Frezzato, Alexandre, La résurrection de la chair selon saint Thomas d’Aquin. Identité et continuité de la personne humaine
Frezzato, Alexandre, La résurrection de la chair selon saint Thomas d’Aquin. Identité et continuité de la personne humaine (Studia Friburgensia, 3e sér., 5), Paris, Cerf, 2021, 256 p.
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1The resurrection of bodies has been at the center of theological debates for many decades. Oscar Cullmann’s famous conference ‘Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead’ crystallized the topic of discussion in 1955. The conviction of the need to break through the Hellenized layers of faith interpretation to a supposedly purely Hebrew way of thinking about faith, the thesis of the grace-related rather than nature-related character of immortality, as well as the attempt to find as simple an answer as possible to the question of how to think about retribution after death (without the need to distinguish between specific and final judgment), led many authors to strongly juxtapose the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Various new articulations of resurrection were born: death was to lead to the complete annihilation of the human person before resurrection, understood as re-creation from nothing (C. Stange, A. von Schlatter), resurrection was to follow immediately after death without any intermediate phase (K. Barth, G. Greshake), or alternatively, the continuation of the human being after death was to consist in the existence of the ‘inner man’ in a state of dormition (O. Cullmann). Against such a background, the proposal of Thomas Aquinas—despite its obvious traditional significance—was becoming an almost counter-cultural proposal for a significant number of 20th-century theologians.
2A. Frezzato, a young Dominican scholar, attempts to present Aquinas’ teaching on the resurrection of the body, focusing on the problem of the identity and continuity of the human person. The book is divided into three parts. The first (‘The Risen Person: Soul and Body’, p. 29-79) presents the basic tools of Thomas’ anthropological analysis as they apply to the situation after death. The second part (‘Bodily Identity and Material Continuity of the Risen Person’, p. 81-166), which the author considers crucial, analyzes Aquinas’ thinking on the individualization of the person by matter, pointing out the evolution in the thinking of the Dominican. The third part (‘The Condition of the Human Body Gloriously Risen’, p. 167-214) seeks to characterize—mainly by reference to the famous four qualities (dotes) of the resurrected body: subtilitas, claritas, impassibilitas, and agilitas—the manner in which the body exists and functions after reunion with the soul.
3The main thesis of the book concerns the change in St. Thomas’ approach to interpreting the role of matter in individualizing the human person. Following Aristotle, Aquinas held from the very beginning that the continuity of the two essential principles of being—form and matter—was essential for the continuity of the person. In the first phase of his work—to his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (1266-1267) and De spiritualibus creaturis (1267-1268)—St. Thomas was inspired in his reading of Aristotle by Averroes, who introduced the concept of dimensiones non terminatae or interminatae to denote the extensibility or three-dimensionality of matter totally devoid of any formal determination. This quantitative accidental property—introduced by Thomas into his considerations as a figura—was meant to give an account of the permanent element on the side of the material principle, which could both precede the unification of matter with the substantial form and remain after the disintegration of the compositum. Over time, however, Aquinas came to realize that such a solution is not coherent with the thesis of the absolute unicity of the substantial form and that, consequently, the existence of some other form (this is how the aforementioned accidental property would ultimately have to be interpreted) beyond the substantial form, which could be attached to the first matter, cannot be accepted. Ever since this philosophical deepening of his interpretation, which flowed from a more careful study of Aristotle’s position, Aquinas consistently linked the individualization of matter and its numerical identity to the only substantial form of the human person, which is the rational soul.
4The book, preceded by an introduction by G. Emery, is the fruit of diligent analysis, and introduces with serene patience the technical speculations of St. Thomas’ interpretation that has been recognized for centuries as groundbreaking and that ‘only the downright ignorance of history could find [...] contestable’ (cf. J. Ratzinger, Eschatology. Death and Eternal Life, Washington, Catholic University of America Press, 1988, p. 149). The only significant limitation of this relatively concise book, written with rigor, is that Aquinas’ texts are given only in Latin. One might be concerned that this narrows the potential circle of readers considerably. For obvious reasons, the subject is worth thinking about along with Aquinas by non-
Thomists as well.
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Michał Paluch, « Frezzato, Alexandre, La résurrection de la chair selon saint Thomas d’Aquin. Identité et continuité de la personne humaine », Revue des sciences religieuses, 99/1-2 | 2025, 250-252.
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Michał Paluch, « Frezzato, Alexandre, La résurrection de la chair selon saint Thomas d’Aquin. Identité et continuité de la personne humaine », Revue des sciences religieuses [En ligne], 99/1-2 | 2025, mis en ligne le 25 juin 2025, consulté le 14 décembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rsr/16106 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/14926
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