Translation, Israel Centeno

By Manuel Carreira, S.J. –

Translation Israel Centeno.

What does faith tell us about the human person after death?

Father Manuel Carreira S.J. He has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Comillas and in Theology from Loyola University Chicago. His training as a scientist includes a Master’s degree in Physics (John Carroll Univ., Cleveland) and a Ph.D. with a thesis on cosmic rays (The Catholic University of America, Washington). Since 1970 he has been teaching and giving lectures in different parts of the world on topics that relate current science with philosophical and theological problems.

Lecture:

Before getting into the questions strictly of the Resurrection and the theological aspects, we will give more details about what matter is according to modern physics. Because sometimes theologians with little basis in physics are afraid to accept what the Faith tells us, what Scripture tells us about the Resurrection, because it seems incompatible with modern science, and it is exactly the other way around. Let us, then, first say what matter is.

Matter can be defined by its operations, saying that matter is anything that has some interaction by one or more of the four known forces: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear.

Apart from this, we have to talk about what are the elements that make up matter. It is well known that there are the so-called chemical elements of the Periodic System, 92 natural chemical elements, from Hydrogen to Uranium. For centuries, each element was thought to be something continuous; that you could take, for example, a piece of silver, divide it indefinitely, and you would always have money. At most, in one of the classical philosophical theories, it was said that one could arrive at an indivisible ultimate piece, which would still be silver; This would be called an atom. And so it was believed that there were atoms of each of the elements.

At the beginning of this century, a series of very interesting experiments were done, which were based on the discovery of radioactivity. There are elements that spontaneously emit particles; Specifically, radium emits particles that, when analyzed, turn out to be helium nuclei. This is already an indication that the element radius is not a single thing; It’s emitting helium, so it has to be something complex, and those helium nuclei are part of what’s inside.

Using a piece of radium stuck in a lead tube, an atomic cannon can be made; A lead tube, with a piece of radium inside, causes the helium particles to come out only through the hole, and they come out with tremendous speed, close to that of light. We put in front of it a very thin sheet of gold (the material that can become the thinnest sheets we know is gold). Most of the particles pass to the other side of the leaf. A screen can be made that glows with the shock of each of the helium particles, which are called alpha rays. This means that there are many holes in what appears to be solid; Therefore, a very thin gold leaf is not all solid but has many empty spaces of ultramicroscopic size.

But, to the surprise of those who did the experiment, every once in a while, a particle instead of passing by, bounces back; Some bounce at very small angles, but others bounce practically backwards. Now, if this happens, it must be because the particle collides with something that repels it tremendously.

If you think of the atom as something in which particles of various types are uniformly distributed, you can’t expect such a drastic rebound. The most that can happen is that an alpha particle, a helium nucleus, will suffer a few small deviations inside, colliding with various things and, finally, it can come out with a small change of direction. But in order for it to bounce off completely, it must be said that all the electric charge, which causes the repulsion of helium, has to be concentrated in the nucleus. And so, you come to the conclusion that the atom has all its positive charge in a very small nucleus, and the negative charge is around. In a primitive model, electrons are said to be like planets around the Sun.

This was the first idea of an atomic structure. We have a positively charged nucleus and, around it, negatively charged electrons. Since the helium nucleus is positively charged as well, when it collides head-on with the positive charge of the nucleus, it bounces back. If it doesn’t go straight to the core, it deviates a bit, but nothing more.

In this way, it can be understood that all the elements of the Periodic System have a common structure: positive charges in the core and negative charges around it. What determines whether an element is one or the other is the number of positive charges in the nucleus. If you have one, it’s hydrogen; if it has two, helium; if you have six, carbon, etc. All elements boil down to a common basic element in the nucleus, protons; and another common basic element around it, which we call electrons.

It was necessary to accept that there is something else in the core, because you can find carbon with six positive charges in the core, but heavier or less heavy; And what adds weight without varying the charge has to be a neutral particle. Thus, by the end of the 1920s, it was established that there were three basic particles, from which all known matter was formed: proton and neutron in the nucleus, and electron in the periphery.

