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Objection 1: It would seem that the resurrection of Christ is not
the cause of our resurrection. For, given the cause, the effect
follows. Yet given the resurrection of Christ the resurrection of the
other dead did not follow at once. Therefore His resurrection is not
the cause of ours.
Objection 2: Further, an effect cannot be unless the cause
precede. But the resurrection of the dead would be even if Christ had
not risen again: for God could have delivered man in some other way.
Therefore Christ's resurrection is not the cause of ours.
Objection 3: Further, the same thing produces the one effect
throughout the one same species. Now the resurrection will be common
to all men. Since then Christ's resurrection is not its own cause,
it is not the cause of the resurrection of others.
Objection 4: Further, an effect retains some likeness to its
cause. But the resurrection, at least of some, namely the wicked,
bears no likeness to the resurrection of Christ. Therefore Christ's
resurrection will not be the cause of theirs.
On the contrary, "In every genus that which is first is the cause of
those that come after it" (Metaph. ii, 1). Now Christ, by
reason of His bodily resurrection, is called "the first-fruits of
them that sleep" (1 Cor. 15:20), and "the first-begotten
of the dead" (Apoc. 1:5). Therefore His resurrection is the
cause of the resurrection of others.
Further, Christ's resurrection has more in common with our bodily
resurrection than with our spiritual resurrection which is by
justification. But Christ's resurrection is the cause of our
justification, as appears from Rm. 4:25, where it is said that
He "rose again for our justification." Therefore Christ's
resurrection is the cause of our bodily resurrection.
I answer that, Christ by reason of His nature is called the mediator
of God and men: wherefore the Divine gifts are bestowed on men by
means of Christ's humanity. Now just as we cannot be delivered from
spiritual death save by the gift of grace bestowed by God, so neither
can we be delivered from bodily death except by resurrection wrought by
the Divine power. And therefore as Christ, in respect of His human
nature, received the firstfruits of grace from above, and His grace
is the cause of our grace, because "of His fulness we all have
received . . . grace for grace" (Jn. 1:16), so in Christ
has our resurrection begun, and His resurrection is the cause of
ours. Thus Christ as God is, as it were, the equivocal cause of
our resurrection, but as God and man rising again, He is the
proximate and, so to say, the univocal cause of our resurrection.
Now a univocal efficient cause produces its effect in likeness to its
own form, so that not only is it an efficient, but also an exemplar
cause in relation to that effect. This happens in two ways. For
sometimes this very form, whereby the agent is likened to its effect,
is the direct principle of the action by which the effect is produced,
as heat in the fire that heats: and sometimes it is not the form in
respect of which this likeness is observed, that is primarily and
directly the principle of that action, but the principles of that
form. For instance, if a white man beget a white man, the whiteness
of the begetter is not the principle of active generation, and yet the
whiteness of the begetter is said to be the cause of the whiteness of
the begotten, because the principles of whiteness in the begetter are
the generative principles causing whiteness in the begotten. In this
way the resurrection of Christ is the cause of our resurrection,
because the same thing that wrought the resurrection of Christ, which
is the univocal efficient cause of our resurrection, is the active
cause of our resurrection, namely the power of Christ's Godhead
which is common to Him and the Father. Hence it is written (Rm.
8:11): "He that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead shall
quicken also your mortal bodies." And this very resurrection of
Christ by virtue of His indwelling Godhead is the quasi-instrumental
cause of our resurrection: since the Divine operations were wrought by
means of Christ's flesh, as though it were a kind of organ; thus the
Damascene instances as an example (De Fide Orth. iii, 15) the
touch of His body whereby He healed the leper (Mt. 8:3).
Reply to Objection 1: A sufficient cause produces at once its
effect to which it is immediately directed, but not the effect to which
it is directed by means of something else, no matter how sufficient it
may be: thus heat, however intense it be, does not cause heat at once
in the first instant, but it begins at once to set up a movement
towards heat, because heat is its effect by means of movement. Now
Christ's resurrection is said to be the cause of ours, in that it
works our resurrection, not immediately, but by means of its
principle, namely the Divine power which will work our resurrection in
likeness to the resurrection of Christ. Now God's power works by
means of His will which is nearest to the effect; hence it is not
necessary that our resurrection should follow straightway after He has
wrought the resurrection of Christ, but that it should happen at the
time which God's will has decreed.
Reply to Objection 2: God's power is not tied to any particular
second causes, but that He can produce their effects either
immediately or by means of other causes: thus He might work the
generation of lower bodies even though there were no movement of the
heaven: and yet according to the order which He has established in
things, the movement of the heaven is the cause of the generation of
the lower bodies. In like manner according to the order appointed to
human things by Divine providence, Christ's resurrection is the
cause of ours: and yet He could have appointed another order, and
then our resurrection would have had another cause ordained by God.
Reply to Objection 3: This argument holds when all the things of
one species have the same order to the first cause of the effect to be
produced in the whole of that species. But it is not so in the case in
point, because Christ's humanity is nearer to His Godhead, Whose
power is the first cause of the resurrection, than is the humanity of
others. Hence Christ's Godhead caused His resurrection
immediately, but it causes the resurrection of others by means of
Christ-man rising again.
Reply to Objection 4: The resurrection of all men will bear some
resemblance to Christ's resurrection, as regards that which pertains
to the life of nature, in respect of which all were conformed to
Christ. Hence all will rise again to immortal life; but in the
saints who were conformed to Christ by grace, there will be conformity
as to things pertaining to glory.
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