1 Corinthians 15:43
It is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory. It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power.
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The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Seminatur in ignobilitate, surget in gloria : seminatur in infirmitate, surget in virtute :
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- σπείρεται ἐν ἀτιμίᾳ, ἐγείρεται ἐν δόξῃ· σπείρεται ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ, ἐγείρεται ἐν δυνάμει·
Haydock's commentary
On verses 35 to 50
How do the dead rise again? He now answers the objections these new teachers made against the resurrection. St. Chrysostom reduces them to these two questions: how is it possible for them to rise? and in what manner, or with what qualities, will they rise? To shew the possibility, he brings the example of a grain of wheat, or of any seeds, which must be corrupted, and die as it were in the ground, and then is quite changed, comes up with a blade, a stalk, and an ear quite different from what it was when sown, and yet comes to be wheat again, or to be a tree that produces the same kind of fruit: so God can raise our bodies as he pleaseth. He also tells them that there are very different bodies, terrestrial, and celestial, some more, some less glorious, differing in beauty and other qualities, as God pleaseth. As the sun is brighter than the moon, and as one star is brighter than another, so shall it be at the general resurrection. But all the bodies of the elect shall be happily changed to a state of incorruption. (ver. 42.) Here the bodies even of the just are subject to corruption, to decay, liable to death, but they shall then rise to a state of incorruptibility and immortality: And so he answers the second question, that here every one's body is a weak, sensual, animal body, clogged with many imperfections, like that of Adam after he had sinned; but at the resurrection, the bodies of the saints shall be spiritual bodies, blessed with all the perfections and qualities of a glorified body, like to that of Christ after he was risen.
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St. Paul also, comparing the first man (Adam) with Christ, whom he calls the second or the last Adam, (ver. 45) says that the first Adam was made a living soul, (i.e. a living animal, or a living creature, with a life and a body that required to be supported with corporal food) but that Christ was made a quickening Spirit: he means, that though he had a true mortal body by his nativity of his Virgin Mother, yet that by his resurrection he had a glorified body, immortal, that needed no corporal food, and that he would also give such spiritual and immortal bodies to those whom he should make partakers of his glory.
But not first that which is spiritual, &c. (ver. 46) that is, both in Adam and in us, and even in Christ, the body was first mortal, which should afterwards be made spiritual and immortal by a happy resurrection.
The first Adam (ver. 47) was of the earth, earthly, made of clay, and with such a body as could die, but the second man (Christ) was from heaven, heavenly: not that he took a body from heaven, as some ancient heretics pretended, but he was heavenly not only because he was the Son of God, but in this place he seems to be called heavenly even as to his body, after his resurrection, his body being then become spiritual and immortal.
Such as is the earthly man, &c. (ver. 48) that is, as the first man, Adam, was earthly by his earthly and mortal body, so were we and all his posterity earthly; but such as the heavenly man, Christ, was heavenly, and rose with a heavenly and immortal body; so shall all those be heavenly, to whom he shall give a spiritual, a heavenly, and an immortal body at their happy resurrection.
Therefore, (ver. 49) as we have borne the image of the earthly man, (that is, have been made mortal, and also by sin subject to the corrupt inclinations of this mortal body) so let us bear also the image of the heavenly one, by a new life imitating Christ, by which means we shall be glorified with him, both as to soul and body.
Now this I say, and admonish you, brethren, (ver. 50) that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God; i.e. those that lead a sensual and carnal life, nor the corruption of sin, deserve the state of incorruption in glory. (Witham)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Irenaeus Against Heresies: Book V, Chapter VII. Inasmuch as Christ did
2. But what is that which, like a grain of wheat, is sown in the earth and decays, unless it be the bodies which are laid in the earth, into which seeds are also cast? And for this reason he said, “It is sown in dishonour, it rises in glory.” For what is more ignoble than dead flesh? Or, on the other hand, what is more glorious than the same when it arises and partakes of incorruption? “It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power:” in its own weakness certainly, because since it is earth it goes to earth; but [it is quickened] by the power of God, who raises it from the dead. “It is sown an animal body, it rises a spiritual body.” He has taught, beyond all doubt, that such language was not used by him, either with reference to the soul or to the spirit, but to bodies that have become corpses. …
Tertullian The Five Books Against Marcion, Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body, Continued. How are the Dead Raised? and with What Body Do They Come? These Questions Answered in Such a Sense as to Maintain the Truth of the Raised Body, Against Marcion. Christ as the Second Adam Connected with the Creator of the First Man. Let Us Bear the Image of the Heavenly. The Triumph Over Death in Accordance with the Prophets. Hosea and St. Paul Compared
Let us now return to the resurrection, to the defence of which against heretics of all sorts we have given indeed sufficient attention in another work of ours. But we will not be wanting (in some defence of the doctrine) even here, in consideration of such persons as are ignorant of that little treatise. “What,” asks he, “shall they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not?” Now, never mind that practice, (whatever it may have been.) The Februarian lustrations will perhaps answer him (quite as well), by praying for the dead. Do not then suppose that the apostle here indicates some new god as the author and advocate of this (baptism for the dead. …
Tertullian On the Resurrection of the Flesh, From St. Paul's Analogy of the Seed We Learn that the Body Which Died Will Rise Again, Garnished with the Appliances of Eternal Life
Let us now see in what body he asserts that the dead will come. And with a felicitous sally he proceeds at once to illustrate the point, as if an objector had plied him with some such question. “Thou fool,” says he, “that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” From this example of the seed it is then evident that no other flesh is quickened than that which shall have undergone death, and therefore all the rest of the question will become clear enough. For nothing which is incompatible with the idea suggested by the example can possibly be understood; nor from the clause which follows, “That which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body which shall be,” are you permitted to suppose that in the resurrection a different body is to arise from that which is sown in death. Otherwise you have run away from the example. …
