On the Resurrection of the Flesh

THE HERETICS AGAINST WHOM THIS WORK IS DIRECTED WERE THE SAME ONES WHO MAINTAINED THAT THE DEMIURGE: or the god who created this world and gave the Mosaic divine arrangement, was opposed to the supreme God. Because of this, they attached the idea of natural corruption and worthlessness to all his works. Among these was the flesh, or the body of man. They affirmed that it could not rise again, and that the soul alone was capable of inheriting immortality.

The resurrection of the dead is the Christian’s hope. By it we are believers. Truth compels us to believe this article of the faith—that truth which God reveals, but the crowd laughs at. The crowd thinks that nothing survives after death. And yet they honor their dead, and do so in the most costly way, according to what was left in the will. They also prepare the richest banquets the seasons can provide, on the assumption that those whom they say can no longer feel anything still keep an appetite. But let the crowd laugh. For my part, I must laugh at it even more, especially when it burns up its dead with the harshest inhumanity, and then at once pampers them with excessive feasting. It uses the very same fires both to honor them and to insult them. What kind of piety is it that cruelly mocks its victims? Is it a sacrifice or an insult that the crowd offers, when it burns offerings to those it has already burned? But even the wise sometimes join the common crowd in this opinion. According to the school of Epicurus, there is nothing after death. “After death all things come to an end, even death itself,” says Seneca in a similar way. It is satisfying, however, that the equally important philosophies of Pythagoras and Empedocles, and the Platonists, take the opposite view and declare that the soul is immortal. They also affirm, in a way that comes very close to our own doctrine, that the soul actually returns into bodies—though not the same bodies, and not always human bodies. So Euphorbus is supposed to have passed into Pythagoras, and Homer into a peacock. They strongly declared that the soul is renewed in a body, thinking it more acceptable to change the kind of bodily state than to deny bodily existence altogether. At least they knocked at the door of truth, although they did not enter. So the world, with all its errors, is not ignorant of the resurrection of the dead.

SINCE THERE IS: even within the bounds of God's Church, a sect more closely related to the Epicureans than to the prophets, we are given an opportunity to know what judgment Christ forms of that sect, that is, the Sadducees. For it was reserved for Christ to lay open everything that had before been hidden, to give certainty to doubtful points, to complete what men had only had a foretaste of, to make present realities of the things foretold by prophecy, and to provide sure proofs of the resurrection of the dead, not only by Himself, but actually in Himself. However, it is against other Sadducees that we must now prepare ourselves, though they still share in their doctrine. For they allow only a half of the resurrection, that is, only of the soul, while they despise the flesh, just as they also despise the Lord of the flesh Himself. In fact, no others refuse to grant to the substance of the body its recovery from death except heretical inventors of a second god. Driven, then, as they are, to give a different divine arrangement to Christ, so that He may not be regarded as belonging to the Creator, they made their first error in the matter of His very flesh. With Marcion and Basilides, they contend that it had no reality. Or else, following the heretical teachings of Valentinus, and according to Apelles, they hold that it had qualities peculiar to itself. And so it follows that they shut out from all recovery from death that substance which they say Christ did not partake of, confidently assuming that this provides the strongest presumption against the resurrection, since the flesh has already risen in Christ. This is why we ourselves previously published our volume On the Flesh of Christ. In it, we both provide proofs of its reality, against the idea that it was an empty phantom, and claim for it a human nature without any peculiarity of condition, such a nature as has marked out Christ to be both man and the Son of man. For when we prove Him to be clothed with flesh and in a bodily condition, we at the same time refute heresy by establishing the rule that no being other than the Creator must be believed to be God, since we show that Christ, in whom God is plainly seen, is exactly of such a nature as the Creator promised that He would be. Since they are thus refuted concerning God as Creator, and Christ as the Redeemer of the flesh, they will at once also be defeated on the resurrection of the flesh. Indeed, no procedure could be more reasonable. And we affirm that controversy with heretics should, in most cases, be conducted in this way. For proper method requires that conclusions should always be drawn from the most important premises, so that there may first be agreement on the essential point, by means of which the particular question under review may be said to have been decided. This is why the heretics, from awareness of their own weakness, never conduct discussion in an orderly way. They know very well how hard their task is in slipping in the existence of a second god, to the dishonor of the Creator of the world, who is naturally known to all men by the witness of His works, who is before all others in the mysteries of His being, and who is especially made known in the prophets. Then, under the pretense of taking up a more urgent inquiry, namely man's own salvation, a question greater than all others in importance, they begin with doubts about the resurrection. For there is greater difficulty in believing the resurrection of the flesh than the oneness of the Godhead. In this way, after they have stripped the discussion of the advantages of its proper order, and have entangled it with doubtful suggestions spoken against the flesh, they gradually draw their argument toward acceptance of a second god, after first destroying and changing the very ground of our hopes. For once a man has fallen from, or been removed from, the sure hope he had placed in the Creator, he is easily led away to the object of a different hope, whom, however, by himself he can hardly help suspecting. Now it is by a difference in the promises that a difference of gods is suggested. How many do we see caught in this net, conquered on the resurrection of the flesh before they could carry their point on the oneness of the Godhead! In regard, then, to the heretics, we have shown with what weapons we ought to meet them. And indeed we have already encountered them in treatises directed separately against them: on the one only God and His Christ, in our work against Marcion; on the Lord's flesh, in our book against the four heresies, especially for the purpose of opening the way to the present inquiry. So now we only have to discuss the resurrection of the flesh, treating it as if it were uncertain even for ourselves, that is, in the system of the Creator. Because many people are uneducated, still more are weak in faith, and several are weak-minded, these must be instructed, directed, and strengthened, since the very oneness of the Godhead will be defended along with the maintenance of our doctrine. For if the resurrection of the flesh is denied, that chief article of the faith is shaken. If it is affirmed, that is established. There is no need, I suppose, to discuss the safety of the soul, for nearly all heretics, whatever they think of it, certainly do not deny that. We may pass over a certain Lucan, who does not spare even this part of our nature, and who, following Aristotle, reduces it to dissolution and puts some other thing in its place. According to him, some third nature is to rise again, neither soul nor flesh; that is, not man, but perhaps a bear, for example, Lucan himself. Even he has received from us a full treatment in our book on the whole condition of the soul. There we maintain its special immortality, while we also acknowledge the dissolution of the flesh alone and strongly assert its restoration. Into that work were gathered whatever points we had elsewhere had to reserve because of the pressure of incidental causes. For just as it is my custom to touch some questions only lightly when they first arise, so I am also obliged to postpone fuller consideration of them until the outline can be filled out in complete detail, and the deferred points can be taken up on their own merits.

A PERSON MAY NO DOUBT BE WISE IN THE THINGS OF GOD: even by natural powers. But this is only as a witness to the truth, not as a support for error. It is so only when a person acts in agreement with, not in opposition to, the divine arrangement. For some things are known even by nature. For example, many hold that the soul is immortal. And all possess knowledge of our God. Therefore, I may use the opinion of Plato when he declares, "Every soul is immortal." I may also use the conscience of a nation when it bears witness to "the God of gods." In the same way, I may use all the other perceptions of our common nature when they declare that God is a judge. "God sees," they say. And, "I commend you to God." But when they say, "What has undergone death is dead," and, "Enjoy life while you live," and, "After death all things come to an end, even death itself," then I must remember both that "the heart of man is ashes," Isaiah 44:20, according to God's estimate, and that the very wisdom of the world is foolishness, as the inspired word declares. Then, if even the heretic seeks refuge in the depraved thoughts of the common people, or in the imaginations of the world, I must say to him, "Part company with the heathen, O heretic!" For although you are all agreed in imagining a God, yet while you do so in the name of Christ, as long as you consider yourself a Christian, you are a different man from a heathen. Give him back his own views, since he does not himself learn from yours. Why lean on a blind guide, if you have eyes of your own? Why be clothed by one who is naked, if you have put on Christ? Why use the shield of another, when the apostle gives you armor of your own? It would be better for him to learn from you to acknowledge the resurrection of the flesh, than for you to learn from him to deny it. Because if Christians must indeed deny it, it would be enough if they did so from their own knowledge, without any instruction from the ignorant multitude. Therefore, he will not be a Christian who denies this doctrine which is confessed by Christians, denying it moreover on grounds adopted by a man who is not a Christian. Indeed, take away from the heretics the wisdom which they share with the heathen, and let them support their inquiries from the Scriptures alone. Then they will be unable to keep their ground. For what commends common sense is its very simplicity, and its sharing in the same feelings, and its community of opinions. And it is considered all the more trustworthy because its definite statements are naked and open, and known to all. Divine reason, on the other hand, lies in the very pith and marrow of things, not on the surface, and very often is at variance with appearances.

