1 Corinthians 15:40

In like manner, those also who after Him are heavenly, are understood to have this celestial quality predicated of them not from their present nature, but from their future glory; because in a preceding sentence, which originated this distinction respecting difference of dignity, there was shown to be "one glory in celestial bodies, and another in terrestrial ones," -"one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for even one star differeth from another star in glory, " although not in substance.

Even among earthly bodies there are no small differences. Take the human race, for example. Some are Greeks and some are barbarians, and among the barbarians, some are wilder than others. Some have higher laws. Some lower ones, and some follow savage customs which are not laws at all.

That no one should be made sad by death; since in living is labour and peril, in dying peace and the certainty of resurrection. In Genesis: "Then said the Lord to Adam, Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of that tree of which alone I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat, cursed shall be the ground in all thy works; in sadness and groaning shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life: thorns and thistles shall it cast forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field in the sweat of thy brow. Thou shall eat thy bread until thou return unto the earth from which also thou wast taken; because earth thou art, and to earth thou shall go." Also in the same place: "And Enoch pleased God, and was not found afterwards: because God translated him." And in Isaiah: "All flesh is grass, and all the glory of it as the flower of grass. The grass withered, and the flower hath fallen away; but the word of the Lord abideth for ever." In Ezekiel: "They say, Our bones are become dry, our hope hath perished: we have expired. Therefore prophesy, and say, Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I open your monuments, and I will bring you forth from your monuments, and I will bring you into the land of Israel; and I will put my Spirit upon you, and ye shall live; and I will place you into your land: and ye shall know that I the Lord have spoken, and will do it, saith the Lord." Also in the Wisdom of Solomon: "He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding; for his soul was pleasing to God." Also in the eighty-third Psalm: "How beloved are thy dwellings, Thou Lord of hosts? My soul desires and hastes to the courts of God." And in the Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians: "But we would not that you should be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who sleep, that ye sorrow not as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also them which have fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." Also in the first Epistle to the Corinthians: "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it have first died." And again: "Star differeth from star in glory: so also the resurrection. The body is sown in corruption, it rises without corruption; it is sown in ignominy, it rises again in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises again in power; it is sown an animal body, it rises again a spiritual body." And again: "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the word that is written, Death is absorbed Into striving. Where, O death, is thy sting? Where, O death, is thy striving? " Also in the Gospel according to John: "Father, I will that those whom Thou hast given me be with me where I shall be, and may see my glory which Thou hast given me before the foundation of the world." Also according to Luke: "Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, O Lord, according to the word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." Also according to John: "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I."

"There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another."

"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory."

And what means he by these expressions? Wherefore from the resurrection of the body did he throw himself into the discourse of the stars and the sun? He did not throw himself out, neither did he break off from his purpose; far from it: but he still keeps to it. For whereas he had established the doctrine concerning the resurrection, he intimates in what follows that great will be then the difference of glory, though there be but one resurrection. And for the present he divides the whole into two: into "bodies celestial," and "bodies terrestrial." For that the bodies are raised again, he signified by the corn: but that they are not all in the same glory, he signifies by this. For as the disbelief of the resurrection makes men supine, so again it makes them indolent to think that all are vouchsafed the same reward. Wherefore he corrects both. And the one in the preceding verses he had completed; but this he begins now. And having made two ranks, of the righteous and of sinners, these same two he subdivides again into many parts, signifying that neither righteous nor sinners shall obtain the same; neither righteous men, all of them, alike with other righteous, nor sinners with other sinners.

Now he makes, you see, first, one separation between righteous and sinners, where he says, "bodies celestial, and bodies terrestrial:" by the "terrestrial" intimating the latter, and by the "celestial," the former. Then farther he introduces a difference of sinners from sinners, saying, "All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of fishes, another of birds, and another of beasts." And yet all are bodies; but some are in more, and some in lesser vileness. And that in their manner of living too, and in their very constitution.

And having said this, he ascends again to the heaven, saying, "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon." For as in the earthly bodies there is a difference, so also in the heavenly; and that difference no ordinary one, but reaching even to the uttermost: there being not only a difference between sun and moon, and stars, but also between stars and stars. For what though they be all in the heaven? yet some have a larger, others a less share of glory. What do we learn from hence? That although they be all in God's kingdom, all shall not enjoy the same reward; and though all sinners be in hell, all shall not endure the same punishment.

