With What Body the Dead Rise

…man came into being for incorruption, but also the account of the resurrection. For God does not bring about the resurrection as a punishment, but because of His own compassion.

But perhaps you will say this: “Yes, you are right; and from now on I give up the need to ask, ‘How are the dead raised?’ Yet it is necessary to know clearly ‘with what kind of body they come’ (1 Corinthians 15:35). For will this very body that comes from the earth and is held fast by corruption come back to life, or some other body beside it, though made from it?”

To this I would say at once that the right teaching of the faith brings us to the resurrection of this very flesh. For so Christ came back to life, “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). But since this teaching does not much please some, come, let us set out the argument they think sound, and then say what is fitting.

(Then, after setting out the fables of those who say that souls exist beforehand, he says:)

Then how is it that God takes pride in the making of man? For He says somewhere to the blessed Job, “Did you take clay of the earth and form a living creature, and set it on the earth endowed with speech?” (Job 38:14). For to make a rational living creature out of earth would, I think, go beyond all wonder. And how did the Creator bless man as soon as he had come into being and been formed from the earth, saying, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28)?

(And after saying much else against them, he goes on:)

The inspired Paul uses an excellent example. He says that the body falls into the earth like a grain, and that it will not rise just as it was sown, bare, but as if in a garment and covering of the things that usually grow on it, I mean stalk and leaves (1 Corinthians 15:36–37). For “God gives,” he says, “to each of the seeds its own body” (1 Corinthians 15:38).

Since he says that not all who have fallen asleep will come back to life in glory, even if all will in incorruption (for surely it is not fitting that the unrighteous and those who work wicked deeds should be crowned with the renown that comes from God), he usefully mentions different seeds for this reason, to which God also assigns, in whatever way He Himself may choose, a difference in this form, it may be, or in another. For he says, “And what you sow is not the body that is to be” (1 Corinthians 15:37), and, “There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies” (1 Corinthians 15:40).

The account is one, in that each is and is called a body; but in another respect it is divided into different kinds. The bodies of all will come back to life in incorruption, yet there will be some difference in the glory and in the covering that God may provide, as He assigns to each what each deserves. “But the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another” (1 Corinthians 15:40).

It should be known that two examples have just been set before us, I mean that of the grain and that which shows the difference in glory among the heavenly bodies; for the present he relates the likeness of the resurrection of the dead to the force of the first, and says next, “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:42). For just as a grain of wheat, cast bare and dead into the soil, springs up in a covering of body and with an added…