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From the words, "Till we all come to a perfect man, to the measure
of the age of the fullness of Christ," and from the words,
"Conformed to the image of the Son of God," some conclude that
women shall not rise women, but that all shall be men, because God
made man only of earth, and woman of the man. For my part, they seem
to be wiser who make no doubt that both sexes shall rise, For there
shall be no lust, which is now the cause of confusion. For before
they sinned, the man and the woman were naked, and were not ashamed.
From those bodies, then, vice shall be withdrawn, while nature shall
be preserved. And the sex of woman is not a vice, but nature. It
shall then indeed be superior to carnal intercourse and child-bearing;
nevertheless the female members shall remain adapted not to the old
uses, but to a new beauty, which, so far from provoking lust, now
extinct, shall excite praise to the wisdom and clemency of God, who
both made what was not and delivered from corruption what He made.
For at the beginning of the human race the woman was made of a rib
taken from the side of the man while he slept; for it seemed fit that
even then Christ and His Church should be fore-shadowed in this
event. For that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose
side, as He hung lifeless upon the cross, was pierced with a spear,
and there flowed from it blood and water, and these we know to be the
sacraments by which the Church is "built up." For Scripture used
this very word, not saying "He formed" or "framed," but "built
her up into a woman;" whence also the apostle speaks of the
edification of the body of Christ, which is the Church. The woman,
therefore, is a creature of God even as the man; but by her creation
from man unity is commended; and the manner of her creation
prefigured, as has been said, Christ and the Church. He, then,
who created both sexes will restore both. Jesus Himself also, when
asked by the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, which of the
seven brothers should have to wife the woman whom all in succession had
taken to raise up seed to their brother, as the law enjoined, says,
"Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God."
And though it was a fit opportunity for His saying, She about whom
you make inquiries shall herself be a man, and not a woman, He said
nothing of the kind; but "In the resurrection they neither marry nor
are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."
They shall be equal to the angels in immortality and happiness, not in
flesh, nor in resurrection, which the angels did not need, because
they could not die. The Lord then denied that there would be in the
resurrection, not women, but marriages; and He uttered this denial
in circumstances in which the question mooted would have been more
easily and speedily solved by denying that the female sex would exist,
if this had in truth been foreknown by Him.
But, indeed, He even affirmed that the sex should exist by saying,
"They shall not be given in marriage," which can only apply to
females; "Neither shall they marry," which applies to males.
There shall therefore be those who are in this world accustomed to
marry and be given in marriage, only they shall there make no such
marriages.
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