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| To those who say, “If the resurrection is a thing excellent and good, how is it that it has not happened already, but is hoped for in some periods of time?”
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XXII. To those who say,
“If the resurrection is a thing excellent and good, how is it
that it has not happened already, but is hoped for in some periods of
time?”1689
| 1689 Otherwise Chap. xxiii. The title in the Bodleian ms. of the Latin version is:—“That when the
generation of man is finished, time also will come to an end.”
Some mss. of the Latin version make the first
few words part of the preceding chapter. |
1. Let us give our attention,
however, to the next point of our discussion. It may be that some one,
giving his thought wings to soar towards the sweetness of our hope,
deems it a burden and a loss that we are not more speedily placed in
that good state which is above man’s sense and knowledge, and is
dissatisfied with the extension of the time that intervenes between him
and the object of his desire. Let him cease to vex himself like a child
that is discontented at the brief delay of something that gives him
pleasure; for since all things are governed by reason and wisdom, we
must by no means suppose that anything that happens is done without
reason itself and the wisdom that is therein.
2. You will say then, What is
this reason, in accordance with which the change of our painful life to
that which we desire does not take place at once, but this heavy and
corporeal existence of ours waits, extended to some determinate time,
for the term of the consummation of all things, that then man’s
life may be set free as it were from the reins, and revert once more,
released and free, to the life of blessedness and
impassibility?
3. Well, whether our answer is
near the truth of the matter, the Truth Itself may clearly know; but at
all events what occurs to our intelligence is as follows. I take up
then once more in my argument our first text:—God says,
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and God
created man, in the image of God created He him1690
.” Accordingly, the Image of God, which
we behold in universal humanity, had its consummation then1691
| 1691 This
Realism is expressed even more strongly in the De Animâ et
Resurrectione. | ; but Adam as yet was not; for the thing
formed from the earth is called Adam, by etymological nomenclature, as
those tell us who are acquainted with the Hebrew tongue—wherefore
also the apostle, who was specially learned in his native tongue, the
tongue of the Israelites, calls the man “of the earth1692
” χοϊκός, as
though translating the name Adam into the Greek word.
4. Man, then, was made in the
image of God; that is, the universal nature, the thing like God; not
part of the whole, but all the fulness of the nature together was so
made by omnipotent wisdom. He saw, Who holds all limits in His grasp,
as the Scripture tells us which says, “in His hand are all the
corners of the earth1693
,” He saw,
“Who knoweth all things” even “before they be1694
,” comprehending them in His knowledge,
how great in number humanity will be in the sum of its individuals. But
as He perceived in our created nature the bias towards evil, and the
fact that after its voluntary fall from equality with the angels it
would acquire a fellowship with the lower nature, He mingled, for this
reason, with His own image, an element of the irrational (for the
distinction of male and female does not exist in the Divine and blessed
nature);—transferring, I say, to man the special attribute of the
irrational formation, He bestowed increase upon our race not according
to the lofty character of our creation; for it was not when He made
that which was in His own image that He bestowed on man the power of
increasing and multiplying; but when He divided it by sexual
distinctions, then He said, “Increase and multiply, and replenish
the earth1695
.” For this belongs not to the
Divine, but to the irrational element, as the history indicates when it
narrates that these words were first spoken by God in the case of the
irrational creatures; since we may be sure that, if He had bestowed on
man, before imprinting on our nature the distinction of male and
female, the power for increase conveyed by this utterance, we should
not have needed this form of generation by which the brutes are
generated.
5. Now seeing that the full
number of men pre-conceived by the operation of foreknowledge will come
into life by means of this animal generation, God, Who governs all
things in a certain order and sequence,—since the inclination of
our nature to what was beneath it (which He Who beholds the future
equally with the present saw before it existed) made some such form of
generation absolutely necessary for mankind,—therefore also
foreknew the time coextensive with the creation of men, so that the
extent of time should be adapted for the entrances of the
pre-determined souls, and that the flux and motion of time should halt
at the moment when humanity is no longer produced by means of it; and
that when the generation of men is completed, time should cease
together with its completion, and then should take place the
restitution of all things, and with the World-Reformation humanity also
should be changed from the corruptible and earthly to the impassible
and eternal.
