Thomas Aquinas Commentary 1 Corinthians 15:35-38

"But some one will say, How are the dead raised? and with what manner of body do they come? Thou foolish one, that which thou thyself sowest is not quickened except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other kind; but God giveth it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own." — 1 Corinthians 15:35-38 (ASV)

Having proved the resurrection of the dead, the Apostle now shows the quality and manner of those who rise. In this regard, he does two things: first, he raises a question about the quality of those who rise; second, he answers it (1 Corinthians 15:36).

Regarding the resurrection, there have been two errors. Some have absolutely denied the future resurrection of the dead. Since they considered only the principles and capabilities of nature, they saw that no one could return to life or a blind person recover sight according to these natural laws. Therefore, they absolutely denied the resurrection. From their mouths, it says in Wisdom 2:5, "Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow"; and in Wisdom 2:2, "We are born of nothing."Job 14:14 asks, "Do you think a dead man will live again?"

Others, on the other hand, have said there will be a resurrection, but that people will rise to the same manner of living and to the same activities. Even some philosophers have proposed this, saying that after many years Plato will rise again and have the same scholars in Athens that he once had. The Sadducees also asserted this in Matthew 22:29 regarding the woman with seven husbands. Hence, they asked, "In the resurrection, to which of the seven will she be wife?" The Saracens, too, claim that after the resurrection they will have wives and voluptuous, bodily pleasures, as in Job 20:17: "He will not move upon the rivers, the streams flow with honey and curds." Against these errors, Matthew 22:30 says that "they will be as the angels in heaven."

Therefore, the Apostle raises two questions here. The first is, "How will the dead rise?" That is, how is it possible that the dead, who are now dust, can rise? The second is, "With what kind of body will they come?" This is as if to ask, "Will they rise with the same kind of body that we have now?"

He answers these two questions when he says, "You foolish man!" First, he answers the second question; then, he answers the first (1 Corinthians 15:44b). To understand what the Apostle presents in this first part, we must investigate what he intends. In this section, the Apostle intends to show that the dead will rise and that their substance will be the same. Here he does three things:

1. He presents analogies.
2. He applies them (1 Corinthians 15:42).
3. He proves his point (1 Corinthians 15:44b).

Regarding the first point, he does two things: first, he proposes analogies within a single species; second, he proposes them across diverse species (1 Corinthians 15:39).

Regarding the first point, it should be noted that we see within one and the same species that a thing has diverse qualities and forms on its way to generation. For example, a grain has one form and quality when it is planted, another when it shoots up, and yet another when it is a plant. From this analogy, the Apostle intends to show the quality of those who rise. Therefore, in this regard he does three things:

1. He compares the process of sowing to growing.
2. He shows the difference in quality between what is sown and what grows (1 Corinthians 15:37).
3. He identifies the cause of the quality in what grows (1 Corinthians 15:38).

He says, therefore, "You foolish man!" But on the other hand, it says in Matthew 5:22, "Whoever says to his brother, 'You fool,' shall be liable to hell." The answer is that God forbids saying "you fool" or "stupid" to your brother in anger, but not for the sake of correction. Now, the reason he says "foolish" is that this objection against the resurrection proceeds from the principles of human wisdom, which is only wisdom as long as it is subject to divine wisdom. But when a person departs from God, he falls back into foolishness. Hence, when someone contradicts divine wisdom, the Apostle calls him foolish.

It is as if he is saying: "You foolish man! Do you not experience every day that what you sow in the earth does not come to life unless it first dies—that is, decays?" As it says in John 12:24, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone." The Apostle seems to be making this comparison: when a person's body is put in a tomb, it is a form of sowing; but when it rises, it is a coming to life.

From this, some have supposed that the resurrection of the dead is a natural process, since the Apostle here compares it to the sprouting of a seed, which is natural. They believed that in the dust into which human bodies decompose, there were certain active, seminal powers for the resurrection of those bodies. But this does not seem to be true. The decomposition of human bodies into their elements happens in the same way as for other composite bodies. Therefore, the dust into which human bodies decompose has no more active power than any other dust. In ordinary dust, there is no evidence of any active power to form a human body; that power exists only in a man's seed.

However, the dust into which human bodies are reduced differs from other dust only according to God's plan, insofar as this dust is ordained by divine wisdom for human bodies to be formed from it again. Therefore, the active cause of the resurrection is God alone, even though He may use the service of angels to collect the dust. This is why the Apostle, when explaining the manner of the resurrection later, attributes it to Christ's power to raise, not to any active power in the dust. Therefore, the Apostle does not intend to prove here that the resurrection is natural. Instead, he intends to show through certain examples that the quality of resurrected bodies is not the same as that of dying bodies. He begins by showing that the quality of the seed and of the sprouting plant are not the same, as will be made clear from what follows.

For when he says, "and what you sow," he shows that the quality of the seed is different from the quality of the plant that sprouts. Hence he says, "what you sow is not the body which is to be"; that is, you do not plant it as it will be. Explaining this, he says, "but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain." A bare kernel is sown, but what sprouts is fashioned as a plant, or an ear of corn, and so on. Similarly, the human body will have a different quality in the resurrection than it has now, as will be explained later.

Yet there is a difference between the resurrection of the human body and the sprouting of a seed. The very same body, numerically, will rise, but it will have a different quality. As the Apostle says later (1 Corinthians 15:53), "For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable," and as Job says (Job 19:27), "And my eyes shall behold, and not another." But in the sprouting of a seed, there is neither the same quality nor the same numerical body; it is only the same in species. Therefore, when speaking about the seed, the Apostle said, "what you sow is not the body which is to be," giving us to understand that it is not numerically the same. And in this, the work of nature falls short of the work of God. The power of nature restores what is the same in species, but not what is numerically the same; God's power, however, can restore even what is numerically the same.

And so, even from what is stated here, we can find proof that the future resurrection is not impossible, as the foolish objector claimed. For if nature can restore something of the same species from what is dead, how much more can God restore the numerically same thing—because whatever nature can do is a work of God. For nature receives from God its ability to do this.

Then, describing the quality of the new plant, he attributes it first to God, and second, to the order of nature.

First, he says, "God gives it a body as he has chosen," because it proceeds from an ordinance of the divine will that from a particular seed, a particular plant is produced. This plant is like the body of the seed, for the ultimate fruit of a plant is the seed. Therefore, he attributes this to the activity of God, as it says earlier (1 Corinthians 12:6), "It is the same God who inspires them all in every one." This can be considered in the following way. It is clear that natural things act for a fixed end without having knowledge of that end; otherwise, they would not always, or for the most part, attain the same end. But it is also clear that nothing lacking knowledge can tend toward a fixed end unless it is directed by one who has knowledge, just as an arrow tends to a fixed target only by the direction of the archer. Therefore, just as someone who saw an arrow moving directly toward a definite target would immediately know that it was directed by an archer, so also when we see natural things tending toward definite ends without knowledge, we can know for certain that they are acting under the will of some director, whom we call God. And so the Apostle says, "God gives to the seed a body"—that is, He produces a plant from the seed—"as he has chosen."

But again, so that no one might believe that such natural effects arise solely from God's will without the activity and order of nature, he adds, "and to each kind of seed its own body." For example, an olive tree is produced from an olive seed, and wheat from a seed of wheat. Hence, it says in Genesis 1:11, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, each according to its kind." Thus, in the resurrection, there will also be a different quality of the resurrected body, which will be proportionate to the merits of the person who died.