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But their way is to feign a scrupulous anxiety in investigating this
question, and to cast ridicule on our faith in the resurrection of the
body, by asking, Whether abortions shall rise? And as the Lord
says, "Verily I say unto you, not a hair of your head shall
perish," shall all bodies have an equal stature and strength, or
shall there be differences in size? For if there is to be equality,
where shall those abortions, supposing that they rise again, get that
bulk which they had not here? Or if they shall not rise because they
were not born but cast out, they raise the same question about children
who have died in childhood, asking us whence they get the stature which
we see they had not here; for we will not say that those who have been
not only born, but born again, shall not rise again. Then,
further, they ask of what size these equal bodies shall be. For if
all shall be as tall and large as were the tallest and largest in this
world, they ask us how it is that not only children but many
full-grown persons shall receive what they here did not possess, if
each one is to receive what he had here. And if the saying of the
apostle, that we are all to come to the "measure of the age of the
fullness of Christ," or that other saying, "Whom He predestinated
to be conformed to the image of His Son," is to be understood to
mean that the stature and size of Christ's body shall be the measure
of the bodies of all those who shall be in His kingdom, then, say
they, the size and height of many must be diminished; and if so much
of the bodily frame itself be lost, what becomes of the saying, "Not
a hair of your head shall perish?" Besides, it might be asked
regarding the hair itself, whether all that the barber has cut off
shall be restored? And if it is to be restored, who would not shrink
from such deformity? For as the same restoration will be made of what
has been pared off the nails, much will be replaced on the body which a
regard for its appearance had cut off. And where, then, will be its
beauty, which assuredly ought to be much greater in that immortal
condition than it could be in this corruptible state? On the other
hand, if such things are not restored to the body, they must perish;
how, then, they say, shall not a hair of the head perish? In like
manner they reason about fatness and leanness; for if all are to be
equal, then certainly there shall not be some fat, others lean.
Some, therefore, shall gain, others lose something. Consequently
there will not be a simple restoration of what formerly existed, but,
on the one hand, an addition of what had no existence, and, on the
other, a loss of what did before exist.
The difficulties, too, about the corruption and dissolution of dead
bodies, that one is turned into dust, while another evaporates into
the air; that some are devoured by beasts, some by fire, while some
perish by shipwreck or by drowning in one shape or other, so that their
bodies decay into liquid,these difficulties give them immoderate
alarm, and they believe that all those dissolved elements cannot be
gathered again and reconstructed into a body. They also make eager use
of all the deformities and blemishes which either accident or birth has
produced, and accordingly, with horror and derision, cite monstrous
births, and ask if every deformity will be preserved in the
resurrection. For if we say that no such thing shall be reproduced in
the body of a man, they suppose that they confute us by citing the
marks of the wounds which we assert were found in the risen body of the
Lord Christ But of all these, the most difficult question is, into
whose body that flesh shall return which has been eaten and assimilated
by another man constrained by hunger to use it so; for it has been
converted into the flesh of the man who used it as his nutriment, and
it filled up those losses of flesh which famine had produced. For the
sake, then, of ridiculing the resurrection, they ask, Shall this
return to the man whose flesh it first was, or to him whose flesh it
afterwards became? And thus, too, they seek to give promise to the
human soul of alternations of true misery and false happiness, in
accordance with Plato's theory; or, in accordance with
Porphyry's, that, after many transmigrations into different bodies,
it ends its miseries. and never more returns to them, not, however,
by obtaining an immortal body, but by escaping from every kind of
body.
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