Annotatio CXLVIII

”The wicked shall not rise again in judgment.” — Psalm 1:5

Origen, in the commentaries on the Psalms — as Methodius, bishop of Olympus in Lycia, in the dialogue whose title is Aglaophon, and Epiphanius in the second book of the Panarion report — examining this little verse, taught that the resurrection of our body will be not in the [self-same] individual, but only in the same species;¹ and this he tried to establish by the testimony of Paul, who, in the epistle to the Corinthians, depicted the image of the body to rise again by the example of a sown grain, saying: “Thou sowest not the body that shall be, but a bare grain — as, for instance, of wheat; but God gives it a body as he wills.” By which likeness the Apostle wished to signify that, just as the ear of corn, rising from the grain, differs from it in magnitude, figure, and reality, although it partakes the same species with it: so the body in the resurrection shall rise as another from that which is sown in death — although the same species remains in it. To this testimony of Paul he added also a reasoning of this kind: “Since in the present life we do not carry about the same body even for the space of two days, how can it be that in the future life we should rise again with this very body?” And that not even for a brief time does the same body remain in us — and that the same material substance of the body [does not remain] — the proof (he says) is mortal living beings, which, as the lost flesh and humors of the body decay, restore [them] with new food daily taken in, and, the old being changed into new flesh, replace and renew the body. Wherefore the animal body was not undeservedly called by the Greeks ῥεῖθος,² that is, a river or stream, because — just as in a river, the prior waves departing, others succeed continually one after another — so in our body, in place of that substance of flesh and humor which is perpetually separated off and flows away, new material of flesh and blood is superinduced, though the same species always remains. But also, in the commentaries on Psalm 65,³ weighing that sentence, “We have passed through water and fire,” etc., he expressed this very change of the body by the example of a wineskin: which, if anyone gradually empty and gradually fill — always adding as much water as is poured out — it is necessary that the water contained in the skin never be the very same, but always vary, although the same figure and species of the skin always remains. These things of Origen [report] Methodius and Epiphanius. But since the blessed martyr Pamphilus, in the Apology which he published for Origen, in the seventh proposition most copiously shows that Origen, in very many places — and chiefly in the exposition of this Psalm and verse — openly and magnificently preached the resurrection of our body in the same individual, it will be credible that these [contrary] things were either furtively intruded into this passage by the malevolent, or were written by the author himself not from his own person, but from that of an adversary.

To that [argument], therefore, which is set forth against the right faith of the resurrection, Methodius, in the Aglaophon, briefly responds: that the likeness of Paul is not to be accommodated to the resurrection of bodies in every way, but only in this part — that, just as wheat is not reborn, nor rises into a new life, unless first, cast into the earth, it be corrupted (Christ saying, “Unless the grain of wheat, cast into the ground, die, it beareth no fruit,” etc.),⁴ so also our bodies, unless they first have died and been dissolved into the earth, do not rise again, nor revive unto an easier life. But when, from the assiduous transmutation of nourishment into the body, a change of the [self-same] individual body is inferred, Methodius judges this to be wrongly concluded: because, although the nutriments daily taken are turned into new flesh, which fill the place of the lost flesh, nevertheless the man does not cease [to be] the same the same [man] in number who he was before. For it suffices, for the preserving of the [self-same] individual identity of the same man, that his more powerful and more excellent parts persist without any vicissitude of change,⁵ and that the other fluxible parts, which continually flow into the body, preserve the figure, site, order, and other qualities of the departing parts. Wherefore, since the soul — the nobler and better portion of man — always remains the same, and the other parts, coming in as reinforcements to the body, retain the site, figure, order, and pristine qualities of the passing parts (indeed, even the very scars of wounds, and the traces of ulcers, and the mutilations of members, endure in bodies through every age): it follows that the [self-same] individual subsistence of man is the same in number up to the end of mortal life — after which the soul, again, in the consummation of the age, shall by divine power return to the body [that is] the same in number, beyond every law and order of nature, resuming its own proper body.