All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fish, and another of birds.
Read Chapter 15
Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Let the Sophists explain this if they can! All the philosophers of this world are unwilling to submit their minds to the law of God in order to believe in him. Instead they confound one another with diverse and mutually contradictory theories, none of which can be proved. God, on the other hand, does not argue. Instead, he demonstrates his power by raising Christ from the dead. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
Whatever bodily or seminal causes may play a part in reproduction, by the intermingling of the two sexes, or in animals, or even by the influence of angels, and whatever longings or emotions of the mother may affect the features or the hue while the fetus is soft and pliable, nevertheless every nature as such, however affected by circumstances, is created wholly by the supreme God. It is the hidden and penetrating power of God’s irresistible presence that gives being to every creature that can be said to be, whatever its genus and species may be. For without his creative act, a nature would not only not be in this or that genus. It simply could not have being at all.
All flesh is not the same flesh. He goes on to prove what he has said, viz, that God gives to each seed its own body as He hath pleased and determined. He proves it by analogy. "God," he says, "gives one flesh to man—his own, another to beasts, another to fishes, another to birds. He gives one body to the heavens and the stars, and another to things on earth." Song of Solomon , too, to the blessed in the resurrection, which will be a kind of regeneration and new creation, will God give their own body, such as He sees fit to give, and such as is becoming to men beatified and glorified. He will give to each as he had deserved; for there is a similitude and proportion between nature and merit. Such a nature demands such a body; so such a degree of merit demands a correspondingly glorified body: the less the merit, the less glorified the body to be received; the more the merit, the more the glory of the body.
All flesh is not the same flesh. For why speak I, says he, in respect of seeds? In respect of bodies let us agitate this point, concerning which we are discoursing now. Wherefore also he adds, and says,
But there is one flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of birds, and another of fishes.
Here Paul distinguishes different kinds of resurrection. Do not suppose that just because grain is sown and it all comes up as ears of corn that therefore every resurrection will be the same in honor. For even in the world of seeds, some are more valuable than others.
"there is one kind of flesh of men, whilst there is another of beasts, and (another) of birds; that there are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial; and that there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars".
), "another flesh of birds "(that is, the martyrs which essay to mount up to heaven), "another of fishes "(that is, those whom the water of baptism has submerged).
