But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
Read Chapter 15
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Some may wonder how decayed bodies can become sound again, scattered members brought together, and destroyed parts restored. Yet no one seems to wonder how seeds softened and broken by the dampness and weight of the earth grow and become green again. Such seeds, of course, are rotted and dissolved by contact with the earth. But when the generative moisture of the soil imparts life to the buried and hidden seeds by a kind of lifegiving heat, they receive the animating force of the growing plant. Then gradually, nature raises from stalk the tender life called the growing ear, and, like a careful mother, wraps it in a sheath as a protection against its being nipped at this immature stage by the frost or scorched by the sun when the kernels are emerging, as it were, from early infancy.
How do the dead rise again? He now answers the objections these new teachers made against the resurrection. St. Chrysostom reduces them to these two questions: how is it possible for them to rise? and in what manner, or with what qualities, will they rise? To show the possibility, he brings the example of a grain of wheat, or of any seeds, which must be corrupted, and die as it were in the ground, and then is quite changed, comes up with a blade, a stalk, and an ear quite different from what it was when sown, and yet comes to be wheat again, or to be a tree that produces the same kind of fruit: so God can raise our bodies as he pleaseth. He also tells them that there are very different bodies, terrestrial, and celestial, some more, some less glorious, differing in beauty and other qualities, as God pleaseth. As the sun is brighter than the moon, and as one star is brighter than another, so shall it be at the general resurrection. But all the bodies of the elect shall be happily changed...
But some one will say, How are the dead raised? And with what manner of body do they come? Thou foolish one, that which you yourself sowest is not quickened, except it die.
Gentle and lowly as the apostle is to a great degree every where, he here adopts a style rather pungent, because of the impiety of the gainsayers. He is not however content with this, but he also employs reasons and examples, subduing thereby even the very contentious. And above he says, Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead; but here he solves an objection brought in by the Gentiles. And see how again he abates the vehemence of his censure; in that he said not, but perhaps you will say, but he set down the objector indefinitely, in order that, although employing his impetuous style with all freedom, he might not too severely wound his hearers. And he states two difficulties, one touching the manner of the resurrection, the other, the kind of bodies. For of both they on their part...
Why does Paul argue like this, instead of simply referring his hearers to the power of God as he does elsewhere? Here he is dealing with people who do not believe in what he is saying, so he gives them reasons for it.
The next question which the apostle has discussed equally relates to the body. But "some man will say, `How are the dead raised up? With what body do they come? '".
For useless must that conflict be deemed (which is sustained in a body) for which no resurrection is in prospect. "But some man will say, How are the dead to be raised? And with what body will they come? "
