Which comes first, the natural body or the spiritual body?

The apostle Paul says, “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual” (1 Cor. 15:46). The physical or natural body is first because it is the body with which Adam was created to live on earth. The spiritual body is this same body after it is glorified and clothes the soul in the resurrection, and lives in heaven as a spirit-like being.

St. Augustine says, “Of these two first parents of the human race, then, Cain was the first-born, and he belonged to the city of men; after him was born Abel, who belonged to the city of God. For as in the individual the truth of the apostle's statement is discerned, ‘that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual’ (1 Cor. 15:46), whence it comes to pass that each man, being derived from a condemned stock, is first of all born of Adam evil and carnal, and becomes good and spiritual only afterwards, when he is grafted into Christ by regeneration: so was it in the human race as a whole.”¹³¹⁸

1316 Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons 117 (FOTC 17:199–202) amended.

1317 Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis (On First Principles) 3.6.6 (ANF 4:347).

1318 St. Augustine of Hippo, City of God 15.1 (NPNF I/2:284).

“But by a spiritual body is meant one which has been made subject to spirit in such wise that it is adapted to a heavenly habitation, all frailty and every earthly blemish having been changed and converted into heavenly purity and stability.”¹³¹⁹

And St. John Chrysostom says, “And he says not, why, but is content with the ordinance of God, having the evidence from the facts testifying to that most excellent œconomy of God, and implying that our state is always going forward to the better; at the same time by this also adding credibility to his [Paul’s] argument. For if the lesser have come to pass, much more ought we to expect the better [2 Cor. 5:17] … For so the husbandman, when he sees the grain dissolving, does not mourn.”¹³²⁰