68. See Acts 10:10-12.
504 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis
Nonetheless our Savior, having died for us, did not disdain to visit that part of creation, in order to release from there all who were due to be released, as he could not but be aware, in accordance with a mysterious divine justice. Accord ingly, it was not the netherworld where sins are punished that he presented to the soul of the robber to whom he said, Today you shall be with me in Paradise (Lk 23:43), but either repose in the bosom of Abraham—there is nowhere, after all, where Christ is not present, since he is himself the Wisdom of God, reaching everywhere because ofherpurity (Wis 7:24) or this Paradise, whether it is in the third heaven or anywhere else, where the apostle was snatched up to after the third heaven—if, that is to say, the souls of the blessed are not all in one place, which is called by various names.
67. So then, suppose we are right in taking the first heaven to be all this bodily sky and in general whatever is above the waters and the earth,67 while the second consists in the bodily likeness which is perceived in spirit, like the one from which that dish full of animals was lowered down to Peter in his ecstasy;68 then finally the third is the one that is observed by the mind, when it has been so secluded and removed and totally snatched away from the senses of the flesh and purified, that it is inexpressibly enabled by the charity of the Holy Spirit to see and hear the things that are in that heaven, and the very substance of God and God the Word through whom all things were made (Jn 1:3).
We consider then that that is where the apostle was not unsuitably snatched away to, and where the paradise is, that is better than all others, the paradise of paradises, if we may so call it. lf the good soul, after all, finds joy in the good things in the whole of creation, what could outdo the joy which is to be found in the Word of God, through whom all things were made?
Question of the resurrection of the body
35, 68. But if anyone has a problem about what need there is for the spirits of the departed to get their bodies back in the resurrection, if that supreme blessed ness can be offered them even without their bodies, it is indeed too difficult a question to be completely tied up in this work. Nonetheless it is not to be doubted in the least that the human mind, when snatched away from the senses of the flesh, and when after death it has laid the flesh aside and also soared above all likenesses ofbodily things, still cannot see the unchangeable divine substance in the way that the holy angels see it. This may be due to some more hidden cause, or the reason may be that there is ingrained in the soul a kind of natural appetite for administering the body, and that as long as it does not have a body at its
67. SeeGn 1:6-8, 68. See Acts 10:10-12.