Dist. 44, Part 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/44/q/bon-sent-IV-d44-p1-littera
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### Part I.

#### *Ch. I. On the age and stature of those who rise.*

Now some are wont to inquire and ask whether all will rise in the same age and stature of body. — Certain persons have supposed that all will rise according to the measure of the age and stature of Christ, on this ground, because the Apostle says: *Until we all attain unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ.* — But by these words it is not the same stature that is assigned to those who rise, but the same age. «For all will rise in the same age in which Christ died and rose again, of whatever age they may have died»; but he set down *a man* not to distinguish sex, but to signify the perfection of powers which they will then have; yet not all will obtain the same stature of body. Whence Augustine: «Not, he says, in the measure of body or of stature, but of age; because each one will receive his own measure of body, which he either had in youth, even if he died an old man, or would have had, if he was carried off before. But the age will be that to which Christ attained, namely the youthful, about thirty years». For the age of Christ was thirty-two years and three months, in which he died and rose again. «But it is not lawful to say that in the resurrection there accrues to the body a magnitude which it neither had here nor was going to have by living long, nor are greater bodies to be reduced to the measure of the Lord's body. For much of those bodies would perish, since not even a hair is to perish, as the Lord says: *A hair of your head shall not perish*».

#### *Ch. II. That whatever was of the substance and nature of the body will rise again, even if not in the same part of the body.*

«For the earthly matter from which the flesh of mortals is created does not perish for God; but though it be dissolved into any dust or ash whatever, though it scatter into any breaths and breezes, though it be turned into the substance of any other bodies whatever, or into the very elements, though it be changed into the food and flesh of any animals whatever, even of men, in a point of time it will return to that soul which first animated it, that a man might come to be, and grow, and live». «That earthly matter, therefore, which, when the soul departs, becomes a corpse, will not be so restored in the resurrection that those things which slip away and are turned into other and other kinds of things must, although they return to the body from which they slipped away, of necessity return also to the same parts of the body where they were. Otherwise, if to the hairs there returns what such frequent shearing has taken away, if to the nails what cutting has so often removed, an excessive and unseemly deformity presents itself to those who ponder the resurrection of the flesh, and therefore do not believe it. But just as, if a statue of any meltable metal were to melt in the fire, or were ground to dust, or were confounded into a mass, and the craftsman wished to restore it again from the material and quantity of the same; it would make no difference to its integrity which particle of matter were rendered to which member of the statue, provided only that the whole, from which it had been constituted, being restored, it should take up again. So God, the wondrously and ineffably skilled craftsman, will restore it with wondrous swiftness from the whole of which our flesh had consisted; nor will it matter at all to its reintegration whether hairs return to hairs, and nails to nails; or whether whatever of them had perished be changed into flesh and recalled into other parts of the body; the craftsman's providence taking care that nothing unseemly be done». «For nothing unbecoming will be there, but whatever is to be, this will be fitting, since it is not to be, if it will not be fitting».

#### *Ch. III. That they will rise without any deformity.*

But this is to be understood of the bodies of the Saints, concerning which he consequently adds: «The bodies of the Saints, therefore, will rise without any defect, without any deformity, as also without any corruption, burden, or difficulty; in which there will be as great facility as felicity; on account of which they are also called spiritual, though beyond doubt they will be bodies, not spirits». — From these things it appears that there will be one age of all who rise, namely the youthful, but a diverse stature, namely the one which each had in his youthful age, or was going to have, if he was carried off before. Nor will anything perish of the substance from which the flesh of man is created, but by the collection of all the particles previously dispersed the natural substance of the body will be reintegrated. The bodies of the Saints too will rise without any defect, shining like the sun, with all the deformities cut away which they had here.

#### *Ch. IV. Whether the bodies of the reprobate rise with the deformities they had here.*

But concerning the reprobate it is wont to be asked whether they rise with the deformities had here. This, however, Augustine does not assert, but leaves in doubt, thus speaking: «Whosoever are not freed by Christ from that mass of perdition which was made through Adam, will indeed rise themselves also, each with his own flesh, but so as to be punished with the devil and his angels. But whether they rise with the vices and deformities of their bodies, whatever they bore in them, what need is there to labor by inquiring? For the uncertain condition or beauty of those whose damnation will be certain and everlasting ought not to weary us». — Behold, he does not determine whether the bodies of the reprobate then have the deformities which they had here.

