Friday, February 18, 2022

Does Jesus' Words to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17 Imply His Resurrected Body Is Not Physical?

  

John does not provide a narrative of Jesus’ ascension, but he does refer to the ascension by quoting Jesus as saying to Mary Magdalene, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17). The immediately preceding words, on which the just-quoted “for”-clause depends, read, “Stop touching me.” It is hard not to understand John as saying that the risen Jesus not only appeared physically to Mary but also ascended to appear physically before God his Father. Sometimes Jesus’ command to stop touching him is taken as an indication of his essential nonphysicality, as though he meant to say that Mary should learn to think of him from then on in different terms. But he gave the reason why Mary should stop touching him. It was not that he did not want to be thought of as physical. It was that he now needed to ascend to the Father. And when he came back that evening to breathe the Holy Spirit on the disciples he showed them his scars and a week later invited Thomas to feel them. Apparently, ascending to the father changed nothing with regard to his physicality. Thomas did not feel the scars, not because he could not have done so or because Jesus did not want him to but because the physical reality was so visually unambiguous, after the ascension as before, that he did not need to (see John 7:37-39 for the necessity that Jesus ascend to the Father between appearances so as to give the Spirit in the second appearance). (Robert Gundry, “The Essential Physicality of Jesus’ Resurrection according to the New Testament,” in The Old Is Better: New Testament Essays in Support of Traditional Interpretations [Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 178; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005; repr., Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2010], 181)