Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 84/87

Finally, if the order of the elements is so arranged that, according to Plato, by two middle elements, namely air and water, the two extremes, namely fire and earth, are joined together, and fire holds the place of the highest part of heaven, while earth holds the lowest, as it were the foundation of the world, and therefore earth cannot be in heaven: why is fire itself in the earth? For according to this reasoning these two elements ought to have been in their own proper places, the lowest and the highest, earth and fire, in such a way that, just as they will not allow that what belongs to the lowest can be in the highest, so neither could what belongs to the highest be in the lowest. Therefore, just as they think no particle of earth either is or will be in heaven, so we ought to have seen no particle of fire on the earth.

But now, in fact, it is not only on the earth, but even beneath the earth, in such a way that the peaks of mountains belch it forth; besides the fact that, in the uses of men, we see fire both exist in the earth and be born from the earth, since indeed it is born both from wood and from stones, which are without doubt earthly bodies. But that fire, they say, is tranquil, pure, harmless, everlasting; while this one is turbid, smoky, corruptible, and a corrupter. Yet it does not corrupt the mountains in which it perpetually rages, nor the caverns of the earth. But granted: let it be unlike that one, so that it suits earthly habitations:

why, then, are they unwilling for us to believe that the nature of earthly bodies will one day be made incorruptible and fitting for heaven, just as now corruptible fire is fitting for these earthly regions? They therefore bring forward nothing from the weights and order of the elements by which they might prescribe to Almighty God a limit, to keep Him from making our bodies such that they can even dwell in heaven. CHAPTER XII. Against the calumnies of the unbelievers, by which they mock the Christians concerning their belief in the resurrection of the flesh. But they are accustomed, with the most scrupulous questioning, both to mock the faith by which we believe that the flesh will rise again, and to inquire in this way: whether aborted fetuses will rise again; and since the Lord says:

'Amen, I say to you, a hair of your head shall not perish,' whether the stature and strength will be equal for all, or whether the sizes of the bodies will be diverse. For if there will be an equality of bodies, whence will those aborted ones obtain what they did not here possess in the mass of their body, if they too rise again? Or if they will not rise again, because they were not born but cast forth, they raise the same question about little children: whence will that measure of body which we now see to have been lacking accrue to them, since they die at this age? For we are not going to say that those will not rise again who are capable not only of generation but even of regeneration. Then they ask what manner of equality this itself will have.

For if all will be as large and as tall as were any here who were the largest and tallest, then they ask, not only about little children but about very many, whence shall accrue to them what was here lacking, if each receives what he here possessed; but if, as the Apostle says, we shall all meet 'unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ,' and that other saying, 'Whom He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son,' is to be understood in such a way that the stature and bodily measure of Christ will be the future measure of all human bodies of those who will be in His kingdom, then, they say, 'Much must be taken away from the greatness and length of body of many; and where then will be:

a hair of your head shall not perish, if from the very size of the body so much shall perish?' Although about the hairs themselves it can also be inquired whether all that falls to those who cut them returns. And if it is to return, who would not shudder at that deformity? For this also seems necessarily to follow concerning the nails, that there should return all that the grooming of the body has cut off. And where will be the beauty, which certainly ought to be in that immortality greater than it could be in this corruption? But if it will not return, then it will perish. How then, they say, shall a hair of the head not perish? Concerning leanness too, or fatness, they argue in like manner. For if all will be equal, surely some will not be lean and others fat.

Therefore to some something will be added, from others something will be diminished; and through this it is not what each was that is to be received back, but in one case something is to be added that was not there, and in another something is to be lost that was there. Concerning the very corruptions and dissolutions of dead bodies as well — when one part is turned into dust, another exhaled into the air, when there are those whom beasts consume, those whom fire consumes, when some perish by shipwreck or by waters of whatever kind, so that putrefaction dissolves their flesh into moisture — they are not a little disturbed, and do not believe that all these things can be gathered back together into flesh and restored whole.

