"If Jesus says to
[Mary] Magdalene, '"Do not hold on to me"' (Jn 20:17), this is not simply
because she must not hold him back because he must go to the Father. It is rather because the new state into which
he has entered by the Resurrection does not allow for the same familiar relations
that had been permitted before his death[, as at, for example, Lk 7:37 ff., and
Jn 11:2 and 12:3]. . . . Already there can no longer be any question of rendering
him the same [corporeal] offices of devotion, for his Body is in a new state
that [however] has not yet been definitively consummated by the Session at the
right hand of the Father [(et qui n’a pas encore reçu sa consécration définitive
par la session auprès du Père)]. This is
what the clause '"because I have not yet ascended to the Father"' signifies,
i.e. that he has not yet taken complete possession of his celestial glory. Is it to say that that one will be able to touch him after his ascent
to the right hand of the [(montée auprès du)] Father? Without a doubt. In this sense the point is less the scene of Jn
20:27 (in which [such] contact takes on a different signification) than that of Jn
6:62 ff., in which the discourse on the Eucharist is associated with [(se clôture
par)] a clear allusion to the Ascension and a significant opposition between
the Spirit that gives life and the flesh which is useless. From the rapprochement of these two texts it
follows that, by the Ascension, the Body of Christ has taken full possession of
the spiritual state that characterizes it as permeated by the Spirit [(qui le
pénètre de l’Esprit)] and makes it possible for him to dispense [the Spirit],
and under the form of the Eucharist above all.
Before Jesus was glorified, the Spirit could not be given (Jn
7:39). This means to say that after his
glorification by the Resurrection and return to the right hand of the [(auprés
du)] Father, he will possess in his very Body the plenitude of the Spirit, whom
he will be able to dispense by means of the sacraments. One sees this by the appearance that follows [(suit)]
his ascent to the right hand of the [(sa montée auprès du)] Father, during
which he gives to his disciples the Spirit who pardons sins (Jn 20:22
ff.). It is doubtless to these spiritual
contacts of the sacramental dispensation that John refers when he makes Jesus tell
[Mary] Magdalene that she must not touch him for as long as he has not re-ascended
to the Father; she will be able to do so anew [however] when he returns to her,
as to all the faithful, under the form of his spiritualized Body that gives
life.
Pierre Benoit, O.P.,
"L'ascension," Revue biblique
56, no. 2 (avril 1949): 183-184
(161-203), italics mine. Re. suit above, "John places the appearances of Jesus to the disciples (20:19 ff., 20:24 f.; 21) after his return to the Father (20:17)" (197). Benoit then goes on to cite the "in heaven" of Mt 28:18 as well as 1 Cor 15:8, according to which Paul had an indubitably post-Ascension experience of the risen Christ every bit "as real and physical for him as for [the first witnesses]," in support of his contention that "there is no incompatibility between the glorious transfer of the body of Christ into the divine sphere and episodic manifestations of it on earth," since "for him as for them it is the Christ risen and already ascended to his Father who manifested himself by resubmitting to their senses the whole physical reality of his spiritualized body" (197-198).
"as Luther wields the language, 'the law' is not coterminous with ethics or 'the gospel' with doctrine as something other than ethics; these supposed equivalencies were invented very recently, to accommodate late-modern America's antinomianism impulse by making it appear that ethical decisions cannot impact doctrinal faithfulness."