6. And this it seems to me the
Divine apostle considered when he declared in his epistle to the
Corinthians the sudden stoppage of time, and the change of the things
that are now moving on back to the opposite end where he says,
“Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we
shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump1696
.” For when, as I suppose, the
full complement of human nature has reached the limit of the
pre-determined measure, because there is no longer anything to be made
up in the way of increase to the number of souls, he teaches us that
the change in existing things will take place in an instant of time,
giving to that limit of time which has no parts or extension the names
of “a moment,” and “the twinkling of an eye”;
so that it will no more be possible for one who reaches the verge of
time (which is the last and extreme point, from the fact that nothing
is lacking to the attainment of its extremity) to obtain by death this
change which takes place at a fixed period, but only when the trumpet
of the resurrection sounds, which awakens the dead, and transforms
those who are left in life, after the likeness of those who have
undergone the resurrection change, at once to incorruptibility; so that
the weight of the flesh is no longer heavy, nor does its burden hold
them down to earth, but they rise aloft through the air—for,
“we shall be caught up,” he tells us, “in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord1697
.”
7. Let him therefore wait for
that time which is necessarily made co-extensive with the development
of humanity. For even Abraham and the patriarchs, while they had the
desire to see the promised good things, and ceased not to seek the
heavenly country, as the apostle says, are yet even now in the
condition of hoping for that grace, “God having provided some
better thing for us,” according to the words of Paul, “that
they without us should not be made perfect1698
.” If they, then, bear the delay who by
faith only and by hope saw the good things “afar off” and
“embraced them1699
,” as the
apostle bears witness, placing their certainty of the enjoyment of the
things for which they hoped in the fact that they “judged Him
faithful Who has promised1700
,” what ought
most of us to do, who have not, it may be, a hold upon the better hope
from the character of our lives? Even the prophet’s soul fainted
with desire, and in his psalm he confesses this passionate love, saying
that his “soul hath a desire and longing to be in the courts of
the Lord1701
,” even if he must needs be
rejected1702
to a place amongst the lowest, as it
is a greater and more desirable thing to be last there than to be first
among the ungodly tents of this life; nevertheless he was patient of
the delay, deeming, indeed, the life there blessed, and accounting a
brief participation in it more desirable than “thousands”
of time—for he says, “one day in Thy courts is better than
thousands1703
”—yet he did not repine at
the necessary dispensation concerning existing things, and thought it
sufficient bliss for man to have those good things even by way of hope;
wherefore he says at the end of the Psalm, “O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the man that hopeth in Thee1704
.”
8. Neither, then, should we be
troubled at the brief delay of what we hope for, but give diligence
that we may not be cast out from the object of our hopes; for just as
though, if one were to tell some inexperienced person beforehand,
“the gathering of the crops will take place in the season of
summer, and the stores will be filled, and the table abundantly
supplied with food at the time of plenty,” it would be a foolish
man who should seek to hurry on the coming of the fruit-time, when he
ought to be sowing seeds and preparing the crops for himself by
diligent care; for the fruit-time will surely come, whether he wishes
or not, at the appointed time; and it will be looked on differently by
him who has secured for himself beforehand abundance of crops, and by
him who is found by the fruit-time destitute of all preparation. Even
so I think it is one’s duty, as the proclamation is clearly made
to all that the time of change will come, not to trouble himself about
times (for He said that “it is not for us to know the times and
the seasons1705
”), nor to pursue calculations by
which he will be sure to sap the hope of the resurrection in the soul;
but to make his confidence in the things expected as a prop to lean on,
and to purchase for himself, by good conversation, the grace that is to
come.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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