THIS IS WHY HERETICS BEGIN AT ONCE FROM THIS POINT: From it they sketch the first outline of their dogmas, and afterward add the details. They know very well how easily people's minds are caught by its influence, and moved by that shared human feeling which so strongly favors their designs. Is there anything else that you can hear from the heretic, and also from the heathen, that is earlier in time or greater in extent? Is not their burden, from the beginning and everywhere, an attack on the flesh? Against its origin, against its substance, against the accidents that happen to it, and against the unchanging end that awaits it? They say it is unclean from its first formation out of the dregs of the ground, and even more unclean afterward from the mire of its own seed-born transmission. They call it worthless, weak, covered with guilt, loaded with misery, and full of trouble. After all this record of its degradation, they say it falls into its original earth and gets the name of corpse. Then it is destined to waste away even from this hateful name into no name at all from now on, into the very death of every designation. Now you are no doubt a shrewd man. Will you then persuade yourself that, after this flesh has been removed from sight, touch, and memory, it can never be restored from corruption to wholeness, from a shattered state to a solid one, from emptiness to fullness, from nothing at all to something, while the devouring fires, and the waters of the sea, and the maws of beasts, and the crops of birds, and the stomachs of fishes, and even time's own great belly itself, must of course give it all back again? Shall the same flesh that has fallen into decay be expected to recover in such a way that the lame, and the one-eyed, and the blind, and the leper, and the paralyzed shall also come back again, although there can be no pleasure in returning to their former condition? Or shall they be whole, and so have to fear exposure to such afflictions? What then, in that case, are we to say of the consequences of taking up the flesh again? Will it once more be subject to all its present wants, especially food and drink? Shall we again have with our lungs to float, and suffer pain in our bowels, and with organs of shame to feel no shame, and with all our limbs to toil and labor? Must there again be ulcers, and wounds, and fever, and gout, and once more the wish to die? Of course these would be the longings that belong to the recovery of the flesh, only a repeated desire to escape from it. Now then, we have said all this in very restrained and delicate language, as suits our style. But if you want to know how great a freedom of unseemly speech these men really use, you must test them in their discussions, whether they are heathens or heretics.

Since all uneducated men still form their opinions according to these common-sense views, and since those who falter and are weak-minded have their perplexities renewed by these same views, and since the first battering-ram directed against us is the one that shatters the condition of the flesh, we too must necessarily manage our defenses so as, first of all, to guard the condition of the flesh. Their disparagement of it must be repulsed by our own praise of it. The heretics, therefore, have challenged us to use our rhetoric no less than our philosophy. Respecting, then, this frail and poor, worthless body, which they do not hesitate to call evil, even if it had been the work of angels, as Menander and Marcus are pleased to think, or the formation of some fiery being, an angel, as Apelles teaches, it would be quite enough to secure respect for the body that it had the support and protection even of a secondary deity. The angels, we know, rank next to God. Now, whatever the supreme God of each heretic may be, I should not unfairly derive the dignity of the flesh likewise from Him to whom was present the will for its production. For, of course, if He had not willed its production, He would have prohibited it when He knew it was in progress. It follows, then, that even on their principle the flesh is equally the work of God. There is no work that does not belong to Him who has permitted it to exist. It is indeed a happy circumstance that most of their doctrines, including even the harshest, accord to our God the entire formation of man. How mighty He is, you know full well, who believe that He is the only God. Let, then, the flesh begin to give you pleasure, since its Creator is so great. But, you say, even the world is the work of God, and yet "the fashion of this world passes away," 1 Corinthians 7:31, as the apostle himself testifies. Nor must it be predetermined that the world will be restored simply because it is the work of God. And surely, if the universe, after its ruin, is not to be formed again, why should a portion of it be? You are right, if a portion is equal with the whole. But we maintain that there is a difference. In the first place, because all things were made by the Word of God, and without Him nothing was made. John 1:3. Now the flesh, too, had its existence from the Word of God, because of the principle that there should be nothing here without that Word. "Let us make man," Genesis 1:26, said He before He created him, and added, with our hand, for the sake of his pre-eminence, so that he might not be compared with the rest of creation. And God, says the Scripture, formed man. Genesis 2:7. There is undoubtedly a great difference in the procedure, springing, of course, from the nature of the case. For the creatures that were made were inferior to him for whom they were made, and they were made for man, to whom they were afterward made subject by God. Rightly, therefore, the creatures that were intended for subjection came forth into being at the bidding and command and sole power of the divine voice, while man, on the contrary, destined to be their lord, was formed by God Himself, so that he might be able to exercise his mastery, being created by the Master, the Lord Himself. Remember, too, that man is properly called flesh, which had a prior occupation in man's designation: "And God formed man, the clay of the ground." He now became man who had until then been clay. "And He breathed upon his face the breath of life, and man"—that is, the clay—"became a living soul; and God placed the man whom He had formed in the garden." Genesis 2:7-8. So that man was clay at first, and only afterward man entire. I wish to impress this on your attention, so that you may know that whatever God has at all purposed or promised to man is due not to the soul simply, but to the flesh also; if not arising out of any community in their origin, yet at all events by the privilege possessed by the latter in its name.

LET ME: then, continue the subject before me, if I can succeed in defending for the flesh as much honor as was given to it by the One who made it. Even then it could glory, because that poor and small material, clay, came into the hands of God. Whatever those hands were, the clay was happy enough simply to be touched by them. But why did it glory? Was it because, without any further work, the clay immediately took its form at God's touch? The truth is that a great work was underway, and the creature we are considering was being formed out of it. So, each time it experienced the hands of God, it received honor: when it was touched, pulled, stretched out, and shaped into form. Imagine God completely occupied and absorbed in this work: His hand, His eye, His labor, His purpose, His wisdom, His providence, and above all, His love, which was directing this creature's features. For whatever form and appearance were then given to the clay by the Creator, Christ was in His thoughts as the One who would one day become man, because the Word was also to be both clay and flesh, just as the earth then was. For this is why the Father had earlier said to the Son, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness." Genesis 1:26. And God made man, that is, the creature He molded and formed. He made him after the image of God, that is, after the image of Christ. And the Word was also God, who, being in the image of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God. Philippians 2:6. So that clay, which was even then taking on the image of Christ, who was to come in the flesh, was not only the work of God, but also His pledge and guarantee. What is the point of throwing around the name of earth as if it were something filthy and low, in order to disgrace the origin of the flesh? Even if some other material had been available for making man, we would still have to consider the dignity of the Maker. By choosing the material, He judged it worthy, and by working with it, He made it worthy. The hand of Phidias makes the Olympian Jupiter out of ivory. People worship the statue, and it is no longer regarded as a god made from a very foolish animal, but as the supreme deity of the world. That is not because of the size of the elephant, but because of the fame of Phidias. Could not, then, the living God, the true God, by His own work, remove whatever baseness may have attached to His material, and heal it of every weakness? Or must this be left in place in order to show that man could make a god more nobly than God could make a man? Now, although clay is offensive because of its lowliness, it is now something else. What I have is flesh, not earth, even though it is said of the flesh, "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return." In these words there is a mention of the origin, not a calling back of the substance. The flesh has been granted the privilege of being nobler than its origin, and of having its blessedness increased by the change worked in it. Now, even gold is earth because it comes from the earth. But after it becomes gold, it is no longer simply earth. It is a very different substance, more splendid and more noble, though it comes from a source that is comparatively dull and obscure. In the same way, it was entirely fitting for God to cleanse the gold of our flesh from all the stains, as you consider them, of its native clay, by purifying the original substance from its impurities.

