As to what the angels strictly are, whom heavenly souls will be like,
the Bible is as far from giving us any definite information as on
other weighty subjects; it only calls them pneumata, spirits, and
declares them to be higher than men. The later Christians expressed
themselves more definitely on this subject; more definitely,
but variously. Some assigned bodies to the angels, others not;
a difference which, however, is only apparent, since the angelic
body is only a phantasmal one. But concerning the human body of
the resurrection, they had not only different, but even opposite,
conceptions; indeed, these contradictions lay in the nature of the
case, necessarily resulted from the fundamental contradiction of the
religious consciousness which, as we have shown, exhibits itself in
the incompatible propositions that the body which is raised is the
same individual body which we had before the resurrection, and that
nevertheless it is another. It is the same body even to the hair,
"cum nec periturus sit capillus, ut ait Dominus: Capillus de capite
vestro non peribit."--Augustinus und Petrus, L. l. iv. dist. 44,
c. 1. Nevertheless it is the same in such a way that everything
burdensome, everything contradictory to transcendental feeling,
is removed. "Immo sicut dicit Augustinus: Detrahentur vitia et
remanebit natura. Superexcrescentia autem capillorum et unguium
est de superfluitate et vitio naturae. Si enim non peccasset homo,
crescerent ungues et capilli ejus usque ad determinatam quantitatem,
sicut in leonibus et avibus."--(Addit. Henrici ab Vurimaria,
ibid. edit. Basiliae, 1513.) What a specific, naïve, ingenuous,
confident, harmonious faith! The risen body, as the same and yet
another, a new body, has hair and nails, otherwise it would be a
maimed body, deprived of an essential ornament, and consequently the
resurrection would not be a restitutio in integrum; moreover they are
the same hair and nails as before, but yet so modified that they are
in accordance with the body. Why do not the believing theologians
of modern times enter into such specialities as occupied the older
theologians? Because their faith is itself only general, indefinite,
i.e., a faith which they only suppose themselves to possess; because,
from fear of their understanding, which has long been at issue with
their faith, from fear of risking their feeble faith by bringing
it to the light, that is, considering it in detail, they suppress
the consequences, the necessary determinations of their faith, and
conceal them from their understanding.
§ 17.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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