Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 86/87

Consider the manifold and varied beauty of heaven and earth and sea; the so great abundance and so wondrous loveliness of light itself; in the sun and moon and stars; in the shadowy depths of the woods; in the colors and fragrances of flowers; in the diversity and multitude of birds, chattering and brightly plumed; in the manifold form of so many and so great living creatures—of which those win the more admiration that are least in bulk (for we marvel more at the works of little ants and bees than at the immense bodies of whales)—and in the so vast spectacle of the sea itself, when it clothes itself, as if with robes, in diverse colors: now green, and that in many shades; now purple; now blue.

How delightful, moreover, is it to behold the sea even when it is stirred up, and how the sweetness of it grows greater therefrom, since it so soothes the onlooker that it does not toss and shake the voyager! What of the everywhere abundant store of foods against hunger? What of the diversity of flavors against loathing, poured forth by the riches of nature, not sought out by the art and toil of cooks? What aids, amid so many things, for guarding or recovering health! How welcome the alternation of day and night succeeding each other! How gentle the mildness of the breezes! In shrubs and flocks what great material for making garments! Who could recount them all?

But these things alone, which I have crowded together as it were into a single heap, if I wished to unfold and shake out, as if loosening tied-up bundles, how great a delay there would be for me in each single thing, in which very many things are contained! And all these are the consolations of the wretched and the condemned, not the rewards of the blessed. What then are those rewards, if these present things are so many and such and so great? What will He give to those whom He has predestined to life, who has given even these things to those whom He has predestined to death? What good things will He cause those to receive in that blessed life, for whose sake He willed His only-begotten Son in this wretched life to endure such great evils, even unto death? Whence the apostle, speaking of those very ones predestined to that kingdom, says:

'He who did not spare His own Son,' he says, 'but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?' When this promise shall be fulfilled, what shall we be! of what sort shall we be! What good things shall we receive in that kingdom, seeing that, when Christ died for us, we have already received such a pledge! Of what sort shall the spirit of man be, having no fault whatsoever—none under which it may lie, none to which it may yield, none against which it must contend even though laudably—perfected in most peaceful virtue! How great, how splendid, how certain shall be the knowledge of all things there, without any error or labor, where the wisdom of God shall be drunk from His own fountain itself, with the highest felicity, without any difficulty!

Of what sort shall the body be, which, being in every way subject to the spirit and sufficiently quickened by it, shall need no nourishment! For it shall not be a natural (animal) body, but a spiritual one, having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any carnal corruption. CHAPTER XXV. On the obstinacy of certain men who attack the resurrection of the flesh, which, as was foretold, the whole world believes. But concerning the goods of the soul, which the most blessed man shall enjoy after this life, the noble philosophers do not dissent from us: it is about the resurrection of the flesh that they contend, denying it as much as they can.

But many who believe have left only a very few who deny, and have been converted with faithful heart to Christ, who showed in His own resurrection that which seems absurd to these men—the learned and the unlearned, the wise of this world and the unwise. For the world believed this, which God foretold, who also foretold this very thing, that the world was going to believe it; nor was He compelled by the magic arts of Peter to foretell it so long beforehand, together with the praise of those who would believe. For He is that God whom—as I have already said several times, nor does it irk me to remind—when Porphyry confesses it and wishes to prove it by the oracles of their own gods, the very deities shudder with dread; whom he so praised that he called Him both God the Father and King.

For far be it that the things which He foretold should be understood in the way these men wish, who did not believe along with the world that which He foretold the world would believe. For why should it not rather be as the world was foretold so long beforehand that it would believe, and not as those very few prate, who refused to believe along with the world that which it was foretold would believe? For if they say that on this account these things are to be believed in another way, lest, if they should say that what was written is vain, they do injury to that God to whom they bear so great a testimony: they do Him an injury altogether as great, or even graver, if they say these things are to be understood otherwise, not as the world believed them—the world which He Himself praised as being about to believe, He Himself promised, He Himself brought to fulfillment.

