do we grapple with these complex Christological questions that tore Christianity apart in the early centuries trying to make sense of the relationship between Jesus’s human nature and his divine substance?
Jesus died because he offered himself to the Father as a sacrifice – for humanity, that we might have eternal life, mediating for us, reconciling us with God the Father – and desiring our purified hearts.
After his death on the cross, and taken down, what happened to Jesus once he was rolled in burial linen and placed in the tomb?
St. Thomas maintains that the soul of Christ was more intimately united with the Word of God than with his body because through Christ’s soul the body was united to the Word of God (Summa Theologiae, Part III, question 50, article 3). The Word of God was not separated from Christ’s body at death, and even less so, the soul: neither body nor soul was separated from the Word of God.
During the time Christ’s soul was separated from his body, he descended to hell, as stated in the Nicene Creed, “… was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead;” For this reason, St. Thomas further states that the Godhead of the Word “was not severed from the flesh in death.”
In response to an objection St. Thomas asserts that the totality of the “assumed nature” was restored in the resurrection once again by a “resumed” union of soul and body. Moreover, the soul and body of Jesus had their existence from the beginning in the hypostasis of the Word, that is, divine substance. Though the body and soul were separated at death, both preserved the same hypostasis of the Word; and there ever was only one hypostasis, not two, that is, the one divine hypostasis of the Word.
This union between the Word, the soul and the body accounts not only for Christ’s descent into hell, but also explains the Resurrection of Christ on the third day. With our purified hearts united to the heart of Christ, Christ’s Resurrection offers us hope and joy of our own resurrection in eternal life.
Father David Bellusci is a Dominican priest and assistant professor of philosophy at Catholic Pacific College in Langley.