They also pursue every kind of foulness and defect, whether occurring after birth or arising at birth, where they mention with horror and ridicule monstrous births, and inquire what the resurrection of each deformity will be. For if we say that nothing of the sort returns into the body of man, they presume that they will refute our answer concerning the marks of the wounds with which we proclaim the Lord Christ to have risen. But amid all these things that most difficult question is proposed: into whose flesh shall that flesh return, by which the body of another person feeding on human entrails, compelled by hunger, is nourished? For it has been converted into the flesh of him who lived on such foods, and has filled up those losses which leanness had displayed.

Therefore whether it should return to the man whose flesh it was first, or rather to him whose it afterward became — they question with this aim: to make sport of the faith of the resurrection, and thus either, alternating like Plato, to promise to human souls true miseries and false beatitudes, or, like Porphyry, to confess that the soul, after many revolutions likewise through diverse bodies, nevertheless at some time ends its miseries and never returns to them — yet not by having an immortal body, but by fleeing every body. CHAPTER XIII. Whether the aborted do not pertain to the resurrection, if they pertain to the number of the dead. To these objections, then, which by the part opposed to me, as I set them forth, seem to me to be raised against me, let me reply, the mercy of God bringing aid to my efforts.

As for aborted fetuses, which, when they had already lived in the womb, there died, I dare neither to affirm nor to deny that they will rise again; although I do not see how the resurrection of the dead should not pertain to them, if they are not excluded from the number of the dead. For either not all the dead will rise again, and there will be some human souls without bodies forever, which bore human bodies, although within the maternal entrails; or if all human souls will receive back their own rising bodies which they had, wherever they left them living and dying, I do not find how I should say that the resurrection of the dead does not pertain to any of the dead, even those dead in their mothers' wombs.

But whichever of these views anyone may hold, what we shall have said about infants already born is to be understood also concerning those, if they shall rise again. CHAPTER XIV. Whether infants are to rise again in that habitude of body which they would have had with the advance of age. What then shall we say about infants, except that they are to rise again not in that smallness of body in which they died, but what would have accrued to them more slowly with time, this they are to receive by that wonderful and most swift work of God? For in the sentence of the Lord, where He says, 'A hair of your head shall not perish,' it is said that what was will not be lacking, but it is not denied that what was lacking will be present. But to the dead infant there was lacking the perfect size of his body;

for to a perfect infant there is certainly lacking the perfection of bodily magnitude, which, when it has accrued, the stature can then no longer be taller. This measure of perfection all men possess in such a way that they are conceived and born with it; but they possess it in potential, not in mass; just as all the members themselves are already latently in the seed, when even in those already born some are still lacking, such as the teeth and anything of that kind. In this reckoning, implanted in the bodily matter of each one, there already seems in a certain manner, so to speak, to be threaded that which is not yet, or rather which lies hidden, but which with the advance of time will be, or rather will appear. In this reckoning, therefore, the infant is already short or tall who is destined to be short or tall.

According to this reasoning, assuredly in the resurrection of the body we do not fear losses of the body, because, even if there were to be an equality of all, so that all should attain even to gigantic magnitudes, lest those who were the largest should have something less in stature, which would perish for them contrary to the sentence of Christ, who said that not even a hair of the head would perish — to the Creator, surely, who created all things out of nothing, how could there be lacking the means whence to add what the wondrous Artificer knew was to be added? CHAPTER XV. Whether the bodies of all the dead are to rise again to the measure of the Lord's body.

But Christ certainly rose again in that measure of body in which He died, nor is it lawful to say that, when the time of the resurrection of all shall come, there will accrue to His body that magnitude which He did not have, when in that body in which He was known to the disciples He appeared to them, so that He might be made equal to the tallest. But if we should say that even the larger bodies of any persons are to be reduced to the measure of the Lord's body, then very much will perish from the bodies of many, though He Himself promised that not even a hair would perish.