For is He unable to bring it about that the flesh should rise again and live forever, or is it on this account not to be believed that He will do it, because it is evil and unworthy of God? But concerning His omnipotence, by which He does so many and such great incredible things, we have already said much. If they wish to find something which the Omnipotent cannot do, they have it without fail: I will tell it—He cannot lie. Let us therefore believe what He can do by not believing what He cannot do. Not believing, then, that He can lie, let them believe that He will do what He has promised He will do, and let them believe it just as the world believed it—the world which He foretold would believe, which He praised as being about to believe, which He promised would believe, which He has now shown has believed. But whence do they demonstrate that this is evil?

There will be no corruption there, which is the body's evil. Concerning the order of the elements we have already disputed; concerning the other conjectures of men we have said enough; how great a facility of motion there will be in the incorruptible body we have, as I think, sufficiently shown in the thirteenth book, drawing from the temperament of present good health, which is in no way to be compared with that immortality. Let those read the earlier parts of this work who either have not read them or wish to recall what they have read. CHAPTER XXVI. How Porphyry's definition, by which he thinks every body must be fled from by the blessed souls, is destroyed by the very opinion of Plato, who says that the supreme God promised to the gods that they would never be stripped of their bodies.

But Porphyry says, they object, that in order for the soul to be blessed, every body must be fled from. It profits nothing, therefore, that we have said the body will be incorruptible, if the soul will not be blessed unless it has fled every body. But I have already, even on this point, disputed in the aforementioned book as much as was needful; yet here I will recall only one thing from it. Let Plato, the master of all these men, amend his books and say that their gods, in order to be blessed, will flee their bodies, that is, will die—those gods whom he said were enclosed in heavenly bodies; to whom, nevertheless, God, by whom they were made, promised immortality, that is, eternal continuance in those same bodies—this being not from their nature possessing it, but from His own counsel prevailing—so that they might be secure.

Here he also overturns that which they say—that because it is impossible, therefore the resurrection of the flesh is not to be believed. For most plainly, according to that same philosopher, where God who was not made promised immortality to the gods made by Himself, He said He would do what is impossible. For thus Plato narrates Him to have spoken: 'Since you have come to be,' He says, 'you cannot be immortal and indissoluble;

yet you shall not be dissolved, nor shall any fates of death destroy you, nor shall they be more potent than my counsel, which is a greater bond unto your perpetuity than those by which you were bound together.' If those who hear these things are not only absurd but deaf, they surely do not doubt that to the gods made by that God who made them, there was promised, according to Plato, that which is impossible. For he who says: 'You indeed cannot be immortal, but by my will you shall be immortal,' what else does he say than 'that which cannot be done you shall nevertheless be, by my doing'? He therefore shall raise up flesh incorruptible, immortal, spiritual, who, according to Plato, promised He would do what is impossible.

Why still do they cry out that what God promised, what the world believed when God promised it—the world which itself also was promised would believe—is impossible, seeing that we cry out that God, who according to Plato also does impossible things, will do this? Therefore, in order that souls may be blessed, every body is not to be fled from, but an incorruptible body is to be received. And in what more fittingly will they rejoice in an incorruptible body, than in that in which, when corruptible, they groaned? For thus there will not be in them that dire desire which Virgil set down out of Plato, where he says: 'And again they begin to wish to return into bodies';

so, I say, they will not have the desire of returning to bodies, since they will have with them the bodies into which they desire to return, and will so have them that they may never not have them, never lay them aside at all by any death even for ever so small a time. CHAPTER XXVII. On the contrary definitions of Plato and Porphyry, in which, if each yielded to the other, neither would deviate from the truth. Plato and Porphyry each said certain particular things which, if they could have shared between themselves, they would perhaps have become Christians. Plato said that souls cannot be without bodies for eternity. For this reason he said that even the souls of the wise, after however long a time, would nevertheless return to bodies.

