{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/102/1020608.htm","path":"chr/ecf/102/1020608.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/102/1020608.htm","text":"Chapter 6.\u2014What is the First Resurrection, and What the Second.\nAfter that He adds the words, \u201cVerily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.\u201d 1334 As yet He does not speak of the second resurrection, that is, the resurrection of the body, which shall be in the end, but of the first, which now is. It is for the sake of making this distinction that He says, \u201cThe hour is coming, and now is.\u201d Now this resurrection regards not the body, but the soul. For souls, too, have a death of their own in wickedness and sins, whereby they are the dead of whom the same lips say, \u201cSuffer the dead to bury their dead,\u201d 1335 \u2014that is, let those who are dead in soul bury them that are dead in body. It is of these dead, then\u2014the dead in ungodliness and wickedness\u2014that He says, \u201cThe hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.\u201d \u201cThey that hear,\u201d that is, they who obey, believe, and persevere to the end. Here no difference is made between the good and the bad. For it is good for all men to hear His voice and live, by passing to the life of godliness from the death of ungodliness. Of this death the Apostle Paul says, \u201cTherefore all are dead, and He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again.\u201d 1336 Thus all, without one exception, were dead in sins, whether original or voluntary sins, sins of ignorance, or sins committed against knowledge; and for all the dead there died the one only person who lived, that is, who had no sin whatever, in order that they who live by the remission of their sins should live, not to themselves, but to Him who died for all, for our sins, and rose again for our justification, that we, believing in Him who justifies the ungodly, and being justified from ungodliness or quickened from death, may be able to attain to the first resurrection which now is. For in this first resurrection none have a part save those who shall be eternally blessed; but in the second, of which He goes on to speak, all, as we shall learn, have a part, both the blessed and the wretched. The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other of judgment. And therefore it is written in the psalm, \u201cI will sing of mercy and of judgment: unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing.\u201d 1337\nAnd of this judgment He went on to say, \u201cAnd hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.\u201d Here He shows that He will come to judge in that flesh in which He had come to be judged. For it is to show this He says, \u201cbecause He is the Son of man.\u201d And then follow the words for our purpose: \u201cMarvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.\u201d 1338 This judgment He uses here in the same sense as a little before, when He says, \u201cHe that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life;\u201d i.e., by having a part in the first resurrection, by which a transition from death to life is made in this present time, he shall not come into damnation, which He mentions by the name of judgment, as also in the place where He says, \u201cbut they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment,\u201d i.e., of damnation. He, therefore, who would not be damned in the second resurrection, let him rise in the first. For \u201cthe hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live,\u201d i.e., shall not come into damnation, which is called the second death; into which death, after the second or bodily resurrection, they shall be p. 426 hurled who do not rise in the first or spiritual resurrection. For \u201cthe hour is coming\u201d (but here He does not say, \u201cand now is,\u201d because it shall come in the end of the world in the last and greatest judgment of God) \u201cwhen all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth.\u201d He does not say, as in the first resurrection, \u201cAnd they that Hear shall live.\u201d For all shall not live, at least with such life as ought alone to be called life because it alone is blessed. For some kind of life they must have in order to hear, and come forth from the graves in their rising bodies. And why all shall not live He teaches in the words that follow: \u201cThey that have done good, to the resurrection of life,\u201d\u2014these are they who shall live; \u201cbut they that have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment,\u201d\u2014these are they who shall not live, for they shall die in the second death. They have done evil because their life has been evil; and their life has been evil because it has not been renewed in the first or spiritual resurrection which now is, or because they have not persevered to the end in their renewed life. As, then, there are two regenerations, of which I have already made mention,\u2014the one according to faith, and which takes place in the present life by means of baptism; the other according to the flesh, and which shall be accomplished in its incorruption and immortality by means of the great and final judgment,\u2014so are there also two resurrections,\u2014the one the first and spiritual resurrection, which has place in this life, and preserves us from coming into the second death; the other the second, which does not occur now, but in the end of the world, and which is of the body, not of the soul, and which by the last judgment shall dismiss some into the second death, others into that life which has no death.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: City of God: Cha...","type":"page"}