Sermons to the People 362.14–362.24

We could solve this question in this way and resist vain slanderers; yet it will be solved both in the way that allows a quick answer, and we shall then consider more carefully from what context the apostle's saying comes. I say, then, how we can answer most easily. What does the gospel contain? That Christ rose in the body in which he was buried: he was seen, he was handled, he said to the disciples when they thought he was a spirit, "Touch and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." What does the apostle say against this? "Flesh and blood," he says, "will not possess the kingdom of God." I embrace both, and I do not say that they conflict, lest I myself kick against the goad. How then do I embrace both? Quickly, as I said, I could answer in this way. The apostle says, "Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God by inheritance." He spoke rightly; for it belongs to the flesh not to possess but to be possessed. Your body does not possess anything, but your soul possesses through the body, and the soul possesses the body itself. If, then, the flesh rises in such a way as to be held, not to hold; to be possessed, not to possess; what wonder if flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God, since it will certainly be possessed? For the flesh possesses those who are not the kingdom of God but the kingdom of the devil, and who are therefore subject to the pleasures of the flesh. Hence too that paralytic was carried on his pallet; but when he was healed the Lord said to him, "Take up your pallet and go to your house." So, his paralysis healed, he holds his flesh and leads it where he will: he is not dragged by the flesh where he does not will, and he carries the body rather than being carried by the body. It is plain that in that resurrection the flesh will not have the pull of enticements to lead the soul, by certain ticklings and blandishments, where the soul does not will, the soul that is now often overcome and says: "I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and leading me captive in the law of sin which is in my members." The paralytic is still carried on his pallet; he does not yet carry it. Let him cry out, then, "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" Let the answer be given, "The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." When, then, we have risen, the flesh will not carry us, but we shall carry it; if we carry it, we shall possess it; if we possess it, we shall not be possessed by it; because, delivered from the devil, we are the kingdom of God; and so flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God. So let those slanderers fall silent, who are truly flesh and blood and can think of nothing except carnally. For about them too, persisting in that same prudence of the flesh for which they are rightly called flesh and blood, it could rightly be said, "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God." Let the question also be solved in this way: such men, who are called flesh and blood (for of such the apostle also says, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood"), unless they turn to the spiritual life and by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh, will not be able to possess the kingdom of God.

But what does the apostle mean, someone may say? For that sense is truer which is opened up by the context of the reading. So let us rather hear him, and from the whole surrounding context of Scripture let us see what he wanted understood in that place. For he says: "The first man from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven. As was the earthly one, so are the earthly; and as is the heavenly one, so are the heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven. This I say, brothers, that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God, nor corruption incorruption." Let us, then, look at each point. "The first man," he says, "from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven. As was the earthly one, so are the earthly," that is, all who are going to die; "and as is the heavenly one, so are the heavenly," that is, all who are going to rise. For the heavenly man has already risen and ascended into heaven; into him we are now incorporated by faith, so that he may be our head; and the members follow their head in their order, so that what was shown beforehand in the head may be shown in its time in the members. But now let us bear this by faith, so that in its time we may come to the reality itself and to sight. For so he says in another place: "If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things on earth." As, then, though we have not yet risen in ourselves as Christ has risen in the body, we are nevertheless said to have risen with Christ by faith, so he commands us meanwhile to bear by faith the image of the heavenly man, that is, of him who is already in heaven.

