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After explaining these matters, I will speak systematically about a rational investigation into the resurrection of the dead — both those at the time of Redemption and those in the World to Come.
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Perhaps a thinker will think and say: When the first generation of people died, their elements dissolved and each part returned to its source —
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that is, the heat joined the fire and mingled with it, the moisture joined the air, the cold joined the water, and the dryness remained as earth —
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and then the Creator composed the bodies of the second generation from these same sources into which the parts of the first had mingled.
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Then the second generation died and their parts mingled into the sources of the elements as well; and the Creator composed from them a third generation, whose situation was like the two preceding ones.
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How then can He restore the first generation complete, and the second complete, and the third complete, when parts of each generation have entered into the others?
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I will give a satisfying answer to this and say: the dissolved parts of the first generation's bodies would only need to be used in composing the second generation's bodies if only those parts remained in existence and had to be recycled perpetually.
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By way of example: if someone has a silver vessel worth a thousand dirhams and has no other silver, every time it breaks he must melt it down and recast it.
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But if someone has a treasury and has pledged that whenever a vessel breaks he will set the shards aside to restore that exact vessel later — he fashions each new item from his treasury and does not mix the broken shards into it; rather, he keeps them separate until he restores them as he promised.
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Likewise, I have calculated and found that the reservoirs of air and fire between the earth and the first sphere of heaven are approximately eight thousand and eight hundred times the total mass of the earth, its mountains, and its seas.
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Since such vast reserves exist, the Creator is under no necessity to compose the second generation's bodies from the dissolved parts of the first — He can set them aside until He fulfills His promise to them.
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Chapter 5. Perhaps one will also think and say: Suppose a lion devoured a man; then the lion drowned and a fish ate it; then the fish was caught and eaten by a human being; then that human being burned and became ash —
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from where does the Creator restore the first man — from the lion, from the fish, or from the second human? And where does the second come from — from the fire or from the ash?
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It seems to me that this is the sort of thing that perplexes believers. Before answering it, I want to lay a premise: we must know that no body in the world annihilates another body.
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Even fire, which burns quickly, only separates the parts of a thing, each part joining its element; the earthy part becomes ash — but nothing is annihilated.
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Indeed, none but the Creator who originated it from nothing can bring a thing to utter non-existence. This principle being correct without doubt,
every creature that ate a body has not annihilated it — it has only separated