The world's end and the body's resurrection

As for the burning of the world, to refuse to believe that fire falls either unforeseen or with difficulty is a common error. Who among the wise doubts, who does not know, that everything which has arisen passes away, and everything which has been made is destroyed? The Stoics hold it as a settled opinion that the sky too, with everything contained in the sky, will pass into the force of fire just as it began, if the sweet water of the springs should cease to nourish the seas; because when the moisture is consumed, this whole world catches fire. The Epicureans hold the same view about the burning up of the elements and the ruin of the world. Plato speaks: he says that parts of the world are now flooded, now burn in alternating turns, and although he said that the world itself was made perpetual and indissoluble, he nevertheless added that for God its maker alone it is both dissoluble and mortal. So it is no wonder if this mass is destroyed by the one by whom it was built. You notice that the philosophers discuss the same things we say, not because we have followed in their footsteps, but because they have imitated the shadow of interpolated truth from the divine predictions of the prophets.

So also the more distinguished of the wise, Pythagoras first and chiefly Plato, handed down the condition of being reborn with a corrupted and halved faith: for when bodies are dissolved, they claim that souls alone remain forever and often pass over into other new bodies. To twist the truth, they add this too: that the souls of humans return into cattle, birds, and beasts. That view deserves not the serious study of a philosopher but the mockery of a mime. But for our purpose it is enough that even in this your wise men agree with us in some measure.

For who is so foolish or brutish as to dare to deny that a human being, since he could first be formed by God, can also be formed again? That there is nothing after death, and that there was nothing before birth? Just as it was possible to be born from nothing, so it is possible to be restored from nothing. Indeed, it is more difficult for what does not exist to begin than for what has existed to be repeated. Do you believe that anything is lost to God if it is withdrawn from our dull eyes? Every body, whether it dries into dust or dissolves into moisture or is pressed into ash or thinned into vapor, is withdrawn from us, but it is preserved for God, the guardian of the elements. Nor do we fear, as you believe, any loss from burial; rather, we practice the old and better custom of interment.

See, indeed, how all nature meditates on the resurrection that will be for our comfort. The sun sinks and is born again, the stars glide away and return, flowers die and revive, trees grow green again after old age, seeds do not grow green again unless they are corrupted: so the body in the tomb is like trees in winter: they hide their greenness with a pretended dryness. Why are you in a hurry for it to revive and return while winter is still raw? We must wait for the spring of the body as well. Nor am I unaware that many, conscious of their deserts, prefer to be nothing after death rather than to believe: they would rather be utterly extinguished than restored for punishment. Their error is increased both by the license allowed in this world and by God's great patience, whose judgment is the more just the slower it is.