But if anyone asks why he said that the second man is not "in heaven" but "from heaven," when the Lord himself also received a body from the earth, since Mary was certainly descended from Adam and Eve, let him understand that the man is called earthly on account of earthly desire. That disposition is earthly by which human beings are born through the union of male and female, drawing even original sin from their parents; but the Lord's body was formed in the virgin's womb with no such disposition. So, although Christ took flesh from the earth, which the Holy Spirit is understood to signify when he says, "Truth has sprung from the earth," he is nevertheless called not an earthly but a heavenly man, and from heaven. For if he granted this to his faithful by grace, so that the apostle rightly says, "For our citizenship is in heaven," how much more is he himself, in whom there was never any sin, to be called a heavenly man, and from heaven? For it was because of sin that it was said to man, "You are earth, and to earth you shall go." That man, then, is most rightly called heavenly, from heaven, whose citizenship never left heaven, although the Son of God, having become also the son of man, took a body from the earth, that is, the form of a servant. For no one ascends except he who descended. For even though the others, to whom he grants it, ascend, or rather are lifted into heaven by his grace, even so it is he who ascends, because they become his body; and in this sense one ascends, since the apostle explains as the great sacrament in Christ and the Church the text where it is written, "And the two shall be in one flesh." Hence it is also said, "So they are no longer two, but one flesh." Therefore no one has ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven. For he added "who is in heaven" for this reason, so that no one would think his citizenship had left heaven when he appeared to men on earth in an earthly body. Therefore, as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven, meanwhile by faith, through which we have also risen with him; so that we may also lift up our heart on high, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; and therefore let us seek and set our minds on the things that are above, not on the things on earth.

But he was dealing with the resurrection of the body; for so he had set out the question: "But someone says, How do the dead rise? With what body do they come?" And that is why he had said, "The first man from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven. As was the earthly one, so are the earthly; and as is the heavenly one, so are the heavenly": so that we may hope that what went before in Christ's body will come to be in our body, and, though we have not yet received it in reality, may hold it meanwhile by faith. Therefore he had added, "As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven." And so that we would not believe that we shall rise to the kind of things we did corruptibly according to the first man, he added at once: "This I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God by inheritance." He wanted to show what he meant by flesh and blood: that by the name of flesh and blood he signifies not the form of the body itself but corruption, and that corruption will not exist then. For a body without corruption is not properly called flesh and blood, but body. If it is flesh, it is corruptible and mortal; but if it no longer dies, it is no longer corruptible; and therefore, since its form remains without corruption, it is called not flesh but body; and if it is called flesh, it is no longer called so properly, but because of a certain likeness of form. In the same way, perhaps, because of the same likeness, we can speak even of the flesh of angels, when they appeared to men as men, though they were body, not flesh, because the need that belongs to corruption was not in them. Since, then, by likeness we can call even a body that is no longer corrupted "flesh," the apostle, being careful, went on to explain what he meant by flesh and blood: that he said it with regard to corruption, not with regard to form. And he added at once, "Nor will corruption possess incorruption by inheritance"; as if to say, What I said, "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God," I said because corruption will not possess incorruption. [18] And so that no one would say, "If incorruption cannot be possessed by corruption, how then will our body be there?" hear what follows. It is as though someone said to the apostle: What is it, then, that you are saying? Have we believed in the resurrection of the flesh in vain? If flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God, we have believed in vain that our Lord rose from the dead in the body in which he was born and crucified, and in it ascended into heaven before the eyes of his disciples, the heaven from which he cried out to you, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" This objection occurred to Paul, the holy and blessed apostle, as he labored with devout love over his children, begotten in Christ through the gospel, with whom he was still in labor until Christ was formed again in them, that is, until they bore by faith the image of him who is from heaven. For he did not want them to remain in the ruinous error of thinking that in the kingdom of God, in that eternal life, they would do the kind of things they did in this life, in the pleasures of eating and drinking, of marrying, of taking wives and begetting children from them carnally; for these works belong to the corruption of the flesh, not to the form of the flesh itself. That we are not going to rise to such things, then, the Lord laid down, as I said a while ago, in the gospel reading that has just been read. For the Jews did believe in the resurrection of the flesh, but they thought it would be such that the life in the resurrection would be like the life they led in this world; and so, thinking carnally, they could not answer the Sadducees when these raised their question about the resurrection: whose wife would the woman be whom seven brothers had one after another, since each wished to raise up offspring for his dead brother from his wife? For the Sadducees were a sect of the Jews that did not believe in the resurrection. So the Jews, wavering and hesitating, could not answer the Sadducees who put this question, because they thought the kingdom of God could be possessed by flesh and blood, that is, incorruption by corruption. The Truth came; he is questioned by the Sadducees, who were deceived and deceivers; that question is put to the Lord. And the Lord, who knew what he was saying and wanted us to believe what we did not know, answers with the authority of his majesty what we are to believe; the apostle explained it as far as was given to him; let us understand it as far as we can. What then did the Lord say to the Sadducees? "You are wrong," he says, "knowing neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor take wives; for they do not begin to die, but they will be equal to the angels of God." Great is the power of God. Why do they not marry or take wives? Because they will not begin to die. For successors are needed only where there are those who pass away. There will be no such corruption there, then. That Lord ran through the ages of life from infancy to young manhood because he still bore the substance of mortal flesh; but since he rose at the age at which he was buried, do we believe that he is growing old in heaven? "Therefore," he says, "they will be equal to the angels of God." He removed the Jews' supposition and refuted the slanders of the Sadducees; for the Jews did believe that the dead would rise, but they thought carnally about the works to which they would rise. "They will be equal," he says, "to the angels of God." You have heard about the power of God; hear also about the Scriptures. "About the resurrection," he says, "have you not read how the Lord spoke to Moses from the bush, saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living."