It remains, therefore, that each should receive back his own measure, which he either had in youth, even if he died old, or would have had, if he died before; and as for that which the Apostle mentioned, concerning 'the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ,' let us understand it either to have been said for another reason, that is:

that, when the perfection of all the members accrues to that Head among the Christian peoples, the measure of His age may be completed; or, if this was said about the resurrection of the bodies, let us so receive it as said, that the bodies of the dead rise again neither below nor beyond the youthful form, but in that age and strength up to which we know Christ to have here attained (for around thirty years even the most learned men of this world have defined youth to be; and when this has been terminated by its own span, from that point a man begins thereafter to decline into the losses of a heavier and more aged time); and therefore it was said, not 'unto the measure of the body' or 'unto the measure of stature,' but 'unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.' CHAPTER XVI.

In what sense the conformation of the saints to the image of the Son of God is to be understood. That also, which He says, that the predestined are 'conformed to the image of the Son of God,' can be understood according to the inner man (whence in another place He says to us: 'Be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind'; therefore where we are reformed, that we be not conformed to this world, there we are conformed to the Son of God); it can also be taken in this way, that, just as He became conformed to us in mortality, so we become conformed to Him in immortality; which indeed pertains also to the very resurrection of the bodies.

But if even in these words we are admonished concerning the form in which the bodies will rise, then, just as that measure, so also this conformation is to be understood not of size but of age. And so all will rise again as great in body as they either were or were destined to be at the youthful age; although it will be no detriment, even if there should be the form of an infantile or aged body, where there will remain no infirmity either of the mind or of the body itself. Whence even if anyone contends that each will rise again in that measure of body in which he died, there is no need to fight with him in laborious contradiction. CHAPTER XVII. Whether the bodies of women are to be raised and to remain in their own sex. Some, on account of what was said:

'Until we all meet unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ,' and 'Conformed to the image of the Son of God,' believe that women will not rise again in the female sex, but say that all will rise in the male, since God made only the man from the mud, the woman from the man. But to me those seem to be wiser who do not doubt that both sexes will rise again. For there will be no lust there, which is the cause of confusion. For before they sinned, the man and the woman were naked and were not ashamed. From those bodies, therefore, the defects will be taken away, but the nature will be preserved. And the female sex is not a defect, but a nature, which then indeed will be free both from intercourse and from childbearing;

yet the female members will remain, not accommodated to the old use, but to a new beauty, by which the concupiscence of the beholder is not allured (which will be none), but the wisdom and clemency of God is praised, who both made what was not and freed from corruption what He made. For just as at the beginning of the human race the woman was made from the rib taken from the side of the sleeping man, it was fitting that even then Christ and the Church should be prophesied by such a deed. For that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless on the cross, was pierced with a lance, and thence flowed blood and water; which we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is built up. For Scripture also used this very word, where it is read not 'formed' or 'fashioned,' but:

He 'built' her into a woman; whence the Apostle also speaks of the 'building up' of the body of Christ, which is the Church. The woman, therefore, is a creature of God just as the man; but that she should be made from the man, unity was commended; that she should be made in that manner, Christ, as has been said, and the Church were figured. He, therefore, who instituted both sexes will restore both. Finally, Jesus Himself, when questioned by the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, whose wife of the seven brothers she would be whom each of them had had, while each of them wished to raise up seed to the deceased, as the law had commanded: 'You err,' He said, 'not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God'; and when there was occasion for Him to say:

'For she about whom you question me will herself also be a man, not a woman,' He did not say this, but said: 'For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven'; equal indeed to the angels in immortality and felicity, not in flesh; just as not in the resurrection, which the angels did not need, since they could not even die. The Lord, therefore, denied that there will be marriages in the resurrection, not women, and He denied it there where such a question was being turned over, so that He might dissolve it with swifter ease by denying the female sex, if He foreknew it would not be there; nay rather, He confirmed that it would be there by saying: 'They will not marry' — which pertains to women — 'nor take wives' — which pertains to men.

There will therefore be those who here are accustomed either to be given in marriage or to take wives; but there they will not do this. CHAPTER XVIII. Concerning the perfect man, that is, Christ, and His body, that is, the Church, which is His fullness. Accordingly, as to what the Apostle says, that we shall all meet unto a perfect man, we ought to consider the whole context of that passage, which runs thus: 'He who descended,' he says, 'is the same also who ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.

