(CG 4/81). Some Points of Reply to Difficulties on the Resurrection (Book 4. God, in His Revelation) (Summa Contra Gentiles) (Aquinas, Thomas, St.)

THAT cannot be said to have been destroyed, which is to go on for ever. If then men were to rise again always with the prospect of another death, in no way could death be said to have been destroyed by the death of Christ. But it has been destroyed,�for the present, causally, as was foretold: I will be your death, O death (Osee xiii, 14): and in the end it shall be destroyed actually: the last enemy to be destroyed is death (i Cor. xv, 26).

3. The effect is like its cause. But the resurrection of Christ is the cause of our resurrection; and Christ rising from the dead dieth now no more (Rom. vi, 9).

Hence it is said: The Lord shall cast out death for ever (Isa. xxv, 8): Death shall be no more (Apoc. xxi, 24).

Hereby entrance is denied to the error of certain Gentiles of old, who believed that times and temporal events recurred in cycles. For example, in that age one Plato, a philosopher in the city of Athens, and in the school that is called Academic, taught his scholars thus, that in the course of countless revolving ages, recurring at long but fixed intervals, the same Plato, and the same city, and the same school, and the same scholars would recur, and so would be repeated again and again in the course of countless ages. As for the text: What is that has been? That same that shall be. There is nothing new under the sun: nor can any one say, Lo, this is fresh: for it hasalready gone before in the ages that have preceded us (Eccles i, 9): it is to be understood of events like in kind, but not in number.