That we shall rise, then, has been stated; that we rise to the life of angels we have heard from the Lord; and in what form we shall rise he himself showed in his resurrection. That this form will have no corruption, the apostle says: "This I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God by inheritance; nor will corruption possess incorruption by inheritance": to show that by the name of flesh and blood he meant the corruption of the mortal and animal body. Then he himself solves the question which anxious hearers might put to him; for he is more anxious about his children's understanding than the children are about their parents' words. So he goes on to say: "Behold, I tell you a mystery." Let your thoughts be quiet, O man, whoever you are. For you had begun to think from the apostle's words that human flesh does not rise, when you heard, "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God"; but lend your ear to the words that follow and correct the presumption of your thought. "Behold," he says, "I tell you a mystery: we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed." What is this? Change is either for the worse or for the better. If, then, change has been mentioned in such a way that we do not yet see what kind it will be, whether into something better or something worse, let him go on and explain it himself; why should we guess? And perhaps apostolic authority does not let you slip into error through human guesswork in your conjectures, and explains clearly what kind of change it wants understood. What then? Since he said, "We shall all rise, yet we shall not all be changed," I see that all will rise, both good and bad; but let us see who will be changed, and from that understand the change, whether it will be for the better or for the worse. For if this change belongs to the wicked, it will be for the worse; but if to the good, for the better. "In an atom," he says, "in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed." So this change will be for the better, since he says, "And we shall be changed"; but it has not yet been stated as fully as it should be how far our body is changed for the better. What that better is has not yet been said. For even when the body is changed from infancy to youth, it can be said to be changed for the better, though even then, while less weak, it is still weak and mortal.

