Chapter LVII.—Our Bodies, However Mutilated Before or After Death, Shall Recover Their Perfect Integrity in the Resurrection. Illustration of the Enfranchised Slave.

We now come to the most usual cavil of unbelief. If, they say, it be actually the selfsame substance which is recalled to life with all its form, and lineaments, and quality, then why not with all its other characteristics?  Then the blind, and the lame, and the palsied, and whoever else may have passed away with any conspicuous mark, will return again with the same. What now is the fact, although you in the greatness of your conceit436    Qualiscunque. thus disdain to accept from God so vast a grace? Does it not happen that, when you now admit the salvation of only the soul, you ascribe it to men at the cost of half their nature? What is the good of believing in the resurrection, unless your faith embraces the whole of it? If the flesh is to be repaired after its dissolution, much more will it be restored after some violent injury. Greater cases prescribe rules for lesser ones. Is not the amputation or the crushing of a limb the death of that limb?  Now, if the death of the whole person is rescinded by its resurrection, what must we say of the death of a part of him?  If we are changed for glory, how much more for integrity!437    Or the recovery of our entire person. Any loss sustained by our bodies is an accident to them, but their entirety is their natural property. In this condition we are born. Even if we become injured in the womb, this is loss suffered by what is already a human being. Natural condition438    Genus. is prior to injury. As life is bestowed by God, so is it restored by Him. As we are when we receive it, so are we when we recover it. To nature, not to injury, are we restored; to our state by birth, not to our condition by accident, do we rise again. If God raises not men entire, He raises not the dead. For what dead man is entire, although he dies entire? Who is without hurt, that is without life? What body is uninjured, when it is dead, when it is cold, when it is ghastly, when it is stiff, when it is a corpse? When is a man more infirm, than when he is entirely infirm? When more palsied, than when quite motionless? Thus, for a dead man to be raised again, amounts to nothing short of his being restored to his entire condition,—lest he, forsooth, be still dead in that part in which he has not risen again. God is quite able to re-make what He once made. This power and this unstinted grace of His He has already sufficiently guaranteed in Christ; and has displayed Himself to us (in Him) not only as the restorer of the flesh, but as the repairer of its breaches.  And so the apostle says: “The dead shall be raised incorruptible” (or unimpaired).439    1 Cor. xv. 52. But how so, unless they become entire, who have wasted away either in the loss of their health, or in the long decrepitude of the grave? For when he propounds the two clauses, that “this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,”440    1 Cor. xv. 53. he does not repeat the same statement, but sets forth a distinction. For, by assigning immortality to the repeating of death, and incorruption to the repairing of the wasted body, he has fitted one to the raising and the other to the retrieval of the body. I suppose, moreover, that he promises to the Thessalonians the integrity of the whole substance of man.441    1 Thess. iv. 13–17 and v. 23. So that for the great future there need be no fear of blemished or defective bodies.  Integrity, whether the result of preservation or restoration, will be able to lose nothing more, after the time that it has given back to it whatever it had lost. Now, when you contend that the flesh will still have to undergo the same sufferings, if the same flesh be said to have to rise again, you rashly set up nature against her Lord, and impiously contrast her law against His grace; as if it were not permitted the Lord God both to change nature, and to preserve her, without subjection to a law. How is it, then, that we read, “With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible;”442    Matt. xix. 26. and again, “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise?”443    1 Cor. i. 27. Let me ask you, if you were to manumit your slave (seeing that the same flesh and soul will remain to him, which once were exposed to the whip, and the fetter, and the stripes), will it therefore be fit for him to undergo the same old sufferings?  I trow not. He is instead thereof honoured with the grace of the white robe, and the favour of the gold ring, and the name and tribe as well as table of his patron. Give, then, the same prerogative to God, by virtue of such a change, of reforming our condition, not our nature, by taking away from it all sufferings, and surrounding it with safeguards of protection. Thus our flesh shall remain even after the resurrection—so far indeed susceptible of suffering, as it is the flesh, and the same flesh too; but at the same time impassible, inasmuch as it has been liberated by the Lord for the very end and purpose of being no longer capable of enduring suffering.

