Creation and Resurrection

For He that made the body of Adam out of the earth will raise up the bodies of the rest, and that of the first man, after their dissolution, (to pay what is owing to the rational nature of man; we mean the continuance in being through all ages). He, therefore, who brings on the dissolution, will Himself procure the resurrection. And He that said, “The Lord took dust from the ground, and formed man, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” added after the disobedience, “Earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou return;” the same promised us a resurrection afterwards. For says He: “All that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.”

As, therefore, we believe Moses when he says, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth;” and we know that He did not want matter, but by His will alone brought those things into being which Christ was commanded to make; we mean the heaven, the earth, the sea, the light, the night, the day, the luminaries, the stars, the fowls, the fishes, and four-footed beasts, the creeping things, the plants, and the herbs; so also will He raise all men up by His will, as not wanting any assistance. For it is the work of the same power to create the world and to raise the dead. And then He made man, who was not a man before, of different parts, giving to him a soul made out of nothing. But now He will restore the bodies, which have been dissolved, to the souls that are still in being: for the rising again belongs to things laid down, not to things which have no being.

He therefore that made the original bodies out of nothing, and fashioned various forms of them, will also again revive and raise up those that are dead. For He that formed man in the womb out of a little seed, and created in him a soul which was not in being before,—as He Himself somewhere speaks to Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the womb I knew thee;”[Jer. 1:5] and elsewhere, “I am the Lord who established the heaven, and laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the spirit of man in him,”[Zech. 12:1]—will also raise up all men, as being His workmanship; as also the divine Scripture testifies that God said to Christ, His only-begotten, “Let us make man after our image, and after our likeness. And God made man: after the image of God made He him; male and female made He them.”
— Constitutions of the Holy Apostles V.I. ANF07

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