BUT PERHAPS THE DIGNITY OF THE FLESH MAY SEEM TO BE LESSENED: because it was not actually shaped by the hand of God, as the clay was at first. Now when God handled the clay for the express purpose that flesh should afterward grow out of it, it was for the flesh that He took all that trouble. But I want you also to know at what time and in what way the flesh blossomed into beauty out of its clay. For it cannot be, as some would have it, that those coats of skins, Genesis 3:31, which Adam and Eve put on when they were stripped of paradise, were really the forming of the flesh itself out of clay. Long before that, Adam had already recognized the flesh that was in the woman as the propagation of his own substance: "This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh," Genesis 2:23. And the taking of the woman out of the man was completed with flesh. But if Adam were still clay, I suppose it ought to have been completed with clay. Therefore the clay was obliterated and absorbed into flesh. When did this happen? It happened when man became a living soul by the breathing in of God. That breath was indeed able to harden clay into another substance, as into some earthenware, and now into flesh. In the same way, the potter too has it in his power, by regulating the blast of his fire, to change his clay material into a stiffer substance, and to shape one form after another more beautiful than the original material, and one now having both a kind and a name of its own. For although Scripture says, "Shall the clay say to the potter?" Romans 9:20, that is, "Shall man contend with God?" and although the apostle speaks of "earthen vessels," 2 Corinthians 6:7, he refers to man, who was originally clay. And the vessel is the flesh, because this was made from clay by the breath of the divine afflatus. And afterward it was clothed with the coats of skins, that is, with the skin covering that was placed over it. This is so truly the case that if you take away the skin, you lay bare the flesh. Thus, what becomes spoil when it is stripped off was a garment as long as it remained laid over it. Therefore the apostle, when he calls circumcision a putting off, or spoliation, of the flesh, Colossians 2:11, declared the skin to be a coat or tunic. Now since this is so, you have both the clay made glorious by the hand of God, and the flesh made still more glorious by His breathing on it. By this, the flesh not only laid aside its clay-like first elements, but also took on itself the ornaments of the soul. Surely you are not more careful than God, so that you would refuse to set the gems of Scythia and India and the pearls of the Red Sea in lead, or brass, or iron, or even silver, but would set them in the most precious and most finely worked gold. Or again, you would provide for your finest wines and most costly ointments the most suitable vessels. Or on the same principle, you would find for your perfectly tempered swords scabbards of equal worth. While God must commit to some vilest sheath the shadow of His own soul, the breath of His own Spirit, the operation of His own mouth, and by so shameful a consignment secure, of course, its condemnation. Well then, has He placed it, or rather inserted and mingled it, with the flesh? Yes. And so close is the union that it may be thought uncertain whether the flesh carries the soul about, or the soul the flesh; or whether the flesh acts as attendant to the soul, or the soul to the flesh. However, it is more believable that service is rendered to the soul, and that it has the mastery, since in character it is nearer to God. John 4:24. This circumstance even adds to the glory of the flesh, since it both contains an essence nearest to God's, and makes itself a sharer in the soul's actual rule. For what enjoyment of nature is there, what product of the world, what taste of the elements, that is not conveyed to the soul by means of the body? How can it be otherwise? Is it not by its means that the soul is supplied with the whole equipment of the senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch? Is it not by its means that it has a sprinkling of divine power, since there is nothing that it does not accomplish by its faculty of speech, even when it is indicated only silently? And speech is the result of a fleshly organ. The arts come through the flesh. Through the flesh also effect is given to the mind's pursuits and powers. All work too, and business, and the offices of life, are accomplished by the flesh. And so completely are the living acts of the soul the work of the flesh, that for the soul to cease doing living acts would be nothing else than to separate itself from the flesh. In the same way, the very act of dying is a function of the flesh, just as the process of life is. Now if all things are subject to the soul through the flesh, their subjection is equally due to the flesh. What is the means and agent of your enjoyment must also be the partaker and sharer of your enjoyment. So the flesh, which is regarded as the minister and servant of the soul, proves to be also its companion and co-heir. And if this is so in temporal things, why not also in eternal things?

NOW I HAVE WISHED TO PUT FORWARD SUCH REMARKS IN DEFENSE OF THE FLESH: from a general view of the condition of our human nature. Let us now consider its special relation to Christianity, and see how vast a privilege before God has been given to this poor and worthless substance. It would be enough to say, indeed, that there is not a soul that can obtain salvation at all unless it believes while it is in the flesh. So true is it that the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul, because of its salvation, is chosen for the service of God, it is the flesh that actually makes it capable of such service. The flesh is washed, so that the soul may be cleansed. The flesh is anointed, so that the soul may be consecrated. The flesh is signed with the cross, so that the soul too may be fortified. The flesh is shadowed with the laying on of hands, so that the soul also may be illuminated by the Spirit. The flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, so that the soul likewise may fatten on its God. They cannot, then, be separated in their recompense, when they are united in their service. Moreover, those sacrifices that are acceptable to God — I mean conflicts of the soul, fastings, abstinences, and the humiliations joined to such duty — are performed again and again by the flesh, to its own special affliction. Virginity also, and widowhood, and modest restraint in secret on the marriage bed, and taking marriage only once, are fragrant offerings to God, paid out of the good services of the flesh. Come, tell me what your opinion of the flesh is, when it has to contend for the name of Christ, dragged out to public view, and exposed to the hatred of all men; when it pines in prisons under the cruelest lack of light, in banishment from the world, amid squalor, filth, and foul food, without freedom even in sleep, for it is bound on its very pallet and mangled on its bed of straw; when at last, before the public eye, it is racked by every kind of torture that can be devised; and when finally it is spent under its agonies, struggling to render its last service for Christ by dying for Him — on His own cross many times, not to speak of even more atrocious devices of torment. Most blessed indeed, and most glorious, must be the flesh that can repay its Master Christ so vast a debt, and so completely, that the only obligation still remaining due to Him is that by death it should cease to owe Him more — all the more bound even then in gratitude, because set free forever.

TO SUM UP: then: Shall that very flesh not rise again? It is the flesh that the divine Creator formed with His own hands in the image of God. It is the flesh He gave life to with His own breath, after the likeness of His own living vigor. It is the flesh He set over all the works of His hands, to dwell among them, to enjoy them, and to rule them. It is the flesh He clothed with His sacraments and His instructions. He loves its purity. He approves its mortifications. He counts its sufferings for Himself as precious. Shall that flesh, I say, which has so often been brought near to God, not rise again? God forbid, God forbid, I repeat, that He should abandon to everlasting destruction the labor of His own hands, the care of His own thoughts, the receptacle of His own Spirit, the queen of His creation, the inheritor of His own bounty, the priestess of His religion, the champion of His testimony, the sister of His Christ! We know the goodness of God by experience. From His Christ we learn that He is the only God, and truly good. Now, just as He requires us to love our neighbor after loving Himself, Matthew 22:37-40, so He Himself will do what He has commanded. He will love the flesh, which is His neighbor in very close and in so many ways. He will love it although it is infirm, since His strength is made perfect in weakness, 2 Corinthians 12:9. He will love it although it is disordered, since those who are whole do not need the physician, but those who are sick, Luke 5:31. He will love it although it is not honorable, since we bestow more abundant honor on the less honorable members, 1 Corinthians 12:23. He will love it although it is ruined, since He says, "I have come to save that which was lost," Luke 19:10. He will love it although it is sinful, since He says, "I desire rather the salvation of the sinner than his death," Ezekiel 18:23. He will love it although it is condemned, for He says, "I shall wound, and also heal," Deuteronomy 32:39. Why do you reproach the flesh with those conditions which wait for God, which hope in God, which receive honor from God, which He helps? I dare to declare that if such misfortunes as these had never befallen the flesh, the bounty, the grace, the mercy, and indeed all the beneficent power of God, would have had no opportunity to work.

YOU HOLD TO THE SCRIPTURES IN WHICH THE FLESH IS DISPARAGED: Receive also those in which it is ennobled. You read whatever passage abases it. Direct your eyes also to that which elevates it. “All flesh is grass.” Isaiah 40:7. Well, Isaiah was not content to say only this. He also declared, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Isaiah 40:5. They take notice when God says in Genesis, “My Spirit shall not remain among these men, because they are flesh.” But then He is also heard saying through Joel, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” Joel 3:1. Even the apostle ought not to be known by any one statement in which he is accustomed to reproach the flesh. For although he says that in his flesh dwells no good thing, Romans 8:18, although he affirms that those who are in the flesh cannot please God, Romans 8:8, because the flesh lusts against the Spirit, Galatians 5:17, yet in these and similar assertions that he makes, it is not the substance of the flesh, but its actions, that are censured. Moreover, elsewhere we shall take occasion to remark that no reproaches can fairly be cast upon the flesh, without also tending to the castigation of the soul, which compels the flesh to do its bidding. However, let me meanwhile add that in the same passage Paul carries about in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Galatians 6:17. He also forbids our body to be profaned, as being the temple of God. 1 Corinthians 3:16. He makes our bodies the members of Christ. 1 Corinthians 6:15. And he exhorts us to exalt and glorify God in our body. If, therefore, the humiliations of the flesh thrust off its resurrection, why shall not its high prerogatives rather avail to bring it about? Since it better suits the character of God to restore to salvation what He for a while rejected, than to surrender to perdition what He once approved.

