II. To the Initial Arguments

283. As to the first argument, from the Apostle [n.249], I concede that the instant of resurrection will not be the same for all, because in the first instant of the resurrection of the dead there will still be some alive, and that too with mortal life; and it is probable that they will pay the due of death as Christ and his Mother did, and then they will rise, and so after others who have already been resuscitated.

284. As to the next [n.250], what Augustine says about speed, I say that it can be referred to the collection of dust, not to the two other things that follow [sc. in Augustine, inducing and uniting the soul, nn.257, 259]; and it has been conceded that the collecting will take place in time, but the other two in an instant and in the same instant.

285. The third and fourth [nn.251-252] raise considerable difficulty among those who philosophize about the last instant of a thing permanent in being. But if it be said, as was said in Ord. II d.2 n.167, that ‘anything permanent in its being is measured by aeviternity’, there is no difficulty, because the same aevum measures the body that precedes [sc. the resurrection] as long as it remains, and when that body ceases to be its aevum ceases to be; and then one can, it is true, grant there is an ultimate in the being of a permanent thing [n.251], and the ultimate and the first are the same, and this same measures the whole, if one upholds the indivisibility of an aevum. So when it is argued about finite being that it will have two terms [n.251], one must deny it, because it is not something continuous but indivisible.

286. And if you say, “at least immediately before the being of what is to be resuscitated there is the being of what is to be corrupted” - I ask in what or with what limit of the time itself? Not with time because then the time would not be something finite with proper limits; with an instant of time therefore, so an instant of time will not immediately succeed - I reply: the being immediately preceding the resurrection is itself in an instant of the aevum, which aevum indeed can coexist with time as also with the ‘now’.

287. And when you ask about what coexists with it in time as it immediately precedes resurrection [n.252], I say that what coexists with it is time and not an instant; and thus those who speak of permanent things as if they had being in time should say that they never have ultimate being, but have being in the whole time, and in the ultimate of the time they have non-being, because then the thing generated has being; however the finite time has its own limits, because the instant that measures the being of what is to be generated is the term of the time that measures the being of what is to be corrupted.

288. And if you say that that being is something finite, therefore it will have its own proper limits - the inference that it will have limits within which it may be preserved does not follow; for ‘having its own proper limits’ only corresponds to it by reason of the time that measures it, and its proper limits are two instants, whether they measure that being or another.

289. Thereby to the next argument [n.252]: when it is said that a permanent thing does not have being in time or with time save because it is in an instant - this is false when holding to the first way, about being measured by the aevum [n.285].

290. But if one holds the other way [sc. being measured by time, Ord. II d.2 n.146], one must say that it is with the whole time as it is immediate to an instant in the way something continuous is immediate to its term; and it does not have this immediacy save as it is in some instant; and then one must deny the statement that “the permanent does not have being in time save because it has it in an instant” [n.252]. True indeed it is that it can be in an instant, provided, however, it can have being in time, namely being with duration; and according to this being, and not instantaneous being, it is immediate to the following instantaneous being.

291. But the first response [n.290] seems easier and more reasonable, because a permanent thing, even if it persist with time, seems nevertheless to have a being in itself that is just as indivisible.