. . There must certainly be a resurrection of bodies whether dead or even quite corrupted, and the same men as before must come to be again. The law of nature appoints an end.for those very same men rho lived in a previous existence, an d it is impossible for the same men to come together again if the same bodies are not given back to the same souls. Now the same soul cannot recover the same body in any other way than by resurrection." 10As Athenagoras stresses, the idea is that each person's selfsame body will be raised; it will not be a different and brand new body but the old body. Aquinas (echoing the argument of very many of the Fathers) notes t he reason for this: " If the body of the man who rises is not to be composed of the flesh and bones which now compose it, the man who rises will not be numerically the same man." " Furthermore, in the resurrection there will be only one soul per body and only one body per soul. As Augustine says: " Each single soul shall possess its own body." " Otherwise (e.g., if souls split and animate more than one body or if multiple identical copies of one body are animated by different souls) the problem of persona l identity is unsolvable, and the Christian hope that we will live after death is incoherent.The Fathers and scholastics insisted, then, that both body and soul must be present or else the person does not exist. "A man cannot be said to exist as such when the body is dissolved or completely scattered, even t hough the soul remain by itself"-so says Athenagoras.t' And Aquinas agrees: "My soul is not I, and if only souls are saved, I am not saved, nor is any man." 14 Thus the Christian hope of survival is not the hope that our souls will survive death (though o n temporary disembodiment that is one important aspect of it), but rather the hope that one day God will miracu!.
lously raise our bodies and reunite them with our souls.