SO FAR: this is my praise of the flesh, in opposition to its enemies. Yet these enemies are also, in another way, its greatest friends. For no one lives so much according to the flesh as those who deny the resurrection of the flesh, since they reject all its discipline while they do not believe in its punishment. The Paraclete speaks sharply about these people through the prophetess Prisca: "They are carnal, and yet they hate the flesh." Since, then, the flesh has the best possible guarantee for receiving the reward of salvation, should we not also think carefully about the power, strength, and ability of God Himself? We should ask whether He is so great that He can rebuild and restore the structure of the flesh, which had become ruined, blocked up, and in every way torn apart. We should also ask whether He has set forth, in the open realm of nature, any examples to persuade us of His power in this matter. Otherwise, some might still be longing for knowledge of God, when faith in Him must rest on this belief above all: that He is able to do all things. No doubt, among your philosophers there are men who say that this world had no beginning and no maker. However, it is much more true that nearly all heresies allow that it had an origin and a maker, and they ascribe its creation to our God. Therefore, firmly believe that He made it completely out of nothing, and then you will have found the knowledge of God by believing that He has such mighty power. But some people are too weak at first to believe all this, because of their views about Matter. Following the philosophers, they prefer to say that in the beginning God made the universe out of underlying matter. Now even if this opinion could truly be held, He still must be acknowledged to have produced, in His reshaping of matter, substances and forms very different from those which Matter itself had. So I would still insist that He produced these things out of nothing, since they had absolutely no existence before He produced them. Now what difference is there between a thing being made out of nothing or out of something, if what did not exist comes into being, when not having existed is the same as having been nothing? The opposite is also true, for having once existed amounts to having been something. If, however, there is a difference, both possibilities support my argument. For if God produced all things out of nothing, then He will be able to bring back even the flesh that had fallen into nothing. Or if He formed other things out of matter, then He will also be able to call forth the flesh from somewhere else, no matter into what abyss it may have been swallowed up. And surely the One who created is fully able to create again, since it is a much greater work to produce than to reproduce, to give a beginning than to maintain continued existence. On this principle, you may be completely sure that restoring the flesh is easier than forming it in the first place.

NOW CONSIDER THOSE VERY EXAMPLES OF DIVINE POWER THAT WE HAVE JUST MENTIONED: Day dies into night and is buried everywhere in darkness. The world's glory is hidden in the shadow of death. Its whole appearance is stained with blackness. Everything becomes dull, silent, and still. Everywhere, work stops and activity rests. And so people mourn the loss of the light. Yet day comes to life again, with its own beauty, its own riches, its own sun, the same as before, whole and complete, over all the world. It kills its own death, which is night. It opens its own tomb, which is the darkness. It comes out as its own heir, until the night also comes to life again, and it too is attended by its own company. For the rays of the stars are lit again, though they had been put out by the glow of morning. The far-off groups of the constellations are brought back into view again, though the temporary interval of day had taken them out of sight. The moon also is adorned again in its full brightness, after its monthly course had worn it away. Winter and summer return, and so do spring and autumn, with their supplies, their patterns, and their fruits. Since the earth receives its lesson from heaven, it clothes the trees that had been stripped bare, colors the flowers again, spreads the grass once more, and reproduces the seed that had been used up. And it does not reproduce these things until they have been used up. What a wonderful plan it is. To restore, it takes away. To protect, it destroys. To make whole, it injures. To enlarge, it first makes smaller. Indeed, this process gives back to us blessings richer and fuller than those it took away, by a destruction that is profit, by an injury that is an advantage, and by a loss that is gain. In a word, I would say that all creation is filled with renewal. Whatever you may come upon has already existed before. Whatever you have lost returns again without fail. All things return to their former state after they have gone out of sight. All things begin after they have ended. They end for the very purpose of coming into existence again. Nothing perishes except with a view to salvation. Therefore, this whole turning order of things bears witness to the resurrection of the dead. God wrote it first in His works before He wrote it in the Scriptures. He proclaimed it in His mighty acts before He proclaimed it in His inspired words. He first sent Nature to you as a teacher, intending also to send Prophecy as an added teacher. In this way, as a disciple of Nature, you may more easily believe Prophecy. And when you hear its testimony, you may accept it without hesitation, because you have already seen the same thing all around you. Nor should you doubt that God, whom you have found to be the restorer of all things, is also the one who revives the flesh. And surely, since all things rise again for man, for whose use they have been provided, though not for man apart from his flesh also, how is it that the flesh itself can perish completely, when nothing is brought to nothing if it exists because of the flesh and for the service of the flesh?

HOWEVER: if all of nature gives only a faint picture of our resurrection, and if creation gives no exact sign like it, since its different processes can hardly be said to die so much as simply come to an end, and then cannot really be called brought back to life but only formed again, then consider a very complete and unanswerable symbol of our hope. It is a living creature, and it is subject both to life and to death. I mean the bird found especially in the East, famous for being unique, and marvelous because of its life after death. It renews its life by a willing death. The day it dies is its birthday, because on that day it departs and returns. Once again, there is a phoenix where just before there was none. Once again, it is itself, though just before it did not exist. It is another, and yet the same. What could speak more clearly and more meaningfully to our subject? What else could such a sign testify to? God even says in Scripture, "The righteous shall flourish like the phoenix." That is, they shall flourish or come back to life from death, from the grave. This teaches you to believe that a bodily substance can be restored even from the fire. Our Lord has declared that we are better than many sparrows, Matthew 10:33. Well then, if we are not better than many a phoenix also, that would be no great thing. But are human beings to die once for all, while birds in Arabia are certain to rise again?

SINCE THESE ARE THE MAIN OUTLINES OF THE DIVINE WORKS THAT GOD HAS SHOWN: both in the parables of nature and in His spoken word, let us now come to His own commands and decrees. This is the main division we are using in our subject. We began with the dignity of the flesh, asking whether its nature was such that, once destroyed, it could be restored. Then we examined the power of God, asking whether it was great enough to be able, as a regular matter, to restore something that had been destroyed. Now, if we have proved these two points, I want you to consider the question of cause: whether there is a cause weighty enough to make the resurrection of the flesh necessary and fully in agreement with reason. For this objection lies underneath the whole matter: the flesh may be fully capable of being restored, and God may be fully able to restore it, but there must first be a cause for such a recovery. Then admit that there is a sufficient cause, you who learn from a God who is both perfectly good and just — perfectly good from His own character, and just because of ours. For if man had never sinned, he would have known God only and simply in His highest goodness, from the quality of His nature. But now, because a cause requires it, man also experiences Him as a just God. Still, even in this, He keeps His excellent goodness while also being just. For by helping the good and punishing the evil, He shows His justice, and at the same time He makes both actions serve as proofs of His goodness, since on the one hand He gives vengeance, and on the other He gives reward. But with Marcion you will have the chance to learn more fully whether this is the whole character of God. Meanwhile, our God is so perfect that He is rightly Judge because He is Lord; rightly Lord because He is the Creator; rightly the Creator because He is God. From this it follows that the heretic, whose name I do not know, holds that He is properly not a Judge, since He is not Lord; properly not Lord, since He is not the Creator. And so I do not know how He can be God if He is neither the Creator, which God is, nor the Lord, which the Creator is. Since, then, it is most fitting for the great Being who is God, and Lord, and Creator to call man to judgment on this very question, whether he has taken care or not to acknowledge and honor his Lord and Creator, this is exactly the kind of judgment that the resurrection will accomplish. The whole cause, then — or rather the necessity — of the resurrection will be this: the ordering of the final judgment in the way most fitting to God. Now, in carrying out this order, you must consider whether the divine judgment oversees a judicial examination of the two natures of man — both his soul and his flesh. For whatever is fit to be judged is also fit to be raised. Our position is that the judgment of God must first of all be believed to be complete, and then absolute, so that it is final and therefore cannot be reversed. It must also be righteous, not falling less heavily on any one part. And it must also be worthy of God, being complete and definite, in keeping with His great patience. So it follows that the fullness and perfection of judgment consists simply in representing the interests of the whole human being. Now, since the whole man consists in the union of these two natures, he must therefore appear in both, because it is right for him to be judged as a whole. Of course, he did not pass through life except as a whole person. Therefore, just as he lived, so also he must be judged, because he must be judged concerning the way he lived. For life is the cause of judgment, and it must be examined in as many natures as it had when it carried out its living functions.

COME NOW: let our opponents separate the flesh from the soul in the matters of this life, so that they may dare to separate them also in the reward of life. Let them deny that the two are joined in actions, so that they may then be able to deny that they also share in rewards. The flesh should have no share in the sentence if it had no share in the cause of it. Let the soul alone be called back, if it alone went away. But nothing like that ever happened. The soul did not depart from life by itself any more than it ran the course by itself from which it departed, that is, this present life. In fact, the soul is so far from carrying on life by itself that we do not even separate our thoughts from partnership with the flesh, even when those thoughts are by themselves and have not yet been carried out through the flesh into action. For whatever is done in a person's heart is done by the soul in the flesh, and with the flesh, and through the flesh. The Lord Himself, when He rebukes our thoughts, includes this part of the flesh in His rebuke, namely, the heart of man, the stronghold of the soul: "Why do you think evil in your hearts?" Matthew 9:4 And again: "Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Matthew 5:28 So even a thought, without action and without outward result, is an act of the flesh. But if you say that the ruling faculty of the senses, which they call the Hegemonikon, has its seat in the brain, or in the space between the eyebrows, or wherever the philosophers choose to place it, the flesh will still be the place where the soul thinks. The soul is never without the flesh as long as it is in the flesh. There is nothing that the flesh does not carry out together with the soul, since without the flesh the soul does not exist in this life. Consider carefully also whether thoughts are not managed by the flesh, since it is through the flesh that they are outwardly distinguished and made known. Let the soul only think of some plan, and the face gives the sign of it, since the face is the mirror of all our intentions. They may deny all partnership in actions, but they cannot deny their working together in thoughts. Yet they list the sins of the flesh. Surely then, because of its sinful conduct, it must be handed over to punishment. But we also set against them the virtues of the flesh. Surely also, because of its virtuous conduct, it deserves a future reward. Again, just as it is the soul that acts and drives us in all that we do, so it is the role of the flesh to obey. Now we must not suppose that God is either unjust or idle. He would be unjust if He left out of reward the flesh that shares in good works. And He would be idle if He freed it from punishment when it has been a partner in evil deeds. Human judgment is considered more complete when it finds the agents involved in every deed, and when it neither spares the guilty nor withholds from the virtuous their full share of punishment or praise along with the principals who used their service.

