Incorruptible Jesus

Every Ascensiontide, the question arises: where is Jesus' body? If in heaven, as one is inclined to answer with irritated alacrity, how is that possible given what is claimed about the nature of heaven? Is this, in fact, a question that admits of so ready an answer as we may wish to supply with indecent haste? Or is it a question to which we cannot come to a final answer with total certainty now?

In any event, such questions are not new, and not uncontroversial, as a recent publication reminds us: Yonatan Moss, Incorruptible Bodies: Christology, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity (U Cal Press, 2016), 264pp.

About this book we are told:

In the early sixth-century eastern Roman empire, anti-Chalcedonian leaders Severus of Antioch and Julian of Halicarnassus debated the nature of Jesus's body: Was it corruptible prior to its resurrection from the dead? Viewing the controversy in light of late antiquity’s multiple images of the ‘body of Christ,’ Yonatan Moss reveals the underlying political, ritual, and cultural stakes and the long-lasting effects of this fateful theological debate. Incorruptible Bodies combines sophisticated historical methods with philological rigor and theological precision, bringing to light an important chapter in the history of Christianity.