Against Heresies: Book V

SINCE SOME PEOPLE CONSIDERED ORTHODOX GO BEYOND THE INTENDED PLAN FOR THE EXALTATION OF THE JUST AND ARE IGNORANT OF THE WAYS THEY ARE PREPARED FOR INCORRUPTION: they hold heretical beliefs. Heretics, who despise God's handiwork and deny the salvation of their flesh, disregard God's promise and surpass God altogether with their beliefs, claiming that immediately after death they will ascend above the heavens and the Demiurge, and go to the Mother (Achamoth) or to the Father they have fabricated.

Those who reject the resurrection of the whole person and try to exclude it from Christian teaching, is it any wonder if they are ignorant of the resurrection plan? They fail to understand that if their views were true, the Lord Himself, whom they claim to believe in, did not rise again on the third day; instead, He would have left His body on earth and ascended immediately after dying on the cross.

However, He stayed among the dead for three days, as the prophet says: “And the Lord remembered His dead saints who previously slept in the land of sepulcher; and He descended to them to rescue and save them.” The Lord Himself says, “As Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth.” The apostle also says, “But when He ascended, what does it mean but that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth?” David, too, prophesied of Him, saying, “And you have delivered my soul from the nethermost hell.” Upon rising again on the third day, He told Mary, who was the first to see and worship Him, “Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My disciples and tell them, I ascend to My Father and your Father.”

IF: then, the Lord followed the law of the dead to become the firstborn from the dead, and remained until the third day "in the lower parts of the earth;" then afterward rose in the flesh, even showing the marks of the nails to His disciples, and then ascended to the Father;—[if all these things happened, I say], how must these people not be confused, who claim that "the lower parts" refer to this world of ours, but that their inner self, leaving the body here, ascends into the super-celestial place? For as the Lord "went away in the midst of the shadow of death," where the souls of the dead were, yet afterward rose in the body, and after the resurrection was taken up [into heaven], it is clear that the souls of His disciples also, for whom the Lord underwent these things, shall go away into the invisible place assigned to them by God, and remain there until the resurrection, awaiting that event; then receiving their bodies, and rising wholly, that is bodily, just as the Lord rose, they shall come into the presence of God. "For no disciple is above the Master, but every one that is perfect shall be as his Master." Just as our Master did not immediately depart, ascending [to heaven], but awaited the time of His resurrection set by the Father, which was also shown through Jonas, and rising again after three days was taken up [to heaven]; so should we also await the time of our resurrection set by God and foretold by the prophets, and, rising, be taken up, as many as the Lord shall deem worthy of this [privilege].