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| Whether the Bodies of Women Shall Retain Their Own Sex in the Resurrection.
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Chapter 17.—Whether the Bodies of
Women Shall Retain Their Own Sex in the Resurrection.
From the words, “Till we all come
to a perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of
Christ,”1634
and from
the words, “Conformed to the image of the Son of God,”1635
some
conclude that women shall not rise women, but that all shall be
men, because
God made man only of earth, and
woman of the man. For my part, they seem to be wiser who make no
doubt that both sexes shall rise. For there shall be no lust,
which is now the cause of confusion. For before they sinned, the
man and the woman were naked, and were not ashamed. From those
bodies, then, vice shall be withdrawn, while nature shall be
preserved. And the sex of woman is not a vice, but nature. It
shall then indeed be superior to carnal intercourse and
child-bearing; nevertheless the female members shall remain adapted
not to the old uses, but to a new beauty, which, so far from
provoking lust, now extinct, shall excite praise to the wisdom and
clemency of God, who both made what was not and delivered from
corruption what He made. For at the beginning of the human race
the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the man while he
slept; for it seemed fit that even then Christ and His Church
should be foreshadowed in this event. For that sleep of the man
was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the
cross, was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and
water, and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church
is “built up.” For Scripture used this very word, not saying
“He formed” or “framed,” but “built her up into a
woman;”1636
whence
also the apostle speaks of the edification of the body of
Christ,1637
which is
the Church. The woman, therefore, is a creature of God even as
the man; but by her creation from man unity is commended; and the
manner of her creation prefigured, as has been said, Christ and the
Church. He, then, who created both sexes will restore both.
Jesus Himself also, when asked by the Sadducees, who denied the
resurrection, which of the seven brothers should have to wife the
woman whom all in succession had taken to raise up seed to their
brother, as the law enjoined, says, “Ye do err, not knowing the
Scriptures nor the power of God.”1638
And though it was a fit
opportunity for His saying, She about whom you make inquiries shall
herself be a man, and not a woman, He said nothing of the kind; but
“In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”1639
They
shall be equal to the angels in immortality and happiness, not in
flesh, nor in resurrection, which the angels did not need, because
they could not die. The Lord then denied that there would be in
the resurrection, not women, but marriages; and He uttered this
denial in circumstances in which the question mooted would have
been more easily and speedily solved by denying that the female sex
would exist, if this had in truth been foreknown by Him. But,
indeed, He even affirmed that the sex should exist by saying,
“They shall not be given in marriage,” which can only apply to
females; “Neither shall they marry,” which applies to males.
There shall therefore be those who are in this world accustomed to
marry and be given in marriage, only they shall there make no such
marriages.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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