The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

a human nature, are taken into personal union with the divine, there shall
be a real personal participation by that human nature in the attributes of
the divine. And if we may thus argue from the body that is, the natural
body, how greatly is the argument strengthened by the fact that this same
body, in its exalted attributes, as glorified at the resurrection, is so perfect
an organ of the spiritual, so conformed to the spiritual in its unity, that St.
Paul calls it "spiritual body." Now Christ's body is a spiritual body, and,
by means of the Spirit whose organ it is, exercises spiritual functions;
Christ's body is a divine body by means of the divine person it incarnates,
and through that person exercises divine powers. A "spiritual body" is not
a spirit which is a body, nor a body which is a spirit, but a true body, so
pure, so exalted in its properties and in its glory, that it is more like our
present conceptions of spirit than it is like ordinary matter, and is' thereby
fitted to be the absolute organ of the spirit. If we can limit the properties of
a spiritual body by what we think we know of a natural body, the whole
representation of the apostle is made void. "It doth not yet appear [is not
yet manifested] what we shall be," but it is most certain that our
conceptions of it are far more likely to fall below the truth than to rise
above it.
It becomes us then to be modest in our affirmation as to what it is
possible for God to do even with our natural bodies. Much more should
we be modest in affirming what may be the possibilities of a body forming
one part of a divine person. Let us acknowledge that we can no more
comprehend how a spirit, even God himself, should be entire in more than
one place at one time, than we can conceive of a body thus present. All
thinkers acknowledge that in the actual conception, the definite framing to
the mind of the presence alike of body or spirit, there is an invincible
necessity of connecting locality with it. Now the presence of spirit
demonstrates that presence and locality are neither identical nor
inseparable; and if the argument, that they seem so, is demonstrative as to
body, it is equally so as to spirit; but if it be granted that this seeming
identity is false as regards spirit, then it may be false as