Scattered and Gathered Again

Suppose we grant the point altogether. Let the nourishment that comes from such bodies — call it nourishment, since that is the ordinary way of speaking — be broken down and changed, unnatural though it is, into one of the things that moisten or dry or warm or cool. Even so, our opponents gain nothing by what has been conceded to them. The bodies that rise are put together again out of the parts that properly belong to them, and not one of the things just named is such a part. Not one of them holds the position or the rank of a part. Not one of them stays permanently with the parts of the body it feeds, or rises along with the parts that rise, since blood and phlegm and bile and breath contribute nothing further to living. [a]

Nor will the bodies that were nourished then need what they once needed. When the neediness and the decay of the nourished bodies are done away with, so is any need of the things that nourished them. Then consider this. Even if someone supposes that the change worked by such food does reach as far as the flesh, there is still no necessity that flesh newly changed out of food of that kind, once it has attached itself to some other man’s body, should serve again as a part in completing that body. The flesh that takes it on does not always keep what it has taken on, and the flesh joined to it does not settle in and stay with what it was added to. It undergoes a great deal of change in the other direction: now dispersed by hard work or worry, now melted away by grief or exhaustion or illness, and by the disorders that follow on being overheated or chilled — the fatty parts not keeping pace with the changes in flesh and fat so as to remain what they are, even while they are taking in the food.

If that is what flesh goes through in the ordinary way, one would find that flesh fed on what does not belong to it goes through it far more: now swelling up and growing fat on what it has taken in, then throwing it off again somehow and shrinking, from one or more of the causes already named. The only things that stay with the parts of the body are those whose natural work is to bind together, or cover, or keep warm the flesh that nature itself selected — the flesh that has grown onto the very parts with which it has carried out the life that is according to nature, and the labors of that life.

So whether the argument we have just been through is judged on its merits, or whether the objections raised against our position are conceded for the sake of argument, in neither case can what our opponents say be shown to be true. Human bodies can never be blended into bodies of the same nature — not if men were once cheated of their perception through someone else and so shared in such a body, and not if, of their own accord, driven by need or madness, they defiled themselves with the body of one of their own kind. Unless, that is, there are beasts in human shape that we have failed to notice, or creatures of mixed nature, part human and part animal, of the sort the bolder poets like to invent.

And why should I even speak about bodies that have been assigned to no animal for food, and allotted only burial in the earth, in honor of what their nature is? The Maker has assigned no animal whatever as food to its own kind, though some animals of a different kind do serve as food naturally enough. If they can show that human flesh has been assigned to human beings for eating, then nothing will stop people from eating one another as a natural thing, like anything else nature allows — and nothing will stop the men who dare to talk this way from making a delicacy of the bodies of those dearest to them, as the food best suited to them, and from setting the same dish before the friends most devoted to them. [e]

But if it is not even decent to say such a thing; if for human beings to share in human flesh is the most hateful and utterly polluted act there is, more accursed than any other lawless and unnatural food or deed; if what is against nature can never pass into nourishment for the parts and members that need it; and if what does not pass into nourishment can never be united with what it was never fitted to nourish — then human bodies can never be compounded with bodies like themselves, for which such food is against nature, even if by some most bitter disaster they pass through their stomachs many times over.

Instead, withdrawing from the power that nourishes and scattering back to the things out of which they first got their makeup, they are united with those for whatever length of time is allotted to each. Then they are separated out from there again, by the wisdom and power of the one who compounded every living nature and furnished it with the powers that belong to it, and each is fitted back to each — whether it was burned up by fire, or rotted away in water, or eaten by wild animals or by whatever creature came upon it, or cut off from the whole body and dissolved before the other parts. United with one another again, they take the same place as before, for the fitting together and the makeup of the same body, and for the resurrection and the life of what had died, or even been entirely dissolved. There is no point in drawing this out any further. The verdict on it is agreed — at least among those who are not half beast.

There are many things more useful to the inquiry before us, so for now I will excuse myself from answering the people who take refuge in human workmanship and in the human craftsmen who produce it. Those craftsmen cannot make new again what has been smashed, or worn out by time, or ruined some other way; and so, arguing from the parallel of potters and carpenters, these people try to show that God could not will, and if he did will could not manage, to raise a body that has died or even been dissolved. They do not stop to think that arguments like this insult God in the worst way. They put on a level the powers of things that are utterly unlike each other — or rather the very beings that use those powers — and set what craft makes beside what nature makes. [g]

To take such objections seriously would not go unblamed; it really is silly to argue against what is shallow and empty. It carries far more weight, and it is truest of all, to say that what is impossible for human beings is possible for God. And if reason shows the thing to be possible — from these very points, which everyone grants, and from everything we examined a little earlier — then plainly it is not impossible. Nor, for that matter, is it something God does not will.

