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On the Resurrection of the Flesh
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Chapter 62. Our Destined Likeness to the Angels in the Glorious Life of the Resurrection.
HOWEVER: our Lord's declaration puts an effective end to this discussion: "They shall be equal to the angels," He says. By not marrying, because they do not die, they also, of course, do not have to yield to any similar necessity of our bodily state. In the same way, the angels too were sometimes equal to men, by eating and drinking, and by submitting their feet to be washed in the bath. They had clothed themselves in human form, without losing their own true nature. If, therefore, angels, when they became like men, submitted in their own unchanged substance of spirit to be treated as if they were flesh, why should not men in the same way, when they become equal to the angels, undergo in their unchanged substance of flesh the treatment proper to spiritual beings? In their angelic form, they will be no more subject to the usual urges of the flesh than the angels once were to the demands of the spirit when they were clothed in human form. Therefore, we will not cease to exist in the flesh because we cease to be pressed by the usual needs of the flesh. In the same way, the angels did not cease to remain in their spiritual substance because their spiritual conditions were suspended. Finally, Christ did not say, "They shall be angels," so that He might not cancel their existence as men. But He said, "They shall be equal to the angels," so that He might preserve their humanity unharmed. When He ascribed an angelic likeness to the flesh, He did not take from it its proper substance.
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