The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
The seed dying and springing up again, and as it were rising from death, is a remarkable image and proof of the resurrection. Hence S. Augustine (Serm. 34 de Verb. A post) says: “The whole government of this world is a witness to the resurrection. We see the trees at the approach of winter stripped of their fruits and shorn of their foliage, and yet in the spring set forth a kind of resurrection; for they first of all begin to shoot forth buds, then they are adorned with blossoms, clad with leaves, and laden with fruit. I ask you who believe not in the resurrection, Where are those things hidden which God in His own good time brings forth? They are nowhere seen, yet God, who is Almighty, and created them from nothing, produces them by His secret power. Then look at the meadows and fields, which after summer are stripped of their grass and flowers, and remain nothing but a bare expanse of ground; yet in the spring they are again clad, and rejoice the heart of the husbandman when he sees the grass again springing up in newness of life. Truly, the grass which lived and died again lives from the seed; so, too, does our body live again from the dust.”
Ver. 43. — It is sown in dishonour. Man’s body, when it is buried and thrown like seed into the ground, is base, thick, heavy, opaque.
It is raised in glory . It will rise glorious, clear, resplendent. The Apostle here strikes at another root of their error. There were some who at that time denied the resurrection of the body on the ground that the body, as being heavy and fleshy, was unfitted to be the home of the soul in bliss, and to enjoy the Divine life, as S. Dionysius testifies when refuting them (Eccles. Hierarch, c. 7). The Apostle cuts this away by declaring that to the soul in glory a corresponding glorified body must be given.
It is sown in weakness. Is weak, slow, inert when it dies and is buried.
It is raised in power. Powerful, quick, agile.
Ver. 44. — It is sown a natural body. It dies as it lived: its life was vegetative and sensitive, and needed for its support food and drink, like the life of other animals. So, too, it was solid, inert, unable to give place to other bodies, and impenetrable. Such was the body of Adam, even in Paradise. The natural body is one that eats, drinks, sleeps, digests, toils, suffers fatigue, is heavy, and offers resistance to other bodies.
It is raised a spiritual body. 1. Not that the body is to be changed into a spirit or into an aerial body, as Origen and Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the time of S. Gregory, thought (he was convinced by S. Gregory and abandoned his error), but spiritual in the sense of being wholly subject and conformed to the spirit, so that it no longer stands in need of food or drink, it toils not, and feels no weariness, but is, so to speak, heavenly and deified, and, as Tertullian says, is, as it were, changed into the angelic nature. So S. Augustine (de Fide et Symb. c. 6) says: “It is called a spiritual body, not because it is changed into spirit, but because it is so subdued to the spirit that it is fitted for its heavenly dwelling-place, when all weakness and earthly frailty have been taken away, and transformed into celestial strength.” Yet (c. 10) he seems to say that in the resurrection the body will not be of the flesh, but like that of angels.
He retracts this, however, afterwards (Retract, lib. i. c. 17), and more at length (de Civ. Dei, lib. ult. c. 5 and 21).
2. Spiritual denotes subtilty, freedom from that heaviness and solidity that fills space, i.e., from that property of body by which it so fills space as to exclude all other bodies. The spiritual body will be subtle, as free from this property, and able, like spirit, to penetrate and fill all other bodies. Cf. Damascene (de Fide, lib. iv. c. 28) and Epiphanius (in Hceres. Orig.). For, as God can take from man his property, viz., the power of laughing, and can take from fire the heat which is the property of fire, so from body can He take away solidity, which is the property of natural bodily substance.
This gift of subtilty, however, will not be a quality infused into the soul, for this seems an impossibility. It will be an assisting presence of Divine power, internal to the soul in bliss, so that the soul can, at its pleasure, lay aside the solidity by which it excludes other bodies, when it wishes to penetrate into them; and can, on the other hand, retain it when it wishes to occupy space and exclude other bodies. And so this assisting presence of Divine power would appear to be a gift existing within the soul in bliss, just as the power of working miracles in Christ came from the presence of God, who thus lent His help to the humanity of Christ, to enable Him to work miracles at His pleasure. Cf. Suarez (pt. iii. qu. 54, art 3).
From this place theologians have gathered the four gifts of the glorified body: (1.) impassibility, from the words, “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption;” (2.) brightness, from, “It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory;” (3.) agility, from, “It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power;” and (4.) subtilty, from, “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
Suarez adds that the “agility” of the bodies of the blessed will be of such a kind that they will be able to travel in an instant from one place to another, without passing through the intermediate space; because, they say, it is probable that this is how angels naturally move. But others, and with greater reason, deny both. At all events, the mind of man can hardly conceive how any one can pass from one point to another and yet not cross the intervening space.
S. Bonaventura (iv. dist 49, part ii. art 2, qu. 1) thinks that these four gifts are alluded to in Wisdom iii. 7, where it is said: “The righteous shall shine, and shall run about like sparks in a bed of reeds.” For he says: “In the shining we have brightness; in the righteousness impassibility, because righteousness is everlasting and deathless; in the spark, subtilty; in the running about, agility. Moreover, the number of these four gifts can be arrived at in a twofold way— from the formal cause and the material, but specially the material: (1.) From the formal: there is in our body a double nature and form —the elementary, which now holds sway, and the heavenly, which is of the nature of light, and will be the form and complement of our glorified body, and will hold sway in the resurrection. As, then, light, as it exists in the ray, has these four qualities — the brightness by which it gives light; impassibility, which no corruption can touch; agility, from the rapidity of its flight; subtilty, which enables it to pass through transparent bodies without injuring them — so also the glorious body, in which the nature of light is predominant, has the same four gifts. (2.) The number of the gifts is also gathered from the material cause. Our body is composed of four elements. Since those elements are imperfect, it has from them a fourfold defect. From water, an element that is humid and easily stirred, it has its passibility and corruption; from earth it has its opaqueness; from fire, its animal nature— for a fire is ever burning within, and hence it needs a constant supply of food; from air it has its weakness, for air is changed most easily of all, and yields to any force, however slight. Since, therefore, these four defects ought to be removed by the four perfections opposed to them, so as to make the body perfect, therefore the gifts are four: impassibility against corruption, brightness against opaqueness, agility against animal nature, subtilty or power against weakness; and this second mode is the more convenient, for it has the support of authority and reason. Of authority, for the Apostle says: ‘It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption’ — there you have impassibility; ‘It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory’ — there you have brightness; ‘It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power’ — there you have subtilty; ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body’ — there you have agility. The Apostle therefore compares these four gifts to the four defects which they make good. Similarly, S. Augustine (de Civ. Dei) says: ‘Our bodies will know no deformity, no slowness, no infirmity, no corruption. All deformity will be swallowed up in brightness, all slowness in agility, all weakness in subtilty, all corruption in impassibility.’”
Ver. 45. — As it is written. 1. These words are, of course, to be referred to the first part only of the following verse, not to the latter: “The last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” This last is nowhere else found in Scripture. S. Paul is merely proving from Scripture that the body is here sown a natural body, from the fact that Adam, the father of all men, was made a living soul, and consequently was an animal, and had an animal body both in death and in life. Hence by an hyperbaton common in S. Paul, we may read the passage: “The first man Adam was made, as it is written, a living soul.”
2. The words, “as it is written,” may be referred, as Theophylact refers them, to the whole of the following verse, and may be the explanation and proof of what has just gone before, viz., that if there is a natural body there is a spiritual body also; for it is implied that it is requisite to the perfection of everything that all kinds of things suppose the existence of their opposites. Where Scripture, therefore, expressly speaks of a first Adam being made a living soul, it implies that the second Adam will be a quickening spirit.