Porphyry, on the other hand, said that the most purified soul, when it has returned to the Father, will never return to these evils of the world. And accordingly, that which Plato saw truly, if he had granted to Porphyry—that the most purified souls even of the just and the wise would return to human bodies; and again, that which Porphyry saw truly, if he had granted to Plato—that holy souls would never return to the miseries of a corruptible body; so that not each one said each of these single things, but both, and each, said both: I think they would have seen it then to follow that souls would both return to bodies and receive such bodies in which they would live blessedly and immortally. For according to Plato even holy souls will return to human bodies;

according to Porphyry, holy souls will not return to the evils of this world: let Porphyry therefore say with Plato: 'They will return to bodies'; let Plato say with Porphyry: 'They will not return to evils': and they will agree that souls return to those bodies in which they suffer no evils. And these will be none other than those which God promises, He who is about to make blessed souls eternal together with their own eternal flesh. For this, as far as I judge, both would now easily grant us: that they who confess that the souls of the saints are to return to immortal bodies should allow them to return to their own bodies, in which they endured the evils of this age, in which they piously and faithfully worshiped God that they might be freed from these evils. CHAPTER XXVIII.

What Plato, or Labeo, or even Varro could have contributed to themselves toward the true faith of the resurrection, if their opinions had come together into one judgment. Some of our own people, on account of a certain most distinguished manner of speaking and on account of some things which he truly perceived, being lovers of Plato, say that he held something similar to us even concerning the resurrection of the dead. Tully indeed touches on this in his books On the Republic in such a way that he affirms Plato wished to say it rather in jest than because it was true. For he brings in a man who had come back to life and had recounted certain things which agreed with the Platonic disputations.

Labeo also says that two men died on one day and met each other at a certain crossroads, then were bidden to return to their own bodies, and resolved among themselves that they would live as friends, and that so it came to pass, until afterward they died. But these authors narrated that such a resurrection of the body had taken place as was that of those whom we know to have risen again and to have been restored indeed to this life, but not in such a way that they would not die thereafter. But Marcus Varro sets down something more marvelous in the books which he wrote On the Race of the Roman People, whose very words I have thought ought to be set down. 'Certain astrologers,' he says, 'have written that there is in the rebirth of men what the Greeks call palingenesis;

by this they wrote that it is accomplished in the number of four hundred and forty years, that the same body and the same soul, which had at some time been joined together in a man, should come together again into the same conjunction.' This Varro indeed, or those astrologers whoever they were (for he did not disclose their names, whose opinion he mentioned), said something which, although it be false (for when souls have once returned to the same bodies which they bore, they will never afterward leave them), nevertheless plucks away and destroys many of the arguments of that impossibility by which these men prate against us.

For those who hold or held this view did not think it impossible that corpses which had dissolved into airs, into dust, into ashes, into fluids, into the bodies of feeding beasts or even of men themselves, should return again to that which they had been.

Wherefore Plato and Porphyry, or rather whoever love them and are still living, if they agree with us that holy souls also are to return to bodies, as Plato says, yet not to return to any evils, as Porphyry says—so that from these there may follow what the Christian faith proclaims, namely that they will receive such bodies in which they may live happily forever without any evil—let them also take this from Varro, that they return to the same bodies in which they formerly were, and among them the whole question of the resurrection of the flesh unto eternity will be resolved. CHAPTER XXIX. On the quality of the vision by which the saints will see God in the age to come.

Now then let us see, as far as the Lord deigns to help, what the saints will be doing in their immortal and spiritual bodies, their flesh now living not carnally but spiritually. And indeed of what sort that action—or rather that rest and repose—will be, if I wish to speak the truth, I do not know. For I have never seen it through the senses of the body. But if I should say that I have seen it with the mind, that is, with the understanding, how great is, or what is, our understanding in comparison with that excellence? For there is the peace of God, which, as the apostle says, surpasses all understanding; whose, if not ours, or perhaps also that of the holy angels? for surely not God's own.

If therefore the saints are to live in the peace of God, surely they are to live in that peace which surpasses all understanding. That it surpasses ours, indeed, is not in doubt; but if it surpasses also that of the angels, so that he who says 'all understanding' seems not to have excepted even them: according to this we must understand it to be said because the peace of God, by which God Himself is at peace, as God knows it, we cannot so know it, nor can any angels. Therefore it surpasses all understanding, with no doubt save His own. But because we too, after our own measure, are made partakers of His peace, we shall obtain in ourselves and among ourselves and with Him the highest peace of which we are capable, as far as our highest is concerned: in this manner, after their own measure, the holy angels know it;