For if he does not will a thing, he does not will it either as unjust or as unworthy of him. And injustice, again, would have to be seen either in the man himself who is to rise or in someone other than him. But it is perfectly clear that none of the beings outside him, none of the things counted as existing, is wronged. The natures that only the mind perceives cannot be wronged by the resurrection of human beings: it is no obstacle to their existing, no damage to them, no insult. Neither can the nature of the animals without reason, or of the things without life; for they will not exist after the resurrection, and there is no injustice toward what does not exist. [i]

And even if someone supposes that they exist forever, they would suffer no wrong when human bodies are made new. If, now, while they yield to human nature and to the needs of people who are needy — driven under the yoke and into every kind of slavery — they suffer no wrong, then much more will they suffer none when human beings have become imperishable and free from need and no longer require their service, and when they themselves have been set free from all slavery. Even if they had a voice, they would not accuse the Maker of unjustly giving them less than human beings because they did not receive the same resurrection. To creatures whose nature is not equal, the Just One does not measure out an equal end. And besides, where there is no judgment about what is just, there is no complaint of injustice either.

Nor is it possible to say that any injustice is seen in the man who is raised. He is made of soul and body, and he takes no wrong in either soul or body. No one in his right mind will say the soul is wronged; in saying it, he would be throwing out the present life along with it, without noticing. If the soul suffers no wrong now, while it lives in a body that decays and suffers, much less will it be wronged when it lives together with a body that neither decays nor suffers. And the body suffers no wrong either. If it suffers none now, perishable and joined to what is imperishable, then plainly it will suffer none when it is imperishable and joined to what is imperishable. Nor could anyone say that raising a dissolved body and gathering it together again is a work unworthy of God. If the worse thing was not unworthy of him — making a body that decays and suffers — then much more is the better thing not unworthy: making one that neither decays nor suffers.

If, then, each of the points we examined has been proved by way of what comes first in nature and what follows from it, it is quite clear that the resurrection of dissolved bodies is a work the Maker can do, and does will, and one worthy of him. By these considerations the opposite view has been shown false, and the position of those who refuse to believe shown unreasonable. Why should I speak of how each of these points converts into the others, and of their connection with one another — if “connection” is even the right word, as though they were separated by some difference — rather than say straight out that what God can do he also wills, that what God wills is altogether within his power, and that it matches the worth of the one who wills it? [l]

That the argument about the truth is one thing and the argument on behalf of the truth is another has been set out well enough already, along with how the two differ, and when and with whom each is useful. But perhaps nothing stops us from making a fresh start from these same points and what belongs with them, both for everyone’s security and because of the connection between what has been said and what is left to say.

By nature it belongs to the one to lead, and to the other to walk beside it as an armed escort: to clear the road and drive back in advance whatever stands in the way or is hard going. The argument about the truth, which everyone needs for security and salvation, stands first in nature, in order, and in usefulness. In nature, because it supplies the knowledge of the things themselves. In order, because it is in those things and stands alongside them while it reports them. In usefulness, because it becomes the guarantor of security and salvation for those who come to know it.

The argument on behalf of the truth is lower in nature and in force, since refuting a falsehood is a smaller thing than establishing the truth. It is second in order too, since its strength is exerted against those who hold false opinions, and false opinion sprang up as a second crop sown over the first, and out of spoilage. Even so, it is often put first, and sometimes proves the more useful of the two, because it removes and clears away beforehand the unbelief that troubles some people, and the doubt or false opinion of those who have only just come over.

Both are directed toward one end: the argument that refutes a falsehood and the argument that establishes the truth alike aim at reverence toward God. Still, they are not simply one and the same. The first is necessary, as I said, for everyone who believes and for everyone who cares about the truth and about his own salvation; the second turns out to be more useful on certain occasions, for certain people, and in dealing with certain people. Let that stand as a summary, to recall what has already been said.

Now we must go on to what we set out to do, and show that the argument about the resurrection is true. We will show it from the cause itself, according to which and for the sake of which the first man came to be, and those after him, even though they did not come to be in the same way; from the nature all human beings share simply as human beings; and further, from the judgment their Maker passes on them, according to the length of time each has lived and the laws by which each has ordered his life — a judgment no one would dispute is just.