This gives us an idea that all matter is basically the same. The matter of our body, the matter of a star, the matter of the earth’s crust… This descriptive catalogue is further simplified by discovering that the neutron, left outside the atom, spontaneously breaks apart and gives rise to a proton and an electron. Therefore, it seems that everything there is could be reduced to protons and electrons.

The nature of each of these particles remained to be ascertained. What are they?, what are they like?, are they hard balls?, do they have a diameter?, how big are they?, etc.

A series of discoveries then come into play that force us to accept the idea that the electron, around the nucleus, is not simply a little ball in orbit, as if it were a planet. In some ways, this electron behaves like a wave, and can only be in those orbits in which the wave associated with it fits a full number of times. If it doesn’t fit a full number of times, then orbit is not possible, and this explains why there are atoms that have two electrons in the first orbit, several more in a second, others in a third…, instead of all of them being in the first, or instead of having orbits at arbitrary distances.

While this was being applied to the structure of the atom, it was discovered that a jet of electrons (later also of protons, and even of helium nuclei), passing through a slit, also behaved like a wave. If there is a slit, and a wave passes through it, the wave spreads on both sides; For example, suppose a wave of water in the sea reaches a pier that encloses a small bay. When you pass through the entrance, you don’t continue in one direction, but reach everywhere. With a jet of electrons, you see the same thing: we shoot them into a slit, and they don’t just go like bullets, they behave like waves.

The other side of the coin is that light waves are found to behave like particles. Waves of light can be thrown at a metal plate, and electrons are observed to be torn from that metal plate, as if they were bullets colliding with the electrons in the metal, causing them to be ejected. They couldn’t do this if they were just waves.

This leads to a description of the structure of matter, in which it must be said that the puerile idea of a particle as a small pellet is not applicable. Nor is the idea of wave applicable only as a vibration of something that previously exists; Rather, matter is something unimaginable, which in some experiments has the properties of particles and in others of waves.

Einstein’s great discovery that energy and mass are interchangeable leads to the same conclusion. The energy of a light wave can cause a pair of particles to appear; The wave disappears, and we have a negative and a positive electron: this is what is called the materialization of the photon. On the other hand, a negative electron and a positive electron can be found; They come together, the two disappear, and in their place we get pure electromagnetic radiation.

Of course, if this is so, and there is no doubt that all modern science is based on this, everything we thought about the structure of matter ceases to apply. Each of these particles, according to the physical data, can be said to have no size at all; All the experiments that have been done indicate zero sizes. Each of these particles acts as a center of attraction or repulsion, but all efforts to find a diameter for them have failed.

If they have no size, there is no impenetrability of matter either. You can put anywhere as much material as you want; All you have to do is overcome the repulsion of particles. If a piece of chalk falls on my hand and stops, why does it stop? Why doesn’t it pass through the hand? The answer of modern science is that the particles of chalk are repelled by those of the hand. There is no impenetrability in the classical, vulgar sense of the word; there are only forces of repulsion. And if enough pressure is applied, those forces can be overcome. Thus we calculate that in a neutron star, at the end of the days of a large star, the density can reach one billion tons per cubic centimeter. And if you push it even harder, you get a black hole in which, according to the theory, any amount of matter can disappear, contracting, always tending to zero radius, and increasing density; There is no limit.

We have left aside the idea of matter as something hard, impenetrable, which was a concept that was based on our vulgar, everyday experience, but which does not apply to matter as it is presented to us by modern science.

What else are we told about these particles? We have said that the electron behaves like a wave, just like the proton, the neutron…, even helium nuclei can give rise to these phenomena. The typical thing about a wave is that it is not localized in one place. If a wave reaches a wall with two slits, and passes through them, the interference of the secondary waves originating in both slits, results in the waves reaching some points reinforcing each other; to others, canceling themselves. This is typical of waves: constructive or destructive interference.

