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Roman Catechism
“He arose Again”

By the word Resurrection, however, we are not merely to understand that Christ was raised from the dead, which happened to many others, but that He rose by His own power and virtue, a singular prerogative peculiar to Him alone. For it is incompatible with nature and was never given to man to raise himself by his own power, from death to life. This was reserved for the almighty power of God, as we learn from these words of the Apostle: Although he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God.13 This divine power, having never been separated, either from His body in the grave, or from His soul in hell, there existed a divine force both within the body, by which it could be again united to the soul, and within the soul, by which it could again return to the body. Thus He was able by His own power to return to life and rise from the dead.

This David, filled with the spirit of God, foretold in these words: His right hand hath wrought for him salvation, and his arm is holy.14 Our Lord confirmed this by the divine testimony of His own mouth when He said: I lay down my life that I may take it again . . . and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again.15 To the Jews He also said, in corroboration of His doctrine: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.16 Although the Jews understood Him to have spoken thus of that magnificent Temple built of stone, yet as the Scripture testifies in the same place, he spoke of the temple of his body. We sometimes, it is true, read in Scripture that He was raised by the Father;17 but this refers to Him as man, just as those passages on the other hand, which say that He rose by His own power relate to Him as God.


13. 2 Cor 13:4
14. Psa 97:1
15. John 10:17-18
16. John 2:19
17. Acts 2:24