Can Souls Be Perfectly Blessed if they are Coupled Again to their Bodies?
must in any wise be looked for. Afterward, we will treat of the causes thereof. Over this, some things shall be spoken of the conditions and qualities of them that shall rise again. And last of all shall be confuted the arguments of them which seem to persuade that there shall be no resurrection. And those arguments will I first of all recite; yet not all, but those only which I shall judge to be of most importance, by the confutation whereof, others may easily be dissolved.
Can Souls Be Perfectly Blessed if they are Coupled Again to their Bodies 7. First, Porphyrius said that all bodies must be avoided for attaining to the felicity of the soul because they hinder and further not the contemplation and knowledge of God, wherein consists our felicity.
By which there seemeth to be affirmed that souls cannot perfectly be made blessed if they should be coupled again to their bodies.
Further, this cannot be that when the bodies are already dissolved and are gone into ashes, they should return to their first elements, or to the first substance of their nature. Besides, it happens sometimes that a man is eaten by a wolf; a wolf, by a lion; a lion, by the fowls of the air, which afterward become the meat of other men: therefore, the flesh of the first man might not be discerned from the flesh of the latter men. Moreover, this will the more plainly appear if we consider those Anthropophagi, being men that feed upon man's flesh: whereby it comes to pass that the substances of human bodies, by that kind of means, are mingled. Wherefore, if there shall be a resurrection of the dead, unto which men shall those fleshes be attributed? To them that eat, or to them that be eaten? We see also in nature that it is taken for an impossibility that one and the same indivisible thing should be restored to number when it has perished.
And therefore, generation was appointed, that at leastwise, by procreating like things in kind, order might be continued.
To this, in death, when the soul is taken away from the body, not only the things accident thereunto are destroyed, but the essential beginnings also, whereby a man is made; namely the body, and also certain parts of the mind, as is the power of nourishing and feeling, which cannot be had without the body. Besides this, if any quantity be sundered, it is no more one in number, but they be two quantities.
And a motion that surceases, if it be begun again, it may be in kind the same that it was; but in number, it shall be distinguished from the first. For who is it, that when he shall have walked a mile, if he stand at rest for a while, and afterward returneth, can affirm that his latter walk is the very same that was before? And this is not only perceived in quantity and motion, and in things that happen; but also in qualities and forms. For if a man enjoy health, and do fall into a sickness, the first health doubtless is gone: but if so be he afterward recover, the health that happens is not altogether the same that the first was. In like manner, if bodies, with all the things belonging unto them, are to be restored, all the humors, hairs, and nails shall be given again, and the heap will be monstrous. But if all these things shall not be restored, but a certain of them, there can be no reason made, why rather one sort than another shall be given again.
8. There are moreover in the holy scriptures many places which are against resurrection, if they should be weighed as they appear at the first sight. In the 78th Psalm, it is written that God did, after a sort, chasten the Jews in the wilderness, but that he would not utterly pour out his wrath upon them: because he remembered (saith David) that they were but flesh, and as a spirit that passes away, and comes not again. But if so be that the souls return not again, there is no resurrection. Also, it is said in the 114th Psalm, "The dead shall not