Chapter 7. Since Christ Rose in a Body Like Ours, We Too Shall Rise in Our Bodies.
Chapter 7
1. Therefore, just as Christ rose in the substance of our flesh and showed the marks of the nails and the opening in his side to his disciples—for these things are signs of his flesh, which rose from the dead,—so Paul said: He will raise us up by his power.
To the Romans, too, he said: But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies. Which then are the mortal bodies? Are they the souls? No, souls are incorporeal compared to the bodies. For, God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul; now, the breath of life is incorporeal. They cannot even call it [the soul] mortal, since it is the breath of life: That is why David said, And my soul will live for him, inasmuch as in him it [the soul] is the substance that is immortal. Nor can they say that the mortal body is the Spirit. What, then, remains to be called the mortal body but the handiwork, namely the flesh, of which the Word said that God will give life to it? For this is the element that dies and dissolves, but not the soul. For to die is to lose the power of life and then to be breathless, soulless, devoid of motion, and to pass away into the things from which it got the beginning of its substance. But this does not happen to the soul, for it is the breath of life; nor to the spirit, for the spirit is not composed of parts, but simple, which cannot dissolve. It is, moreover, the life of those who receive it. So there is nothing left but to show that death is related to the flesh, which, after the soul has departed, becomes breathless and soulless and gradually dissolves into earth from which it was taken. The flesh, then, is what is mortal. It is that of which he also says, He will give life to your mortal bodies. This, too, is why he says in the First Letter to the Corinthians, So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. What you sow, he says, does not come to life unless it first dies.
2. But what is it that is sown as a grain of wheat and rots in the earth, except our bodies, which are placed in the earth into which also the seeds are cast? So he said, It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. What is more dishonorable than dead flesh? Or, again, what is more honorable than the flesh that rises and receives imperishability? It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. “In weakness” that is its own; for, since it is earth, it returns to earth; but “in power” that is God’s who raises it from the dead. It is sown in a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. Without doubt he taught that he is not speaking of the soul or of the spirit, but of the dead bodies. For these are ensouled bodies, that is, they partake of the soul, which, once they have lost it, they are dead. Then when they rise through the Spirit, they become spiritual bodies, in order that continuing forever through the Spirit they may have life.
He says, Now our knowledge is imperfect, and our prophecy is imperfect, but then face-to-face. Peter also said the same thing, Without seeing him you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe him and exult with unutterable joy. For our face will see the face of the Lord, and it will rejoice with an unutterable joy, namely, when it will see its joy.