(1.) Christ's Resurrection.
Now according to the Gospels, Christ's Risen Body combined material and immaterial properties in a remarkable manner. Thus He could be touched and eat food, and yet apparently pass through closed doors and vanish at pleasure; and this is often thought to be incredible. But strictly speaking it is not incredible; since no material substance (a door or anything else) is solid. There are always spaces between the molecules; so that for one such body to pass through another is no more difficult to imagine, than for one regiment to march through another on parade. And if a regiment contained anything like as many men, as there are molecules in a door, it would probably look just as solid.
Moreover Christ's risen Body, though possessing some material properties, is represented to have been spiritual as well. And the nearest approach to a spiritual substance of which we have any scientific knowledge is the ether, and this also seems to combine material and immaterial properties, being in some respects more like a solid than a gas. Yet it can pass through all material substances; and this certainly prevents us from saying that it is incredible that Christ's spiritual Body should pass through closed doors.
Indeed for all we know, it may be one of the properties of spiritual beings, that they can pass through material substances (just as the X-rays can) and be generally invisible; yet be able, if they wish, to assume some of the properties of matter, such as becoming visible or audible. In fact, unless they were able to do this, it is hard to see how they could manifest themselves at all. And a slight alteration in the waves of light coming from a body would make it visible or not to the human eye. And it is out of the question to say that God—the Omnipotent One—could not produce such a change in a spiritual body. While for such a body to become tangible, or to take food, is not really more wonderful (though it seems so) than for it to become visible or audible; since when once we pass the boundary between the natural and the supernatural everything is mysterious.
It may of course be replied that though all this is not perhaps incredible, it is still most improbable; and no doubt it is. But what then? We have no adequate means of judging, for the fact, if true, is, up to the present, unique. It implies a new mode of existence which is neither spiritual nor material, though possessing some of the properties of each, and of which we have no experience whatever. So we are naturally unable to understand it. But assuming the Resurrection of Christ to be otherwise credible, as it certainly is if we admit His Incarnation and Death, we cannot call it incredible, merely because the properties of His risen Body are said to be different from those of ordinary human bodies, and in some respects to resemble those of spirits. It is in fact only what we should expect.
(2.) Man's Resurrection.
Next as to man's resurrection. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body must not be confused with that of the immortality of the spirit, discussed in [Chapter VI.], which is common to many religions, and is certainly not improbable. But two objections may be made to the resurrection of the body.
The first is that it is impossible, since the human body decomposes after death, and its molecules may afterwards form a part of other bodies; so, if all men were to rise again at the same time, those molecules would have to be in two places at once. But the fallacy here is obvious, for the molecules composing a man's body are continually changing during life, and it is probable that every one of them is changed in a few years; yet the identity of the body is not destroyed. This identity depends not on the identity of the molecules, but on their relative position and numbers so that a man's body in this respect is like a whirlpool in a stream, the water composing which is continually changing, though the whirlpool itself remains. Therefore the resurrection need not be a resurrection of relics, as it is sometimes called. No doubt in the case of Christ it was so, and perhaps it will be so in the case of some Christians, only it need not be so; and this removes at once the apparent impossibility of the doctrine.
Secondly, it may still be objected that the doctrine is extremely improbable. And no doubt it seems so. But once more we have no adequate means of judging. Apart from experience, how very unlikely it would be that a seed when buried in the ground should develop into a plant; or that plants and trees, after being apparently dead all through the winter, should blossom again in the spring. Thus everything connected with life is so mysterious that we can decide nothing except by experience. And therefore we cannot say what may, or may not happen in some future state, of which we have no experience whatever. Indeed, if man's spirit is immortal, the fact that it is associated with a body during its life on this earth makes it not unlikely that it will be associated with a body of some kind during its future life. And that this body should be partly spiritual, and so resemble Christ's risen body, is again only what we should expect. Thus, on the whole, the doctrine of the Resurrection is certainly credible.