If we do it with light, passing through two slits, we obtain on a photographic plate a series of luminous bands separated by darkness, which correspond to areas where the two waves overlap and add up, and to areas where they cancel each other out.

If we did this with pellets, it wouldn’t be the same. Either they pass through one crack or pass through the other, producing pellet stains; They do not give rise, like a wave, to what we call an interference.

What happens when instead of pellets, or light waves, we shoot electrons? Interference occurs. Electrons have the property of interfering like waves, and even if we fire only one electron at a time, while logic would tell me that it passes through one slit or the other, the experiment tells us that it passes through both. The electron is in two places at the same time. Somehow, passing through one crack is influenced by the existence of the other crack. And if instead of two, we have three or four, too; All of those slits influence the passage of each loose electron. It is no longer true that particles are confined to one place.

When we consider the electron in orbit, around an atom, also the behavior indicates that the electron is in that entire orbit, not just in one place.

If particles are somehow also waves, mathematical calculations indicate that a wave is never fully localized. If the particle is inside what’s called a potential well (which can be represented as a graph in which there are walls that are repulsive forces, and the particle can only move within that zone), the theory tells us that the associated wave is not confined to that place, but also extends a bit to the outside. Mathematical theory tells us that we can calculate the probability that the particle is inside, but that there is also a small probability that it is outside.

In practice, we enclose a particle in an enclosure from which it should not be able to leave because there are very strong repulsive forces, and we find that the particle exits with a calculable frequency. Moreover, he has not expended energy in crossing that barrier; He appears outside with exactly the same energy he had inside. It has passed from one place to another without going through the middle. This is called the tunnel effect. Most transistor devices also use a large number of “tunneling diodes”, which are based on this effect.

Finally, physics also tells us that it is impossible to assign a concrete individuality to a particle. If we shoot one electron at another, they repel each other, and they come out in different directions. What happened? It is not possible to know which one has taken which direction; It is impossible to distinguish one electron from another. And when calculating what is to be observed in atomic processes, it must be taken into account whether the calculations are made with distinguishable electrons or not; If the calculations are made for distinguishable particles, the results are not in agreement with the experiments; It must be said that electrons are indistinguishable, that they have no personality, so to speak.

Finally, with the idea that mass curves to space, modern theories go so far as to suggest that particles are “knots of space”, they are highly concentrated wrinkles of space. If the wrinkle is more diffuse, we call it energy, and if it is more concentrated, particle. Particles can be transformed into energy and vice versa; Everything can possibly be explained as a minimal variation of the so-called “physical empty space,” which turns out to be the basic substratum of everything that exists in the material order. It is even said that, at the beginning of the Universe, this empty space was so dense that a cubic centimeter would have trillions of times more mass than all galaxies combined.

After this it may be said, at least, that matter is very different from what we think; which is far more flexible, far more mysterious than any philosopher of antiquity believed. The properties that we claim of matter to be obvious are obvious only at the level of functioning that we call “macroscopic,” subject to direct perception by our senses; But it is not possible to extend these properties by claiming that they are real properties of matter at all levels. There is no continuity of matter, but it is discontinuous, there is no impenetrability, there is no strict localization, and there is no individuality. All these characteristics are mere extrapolations from the rather crude experience of our senses and our daily lives; But they are not the properties that define matter.

Let us now think of what the Church tells us, what the biblical account of Christ after the Resurrection tells us. There is a wonderful transformation of his body at the moment of the Resurrection. That body that until then was inert, dead in the tomb, begins to live in a totally new way. It is what we call “a glorious body”: it shines, it enters without opening doors or holes in the walls, in closed spaces, it disappears instantaneously, it goes from one place to another without using any means of locomotion; It is not subject to death, to disease, to change. This is the traditional description of the resurrected body.

As I said at the beginning, some theologians are afraid to take this literally and say that a body with these properties cannot be matter, that the idea of matter is incompatible with something that behaves like this. But is it incompatible given what we have said? Christ enters an enclosed room: if an atomic particle can do so by tunneling, and that is a normal part of our laboratory work, it would be very risky to say that it is impossible for a resurrected body, with the privilege of being endowed by God with new properties, to do the same.