HOWEVER: when we give authority to the soul and submission to the flesh, we must make sure that our opponents do not twist our position with another argument. They may insist on placing the flesh in the service of the soul in such a way that it is not considered its servant, because if it were regarded that way, they would be forced to admit its companionship with the soul. For they would argue that servants and companions have judgment in carrying out the functions of their office, and power over their own will in both relations. In short, they would claim to be persons themselves, and therefore expect to share the credit with those to whom they willingly gave their help. But the flesh has no judgment and no feeling in itself. Since it has no power of its own either to will or to refuse, it seems to stand in relation to the soul in the place of a vessel, as an instrument rather than a servant. Therefore the soul alone will chiefly have to be judged at the last day for how it has used the vessel of the flesh. The vessel itself, of course, is not answerable to a judicial sentence. For who condemns the cup if a man has mixed poison in it? Or who sentences the sword to the beasts if a man has committed with it the atrocities of a brigand? Well then, let us grant that the flesh is innocent, in the sense that evil actions are not charged against it. What then prevents it from being saved on the ground of its innocence? For although it is free from the charge of good works, as it is from evil ones, yet it is more fitting with the divine goodness to rescue the innocent. A generous man is indeed bound to do so. Therefore it suits the character of the Most Bountiful to bestow such a favor even freely. And yet, as for the cup, I would not take the poisoned one, into which sure death has been poured, but one that has been tainted by the breath of a lustful woman, or of Cybele's priest, or of a gladiator, or of a hangman. Then I want to know whether you would pass a milder sentence on it than on the kisses of such persons. A cup that is stained with our own filth, or one whose mixture is not to our taste, we are apt to dash to pieces, and then increase our anger against our servant. As for the sword that is drunk with the blood of the brigand's victims, who would not banish it entirely from his house, much more from his bedroom, or from his pillow? He would do so from the thought that he would be sure to dream of nothing but the ghosts of the souls that pursued and troubled him because he lay down with the blade that shed their blood. But take the cup that has no disgrace on it, and that deserves the credit of faithful service, and its master at the feast will adorn it with garlands or honor it with a handful of flowers. The sword also, which has received honorable stains in war, and has thus been employed in a more honorable bloodshed, will win praise for itself by consecration. It is quite possible, then, to pass decisive sentences even on vessels and instruments, so that they too may share in the merits of their owners and users. I say this only because I want to answer even this argument, although the example falls short because the things compared are different in nature. For every vessel and every instrument becomes useful from outside, since it is made of material entirely separate from the substance of the human owner or user. But the flesh is conceived, formed, and generated together with the soul from its earliest existence in the womb, and it is also joined with the soul in all its actions. For although the apostle calls it a vessel, the kind he commands to be treated with honor in 1 Thessalonians 4:4, yet the same apostle also calls it the outward man in 2 Corinthians 4:16. It is, of course, that clay which at the first was marked with the title of man, not of a cup or a sword or any petty vessel. Now it is called a vessel because of its capacity, by which it receives and contains the soul. But it is called man because of its community of nature, which makes it in all actions a servant and not an instrument. Accordingly, in the judgment it will be regarded as a servant, even though it may have no independent judgment of its own, because it is an essential part of that which does have such judgment, and is not a mere possession. And although the apostle knows well that the flesh does nothing by itself that is not also charged to the soul, he still considers the flesh sinful in Romans 8:3, lest it should be thought to be free from all responsibility merely because it seems to be driven by the soul. So again, when he ascribes certain praiseworthy actions to the flesh, he says in 1 Corinthians 6:20, Therefore glorify and exalt God in your body. He is fully aware that such actions are moved by the soul. But he still attributes them to the flesh, because it is to the flesh that he also promises the reward. Besides, rebuke would not have suited it if it were free from blame. Nor would exhortation have suited it if it were incapable of glory. Indeed, both rebuke and exhortation would be equally useless toward the flesh if it were not a proper subject for that recompense which is certainly received in the resurrection.

ANY UNEDUCATED PERSON WHO AGREES WITH OUR VIEW MAY BE READY TO THINK THAT THE FLESH MUST BE PRESENT AT THE FINAL JUDGMENT FOR THIS REASON ALSO: otherwise, the soul would be unable to suffer pain or enjoy pleasure, since it is not bodily. That is the common opinion. But we maintain here, and we prove in a special treatise on this subject, that the soul is bodily, having its own special kind of solid nature. Because of this, it can both perceive and suffer. That souls even now can suffer torment and receive blessing in Hades, though they are without the body and separated from the flesh, is proved by the case of Lazarus. I have no doubt given my opponent an opportunity to say, "If the soul, then, has a bodily substance of its own, it will have enough ability to suffer and to perceive, and so it will not need the presence of the flesh." No, no, I reply. It will still need the flesh. Not because it cannot feel anything without the help of the flesh, but because it must have that ability together with the flesh. For to the same extent that it has enough power of its own to act, it also has the ability to suffer. But the truth is that, with respect to action, it has a certain degree of inability. By its own nature, it can only think, will, desire, and plan. But to carry out its purpose fully, it looks for the help of the flesh. In the same way, it also needs union with the flesh in order to endure suffering, so that with the flesh's help it may be as fully able to suffer as, without the flesh's help, it was not fully able to act. Now, in the case of those sins such as lust, thought, and desire, which it is able to commit by itself, it immediately pays the penalty for them. No doubt, if these alone were enough to make up full guilt, without needing the addition of outward acts, then the soul by itself would be enough to bear the full responsibility of the judgment, since it would be judged for those things in doing which it alone had enough ability. But acts also are inseparably joined to guilt. And acts are carried out in service by the flesh. Therefore, it is no longer enough for the soul apart from the flesh to be repaid with pleasure or pain for what are actually works of the flesh, although it has a body of its own, and although it has members of its own. These, in the same way, are not enough for its full perception, just as they are also not enough for its complete action. Therefore, just as it has acted in each case, so it suffers in proportion in Hades. It is the first to taste judgment, just as it was the first to lead to the committing of sin. But it is still waiting for the flesh, so that through the flesh also it may pay for its deeds, since it laid on the flesh the carrying out of its own thoughts. In short, this will be the course of that judgment which is delayed until the last great day, so that by the appearance of the flesh the whole process of divine vengeance may be completed. Besides, it is clear to say that there would be no delaying until the end of that punishment which souls are already tasting in Hades, if it were intended for souls alone.