If God could make the sun, moon and stars, what problem will he have in making new bodies for us?

If any man does not believe that common flesh can be changed into a nature of this sort, he is to be convinced toward faith by gradual steps. If you ask them whether earth can be changed into water, that will not seem to him incredible because there is no great distance between these two elements. Again if you ask whether water can be changed into air, he will agree that that is not absurd because these two elements are close neighbors.

Porphyry says: “You praise the body to me without good reasons. No matter what kind of body it is, you must escape from it if you wish to be happy.” Philosophers say this, but they are wrong. They are raving.… I read your books where you say that the world is animated, that the heavens, the earth, the seas, all the huge bodies which exist, all the immense elements of all times, this whole universal body which consists of all these elements—all this, you say, is a vast living thing and has its own soul. But you claim that it does not have the senses of the body because outside of it there is nothing which can be perceived. Nevertheless you say it has intelligence, and that it leads to God, and that the soul of the world is called Jupiter.… You claim that the same world is eternal, that it will always exist, that it will not have an end. If then the world is eternal and remains without any end, if this world is a living thing and if its soul is always held in the world, then as a matter of fact, must we then flee every kind of body?

The second class of miracles, on this view, foretell what God has not yet done, but will do, universally. He raised one man (the man who was Himself) from the dead because He will one day raise all men from the dead. Perhaps not only men, for there are hints in the New Testament that all creation will eventually be rescued from decay, restored to shape and subserve the splendour of re-made humanity. The Transfiguration and the walking on the water are glimpses of the beauty and the effortless power over all matter which will belong to men when they are really waked by God. Now resurrection certainly involves “reversal” of natural process in the sense that it involves a series of changes moving in the opposite direction to those we see. At death, matter which has been organic, falls back gradually into the inorganic, to be finally scattered and used perhaps in other organisms. Resurrection would be the reverse process. It would not of course mean the restoration to each personality of those very atoms, numerically the same, which had made its first or “natural” body. There would not be enough to go round, for one thing; and for another, the unity of the body even in this life was consistent with a slow but perplexed change of its actual ingredients. But it certainly does mean matter of some kind rushing towards organism as now we see it rushing away. It means, in fact, playing backwards a film we have already seen played forwards. In that sense it is a reversal of Nature. But, of course, it is a further question whether reversal in this sense is necessarily contradiction. Do we know that the film cannot be played backwards?

Well, in one sense, it is precisely the teaching of modern physics that the film never works backwards. For modern physics, as you have heard before, the universe is “running down.” Disorganization and chance is continually increasing. There will come a time, not infinitely remote, when it will be wholly run down or wholly disorganized, and science knows of no possible return from that state. There must have been a time, not infinitely remote, in the past when it was wound up, though science knows of no winding-up process. The point is that for our ancestors the universe was a picture: for modern physics it is a story. If the universe is a picture these things either appear in that picture or not; and if they don’t, since it is an infinite picture, one may suspect that they are contrary to the nature of things. But a story is a different matter; specially if it is an incomplete story. And the story told by modern physics might be told briefly in the words “Humpty Dumpty was falling.” That is, it proclaims itself an incomplete story. There must have been a time before he fell, when he was sitting on the wall; there must be a time after he had reached the ground. It is quite true that science knows of no horses and men who can put him together again once he has reached the ground and broken. But then she also knows of no means by which he could originally have been put on the wall. You wouldn’t expect her to. All science rests on observation: all our observations are taken during Humpty Dumpty’s fall, because we were born after he lost his seat on the wall and shall be extinct long before he reaches the ground. But to assume from observations taken while the clock is running down that the unimaginable winding-up which must have preceded this process cannot occur when the process is over is the merest dogmatism. From the very nature of the case the laws of degradation and disorganization which we find in matter at present, cannot be the ultimate and eternal nature of things. If they were, there would have been nothing to degrade and disorganize. Humpty Dumpty can’t fall off a wall that never existed.