but men now far below, however much they may excel in advancement of mind. For it must be considered how great a man it was who said: 'We know in part and we prophesy in part, until that which is perfect shall come'; and: 'We see now through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face.' Thus already do the holy angels see, who are also called our angels, because, having struggled out from the power of darkness and, having received the pledge of the Spirit, having been translated to the kingdom of Christ, we have already begun to belong to those angels with whom we shall share that holy and most sweet city of God, common to us, concerning which we have already written so many books. So therefore they are our angels, who are the angels of God, just as Christ, the Christ of God, is ours. They are God's, because they did not forsake God;

they are ours, because they have begun to have us as their fellow citizens. But the Lord Jesus said: 'See that you despise not one of these little ones. For I say to you, that their angels in heaven always behold the face of my Father, who is in heaven.' As therefore they see, so also shall we be going to see; but not yet do we so see. On account of which the apostle says that which I said a little before: 'We see now through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face.' Therefore that vision is reserved for us as the reward of faith, of which John the apostle also, speaking, says: 'When He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'

But the face of God is to be understood as His manifestation, not some such member as we have in the body and call by this name. Wherefore, when it is asked of me what the saints will be doing in that spiritual body, I do not say what I now see, but I say what I believe, according to that which I read in the psalm: 'I believed, therefore have I spoken.' I say therefore: They will see God in the body itself; but whether through it—as now through the body we see the sun, the moon, the stars, the sea and the earth and the things that are in it—is no small question. For it is hard to say that the saints will then have such bodies that they cannot close and open their eyes when they will;

but harder still to say that there whoever closes his eyes will not see God. For if the prophet Elisha, absent in body, saw his servant Gehazi receiving the gifts which Naaman the Syrian gave him—Naaman, whom the said prophet had cleansed from the deformity of leprosy—which gifts the worthless servant thought he had secretly taken with his master not seeing: how much more in that spiritual body will the saints see all things, not only if they close their eyes, but even from where they are absent in body! For then will be perfected that of which the apostle, speaking, says: 'We know in part and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect shall come, that which is in part shall be done away.'

Then, that he might show by some kind of similitude how far this life is distant from that which is to come—the life not of any sort of men, but even of those who here are endowed with pre-eminent holiness—he says: 'When I was a child, I understood as a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I did away with the things that were of a child. We see now through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I also am known.' If therefore in this life, where the prophecy of wondrous men is to be compared to that life as children to a young man, Elisha nevertheless saw his servant receiving the gifts, where he himself was not:

will it then be, when that which is perfect shall have come, and the corruptible body no longer weighs down the soul, but the incorruptible one hinders nothing, that those saints will need bodily eyes for those things which are to be seen—the eyes which Elisha, absent, did not need for seeing his servant? For according to the Septuagint translators these are the prophet's words to Gehazi: 'Did not my heart go with you, when the man turned from his chariot to meet you, and you took the money?' and the rest; but as the presbyter Jerome translated from the Hebrew: 'Was not my heart present,' he says, 'when the man returned from his chariot to meet you?' With his own heart, therefore, the prophet said he had seen this, being aided indeed marvelously and, as none doubts, divinely.

But how much more will all then abound in this gift, when God will be all in all! Yet those bodily eyes also will have their function and will be in their place, and the spirit will use them through the spiritual body. For neither did that prophet, because he did not need them to see the absent man, fail to use them for seeing things present; which things he could nevertheless see with his spirit even if he closed those eyes, just as he saw things absent, where he himself was not with them. Far be it therefore that we should say those saints in that life will not see God with closed eyes, whom they will always see with the spirit. But whether they will see Him also through the eyes of the body when they have them open, that is the question.

For if in the spiritual body the very eyes also, though spiritual, will be able to do only as much as these can which we now have: then without doubt God will not be able to be seen through them. They will therefore be of a far other power, if through them that incorporeal nature will be seen, which is not contained in a place, but is everywhere whole. For not because we say that God is both in heaven and on earth (since He Himself says through the prophet: 'I fill heaven and earth') are we going to say that He has one part in heaven and another on earth; but He is whole in heaven, whole on earth, not at alternating times, but both at once, which no corporeal nature can do.

