Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
Read Chapter 15
Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul says this because the Corinthians will not want to listen to the false prophets once they realize that if they do so their dead, whom they love, will be taken from them. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished, i.e, who have died in faith, hope, and charity. If the body is not to rise again, but perishes outright at death, the soul too will perish: it cannot exist for ever without the body, for its nature is the "form" of the body. Unless, then, God take away by violence from the soul its nature and natural condition, He must restore to it its body.
And why speak I of you, says he, when all those also are perished, who have done all and are no longer subject to the uncertainty of the future? But by the expression, in Christ, he means either in the faith, or they who died for His sake, who endured many perils, many miseries, who walked in the narrow way.
Where are those foul-mouthed Manichees who say that by the resurrection here means the liberation from sin ? For these compact and continuous syllogisms, holding as they do also conversely, indicate nothing of what they say, but what we affirm. It is true, rising again is spoken of one who has fallen: and this is why he keeps on explaining, and says not only that He was raised, but adds this also, from the dead. And the Corinthians too doubted not of the forgiveness of sins, but of the resurrection of bodies.
But what necessity is there at all, that except mankind be not without sin, neither should Christ Himself be so? Whereas, if He were not to raise men up, it were natura...
