On the Resurrection of the Dead 2

Let us consider the matter in this way. All unbelief ought to arise in people not hastily or from some uncritical opinion, but for some strong reason and with the certainty that comes from the truth; for unbelief is only reasonable when the thing disbelieved seems itself incredible, while to disbelieve what is not incredible is the work of people who do not judge soundly about the truth. So those who disbelieve or doubt the resurrection ought not to give their opinion about it uncritically, according to what seems right to them and what pleases the licentious. Either they should attach the origin of human beings to no cause at all (which is very easily refuted), or, if they ascribe the cause of all that exists to God, they should look at the foundation of this doctrine and show from it that the resurrection deserves no belief at all. They will do this if they can show either that God is unable, or that he is unwilling, to reunite and gather together bodies that have died or even been entirely dissolved, so as to reconstitute the same human beings. If they cannot do this, let them cease from this godless unbelief and from blaspheming what they have no right to. That they speak the truth neither in saying that it is impossible nor in saying that God does not will it will become clear from what follows. Something is truly known to be impossible for someone either because he does not know what is to be done, or because he does not have sufficient power to carry out well what he knows. For one who is ignorant of something that is to be done could neither undertake nor do at all what he does not know; and one who knows well what is to be done, and from what and how it could come about, but has no power at all, or not enough, to do what he knows, would not undertake it in the first place if he were sensible and had considered his own power; and if he undertook it rashly, he would not accomplish what he intended. But God cannot be ignorant of the nature of the bodies that will be raised, whether as wholes or in each part and particle, nor of where each of the dissolved parts goes, and which part of the elements has received what was dissolved and passed back to its kindred element, even if what has been reunited naturally with the whole seems to human beings quite impossible to distinguish. For he knew, before each person was constituted, both the nature of the elements from which human bodies would come and the parts of them from which he was going to take what he chose to constitute the human body. Clearly, then, even after the whole is dissolved, he will not be ignorant of where each of the parts he took to complete each body has gone. As far as the order of things that now prevails among us and our way of judging other matters is concerned, it is a greater thing to know beforehand what has not yet happened; but as far as the dignity and wisdom of God are concerned, both are natural to him, and it is as easy for him to know what has been dissolved as to know beforehand what has not yet happened.