Cut off from the Tree of Life, human beings are subject to death. After Adam’s fall there is no returning to the original condition of human life. We will die. But Jesus Christ promises a resurrection. The Sadducees, a priestly sect who accepted only Torah as divine revelation and not other part of the Old Testament, refused to accept the notion of a resurrection. This led to their conflicts with the Pharisees, as we see in Acts 23:6-10. They approached Jesus with a decisive argument (so they thought) against the resurrection. Since the Mosaic Law (Torah) commands that if a man dies childless, his brother must take the wife as his own to raise up children for his dead brother. The argument was simply that if this is done, then in the resurrection one woman could have seven husbands (see Mark 12:18-27)! Jesus tells them that they understand neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.
John Paul II takes this episode and the Lord’s words to explain the resurrection of the body. This constitutes the third ‘panel’ the ‘triptych’ of the first major division of the Theology of the Body. God’s promise of a resurrection goes far beyond the philosophical teaching that the soul will survive the death of the body. We will be raised bodily, and the raising will be far more than a simple return to life. We will be divinized, as the Eastern (or Orthodox) theologies express it. The bodies of the resurrected will be spiritualized, perfectly integrated with their souls as they contemplate the Beatific Vision. In this state the spousal meaning of the body will be perfectly expressed in the mutual self-gift of their vision of God.
Therefore, the Resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of those who follow him completes the theology of the body. A complete understanding and realization of our human nature is possible only in the light of the Resurrection.
Resurrection of the Body