God cannot do the impossible, He cannot do the absurd, but it is not absurd for matter to pass from one place to another without passing through the middle. It does it every day in our labs. If each particle does it, so can a set of particles. We do not observe the tunneling effect of macroscopic bodies in our laboratories, but it is because the energy required would be truly fantastic for this possibility to be realized spontaneously, within a time comparable to the age of the universe. But it’s not absurd.

It is, therefore, something that fits perfectly within the idea of the activity of an omnipotent God. The same must be said by applying it retroactively to the fact of Christ’s virgin birth. There’s no absurdity in that. Matter is capable of passing from one place to another without passing through the medium. It does it constantly.

We might add that, as we have already indicated, the matter is not truly impenetrable; It can also pass through walls or anything without any difficulty, (I mean, without logical difficulty).

Then we see Christ going from Jerusalem to Emmaus, disappearing, appearing, and going to Galilee, did He have to make the journey, step by step? No. Theologians described the properties of the glorious body with simple names, and for these changes of place they used the word “agility”; It did not mean that it was capable of moving at high speed, but indicated the possibility of going from one place to another instantaneously. This is child’s play for God since we see that matter itself is constantly doing so in the world of microscopic particles.

Can Christ be in two places at the same time? Why not, if an electron can do it? Even if we speak of Christ in the Eucharist, can the whole Body of Christ be at one point? Why not, if matter is not impenetrable? And can the whole Body of Christ be at the same time in many different places? Why not? There is no contradiction with the idea of matter in that.

Finally, if matter in our world is subject to a series of processes by which matter alters, decays, and a living body ends up aging and corrupting, that is because matter is within a space-time framework. If it did not act within a space-time framework, matter would not be subject to any of the forces we have mentioned, since all these forces always demand a space and a time in which to act. Each of the forces has a radius of action in space and an intensity that varies with distance and consequently, has a characteristic time of its activity.

The resurrected body begins to be, in the words of St. Paul, a spiritual body. And what does spiritual mean? My interpretation is: a body that has the properties of existing outside of space and time. What is proper to matter is to exist and act within that space-time framework. What is proper to the spirit is that it is not bound to space and time. We have already said that God is not in space or time. Esa-spatial, a-temporal.

Our very thinking is not in one place, nor does it age. Everything that is spirit is outside of those categories of space and time. St. Paul says, “A material body is sown and a spiritual body is born.” Let us take it in this sense, then, and say that the resurrected body remains, by divine action, with the same freedom from spatio-temporal ties that are proper to the spirit. Automatically that body will be incorruptible; It cannot age, it cannot have changes imposed by the activity of matter. Matter then has characteristics of total freedom from that framework in which it moved, and it begins to be like spirit.

In other words, during our lifetime and during the life of Christ, his human spirit and our human spirit are constrained by their union with the matter of the body. Christ really needed to eat, He needed to rest and sleep, and He was weary going from place to place like we do. Once the resurrection occurs, it is the spirit that commands. Instead of spirit being subordinate to matter, matter will now be totally under the dominion of spirit. And the spirit is going to give matter the total freedom that is proper to it, without ties or restrictions. That is why Christ said, speaking to the Sadducees, that “the sons of the resurrection,” those who enjoy the glorious resurrection, no longer need to marry, because there will be no more death, but they will be “like the angels of God.”

And being “resurrected,” which means “brought back to life with a body,” (that the soul alone is not resurrected, since it has not died), being “resurrected” they are, nevertheless, like the angels of God. They have the same freedom from all the bonds and all the necessities of matter that a pure spirit has.