CAPUT LVII.

Hinc jam illa vulgaris incredulitatis argutia est: Si, inquiunt, ipsa eadamque substantia revocatur cum sua forma, linea, qualitate, ergo et cum insignibus suis reliquis: itaque et caeci, et claudi, et paralytici, et ut quis insignis excesserit , ita et revertetur. Quid nunc? et si ita, dedignaris tantam gratiam qualiscumque a Deo consequi? Non enim et nunc, animae solius admittens salutem, dimidiatis hominibus eamdem 0878B adscribis? Quid est credere resurrectionem, nisi integram credere? Si enim caro de dissolutione reparabitur, multo magis de vitiatione revocabitur. Minoribus majora praescribunt. Cujuscumque membri detruncatio, vel obtusio, nonne mors membri est? Si universalis mors resurrectione rescinditur, quid portionalis? Si demutamur in gloriam, quanto magis in incolumitatem! Vitiatio corporum accidens res est; integritas propria est: in hac nascimur. Etiamsi in utero vitiemur , jam hominis est passio. Prius est genus, quam casus. Quomodo vita confertur a Deo, ita et refertur. Quales eam accipimus, tales et recipimus. Naturae, non injuriae reddimur. Quod nascimur, non quod laedimur, reviviscimus. Si non integros Deus suscitat, non suscitat mortuos. Quis 0878C enim mortuus integer, etsi integer moritur? Quis incolumis, qui exanimis? quod corpus inlaesum, cum interemptum, cum frigidum, cum expallidum, cum edurum, cum cadaver? Quando magis homo debilis, nisi cum totus? quando magis paralyticus, nisi cum immobilis? Ita, nihil aliud est mortuum resuscitari, quam integrum fieri; ne ex ea parte mortuus adhuc sit, ex qua non resurrexerit. Idoneus Deus 0879A reficere quod fecit. Hanc suam et potestatem et liberalitatem satis jam in Christo spopondit, imo et ostendit non tantum resuscitatorem carnis, verum etiam redintegratorem. Atque adeo et Apostolus: Et mortui, inquit (I Cor., XV), resurgent incorrupti. Quomodo, nisi integri, qui retro corrupti, tam vitio valetudinis, quam et senio sepulturae? Nam et supra, utrumque proponens, oportere et corruptivum istud induere incorruptelam, et mortale istud immortalitatem, non iteravit sententiam, sed differentiam demandavit. Immortalitatem enim ad rescissionem mortis, incorruptelam ad obliterationem corruptelae dividendo, alteram ad resurrectionem, alteram ad redintegrationem temperavit. Puto autem, et Thessalonicensibus omnis substantiae integritatem repromisit. 0879B Itaque nec in posterum timebuntur corporum labes. Nihil poterit amittere integritas, vel conservata, vel restituta, ex quo illi etiam, si quid amiserat, redditur. Praescribens enim adhuc easdem passiones obituram carnem, si eadem resurrectura dicatur, naturam adversus Dominum suum temere defendis, legem adversus gratiam impie asseris: quasi Domino Deo non liceat et mutare naturam, et sine lege servare. Quomodo ergo legimus (Matth., XIX): «Quae impossibilia apud homines, possibilia apud Deum sunt , et (I Cor., I), Stulta mundi elegit Deus, ut sapientiam mundi confundat?» Oro te, si famulum tuum libertate mutaveris, quia eadem caro atque anima permanebunt, quae flagellis et compedibus, et stigmatibus, obnoxiae retro fuerant, idcircone illa 0879C eadem pati oportebit? Non opinor. Atquin et vestis albae nitore, et aurei annuli honore, et patroni nomine, ac tribu mensaque honoratur. Permitte hanc et Deo potestatem, per vim demutationis illius conditionem, non naturam reformandi, dum et passiones auferuntur, et munitiones conferuntur. Ita 0880A manebit quidem caro etiam post resurrectionem, eatenus passibilis qua ipsa, qua eadem; ea tamen impassibilis, qua in hoc ipsum manumissa a Domino, ne ultra pati possit