A Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 41
41 Section 41 PL 21, 378
41. This last article, which affirms the Resurrection of the Flesh, concludes the sum of all perfection with succinct brevity. Although on this point also the faith of the Church is impugned, not only by Gentiles, but by heretics likewise. For Valentinus altogether denies the resurrection of the flesh, so do the Manicheans, as we shewed above. But they refuse to listen to the Prophet Isaiah when he says, “The dead shall rise, and they who are in the graves shall be raised,” or to most wise Daniel, when he declares, “Then they who are in the dust of the earth shall arise, these to eternal life, but those to shame and confusion.” Yet even in the Gospels, which they appear to receive, they ought to learn from our Lord and Saviour, Who says, when instructing the Sadducees, “As touching the resurrection of the dead: have ye not read how He saith to Moses in the Bush, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob? Now God is not the God of the dead but of the living.” Where in what goes before He declares what and how great is the glory of the resurrection, saying, “But in the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry or be given in marriage, but will be as the angels of God.” But the virtue of the resurrection confers on men an angelical state, so that they who have risen from the earth shall not live again on the earth with the brute animals but with angels in heaven—yet those only whose purer life has fitted them for this—those, namely, who even now preserving the flesh of their soul in chastity, have brought it into subjection to the Holy Spirit, and thus with every stain of sins done away and changed into spiritual glory by the virtue of sanctification, have been counted worthy to have it admitted into the society of angels.
Sed et ultimus sermo iste, qui resurrectionem carnis pronunciat, summam totius perfectionis succincta brevitate concludit: quamvis etiam de hoc non solum a Gentilibus, sed et ab Haereticis fides impugnetur Ecclesiae. Nam Valentinus resurrectionem carnis omni modo negat, et Manichaei, sicut supra ostendimus. Sed isti Esaiam quidem prophetam dicentem, Resurgent mortui et suscitabuntur, qui sunt in sepulcris , audire noluerunt: nec Danielem sapientissimum, protestantem, Quia tunc resurgent, qui sunt in terrae pulvere: hi quidem in vitam aeternam, hi autem in opprobrium et confusionem aeternam . Tamen vel in Evangeliis, quae recipere videntur, discere debuerunt a Domino et Salvatore nostro, Sadducaeos docente, dictum: Quod autem resurgant mortui, non legistis, quo modo dicit Moysi in rubo, Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, Deus Jacob? Deus autem non est mortuorum, sed viventium . In quo etiam quae sit et quanta resurrectionis gloria, in superioribus memoravit, cum dixit: In resurrectione autem mortuorum neque nubent, neque nubentur: sed erunt sicut Angeli 106 Dei . Resurrectionis autem [Al. ergo] virtus, angelicum hominibus confert statum, ut qui de terra resurrexerint [Al. resurrexerunt], non iterum in terra, cum pecudibus, sed in caelo cum Angelis vivant: quos tamen ad hoc ratio vitae purioris admiserit: illos scilicet, qui jam nunc conservantes animae suae carnem in castis pudicitiae actibus, obedientiae Sancti Spiritus subjugaverunt, et omni eam vitiorum labe tenuatam, atque in spiritualem gloriam sanctificationis virtute mutatam, Angelorum quoque meruerunt inferre consortiis.