### Part II.

#### *Ch. V. That the bodies of the wicked, which will then burn, will not be consumed.*

But if it is asked concerning the bodies of the wicked, how they burn in the fire and are not consumed; Augustine establishes by various examples that they both burn in everlasting fires and are not consumed by that combustion; just as the soul, by whose presence the body lives, both can suffer pain and cannot die. For this will then be in the bodies of the damned which we now know to be in the souls of all.

#### *Ch. VI. Whether the demons will be burned by bodily fire.*

It is also wont to be asked whether the demons burn in bodily fire. — To which Augustine, answering, says: «Why should we not say that, although in wondrous yet true ways, even incorporeal spirits can be afflicted by the pain of bodily fire, if the spirits of men, even they themselves incorporeal, were both able now to be enclosed in bodily members and will then be able to be bound inseparably by the chains of their bodies»? «That Gehenna, which is called the pool of fire and brimstone, will be a bodily fire and will torment the bodies of the damned, of men, or of demons—but the solid bodies of men, the airy bodies of demons. For there will be one fire for both, as the Truth says». And if it is asked concerning this fire, of what sort or where it is; Augustine answers thus: «Of what kind the eternal fire is, and in what part of the world or of things it is to be, I think no man knows, unless perhaps to whom the divine Spirit reveals it».

#### *Ch. VII. Whether souls without bodies feel material fire.*

But since it is agreed that souls are to be tormented by material fire in bodies; it is wont to be asked whether meanwhile, before the resurrection of bodies, the souls of the deceased reprobate are burned by material fire. — Concerning this Iulianus, bishop of the Church of Toledo, following the sayings of Gregory, wrote thus: «If the incorporeal spirit of a living man is held in the body, why should it not after death also be held by bodily fire? But we say that the spirit is held by the fire so that it is in the torment of the fire by *seeing* and by *feeling*. But that the soul suffers the torment of the fire not only by seeing but also by experiencing; is gathered from the Gospel, where by the voice of the Truth the rich man who died is said to be *buried in hell*; whose soul intimates that it is held in the fire, when it beseeches Abraham, saying: *Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, that he may cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.* Since therefore the Truth affirms that the rich sinner was damned in the fires, what wise man would deny that the souls of the reprobate are held by the fires»? especially since Augustine teaches that the human soul has a likeness of the body, thus speaking: «Whoever refuses to profess that the soul can have a likeness of the body and of bodily members altogether, can deny that it is the soul which sees in dreams, or is borne to walk or to sit or hither and thither by a step or even by flight; this does not happen without a certain likeness of the body: accordingly, if it bears this likeness even among those below, it is not bodily, but like a body; so also it is seen to be in places not bodily, but like bodily ones, whether in rest or in pains». In the volumes of Cassian too it is read that «they are not idle nor perceive nothing, since that rich man in hell cries out that he is tormented by the flame». «Whence it is proved that the souls of the deceased are not only not deprived of their senses, but neither lack these affections, namely hope, sadness, joy, and fear, and that from those things which are reserved for them in that general examination, they already begin to foretaste something».

#### *Ch. VIII. On abortive fetuses and monsters.*

That too must be investigated, whether abortive fetuses and monsters will rise, and of what kind. — Concerning which Augustine speaks thus: «There occurs a question about abortive fetuses, which have already been born in their mothers' wombs, but not in such a way that they could yet be reborn. For if we say that they will rise; concerning those who are already *formed*, what is said can somehow be tolerated. But who would not more readily judge that the *unformed* perish, like seeds which were not conceived»? «It can indeed be scrupulously inquired and disputed among the learned when a man begins to live in the womb; whether there is a certain hidden life which does not yet appear by the movements of the living. For to deny that those infants have lived, which are for that reason cut out limb by limb, so that they may be cast out from the wombs of the pregnant, lest the mothers too be killed if the dead be left there, seems excessive shamelessness. But from the point at which a man begins to live, from that point assuredly he can already die; and once dead, wherever death was able to befall him, how he should not pertain to the resurrection, I am unable to discover». «For neither will the monsters which are born and live, however quickly they die, either be denied to be going to rise, or be believed to rise in such a state; but rather with their nature corrected and amended. For far be it that we should suppose that two-bodied one—recently born in the East, whom most faithful brethren, who saw him, reported, and holy Jerome left in writing—will rise as one double man, and not rather as two, which would have been the case if twins had been born. So too the rest, which by excessive deformity are called monsters, will be recalled by the resurrection to the figure of human nature».

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