Tertullian On the Resurrection of the Flesh, Not the Soul, But the Natural Body Which Died, is that Which is to Rise Again. The Resurrection of Lazarus Commented on. Christ's Resurrection, as the Second Adam, Guarantees Our Own
Some, however, contend that the soul is “the natural (or animate) body,” with the view of withdrawing the flesh from all connection with the risen body. Now, since it is a clear and fixed point that the body which is to rise again is that which was sown in death , they must be challenged to an examination of the very fact itself. Else let them show that the soul was sown after death; in a word, that it underwent death, that is, was demolished, dismembered, dissolved in the ground, nothing of which was ever decreed against it by God: let them display to our view its corruptibility and dishonour (as well as) its weakness, that it may also accrue to it to rise again in incorruption, and in glory, and in power. …
St Cyprian Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews, Testimony LVIII
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 shalt eat thy bread until thou return unto the earth from which also thou wast taken; because earth thou art, and to earth thou shalt 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. …
St Augustine City of God, What We are to Understand by the Animal and Spiritual Body; Or of Those Who Die in Adam, And of Those Who are Made Alive in Christ
Thus the apostle states that the first man was made in an animal body. For, wishing to distinguish the animal body which now is from the spiritual, which is to be in the resurrection, he says, “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” Then, to prove this, he goes on, “There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” And to show what the animated body is, he says, “Thus it was written, The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” He wished thus to show what the animated body is, though Scripture did not say of the first man Adam, when his soul was created by the breath of God, “Man was made in an animated body,” but “Man was made a living soul.” By these words, therefore, “ …
St Augustine On the Holy Trinity, Whether the Sentence of John is to Be Understood of Our Future Likeness with the Son of God in the Immortality Itself Also of the Body
24. But the Apostle John says, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Hence it appears, that the full likeness of God is to take place in that image of God at that time when it shall receive the full sight of God. And yet this may also possibly seem to be said by the Apostle John of the immortality of the body. For we shall be like to God in this too, but only to the Son, because He only in the Trinity took a body, in which He died and rose again, and which He carried with Him to heaven above. …
St Augustine Reply to Faustus the Manichæan, Faustus quotes passages to show that the Apostle Paul abandoned belief in the incarnation, to which he earlier held. Augustin shows that the apostle was consistent with himself in the utterances quoted
3. As regards the passage from Paul’s epistle which teaches, in opposition to your heresy , that the Son of God was born of the seed of David, it is found in all manuscripts both new and old of all Churches, and in all languages. So the profession which Faustus makes of believing the apostle is hypocritical. Instead of saying, "Assuredly I believe," he should have said, Assuredly I do not believe, as he would have said if he had not wished to deceive people. …
St Augustine Reply to Faustus the Manichæan, Faustus explains the Manichæan denial that man was made by God as applying to the fleshly man not to the spiritual. Augustin elucidates the Apostle Paul’s contrasts between flesh and spirit so as to exclude the Manichæan view
2. Augustin replied: The Apostle Paul certainly uses the expression the inner man for the spirit of the mind, and the outer man for the body and for this mortal life; but we nowhere find him making these two different men, but one, which is all made by God, both the inner and the outer. However, it is made in the image of God only as regards the inner, which, besides being immaterial, is rational, and is not possessed by the lower animals. God, then, did not make one man after His own image, and another man not after that image; but the one man, which includes both the inner and the outer, He made after His own image, not as regards the possession of a body and of mortal life, but as regards the rational mind with the power of knowing God, and with the superiority as compared with all irrational creatures which the possession of reason implies. …
St Augustine Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, On the words of the Gospel, Luke xxiv. 36, ‘He himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, peace be unto you,’ etc
2. But what said the Lord Jesus? “Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts ascend into your hearts?” If thoughts ascend into your heart, the thoughts come from the earth. But it is good for a man, not that a thought should ascend into his heart, but that his heart should itself ascend upwards, where the Apostle would have believers place their hearts, to whom he said, “If ye be risen with Christ, mind those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Seek those things which are above, not the things which are upon the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ your life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” In what glory? The glory of the resurrection. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXVIII
40. Lastly, lest of anything else the clouds be understood, he hath in continuation added, “Wonderful is God in His saints, the God of Israel” ( ver. 35 ). For at that time even most truly and most fully there shall be fulfilled the name Israel itself, which is one “seeing God:” for we shall see Him as He is. “He Himself shall give virtue and strength to His people, blessed be God:” to His people now frail and weak. For “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” But then by a most glorious changing even of our bodies, “He Himself shall give virtue and strength to His people.” For this body is sown in weakness, shall rise in virtue. He Himself then shall give the virtue which in His own flesh He hath sent before, whereof the Apostle saith, “the power of His Resurrection.” But strength whereby shall be destroyed the enemy death. …
St John Chrysostom Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily XLI
Ver. 43 . “It is sown in dishonor.” For what is more unsightly than a corpse in dissolution? “It is raised in glory.” “It is sown in weakness.” For before thirty days the whole is gone, and the flesh cannot keep itself together nor hold out for one day. “It is raised in power.” For there shall nothing prevail against it for all the future. Here is why he stood in need of those former analogies, lest many on hearing of these things, that they are “raised in incorruption and glory and power,” might suppose that there is no difference among those who rise again. For all indeed rise again, both in power and in incorruption; and in this glory of their incorruption yet are not all in the same state of honor and safety.
5 more passages of the Fathers cite this verse. The Motif Searcher in the palace lists them all.