Article 2 — Whether the sound of the trumpet will be the cause of our resurrection?

Objection 1: It would seem that the sound of the trumpet will not be the cause of our resurrection. For the Damascene says (On the Orthodox Faith 4): you must believe that the resurrection will take place by God’s will, power, and nod. Therefore, since these are a sufficient cause of our resurrection, we ought not to assign the sound of the trumpet as a cause of it.

Obj. 2: Further, it is useless to make sounds to one who cannot hear. But the dead will not have hearing. Therefore, it is unfitting to make a sound to arouse them.

Obj. 3: Further, if any sound is the cause of the resurrection, this will only be by a power given by God to the sound: wherefore a Gloss on Psalm 67:34, he will give to his voice the voice of power, says: to arouse our bodies. Now from the moment that a power is given to a thing, though it be given miraculously, the act that ensues is natural, as instanced in the man born blind who, after being restored to sight, saw naturally. Therefore, if a sound be the cause of resurrection, the resurrection would be natural: which is false.

On the contrary, It is written: the Lord himself will come down from heaven with the trumpet of God; and the dead who are in Christ shall rise (1 Thess 4:15).

Further, It is written that they who are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God (John 5:28) and they that hear shall live (John 5:25). Now this voice is called the trumpet, as stated in the text (Sentences IV, D. 43). Therefore, etc.

I answer that, Cause and effect must in some way be united together, since mover and moved, maker and made, are simultaneous (Physics 7.2). Now Christ rising again is the univocal cause of our resurrection: wherefore at the resurrection of bodies, Christ must work the resurrection at the giving of some common bodily sign.

According to some, this sign will be literally Christ’s voice commanding the resurrection, even as he commanded the sea and the storm ceased (Matt 8:26).

Others say that this sign will be nothing else than the manifest appearance of the Son of God in the world, according to Matthew 24:27: as lightning comes out of the east, and appears even into the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. These rely on the authority of Gregory who says that the sound of the trumpet is nothing else but the Son appearing to the world as judge. (Morals on Job 31, as quoted by St. Albert the Great, Sentences IV, D. 42, A. 4.) According to this, the visible presence of the Son of God is called his voice, because as soon as he appears all nature will obey his command in restoring human bodies: hence he is described as coming with commandment (1 Thess 4:15). In this way his appearing, insofar as it has the force of a command, is called his voice.

And this voice, whatever it be, is sometimes called a cry as of a herald summoning to judgment (Cf. Mt 25:6); sometimes the sound of a trumpet (Cf. 1 Cor 15:52; 1 Thess 4:15), either on account of its distinctness, as stated in the text (Sentences IV, D. 43), or as being in keeping with the use of the trumpet in the Old Testament: for by the trumpet they were summoned to the council, stirred to the battle, and called to the feast; and those who rise again will be summoned to the council of judgment, to the battle in which the world shall fight against the unwise (Wis 5:21), and to the feast of everlasting solemnity.

Reply Obj. 1: In those words the Damascene touches on three things respecting the material cause of the resurrection: the divine will which commands, the power which executes, and the ease of execution, when he adds his nod, in resemblance to our own affairs. For it is very easy for us to do what is done at once at our word. But the ease is much more evident, if before we say a word, at the first sign of our will (called a nod) our servants execute our will at once. And this nod is a kind of cause of that execution, insofar as others are led thereby to accomplish our will. Yet the divine nod, at which the resurrection will take place, is nothing but the sign given by God, which all nature will obey by concurring in the resurrection of the dead. This sign is the same as the sound of the trumpet, as explained above.

Reply Obj. 2: As the forms of the sacraments have the power to sanctify not through being heard, but through being spoken, so this sound, whatever it be, will have an instrumental efficacy of resuscitation, not through being perceived, but through being uttered. Even so a voice awakens a sleeping person by its very impact on the air striking the organ of sensing, not by the fact that he recognizes it, for the judgment about the voice reaching the ears follows waking, and is not the cause of it.

Reply Obj. 3: This argument would proceed if the power given to that sound were a complete being in nature: because then that which would proceed therefrom would have for a principle a power already rendered natural. But this power is not of that kind, but such as we have ascribed above to the forms of the sacraments (Sentences IV, D. 1; I, Q. 62, A. 1,4).