Annotation CCLXV
”We shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed.” — 1 Corinthians 15:51
Whether all men are to die.
Chrysostom, [in] homily 42 on the first [epistle] to the Corinthians, reads this passage in an almost contrary sense, in this manner: πάντες μὲν οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα, πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησόμεθα — that is, “We shall not all indeed sleep [die], but we shall all be changed.” Which sentence he so expounds, that he asserts [that] not all are to die, writing these [things]: “WE shall not all die, yet we shall all be changed — even those who do not die: for although [they are] mortal. Lest, therefore, if it happen [thee] to die,” he says, “thou be terrified on that account, as [one who is] not going to rise again: for there are certain [men], there are [those] who will even escape this [dying]: for whom, however, this will not suffice unto that resurrection, but it will nonetheless be needful that those bodies, [though] not yet dead, be also changed, and attain incorruptibility.”
Theodore, bishop of Heraclea, in the little commentaries on the Apostle, applies the same exposition in this place.
Diodore, bishop of Tarsus, in the explanation of this epistle, has the same.
Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, in the commentaries on the Apostle, explains [it] in the same manner.
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, has this same [thing].
Theophylact, bishop of Bulgaria, [has] the same.
Oecumenius, in the Collectanea of explanations on Paul, writes similarly.
On the contrary, there are other ancient commentators who read this sentence of Paul thus: πάντες μὲν κοιμηθησόμεθα, ἀλλὰ οὐκ πάντες ἀλλαγησόμεθα — that is, “We shall all indeed sleep [die], but not all shall be changed.” Which reading, indeed, differs little from the scripture of the Vulgate of our edition — nay, renders the same sense; because, if all shall sleep, all also shall rise. But those who, according to this reading, assert that all are to die, and afterward to rise again, are these, namely:
Origen, in the third volume [book] on Paul’s epistle to the Thessalonians, expounding that [text], “We who are alive, and who remain.”
Acacius, bishop of Caesarea, in book 4 of the Select Questions.
Didymus of Alexandria, in the commentary on the first epistle to the Corinthians.
Ambrose, bishop of Milan [Ambrosiaster], in the same place.
Augustine, On the City of God, book twenty, chapter 20.
Ambrose of Compsa, in the commentary on the present epistle, writes that Chrysostom — deceived by a false reading, since he had not exactly considered the matter — adhered to the former opinion, which he [Ambrose] says is both false and dangerous, and can be upheld only perversely. But, among the Greeks, Oecumenius, and among the Latins the author of the book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas [Gennadius], and Augustine, [in] the third question to Dulcitius, pronounce [that] those are equally catholic who follow either that reading and opinion or this. Jerome, in the epistle to Minervius and Alexander, sets [it] in the arbitrament [choice] of the reader, that he choose of these [readings] whichever he himself shall prefer.