Let us, then, go over each point more carefully. "In an atom," he says. It seems hard to people that the dead should rise; but it is wonderful how the apostle has removed every doubt and difficulty from the hearts of the faithful. You say, "The dead do not rise"; I say not only that the dead man rises, but that he rises with a speed greater than that with which you were conceived and born. For how much time passes before a man is formed in the womb, before he is completed, before he is born, before he grows strong through the succession of the ages of life! Is he perhaps going to rise like that? No: but "in an atom," he says. Many do not know what an atom is. Atom is named from tomē, which means cutting; atomos in Greek is what cannot be cut. But we speak of an atom in body and in time. We speak of it in body if something can be found which is held to be indivisible, some tiny body so small that there is nowhere left where it can be cut. An atom in time is a brief moment which has nowhere left where it can be divided. For example, so that even slower hearts may grasp what I say: there is a stone; divide it into parts, and divide the parts into pebbles, the pebbles into grains like grains of sand, and again divide the grains of sand into the finest dust, until, if you can, you reach some tiny particle that can no longer be divided. This is the atom in bodies. In time it is understood thus. A year, for example, is divided into months, months are divided into days, days can be further divided into hours, hours further into certain longer parts of hours which admit divisions, until you come to such a point of time, a drop of a moment as it were, that it cannot be stretched out by any tiny delay and therefore can no longer be divided: this is the atom of time. You said, then, that the dead do not rise: not only do they rise, but they rise with such speed that the resurrection of all the dead will take place in an atom of time. And to explain to you the speed of the atom, after saying "in an atom," he added at once how much action and motion can take place in an atom of time: "in the twinkling of an eye," he says. For he knew that he had spoken obscurely in saying "in an atom," and he wanted to say more plainly something that would be more easily understood. What is the twinkling, the stroke, of an eye? Not the movement by which we close or open the eye with the eyelids; by the stroke of the eye he means the sending out of the rays to see something. For as soon as you cast your gaze, the ray sent out reaches the sky, where we behold the sun and moon and stars and constellations, separated from the earth by so immense a distance. And by the last trumpet he means the last signal. "For the trumpet will sound," he says, "and the dead will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed." By "we" he certainly meant the faithful, those who rise first to eternal life. Therefore that change, because it belongs to the devout and the saints, will be for the better, not for the worse.

But what is this change? What does he mean by "we shall be changed"? Is the form that now exists lost, or only corruption, because of what was said, "Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, nor will corruption possess incorruption by inheritance"? So that this would not move the hearer to despair of the resurrection of the flesh, he added, "Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed." And so that we would not think the change would be for the worse: "And we," he says, "shall be changed." It remains, then, for him to say what kind of change it will be. "For this corruptible," he says, "must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality." If this corruptible is clothed with incorruption, and this mortal is clothed with immortality, the flesh will no longer be corruptible. If, then, the flesh will not be corruptible, the name of corruption will cease in flesh and blood, and the proper name of flesh and blood will cease too, because these are names of mortality. And if this is so, the flesh will both rise and, because it is changed so as to be incorrupt, flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God. But if anyone wants to understand that change as referring to those whom that day will find still alive, so that those who were already dead rise, while those who are still alive are changed, and the apostle is thought to have spoken in their person when he says, "And we shall be changed," the same reasoning will still follow, since that incorruption will surely belong to all, when this corruptible puts on incorruption and this mortal puts on immortality. "Then the word that is written will come to pass: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your contention? Where, O death, is your sting?" But a body that is no longer mortal is not properly called flesh and blood, which are earthly bodies; it is called body, which can now be called heavenly. So the same apostle said, speaking of the differences between kinds of flesh: "Not all flesh," he says, "is the same flesh. There is one for men, another for cattle, another for fish, another for birds, another for serpents." "And there are heavenly bodies," he says, "and earthly bodies." But he would by no means say "heavenly fleshes," though fleshes can be called bodies, earthly ones. For all flesh is body, but not every body is flesh; not only because a heavenly body is not called flesh, but because certain earthly things are not called flesh either, such as wood and stones and anything of that kind. In this way too, then, flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God: because the rising flesh will be changed into a body in which there will no longer be mortal corruption, and therefore not the name of flesh and blood either.

But pay attention, brothers, we beg you; this is not a matter to be taken lightly; our faith is at stake, and it must be guarded not so much against pagans as against certain perverse people who want to be called and seen as Christians. For even in the time of the apostles there were some who said that the resurrection had already taken place and who perverted the faith of some; of them the apostle says, "They have erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place; and they have overturned the faith of some." Not without reason does he say, not "They have strayed from the truth," but "concerning the truth"; yet they did not hold the truth. Death, then, is taken away and in a certain way will not exist, as the apostle says: "What is mortal will be swallowed up by life." For so it has also been said of the Lord that he swallowed up death. For death does not withdraw as though it had some substance of its own; but in the very body where it was it will cease to be, so that you see the form, you hold the form, you look for corruption and mortality and do not find them. Did corruption, then, go away somewhere? No: it was destroyed there, it was swallowed up there. That is why, after saying, "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality," he says, "then the word that is written will come to pass: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your contention? Where, O death, is your sting?" He does not say, "Death has departed in victory," but "Death is swallowed up in victory." How then did those people go astray concerning the truth? Because they spoke of one true resurrection but denied the other.