If we think this way about life after the resurrection, it goes without saying where heaven is. Nowhere! Heaven is not a place: it is a “way of existing.” And when do things happen in eternity? In a very long time? They don’t happen in a while. Eternity is the total presence of the being that does not elapse over time. We will be, in that sense, like God. This is saying something very daring, but I’m not making it up. St. John says that “we will be like God, because we will know him as he is.” To know God as God is, one has to be like Him, because only He can know oneself, literally, as He is. And St. John promises us that it will be so: we will be like God, because we will know him as he is.

And what is God like? It’s all simultaneously. For Him, existence does not pass for successive periods. Rather, He is all simultaneously in the perfection of His totality. And our own existence will resemble God’s. Of course, all this I have said is not part of the dogma, as far as explanations are concerned. Anyone who wants to stick simply with the prudent statement of St. Paul: “Eye has not seen, no ear heard, nor can anyone put into his head what God has in store for his own,” does very well. This is all we need to know, that God can do more than we can understand. But, on the other hand, theology is the faith that seeks to understand, and this seems to me to help us understand a little what our revelation and our faith promise us. Certainly, at the very least, one should remain very prudently in an attitude of expectation, in saying: God can do more than man can understand.

There are theologians who talk about these issues with fear of being labeled unscientific if they accept that Christ was really resurrected with a body that was at the same time capable of eating a piece of fish and, on the other hand, could come out through a wall. They say: “No, that can’t be taken literally, you can see that this is not matter, if you do this…” He would answer by suggesting a basic study of modern physics to convince himself that it is not as strange or as impossible as it seems. Matter is much more flexible and much more wonderful than you might think.

Finally, I will refer to the problem of asking ourselves: with what body do we come back to life: with the one we had when we were old, when we died, the one we had when we were young…, which one? And what about surgical transplants? Who, then, gets that liver, that kidney? It seems to me that the idea of the lack of individuality of elementary particles may also play an important role here.

If there is a wave in the ocean, can I say that this wave is this or another wave that passes through the same place, with the same intensity? What is the wave, the water that has moved, and then stayed still, or that movement? There’s no point in asking, right?

Well, matter can be nothing more than that: ripples in that physical void to which I referred. What is my body, the one I have now, the one I had yesterday, the one I had a fortnight ago? The particles in the body change day by day, moment by moment. My body is that assemblage of matter that is, symbolically speaking, tailor-made for my spirit.

The way of speaking of traditional Catholic philosophy is that man is a “composite of soul and body.” They are not two juxtaposed realities, but totally independent, but one is made for the other. The soul is made to be united to the body. The soul is not an angel who has been enclosed in a lump of matter. The soul is not made to exist alone, as an angel is. It is made to exist united to matter, and it is the soul that gives a structure to matter that makes it my body. The soul is, at the same time, the vital principle, the directing principle of all my activities.

We can even say biologically that my body is a collection of little animals, because each of the cells in my body is a little bug that I can extract with a scalpel and put in a culture and it lives quietly under a microscope for years. And yet, the whole thing is my body. Each cell in the blood seems to act on its own, as soon as one can observe under the microscope. But the sum total of all those billions of cells is me.

So to demand that my body have this atom, with this one next to it… It’s puerile. My body is interchangeable, as far as its matter is concerned, from one day to the next; It’s interchangeable even with respect to whole organs, but I’m still me. Why? Because this bundle of matter that is under the control of my spirit, of my soul, that’s my body. We do not know, from a biological point of view, how to define this control. But at the moment when God completely remakes man in the resurrection, he doesn’t have to go looking for the atoms that were part of my body, at the moment I died, or at any given age.

Any material structure made from that common substratum of all matter, any structure adapted to my spirit, is my body. And in this way, the problem of bodies that have eaten anthropophagous or others that have had transplants disappears. These are superficial and even puerile objections.

Matter, as we have said, is much more wonderful than we thought, and the structuring of the body is also much deeper than simply the placement of certain atoms to make my body.

The Risen Christ is the reason for our faith and our hope. Where He has gone, we hope to go too. Death no longer has any power over Him; And His victory is our victory, of our spirit, and also of our body. This is the unimaginable promise made to God’s children.