SO FAR: my purpose in these opening remarks has been to lay a foundation for defending all the Scriptures that promise a resurrection of the flesh. Now, since this truth is supported by so many fair and reasonable considerations—I mean the dignity of the flesh itself, the power and might of God, similar cases where these are shown, as well as the good reasons for the judgment and the need for it—it is clearly right and proper that the Scriptures should be understood in the sense pointed to by such weighty considerations. They should not be understood according to the inventions of the heretics. Those inventions come only from unbelief, because they think it is unbelievable that the flesh should be recovered from death and restored to life. They do not think this because such a restoration is beyond the flesh itself, or impossible for God to do, or unfitting for the final judgment. No doubt it might seem unbelievable if it had not been revealed in the word of God. Yet even if God had not first announced it in this way, one might still reasonably suppose that the revelation had been withheld simply because so many strong arguments in its favor had already been given. But since this great fact is proclaimed in so many inspired passages, that is all the more reason not to understand it in a different sense from the one supported by the arguments that persuade us to accept it, even apart from the testimony of revelation. Let us see, then, first of all, under what title this hope of ours is set before us. There is, I think, one divine decree that is placed before the eyes of all people: "The Resurrection of the Dead." These words are direct, definite, and clear. I intend to take these very terms, examine them, and find out to what substance they apply. As for the word resurrection, whenever I hear that it is coming upon a human being, I am forced to ask what part of him has been appointed to fall, since nothing can be expected to rise again unless it has first been laid low. Only a person who does not know that the flesh falls in death could fail to see that it stands upright by means of life. Nature declares God's sentence: "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return." Genesis 3:19 Even a person who has not heard that sentence can still see the fact. Every death is the destruction of our limbs. The Lord also described this destiny of the body when, clothed as He was in its very substance, He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again." John 2:19 For He showed what it is that can be destroyed, thrown down, and kept down. It is the same thing that can also be lifted up and raised again. At the same time, He was carrying a soul within Him that was sorrowful even to death, Matthew 26:38 but it did not fall through death, because Scripture itself tells us that He was speaking about His body. John 2:21 So it is the flesh that falls in death. Accordingly, it gets its name, cadaver, from falling. The soul, however, has no sign of a fall in its name, just as there is no mortality in its condition. Rather, it is the soul that brings ruin to the body when it is breathed out of it, just as it is also destined to raise the body up again from the earth when it enters it again. That cannot fall which raises by entering. Nor can that droop which causes ruin by departing. I will go further and say that the soul does not even fall asleep along with the body, nor does it lie down at rest with its companion. For it is active in dreams and troubled. It might rest if it lay down, and it certainly would lie down if it fell. So then, what does not fall even into something like death does not yield to the reality of death. Now let us turn to the other word, dead. I want you to look carefully and see to what substance this word applies. Even if we were to allow, under this heading, as the heretics sometimes claim, that the soul is mortal, so that being mortal it would come to a resurrection, this would still suggest that the flesh also, being no less mortal, would share in the same resurrection. But our present aim is to draw from the proper meaning of this word an idea of the destiny it points to. Just as the term resurrection is used of what falls—that is, the flesh—so the word dead has the same application, because what is called "the resurrection of the dead" means the rising again of what has fallen down. We learn this from the case of Abraham, the father of the faithful, a man who had close fellowship with God. When he asked the sons of Heth for a place to bury Sarah, he said to them, "Give me a possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead." Genesis 23:4 He plainly meant her flesh. He could not have wanted a place to bury her soul, even if the soul were considered mortal, and even if it could properly be described by the word dead. Since, then, this word points to the body, it follows that when "the resurrection of the dead" is spoken of, it means the rising again of human bodies.

NOW THIS EXAMINATION OF THE PHRASE IN QUESTION: and of what it means, besides preserving the true meaning of these important words, must also lead to this further result: whatever obscurity our opponents throw over the subject under the pretense of figurative and allegorical language, the truth will stand out more clearly, and certain and definite rules will be laid down out of uncertainties. For some, when they have come upon a very common form of prophetic statement, generally expressed in figure and allegory, though not always, twist into some imaginary meaning even the most clearly described teaching of the resurrection of the dead. They claim that even death itself must be understood in a spiritual sense. They say that what is commonly supposed to be death is not really so, namely, the separation of body and soul. Rather, it is ignorance of God, because of which a man is dead to God, and is buried in error no less than he would be in the grave. Therefore they also hold that this must be the resurrection: when a man is brought to life again by coming to the truth, and, having scattered the death of ignorance, and being given new life by God, has burst out from the tomb of the old man, just as the Lord compared the scribes and Pharisees to whitewashed tombs in Matthew 23:27. From this it follows that those who have attained the resurrection by faith are with the Lord after they have once put Him on in baptism. By such subtlety, then, they have often been in the habit of misleading our brothers even in conversation, as though they held a resurrection of the dead as well as we do. "Woe," they say, "to him who has not risen in the present body." For they are afraid that they might alarm their hearers if they at once denied the resurrection. Secretly, however, in their minds they think this: Woe to the simpleton who during his present life fails to discover the mysteries of heresy, since this, in their view, is the resurrection. There are, however, a great many also who, while claiming to hold a resurrection after the soul's departure, maintain that going out of the tomb means escaping out of the world, since in their view the world is the dwelling place of the dead, that is, of those who do not know God. Or they go so far as to say that it actually means escaping out of the body itself, since they imagine that the body keeps the soul confined when it is shut up in the death of a worldly life, as in a grave.

NOW: to overturn all ideas of this kind, let me at once clear away the basic claim they rest on. They say that the prophets make all their statements in figures of speech. But if that were true, the figures themselves could never be recognized, since the real things from which figurative language is drawn would never have been stated. In fact, if everything is figurative, then where is the thing of which it is a figure? How can you hold up a mirror to your face if the face does not exist anywhere? But the truth is that not everything is figurative. There are also literal statements. Not everything is shadow; there are bodies too. So we even have prophecies about the Lord Himself that are clearer than daylight. It was not in a figure that the Virgin conceived in her womb. Nor was it in a trope that she gave birth to Emmanuel, that is, Jesus, God with us. And even if we grant that His taking the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, Isaiah 8:4, was figurative, it was still literal that He would enter into judgment with the elders and rulers of the people, Isaiah 3:13. For in the person of Pilate, the Gentiles raged. And in the person of Israel, the people imagined vain things. The kings of the earth, in Herod, and the rulers, in Annas and Caiaphas, were gathered together against the Lord and against His Anointed. Again, He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearer, that is, Herod, is silent, so He did not open His mouth, Isaiah 53:7. He gave His back to whips, and His cheeks to blows. He did not turn His face away even from the shame of spitting. He was counted among the transgressors, Isaiah 53:12. His hands and feet were pierced. They cast lots for His clothing. They gave Him gall and made Him drink vinegar. They shook their heads and mocked Him. He was valued by the traitor at thirty pieces of silver, Zechariah 11:12. What figures of speech does Isaiah give us here? What tropes does David use? What allegories does Jeremiah use? They did not even use parables about His mighty works. Or else, were the eyes of the blind not opened? Did the tongue of the mute not speak again? Isaiah 35:5. Did not weak hands and paralyzed knees become strong, and the lame leap like a deer? No doubt we are also used to giving these prophetic statements a spiritual meaning, by comparing them to the physical diseases that the Lord healed. But they were still all fulfilled literally. This shows that the prophets foretold both senses. Still, very many of their words can only be taken in a plain and simple sense, free from all allegorical obscurity. This is so when we hear about the fall of nations and cities, of Tyre and Egypt, and Babylon and Edom, and the fleet of Carthage. It is also so when they foretell Israel's own punishments and pardons, its captivities, restorations, and finally its last dispersion. Who would choose to force a metaphorical meaning onto all these events instead of accepting their literal truth? The realities are contained in the words, just as the words are read in the realities. So then, we find that the allegorical style is not used in every part of the prophetic record, although it does appear at times in certain sections of it.

WELL: if this occurs at times in certain parts of Scripture, you will say, then why not in that phrase, where the resurrection might be understood spiritually? There are several reasons why not. First, what are we to make of the many important passages of Holy Scripture that so plainly testify to the resurrection of the body that they do not even allow the appearance of a figurative meaning? And indeed, since some passages are more obscure than others, it cannot but be right, as we have shown above, that uncertain statements should be settled by certain ones, and obscure ones by those that are clear and plain. Otherwise, there is a danger that, in the conflict between certainties and uncertainties, between what is explicit and what is obscure, faith may be shattered, truth endangered, and God Himself be called inconstant. Then there is also the unlikelihood that the very mystery on which our trust wholly rests, and on which our instruction entirely depends, should seem to be announced ambiguously and set forth obscurely. For the hope of the resurrection, unless it is clearly presented in terms of both punishment and reward, would fail to persuade anyone to embrace a religion like ours, exposed as it is to public detestation and the charge of hostility to others. There is no certain work where the payment is uncertain. There is no real apprehension when the danger is only doubtful. But both the recompense of reward, and the danger of losing it, depend on the outcome of the resurrection. Now if even those purposes of God against cities, nations, and kings, which are only temporal, local, and personal in character, have been proclaimed so clearly in prophecy, how is it to be supposed that those divine arrangements of His which are eternal, and concern the whole human race, should be without true light in themselves? The greater they are, the clearer their announcement should be, so that their greater importance might be believed. And I understand that envy, guile, inconsistency, or artifice cannot possibly be ascribed to God, since it is by such evil qualities that schemes of unusual grandeur are proclaimed in a deceptive and contentious manner.

