It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
Read Chapter 15
Ambrosiaster
AD 400
The body is sown in dishonor because it is placed in a coffin where it rots and is eaten by worms. But when it rises again, it will do so in glory, and all trace of this dishonor will vanish. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
We will still be bodies, so vivified by the spirit, however, as to retain the substance of the flesh without suffering the accidents of sluggishness and mortality.
It is sown in dishonour. Man"s body when it is buried and thrown like seed into the ground, is base, thick, heavy, opaque.
It is raised in glory. It will rise glorious clear, resplendent. The Apostle here strikes at another root of their error. There were some who at that time denied the resurrection of the body on the ground that the body, as being heavy and fleshy, was unfitted to be the home of the soul in bliss, and to enjoy the Divine life, as S. Dionysius testifies when refuting them (Eccles. Hierarch. c7). The Apostle cuts this away by declaring that to the soul in glory a corresponding glorified body must be given.
It is sown in weakness. Is weak, slow, inert when it dies and is buried.
It is raised in power. Powerful, quick, agile.
When the body formed by the copulation of male and female is sown, dishonor and weakness will be in it because it is the body of a perishing soul and shares its characteristics. But when it rises again by the power of God, it appears as a spiritual body, having imperishability, power and honor. .
But what is that which, like a grain of wheat, is sown in the earth and decays, unless it be the bodies which are laid in the earth, into which seeds are also cast? And for this reason he said, "It is sown in dishonour, it rises in glory.".
For what is more ignoble than dead flesh? Or, on the other hand, what is more glorious than the same when it arises and partakes of in corruption? "It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: "
It is sown in weakness. For before thirty days the whole is gone, and the flesh cannot keep itself together nor hold out for one day. It is raised in power. For there shall nothing prevail against it for all the future.
Here is why he stood in need of those former analogies, lest many on hearing of these things, that they are raised in incorruption and glory and power, might suppose that there is no difference among those who rise again. For all indeed rise again, both in power and in incorruption; and in this glory of their incorruption yet are not all in the same state of honor and safety.