And He Himself gave some indeed to be apostles, some however prophets, some indeed evangelists, some however pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ, until we all meet unto the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ; that we may be no longer little children, tossed and carried about with every wind of doctrine, in the trickery of men, in craftiness unto the contriving of error, but doing the truth in charity may grow up in Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ;

from whom the whole body, joined together and compacted by every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each single part, makes the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in charity.' Behold who is the perfect man: the Head and the body, which consists of all the members that in their own time will be completed, yet daily are added to that same body, while the Church is being built up, to which it is said: 'But you are the body of Christ and members'; and elsewhere: 'For His body,' he says, 'which is the Church'; and again elsewhere: 'One bread, one body, we many are.' Concerning the building up of which body it has also been said here: 'For the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ'; and then is subjoined that with which we are now dealing:

'Until we all meet unto the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ,' and the rest; until he should show in what body that same measure was to be understood, saying: 'May we grow up in Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ; from whom the whole body, joined together and compacted by every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each single part.' As, therefore, there is a measure of each single part, so of the whole body, which consists of all its parts, there is surely a measure of fullness, concerning which it was said: 'Unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.' Which fullness he also mentioned in that place where he says concerning Christ:

'And Him He gave to be Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who is filled all in all.' But if this were to be referred to the form of the resurrection in which each will be, what would hinder us, when 'man' is named, from understanding 'woman' too, so that we should take 'man' as put for the human being? Just as in that which is said, 'Blessed is the man that fears the Lord,' surely there too are also the women who fear the Lord. CHAPTER XIX. That all the defects of the body which in this life are contrary to human comeliness will not be in the resurrection, where, the natural substance remaining, both quality and quantity will concur into one beauty. What now shall I answer concerning hairs and nails?

For once it is understood that nothing of the body will perish in such a way that there should be anything deformed in the body, it is at once understood that those things which would have made a deforming excess will accrue to the mass itself, not to the places in which the form of the members would be made unsightly. As if a vessel were made of clay, which, again reduced into the same clay, were wholly remade out of the whole, it would not be necessary that that part of the clay which had been in the handle should return to the handle, or that which had made the bottom should itself again make the bottom — provided, however, that the whole returned into the whole, that is, that all that clay should pass again into the whole vessel with no part of itself lost. Wherefore, if the hairs so often shorn and the nails so often cut return unsightly to their own places, they will not return;

yet they will not perish for anyone rising again, because they will be turned into the same flesh, so as to hold whatever place of the body they may there occupy, the congruence of the parts being preserved by the mutability of the matter. Although what the Lord says, 'A hair of your head shall not perish,' can be understood much more fittingly as said not of the length but of the number of the hairs; whence elsewhere also He says: 'The hairs of your head are numbered.' Nor would I say this on the ground that I think anything will perish from any body which was naturally in it; but that what was born deformed (assuredly for no other reason than that hereby too it might be shown how penal is this condition of mortals), will so return that, the integrity of the substance being preserved, the deformity may perish.

For if a human artificer can recast a statue which for some reason he had made deformed, and render it most beautiful, in such a way that nothing of the substance, but only the deformity, perishes; and if there was anything in that earlier figure which protruded unbecomingly and did not agree with the symmetry of the parts, he does not cut it away and separate it from the whole out of which he had made it, but so disperses it throughout the whole and mingles it, that he neither produces foulness nor diminishes the quantity: what is to be thought of the Almighty Artificer?

Will He then not be able so to take away and destroy any deformities whatsoever of human bodies — not only the usual ones, but even the rare and monstrous, which suit this wretched life but are abhorrent from that future felicity of the saints — that whatever excesses of the bodily substance produce them, though natural, yet unseemly, may be removed with no diminution of it? And through this, the lean and the fat need not fear that they will be there such as, if they could, they would not have wished to be even here. For all beauty of the body is the congruence of the parts together with a certain pleasantness of color. But where there is not congruence of the parts, either it offends because it is distorted, or because it is too little, or because it is too much.