AFTER ALL THIS: we must also turn our attention to those Scriptures that forbid us to believe in the kind of resurrection held by your Animalists. I will not call them Spiritualists. They say it either takes place now, as soon as people come to know the truth, or else that it is completed immediately after they depart from this life. Now since the appointed times of our whole hope have been fixed in Holy Scripture, and since we are not allowed, as I understand it, to place its fulfillment before Christ's coming, our prayers are directed toward the end of this world, toward its passing away on the great day of the Lord, the day of His wrath and vengeance, the last day. It is hidden from all and known to no one but the Father, although it has been announced beforehand by signs and wonders, by the dissolving of the elements, and by conflicts of nations. I would set aside the words of the prophets, if the Lord Himself had said nothing, although the prophecies were the Lord's own word. But it serves my purpose better that He confirms their statement with His own mouth. When His disciples asked Him when those things would happen, the things He had just been speaking about concerning the destruction of the temple, He first spoke to them about the order of Jewish events up to the overthrow of Jerusalem, and then about those concerning all nations up to the very end of the world. For after He declared that Jerusalem would be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled, Luke 21:24, meaning, of course, those who were to be chosen by God and gathered in with the remnant of Israel, He then went on to proclaim against this world and dispensation, just as Joel and Daniel and all the prophets had done with one consent, that there would be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring, and men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after the things that are coming on the earth. Luke 21:25-26. For, He says, the powers of heaven will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near. He spoke of it as drawing near, not as already being present. And He spoke of those things as beginning to come to pass, not as already having happened. Because when they have come to pass, then our redemption will be at hand. It is said to be approaching up to that time, raising and stirring our minds to what is then the near harvest of our hope. He immediately adds a parable about trees that sprout tenderly into a flower-stalk and then develop the flower, which comes before the fruit. In the same way, He adds, when you see all these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of heaven is near at hand. Watch, therefore, and pray always, that you may be counted worthy to escape all those things and to stand before the Son of Man, Luke 21:36, that is, no doubt, at the resurrection, after all these things have first taken place. Therefore, although there is a sprouting in the acknowledgment of all this mystery, it is only in the actual presence of the Lord that the flower is developed and the fruit is borne. Who then has stirred up the Lord, now at God's right hand, so unseasonably and with such severity, to shake terribly, as Isaiah 2:19 says, that earth which, I suppose, is still unshattered? Who has already put Christ's enemies beneath His feet, to use David's words, making Him more hurried than the Father, while every crowd in our public assemblies is still with shouts consigning the Christians to the lions? Who has yet seen Jesus descending from heaven in the same way as the apostles saw Him ascend, according to the declaration of the two angels? Acts 1:11. Up to the present moment, they have not yet, tribe by tribe, beaten their breasts while looking on Him whom they pierced. No one has yet met Elias. Malachi 4:5. No one has yet escaped from Antichrist. 1 John 4:3. No one has yet had to bewail the fall of Babylon. Revelation 18:2. And is there now anyone who has risen again except the heretic? Of course, he has already left the grave of his own corpse, although even now he is still liable to fevers and ulcers. He too has already trodden down his enemies, although even now he still has to struggle with the powers of the world. And of course, he is already a king, although even now he still owes to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Matthew 22:21.

THE APOSTLE INDEED TEACHES IN HIS EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS THAT WE WERE ONCE DEAD: alienated, and enemies to the Lord in our minds, while we were living in wicked works, Colossians 1:21. He says that we were then buried with Christ in baptism, and also raised again with Him through faith in the working of God, who has raised Him from the dead, Colossians 2:12. And he adds, “And you, when you were dead in sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, has He made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.” And again: “If you are dead with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, are you subject to ordinances?” Now, since he makes us spiritually dead, yet in such a way as to allow that one day we will have to undergo a bodily death, so too, when he considers that we have also been raised in a similar spiritual sense, he equally allows that we will further have to undergo a bodily resurrection. He says it in so many words: “Since you are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth,” Colossians 3:1-2. Accordingly, he shows that it is in our mind that we rise with Christ, since by this alone we are as yet able to reach heavenly things. We should not seek these things, nor set our affection on them, if we already had them in our possession. He also adds: “For you are dead” — that is, to your sins, not to yourselves — “and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Now that life is not yet grasped which is hidden. In the same way John says: “And it does not yet appear what we shall be: we know, however, that when He shall be manifest, we shall be like Him,” 1 John 3:2. We are indeed far from already being what we do not know. Of course, we would be sure to know it if we were already like Him. Therefore, he speaks of the contemplation of our blessed hope even in this life by faith, not of its presence or its possession, but only of its expectation. Concerning this expectation and hope, Paul writes to the Galatians: “For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith,” Galatians 5:5. He says we wait for it, not that we are in possession of it. By the righteousness of God, he means that judgment which we will have to undergo as the recompense of our deeds. It is in expectation of this for himself that the apostle writes to the Philippians: “If by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect,” Philippians 3:11-12. And yet he had believed and had known all mysteries, as an elect vessel and the great teacher of the Gentiles. But for all that he goes on to say: “I, however, follow on, if perhaps I may grasp that for which I also am grasped by Christ.” No, more: “Brothers,” he adds, “I do not count myself to have grasped. But this one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of blamelessness, that I may attain it,” meaning the resurrection from the dead in its proper time. Just as he says to the Galatians: “Let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap,” Galatians 6:9. In the same way, concerning Onesiphorus, he also writes to Timothy: “The Lord grant to him that he may find mercy in that day,” 2 Timothy 1:18. Until that day and time, he charges Timothy himself to keep what had been committed to his care, without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, “which in His times He shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” speaking of God. It is to these same times that Peter refers in Acts when he says: “Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and He shall send Jesus Christ, who before was preached to you. Heaven must receive Him until the times of restitution of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets,” Acts 3:19-21.

LEARN THE CHARACTER OF THESE TIMES: along with the Thessalonians. For we read, "How you turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 And again, "For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even you in the presence of our Lord God, Jesus Christ, at His coming?" Likewise, "Before God, even our Father, at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, with the whole company of His saints." 1 Thessalonians 3:13 He teaches them that they must not sorrow concerning those who are asleep. At the same time, he explains to them the times of the resurrection, saying, "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so those also who sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain to the coming of our Lord shall not prevent those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall ever be with the Lord." 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 What archangel's voice, I wonder, what trump of God is now heard, unless it is, of course, in the entertainments of the heretics? For, even allowing that the word of the gospel may be called the trump of God, since it was still calling men, yet at that time they must either be dead as to the body, so that they may be able to rise again; and then how are they alive? Or else they must be caught up into the clouds; and then how are they here? Most miserable, no doubt, as the apostle declared, are they who in this life only shall be found to have hope. 1 Corinthians 15:19 They will have to be excluded while, with premature haste, they seize what is promised after this life, erring concerning the truth no less than Phygellus and Hermogenes. 2 Timothy 1:15 Hence it is that the Holy Ghost, in His greatness, clearly foreseeing all such interpretations as these, suggests to the apostle, in this very epistle of his to the Thessalonians, as follows: "But of the times and the seasons, brothers, there is no necessity for my writing to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, 'Peace,' and 'All things are safe,' then sudden destruction shall come upon them." 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3 Again, in the second epistle he addresses them with even greater earnestness: "Now I beseech you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together to Him, that you be not soon shaken in mind, nor be troubled, either by spirit, or by word," that is, the word of false prophets, "or by letter," that is, the letter of false apostles, "as if from us, as that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means. For that day shall not come, unless indeed there first come a falling away," he means indeed of this present empire, "and that man of sin be revealed," that is to say, Antichrist, "the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or religion; so that he sits in the temple of God, affirming that he is God. Do you not remember, that when I was with you, I used to tell you these things? And now you know what detains, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity does already work; only he who now hinders must hinder, until he be taken out of the way." 2 Thessalonians 2:1-7 What obstacle is there but the Roman state? The falling away of it, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon its own ruins. And then shall be revealed the wicked one, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in those who perish. 2 Thessalonians 2:8-10

IN THE REVELATION OF JOHN: again, the order of these times is spread out for us to see. The souls of the martyrs under the altar are taught to wait while they earnestly pray to be avenged and judged, in Revelation 6:9-10. I say they are taught to wait so that the world may first drink to the dregs the plagues waiting for it from the bowls of the angels, in Revelation 16; so that the city of fornication may receive from the ten kings its deserved doom, in Revelation 18; and so that the beast, Antichrist, with his false prophet, may wage war on the Church of God. Then, after the devil is cast into the bottomless pit for a while, in Revelation 20:2, the blessed prerogative of the first resurrection may be appointed from the thrones. Then again, after he is consigned to the fire, the judgment of the final and universal resurrection may be determined from the books. Since, then, the Scriptures both show the stages of the last times and gather the harvest of Christian hope into the very end of the world, it is clear either that all God promises us is fulfilled then, and so what the heretics claim about a resurrection here falls to the ground; or else, even if we allow that a confession of the mystery of divine truth is a resurrection, there is still, without any harm to this view, room for believing in what is announced for the end. It also follows that the very defense of this spiritual resurrection amounts to a presumption in favor of the other, bodily resurrection. For if none were announced for that time, there would be fair reason to assert only this purely spiritual resurrection. However, since a resurrection is proclaimed for the last time, it is proved to be a bodily one, because no spiritual one is also announced then. For why make a second announcement of a resurrection of only one kind, that is, the spiritual one, since this ought to be taking place either now, without any regard to different times, or else then, at the very end of all the periods? Therefore, we are better able even to maintain a spiritual resurrection at the beginning of a life of faith, since we acknowledge the full completion of the resurrection hope at the end of the world.

