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Far be it from us to fear that the omnipotence of the Creator cannot,
for the resuscitation and reanimation of our bodies, recall all the
portions which have been consumed by beasts or fire, or have been
dissolved into dust or ashes, or have decomposed into water, or
evaporated into the air. Far from us be the thought, that anything
which escapes our observation in any most hidden recess of nature either
evades the knowledge or transcends the power of the Creator of all
things. Cicero, the great authority of our adversaries, wishing to
define God as accurately as possible, says, "God is a mind free and
independent, without materiality, perceiving and moving all things,
and itself endowed with eternal movement." This he found in the
systems of the greatest philosophers. Let me ask, then, in their own
language, how anything can either lie hid from Him who perceives all
things, or irrevocably escape Him who moves all things?
This leads me to reply to that question which seems the most difficult
of all, To whom, in the resurrection, will belong the flesh of a
dead man which has become the flesh of a living man? For if some one,
famishing for want and pressed with hunger, use human flesh as food,
an extremity not unknown, as both ancient history and the unhappy
experience of our own days have taught us, can it be contended, with
any show of reason, that all the flesh eaten has been evacuated, and
that none of it has been assimilated to the substance of the eater
though the very emaciation which existed before, and has now
disappeared, sufficiently indicates what large deficiencies have been
filled up with this food? But I have already made some remarks which
will suffice for the solution of this difficulty also. For all the
flesh which hunger has consumed finds its way into the air by
evaporation, whence, as we have said, God Almighty can recall it.
That flesh, therefore, shall be restored to the man in whom it first
became human flesh. For it must be looked upon as borrowed by the
other person, and, like a pecuniary loan, must be returned to the
lender. His own flesh, however, which he lost by famine, shall be
restored to him by Him who can recover even what has evaporated. And
though it had been absolutely annihilated, so that no part of its
substance remained in any secret spot of nature, the Almighty could
restore it by such means as He saw fit. For this sentence, uttered
by the Truth, "Not a hair of your head shall perish," forbids us
to suppose that, though no hair of a man's head can perish, yet the
large portions of his flesh eaten and consumed by the famishing can
perish.
From all that we have thus considered, and discussed with such poor
ability as we can command, we gather this conclusion, that in the
resurrection of the flesh the body shall be of that size which it either
had attained or should have attained in the flower of its youth, and
shall enjoy the beauty that arises from preserving symmetry and
proportion in all its members. And it is reasonable to suppose that,
for the preservation of this beauty, any part of the body's
substance, which, if placed in one spot, would produce a deformity,
shall be distributed through the whole of it, so that neither any
part, nor the symmetry of the whole, may be lost, but only the
general stature of the body somewhat increased by the distribution in
all the parts of that which, in one place, would have been unsightly.
Or if it is contended that each will rise with the same stature as that
of the body he died in, we shall not obstinately dispute this,
provided only there be no deformity, no infirmity, no languor, no
corruption, nothing of any kind which would ill become that kingdom in
which the children of the resurrection and of the promise shall be equal
to the angels of God, if not in body and age, at least in happiness.
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