The mere return of material particles does not constitute resurrection, for those particles must be ensouled, renewed, or in some way cast anew. And here the almost absurdist debates concerning “chain consumption” come into the foreground. If the corpse is devoured by worms and beasts, and those beasts are in turn devoured by man, how can the parts or particles of the body be re-assembled for resurrection? (One can imagine a solution to this problem offered by Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu…) One partial resolution, offered by Tertullian, was to shift emphasis from the matter to the form of the
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