Accordingly there will be no deformity which the incongruence of the parts produces, where both those things that are distorted will be corrected, and what is less than is fitting will be supplied from the source which the Creator knows, and what is more than is fitting will be taken away, the integrity of the matter being preserved. But how great will be the pleasantness of color, where the just will shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father! Which brightness in the body of Christ, when He had risen, is to be believed to have been rather hidden from the eyes of the disciples than to have been lacking. For the human and weak gaze would not have borne it, at the time when He had to be regarded by His own in such a way that He could be recognized.

To this it also pertained that He showed to those who touched Him the scars of His wounds, and that He took food and drink as well, not from need of nourishment, but by that power by which He was able to do this also. But when something is not seen, although it is present, by those by whom other things, which are equally present, are seen — as we say that brightness was present unseen by those by whom other things were seen — it is called in Greek aorasia, which our translators, unable to express it in Latin, rendered in the book of Genesis as 'blindness.' For this the Sodomites suffered, when they sought the door of the righteous man and could not find it.

For if it had been such a blindness as makes it that nothing can be seen, they would have sought not the door by which they might enter, but guides for their way by whom they might be led away from there. But somehow we are so affected by love of the blessed martyrs that we desire to see in that kingdom, in their bodies, the scars of the wounds which they endured for the name of Christ; and perhaps we shall see them. For there will be no deformity in them, but dignity, and a certain beauty — though in the body, yet not of the body but of virtue — will shine forth. Nor, however, if any members were cut off and taken away from the martyrs, will they on that account be without those members in the resurrection of the dead, to whom it was said:

'A hair of your head shall not perish.' But if it shall be becoming in that new age that the marks of the glorious wounds be seen in that immortal flesh, there where the members were struck or cut so as to be severed, there the scars will appear — yet with those same members restored, not lost. And so, although all the defects that befell the body will then not exist, yet the indications of virtue are not to be reckoned or called defects. CHAPTER XX. That in the resurrection of the dead the nature of bodies dissipated in whatsoever ways is to be recalled to wholeness from wherever it may be.

But far be it that the omnipotence of the Creator should be unable, for the raising up and restoring to life of bodies, to recall all that either beasts or fire have consumed, or that has collapsed into dust or ash, or been dissolved into moisture, or exhaled into the air. Far be it that any bosom or secret place of nature should so receive anything withdrawn from our senses, that it should either escape the knowledge or elude the power of the Creator of all things. Cicero, that great author of theirs, wishing to define God as best he could, says: 'It is a certain Mind, loosed and free, separated from all mortal admixture, perceiving and moving all things, and itself endowed with eternal motion.' This indeed he found in the teachings of the great philosophers.

In order, therefore, to speak according to them: how can anything either lie hidden from One who perceives all things, or irrevocably flee from One who moves all things? Whence now also that question is to be solved, which seems more difficult than the rest, where it is asked: when the flesh of a dead man becomes also the flesh of another living man, to which of them rather should it be restored in the resurrection? For if anyone, worn out by hunger and compelled, should feed on the corpses of men — an evil which it bears witness that it has sometimes happened, both ancient history and the unhappy experiences of our own times have taught:

will anyone contend, by any truthful reasoning, that the whole was digested through the lower passages, and that nothing thereof was changed and converted into his flesh — when the very leanness, which was and is no more, sufficiently indicates what losses were supplied by those foods? Already, then, I have set forth a little before some things which ought to avail also for solving this knot. For whatever of the flesh hunger has exhausted has surely been exhaled into the air, whence we have said that Almighty God can recall what has fled. That flesh, therefore, shall be restored to the man in whom the human flesh first began to be. For by that other man it is to be reckoned as taken, as it were, on loan; which, like a debt, is to be repaid to him from whom it was taken. But his own flesh shall be restored to him whom hunger had emptied, by him.

He who is able even to recall what has been breathed out shall restore it. And even if it had perished in every manner and no portion of its matter remained in any hidden recesses of nature, the Almighty would repair it from whatever source He willed. But because of the verdict of Truth, by which it was said, 'A hair of your head shall not perish,' it is absurd to suppose that, when a single hair of a man cannot perish, so great a bodily substance, devoured and consumed by decay and hunger, could perish.