For there is a resurrection according to faith, in which everyone who believes rises in spirit. And indeed he will rise well in the body who first rose in the spirit. For those who have not first risen in spirit through faith will rise in the body not to that change in which all corruption will be taken up and swallowed, but to that penal wholeness. For the bodies of the wicked too will be whole; nothing in them will appear diminished; but the wholeness of the body will serve for punishment, and a kind of firmness of body, so to speak, a corruptible firmness: for where there can be pain, it cannot be said that there is no corruption; though that weakness does not give out under the pains, so that the pain itself may not die. For it is not unfittingly believed that the corruption itself is signified prophetically by the name of the worm, and the pain itself by the name of fire. But because the firmness will be so great that it will neither yield to the pains so as to die, nor be changed into incorruption, in which there is no pain, therefore it is written thus: "Their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched." But the change that will have no corruption will belong to the saints. It will belong, then, to those who now have the resurrection of the spirit through faith, of which resurrection the apostle says, "If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." As we die according to the spirit and rise according to the spirit, so afterwards we die according to the flesh and rise according to the flesh. Death according to the spirit is to stop believing the vain things one used to believe, to stop doing the evil things one used to do. Resurrection according to the spirit is to believe the saving things one did not believe, and to do the good things one did not do. One who thought earthly idols and figments were gods has come to know the one God and believed in him: he has died in idolatry and risen in the Christian faith. He was a drunkard; he is sober: he has died from drunkenness and risen in sobriety. So when one turns away from all evil works, a kind of death takes place in the soul, and it rises in its good works. "Put to death," says the apostle, "your members that are on earth: impurity, disturbance, evil desire, and greed," he says, "which is the service of idols." When these members have been put to death, then, we rise in the goods that are their opposites: in holiness, in tranquility, in love, in almsgiving. And as death according to the spirit precedes the resurrection according to the spirit, so death according to the flesh will precede the resurrection that is to come according to the flesh.

Let us know both, then, the spiritual and the bodily. To the spiritual belongs what was said, "Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead"; and this, "For those who sat in the shadow of death a light has dawned"; and what I mentioned a little before, "If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above." But to the bodily resurrection belongs what the apostle now says, after setting himself this question: "But someone says, How do the dead rise? With what body will they come?" He was dealing, then, with the resurrection of the body, in which the Lord went before his Church; and of this he says, "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality," because of what he had said: "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God." And in another place we have a most open testimony of the apostle Paul himself about the resurrection according to the spirit and the resurrection according to the flesh. For the mortal body, which is animated or was animated, is called flesh. So the apostle speaks thus: "If Christ is in you, the body is indeed dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness." Here the resurrection of the spirit, brought about through righteousness, is now understood: see whether a resurrection of the body is also to be hoped for. For he chose to call the mortal body not mortal but dead; and yet in what follows he makes clear that this is what he meant. So he goes on to say: "If, then, the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised our Lord Jesus will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you." Therefore those people went astray concerning the truth: they denied one resurrection. For if they denied it altogether, they would stray from the truth, not concerning the truth. But because they went astray concerning the truth, they confessed the one that takes place according to the spirit, but denied the other, which is hoped for through the resurrection of the flesh, saying that the resurrection had already taken place; and unless they said this so as to forbid belief in, and hope for, the one that will take place in the body, it would not be said of them, "They overturn the faith of some."