B. How in the Resurrection the Flesh Returns the Same

1. First Conclusion

42. As to the second main point [n.8]: the supposition here is that to the truth of an individual man’s nature pertain not only the essential parts, namely matter and form, but also the integral parts (not only the heterogeneous ones, but the homogeneous ones that the heterogeneous are composed of, and in brief whatever was truly animated by the intellective soul, or is per se something of the individual animated body). On this supposition I state first this conclusion: that not everything that in Peter belonged to the truth of his nature for the whole of his life will rise again in him.

43. The proof is that because many of these sorts of parts flowed out during his life and many others came back in (from the preceding article [nn.19; 35-41]), then if they were all to return in him his body would either be of extreme density or of extreme size.

2. Second Conclusion

44. Second conclusion: what parts then will rise again so as to be of due density and due size? And that is: of as large a quantity as he would be of at the end of thirty years, had he lived, because whatever is to be re-formed in the resurrection is posited to be of such quantity - which I understand to mean: if he had suffered no deprivation that prevented him from reaching within thirty years the due quantity that would have occurred in his un-deprived nature.

45. Here there is a double way:

For this way is true: that as a rule a prior part of a man, that is, a part within the body of a living man, is purer (from the preceding article [nn.25-26]) - as a rule, I say, because by accidental impediment, whether on the part of what contains or on the part of something applied that is fitting or harmful, something else can come about.

46. Now the following is probable: that the body will be repaired from the purer parts that were at some point parts of this body; therefore it will have the whole of what was contracted from parents (because this was purest), and always the purer parts of whatever else is generated from food, up to a quantity sufficient for the whole body.

47. The second way is that nutrition is not per se necessary, save for the restoration of what is lost; but growth is per se necessary, so that the generated thing may reach the due quantity of its nature. Therefore, in all nutrition (up to the limit of growth) something is converted precisely because of nutrition, namely so that what flowed away might be restored, and something is converted because of increase, namely so that the due quantity may be acquired, even had nothing flowed away. And the first of these, indeed, does not belong to the principal intention of nature, for nature would simply rather conserve, for the being of the whole, the part that had flowed away (if nature could conserve it) than restore in its place another less perfect part. But the second does belong to the principal intention of a nature that wants to attain perfect quantity. So that the second is intended for the sake of acquiring perfection; the first is as it were occasioned for the sake of avoiding imperfection.

48. To this is added the probable conclusion that (up to due quantity) those parts will be in the body that is to be resuscitated which nature made more by intention to be parts of the body, up to the quantity sufficient for that body. But of this sort are the parts that arrived to give increase and not those that arrived to give restoration.

49. Therefore the body will rise again from that which was first taken from parents, and from the other parts generated from food for the sake of due increase of the body, up to the quantity sufficient for that body.

50. These two ways agree in this, that whatever was taken from parents will rise again, because, according to the first way [nn.45-46], it was purest of all the parts of the body and, according to the second way [n.47], it belonged most to nature’s intention in this supposit. But they disagree as to the parts generated from food, because the first posits that to this are joined, as to parts, those that were purer in this body as to the whole flow of its life; the other posits that to this are joined the parts that belonged more by the intention of nature to the truth of this body. Now the parts are not the same that are purer in the whole flow of time and that belong more by the intention of nature to this body, because the parts generated first are always regularly purer, whether they are more or less intended; but always, whether first or later, those parts that were generated over and above the necessary restoration of what has been lost were more of the intention of nature.

51. If you ask in objection against each way ‘how then will the man to be resuscitated have the same flesh which he had while alive here?’ - I say that he will not have precisely the same that he had in some instant or in some time of his life. But neither will he have the whole that he had at some time beside what he contracted from parents. Yet he will have the whole, and have the other parts that he had successively, now this one now that one. And so the body resuscitated will be more the same as the body possessed in this life than if it were the same as the man had in any determinate instant (or part) of his life, because although it would be the same as it for such an instant, it would be more different from the man’s body at another instant.