On the Resurrection of the Dead 12

The argument from the cause is this. We ask whether the human being was made simply and to no purpose, or for some purpose; and if for some purpose, whether he was made simply to live and to continue in the nature in which he was made, or for someone's use; and if for someone's use, whether for the use of the Maker himself or of some other being related to him and thought worthy of greater care. Considering this more generally, we find that every sensible person, when rational judgment moves him to make something, does nothing that he does deliberately to no purpose. He acts either for his own use, or for the need of something else he cares for, or for the sake of the thing he makes, moved by a natural attraction and affection toward bringing it into being. For example (let me use an illustration to make the point clear): a man builds a house for his own need; for oxen, camels, or other animals he needs, he makes the shelter suited to each, not for his own use, as it appears, though ultimately it is for that, but immediately out of care for the creatures he looks after; and he begets children neither for his own need nor for anything else of his, but so that those he begets may exist and continue as long as possible, consoling himself for his own death by the succession of children and grandchildren, and thinking in this way to make the mortal immortal. So much for human beings. But God would not have made the human being to no purpose, for he is wise, and no work of wisdom is purposeless; nor for his own need, for he needs nothing at all, and to one who needs nothing at all, nothing he has made could contribute to his own need. Nor did he make the human being for the sake of any of the other works he made. For none of the beings that use reason and judgment, whether greater or lesser, was made or is made for another's use, but for the sake of its own life and continuance. Reason finds no need that could be the cause of the creation of human beings: the immortals lack nothing and need no contribution at all from human beings in order to exist; and irrational creatures are by nature subject to rule, and serve human beings in the uses for which each was made, but are not made to use human beings. It never was and is not right to put what rules and leads to the use of lesser things, or to subject the rational to the irrational, which are unfit to rule. If, then, the human being was made neither without cause and to no purpose (for nothing made by God is purposeless, at least in the intention of the Maker), nor for the use of the Maker himself or of any other of the works made by God, it is clear that in the first and more general sense God made the human being for his own sake and for the goodness and wisdom seen in all his creation; and in the sense more closely bound up with the beings made, for the sake of their own life, not a life kindled for a short time and then wholly extinguished. That kind of life, I think, God assigned to creeping things and birds and fish, or, to speak more generally, to all irrational creatures. But to those who carry the image of their Maker within themselves, who bear intelligence and have received a share of rational judgment, the Maker allotted everlasting continuance, so that, knowing their Maker and his power and wisdom, and following law and justice, they may pass all eternity free of toil with those virtues by which they strengthened their former life, though they lived in corruptible and earthly bodies. Whatever has been made for the sake of something else will reasonably cease to exist when the things for whose sake it was made cease, and will not continue to no purpose, since nothing purposeless has any place among the things made by God. But beings made for the sake of existing and living according to their nature, since the cause is bound up with their very nature and is seen in their existence alone, could never admit any cause that wholly destroys their existence. And since this cause is always seen in their existing, the living being that was made must certainly be preserved, doing and undergoing what is natural to it, each of its two parts contributing its share. The soul exists and continues unchanged in the nature in which it was made, and carries out what is natural to it (and it is natural for it to govern the impulses of the body and always to judge and measure whatever befalls it by the proper standards and measures). The body is moved according to nature toward what is natural to it, and undergoes the changes allotted to it, including, along with the other changes of age, appearance, or size, the resurrection. For the resurrection is a kind of change, the last of all, and so is the change for the better of those who are still alive at that time.