The power of those eyes, then, will be more excellent—not that they may see more keenly than certain serpents or eagles are reported to see (for however great the sharpness of their sight, those same animals can see nothing else than bodies), but that they may see even incorporeal things. And perhaps this great power of discerning was granted for an hour even in this mortal body to the eyes of the holy man Job, when he said to God: 'By the hearing of the ear I heard You before, but now my eye sees You; therefore I have despised myself and wasted away, and I have esteemed myself dust and ashes'—although nothing here prevents the eye of the heart from being understood, concerning which eyes the apostle says: 'Having the eyes of your heart enlightened.'

But that they themselves will see God, when He shall be seen, no Christian doubts who faithfully accepts what that divine Master says: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' But whether He will be seen there also with corporeal eyes, this is what we are debating in this question. For that which is written: 'And all flesh shall see the salvation of God,' can be understood without the knot of any difficulty as if it had been said: 'And every man shall see the Christ of God,' who was indeed seen in the body and will be seen in the body, when He shall judge the living and the dead. And that He Himself is the salvation of God, there are also many other testimonies of the Scriptures;

but more evidently do the words of that venerable old man Simeon declare it, who, when he had received the infant Christ into his hands, said: 'Now You dismiss Your servant, Lord, according to Your word in peace, for my eyes have seen Your salvation.' That also which the aforementioned Job said, as it is found in the copies which are from the Hebrew: 'And in my flesh I shall see God,' did indeed without doubt prophesy the resurrection of the flesh, yet he did not say: 'Through my flesh.' And if indeed he had said this, God Christ could be understood, who through the flesh will be seen in the flesh; but as it is, it can also be taken thus: 'In my flesh I shall see God,' as if he had said: 'In my flesh I shall be, when I shall see God.' And that also which the apostle says:

'Face to face,' does not compel us to believe that we are going to see God through this corporeal face, where the corporeal eyes are, whom we shall see with the spirit without intermission. For unless there were also a face of the inner man, the same apostle would not say: 'But we, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord'; nor do we otherwise understand that which is sung in the psalm: 'Come to Him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed.' For it is by faith that one comes to God, which faith is established to be of the heart, not of the body.

But because we do not know how great accessions the spiritual body will have (for we speak of a matter not yet experienced), where the authority of the divine Scriptures does not present itself and come to our aid in something which cannot be understood otherwise, it is necessary that there befall us that which is read in the book of Wisdom: 'The thoughts of mortals are timid, and our foresight uncertain.' For that reasoning of the philosophers, by which they argue that intelligible things are so seen by the gaze of the mind, and sensible, that is, corporeal, things by the sense of the body, that neither can the mind behold intelligible things through the body nor corporeal things through itself—if it could be most certain to us, then it would certainly be sure that God can in no way be seen through the eyes even of a spiritual body.

But both true reason and prophetic authority deride this reasoning. For who would be so averse from the truth as to dare to say that God does not know these corporeal things? Does He then have a body, through whose eyes He can learn them? Then that which we said a little before concerning the prophet Elisha—does it not sufficiently indicate that corporeal things can be discerned even by the spirit, not through the body? For when that servant received the gifts, it was assuredly done corporeally; which thing, nevertheless, the prophet saw not through the body, but through the spirit. As therefore it is established that bodies are seen by the spirit, what if the power of the spiritual body will be so great that the spirit also will be seen by the body? For God is a Spirit.

Furthermore, his own life, by which one now lives in the body and animates these earthly members and makes them living, each man knows by an inner sense, not through the corporeal eyes; but the lives of others, although they are invisible, he sees through the body. For whence do we distinguish living bodies from non-living ones, except that we see at once both the bodies and the lives, which we cannot see except through the body? But lives without bodies we do not see with corporeal eyes.

Wherefore it can come about, and is exceedingly credible, that we shall thus see the worldly bodies of the new heaven and the new earth, so that we shall see God everywhere present and governing even all corporeal things, with the clearest distinctness, through the bodies which we shall bear and which we shall behold, wherever we shall turn our eyes—not as now the invisible things of God are seen, understood through those things which are made, through a glass in a riddle and in part, where faith, by which we believe, avails more in us than the appearance of corporeal things which we discern through corporeal eyes.