And consequently overgrown and emaciated persons need not fear that they shall be in heaven of such a figure as they would not be even in this world if they could help it.For all bodily beauty consists in the proportion of the parts, together with a certain agreeableness of color.Where there is no proportion, the eye is offended, either because there is something awanting, or too small, or too large.And thus there shall be no deformity resulting from want of proportion in that state in which all that is wrong is corrected, and all that is defective supplied from resources the Creator wots of, and all that is excessive removed without destroying the integrity of the substance.And as for the pleasant color, how conspicuous shall it be where "the just shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father!"(5) This brightness we must rather believe to have been concealed from the eyes of the disciples when Christ rose, than to have been awanting.
For weak human eyesight could not bear it, and it was necessary that they should so look upon Him as to be able to recognize Him.For this purpose also He allowed them to touch the marks of His wounds, and also ate and drank,--not because He needed nourishment, but because He could take it if He wished.Now, when an object, though present, is invisible to persons who see other things which are present, as we say that that brightness was present but invisible by those who saw other things, this is called in Greek aorasia; and our Latin translators, for want of a better word, have rendered this caecitas (blindness) in the book of Genesis.This blindness the men of Sodom suffered when they sought the just Lot's gate and could not find it.But if it had been blindness, that is to say, if they could see nothing, then they would not have asked for the gate by which they might enter the house, but for guides who might lead them away.
But the love we bear to the blessed martyrs causes us, I know not how, to desire to see in the heavenly kingdom the marks of the wounds which they received for the name of Christ, and possibly we shall see them.For this will not be a deformity, but a mark of honor, and will add lustre to their appearance, and a spiritual, if not a bodily beauty.And yet we need not believe that they to whom it has been said, "Not a hair of your head shall perish,"shall, in the resurrection, want such of their members as they have been deprived of in their martyrdom.But if it will be seemly in that new kingdom to have some marks of these wounds still visible in that immortal flesh, the places where they have been wounded or mutilated shall retain the scars without any of the members being lost.While, therefore, it is quite true that no blemishes which the body has sustained shall appear in the resurrection, yet we are not to reckon or name these marks of virtue blemishes.
CHAP.20.--THAT, IN THE RESURRECTION, THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR BODIES, HOWEVERDISINTEGRATED, SHALL BE ENTIRELY REUNITED.
Far be it from us to fear that the omnipotence of the Creator cannot, for the resuscitation and reanimation of our bodies, recall all the portions which have been consumed by beasts or fire, or have been dissolved into dust or ashes, or have decomposed into water, or evaporated into the air.Far from us be the thought, that anything which escapes our observation in any most hidden recess of nature either evades the knowledge or transcends the power of the Creator of all things.Cicero, the great authority of our adversaries, wishing to define God as accurately as possible, says, "God is a mind free and independent, without materiality, perceiving and moving all things, and itself endowed with eternal movement."(1) This he found in the systems of the greatest philosophers.Let me ask, then, in their own language, how anything can either lie hid from Him who perceives all things, or irrevocably escape Him who moves all things?
This leads me to reply to that question which seems the most difficult of all,--To whom, in the resurrection, will belong the flesh of a dead man which has become the flesh of a living man? For if some one, famishing for want and pressed with hunger, use human flesh as food,--an extremity not unknown, as both ancient history and the unhappy experience of our own days have taught us,--can it be contended, with any show of reason, that all the flesh eaten has been evacuated, and that none of it has been assimilated to the substance of the eater though the very emaciation which existed before, and has now disappeared, sufficiently indicates what large deficiencies have been filled up with this food? But I have already made some remarks which will suffice for the solution of this difficulty also.For all the flesh which hunger has consumed finds its way into the air by evaporation, whence, as we have said, God Almighty can recall it.That flesh, therefore, shall be restored to the man in whom it first became human flesh.For it must be looked upon as borrowed by the other person, and, like a pecuniary loan, must be returned to the lender.His own flesh, however, which he lost by famine, shall be restored to him by Him who can recover even what has evaporated.And though it had been absolutely annihilated, so that no part of its substance remained in any secret spot of nature, the Almighty could restore it by such means as He saw fit.For this sentence, uttered by the Truth, "Not a hair of your head shall perish," forbids us to suppose that, though no hair of a man's head can perish, yet the large portions of his flesh eaten and consumed by the famishing can perish.
