On the Resurrection of the Flesh

WE NOW COME TO THE MOST USUAL OBJECTION OF UNBELIEF: They say, if it is really the very same substance that is called back to life, with all its form, features, and quality, then why not with all its other characteristics as well? Then the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, and anyone else who has passed away with some noticeable mark, will return again with the same one. What, then, is the fact, although in your great pride you refuse to accept from God so vast a grace? Does it not happen that, when you now allow the salvation of only the soul, you assign it to men at the cost of half their nature? What is the good of believing in the resurrection unless your faith embraces all of it? If the flesh is to be repaired after its dissolution, much more will it be restored after some violent injury. Greater cases lay down rules for lesser ones. Is not the cutting off or crushing of a limb the death of that limb? Now, if the death of the whole person is rescinded by the resurrection, what must we say about the death of a part of him? If we are changed for glory, how much more for integrity! Any loss our bodies suffer is an accident to them, but their entirety belongs to them by nature. In this condition we are born. Even if we are injured in the womb, this is loss suffered by one who is already a human being. Natural condition comes before injury. As life is bestowed by God, so it is restored by Him. As we are when we receive it, so we are when we recover it. We are restored to nature, not to injury. We rise again to our state by birth, not to our condition by accident. If God does not raise men entire, then He does not raise the dead. For what dead man is entire, even if he dies entire? Who is without injury when he 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 paralyzed than when he is completely motionless? Thus, for a dead man to be raised again amounts to nothing less than his being restored to his entire condition, lest, of course, he should still be dead in the part in which he has not risen again. God is fully able to remake what He once made. He has already sufficiently guaranteed this power and this unstinting grace in Christ. In Him, He has shown Himself to us not only as the restorer of the flesh, but also as the repairer of its breaches. And so the apostle says, "The dead shall be raised incorruptible," or "unimpaired," in 1 Corinthians 15:52. But how can this be, unless those become entire who have wasted away either through the loss of health or through the long decay of the grave? For when he states the two clauses, that "this corruptible must put on incorruption," and that "this mortal must put on immortality," in 1 Corinthians 15:53, he is not repeating the same statement. He is setting out a distinction. By assigning immortality to the reversal of death, and incorruption to the repair of the body that has wasted away, he has fitted one to the raising of the body and the other to its recovery. I suppose, moreover, that he promises to the Thessalonians the integrity of the whole substance of man. So for the great future there is no need to fear blemished or defective bodies. Integrity, whether it comes from preservation or restoration, will be able to lose nothing more after the time when it has given back whatever it had lost. Now when you argue that the flesh will still have to undergo the same sufferings, if the same flesh is said to rise again, you rashly set nature against her Lord, and impiously set her law against His grace, as if the Lord God were not permitted both to change nature and to preserve it, 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," in Matthew 19:26, and again, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise," in 1 Corinthians 1:27? Let me ask you this. If you were to free your slave, since the same flesh and soul would remain in him that had once been exposed to the whip, the fetter, and the stripes, would it therefore be proper for him to undergo those same old sufferings? I think not. Instead, he is honored with the grace of the white robe, the favor of the gold ring, and the name and tribe, as well as the table, of his patron. Give, then, the same prerogative to God: that by such a change He may reform our condition, not our nature, by taking away from it all sufferings and surrounding it with safeguards of protection. Thus our flesh will remain even after the resurrection. It will indeed, so far as it is flesh, and the same flesh too, be capable of suffering. But at the same time it will be unable to suffer, since it has been liberated by the Lord for this very end and purpose: that it should no longer be capable of enduring suffering.