TO A PREVIOUS OBJECTION: that the Scriptures are allegorical, I still have one answer to make. It is also open to us to defend the bodily character of the resurrection by means of the language of the prophets, which is equally figurative. For consider that first sentence which God spoke when He called man earth, saying, “Earth you are, and to earth shall you return.” Genesis 3:19 This refers, of course, to his fleshly substance, which had been taken out of the ground, and which was the first to receive the name of man, as we have already shown. Does not this passage give one instruction? We are to interpret in relation to the flesh also whatever of wrath or of grace God has determined for the earth. For, strictly speaking, the earth is not exposed to His judgment, since it has never done any good or evil. No doubt it was cursed, because it drank the blood of man. Genesis 4:11 But even this was as a figure of murderous flesh. For if the earth has to suffer either joy or injury, it is simply on man's account, so that he may suffer the joy or the sorrow through the events that happen to his dwelling-place. By this he will rather have to pay the penalty which, simply on his account, even the earth must suffer. When, therefore, God even threatens the earth, I would prefer to say that He threatens the flesh. So likewise, when He makes a promise to the earth, I would rather understand Him as promising the flesh. As in that passage of David: “The Lord is King, let the earth be glad,” meaning the flesh of the saints, to which belongs the enjoyment of the kingdom of God. Then afterward he says: “The earth saw and trembled; the mountains melted like wax at the presence of the Lord,” meaning, no doubt, the flesh of the wicked. And in a similar sense it is written: “For they shall look on Him whom they pierced.” Zechariah 12:10 If indeed it is thought that both these passages were spoken simply of the element earth, how can it be consistent that it should shake and melt at the presence of the Lord, at whose royal dignity it had before rejoiced? So again in Isaiah, “You shall eat the good of the land.” Isaiah 1:19 The expression means the blessings that await the flesh when, in the kingdom of God, it shall be renewed and made like the angels, and while waiting to obtain the things that neither eye has seen, nor ear heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man. 1 Corinthians 2:9 Otherwise, how vain it would be for God to invite men to obedience by the fruits of the field and the elements of this life, when He dispenses these even to irreligious men and blasphemers, on a general condition once for all made to man, sending rain on the good and on the evil, and making His sun to shine on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 5:45 Happy, no doubt, is faith, if it is to obtain gifts that the enemies of God and Christ not only use, but even abuse, worshipping the creature itself in opposition to the Creator. Romans 1:25 You will reckon, I suppose, onions and truffles among earth's bounties, since the Lord declares that man shall not live on bread alone. Matthew 4:4 In this way the Jews lose heavenly blessings by confining their hopes to earthly ones, being ignorant of the promise of heavenly bread, and of the oil of God's unction, and the wine of the Spirit, and of that water of life which has its vigor from the vine of Christ. On exactly the same principle, they consider the special soil of Judaea to be that very holy land. It ought rather to be interpreted of the Lord's flesh, which, in all those who put on Christ, is from now on the holy land. Holy indeed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, truly flowing with milk and honey by the sweetness of His assurance, truly Judaean by reason of the friendship of God. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he who is one inwardly. Romans 2:28-29 In the same way it is that both God's temple and Jerusalem must be understood when it is said by Isaiah: “Awake, awake, O Jerusalem! Put on the strength of your arm; awake, as in your earliest time,” that is to say, in that innocence which preceded the fall into sin. For how can words of this kind, of exhortation and invitation, be suitable for that Jerusalem which killed the prophets, and stoned those who were sent to them, and at last crucified its very Lord? Neither indeed is salvation promised to any one land at all, which must needs pass away with the form of the whole world. Even if anybody should venture strongly to contend that paradise is the holy land, which perhaps may be designated as the land of our first parents Adam and Eve, it will even then follow that the restoration of paradise will seem to be promised to the flesh, whose lot it was to inhabit and keep it, in order that man may be called back there just as he was driven from it.

WE ALSO HAVE ROBES MENTIONED IN THE SCRIPTURES AS ALLEGORIZING THE HOPE OF THE FLESH: So in the Revelation of John it is said, "These are they who have not defiled their clothes with women," indicating, of course, virgins, and those who have become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 19:12 Therefore they shall be clothed in white raiment, Revelation 3:5 that is, in the bright beauty of the unwedded flesh. Even in the Gospel, the wedding garment may be understood as the sanctity of the flesh. Matthew 22:11-12 And so, when Isaiah tells us what sort of fast the Lord has chosen, and adds a statement about the reward of good works, he says, "Then shall your light break forth as the morning, and your garments shall speedily arise." Isaiah 58:8 Here Tertullian is reading "garments" instead of the usual Septuagint reading, "health" or "healings." He has no thought of cloaks or woven gowns, but means the rising of the flesh, whose resurrection he declared after its fall in death. Thus we are furnished even with an allegorical defense of the resurrection of the body. When, then, we read, "Go, my people, enter into your closets for a little season, until my anger pass away," Isaiah 26:20 we take the closets to mean graves. In them, those who at the end of the world shall have departed this life in the last furious onset of the power of Antichrist will have to rest for a little while. Why else did He use the expression "closets," rather than some other receptacle, unless it is because the flesh is kept in these closets or cellars, salted and reserved for use, to be drawn out from there on a fitting occasion? On the same principle, embalmed corpses are laid aside for burial in mausoleums and sepulchres, so that they may be removed from there when the Master shall order it. Since, therefore, there is consistency in understanding the passage this way, for what refuge of little closets could possibly shelter us from the wrath of God? It appears that by the very phrase he uses, "until His anger pass away," Isaiah 26:20 which shall extinguish Antichrist, he in fact shows that after that indignation the flesh will come forth from the sepulchre, in which it had been deposited before the bursting out of the anger. Now out of the closets nothing else is brought than what had been put into them. And after the extirpation of Antichrist, the great process of the resurrection shall be busily transacted.

BUT WE KNOW THAT PROPHECY WAS EXPRESSED NOT ONLY BY WORDS: but also by actions. The resurrection is foretold by words, and also by deeds. When Moses puts his hand into his bosom and then draws it out dead, and then puts his hand into his bosom again and pulls it out living, in Exodus 4:6-7, does this not point ahead to all mankind? Since those three signs in Exodus 4:2-9 showed the threefold power of God. First, in the appointed order, He will bring the old serpent, the devil, under man's control, however terrible he is. Second, He will draw the flesh out from the bosom of death. Then at last, He will call all blood that has been shed to judgment. On this subject we read in the writings of the same prophet that God says, "For your lifeblood I will require a reckoning from every wild beast; and I will require it from the hand of man, and from the hand of his brother," Genesis 9:5. Now nothing is required except what is asked back again, and nothing is asked back again except what is meant to be given up. And of course that will be given up which is demanded and required for the sake of vengeance. But there cannot possibly be punishment for something that never existed. However, it will exist when it is restored in order to be punished. Therefore, everything said about the blood applies to the flesh, because without the flesh there cannot be blood. The flesh will be raised up so that the blood may be punished. Again, there are some statements of Scripture made so plainly that they are free from all obscurity of allegory, and yet their very simplicity strongly requires interpretation. For example, there is that passage in Isaiah: "I will kill, and I will make alive." Certainly, His making alive happens after He has killed. Therefore, just as He kills by death, so He will make alive by the resurrection. Now it is the flesh that is killed by death. Therefore, the flesh will be brought to life again by the resurrection. Surely, if killing means taking life away from the flesh, and its opposite, bringing to life again, means restoring life to the flesh, then it must follow that the flesh rises again. For it is to the flesh that the life taken away by killing must be restored by being made alive.

SINCE EVEN THE FIGURATIVE PARTS OF SCRIPTURE: the lessons taught by events, and some plain statements of Holy Scripture shed light on the resurrection of the flesh, even though they do not specifically name the very substance itself, how much more helpful for settling this question will those passages be that point to the actual substance of the body by naming it openly. Take Ezekiel: "The hand of the Lord was upon me," he says. "And the Lord brought me out in the Spirit and set me in the middle of a plain that was full of bones. And He led me all around them. And behold, there were very many on the face of the plain, and behold, they were very dry. And He said to me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I said, 'O Lord God, You know.' And He said to me, 'Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, "You dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will bring the breath of life upon you, and you shall live. And I will give you spirit, and I will put muscles on you, and I will spread skin over you. And you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord."' And I prophesied as the Lord commanded me. And while I was prophesying, behold, there was a sound, and behold, also a movement, and bones came together with bones. And I looked, and behold, sinews and flesh came up over them, and muscles were placed around them, but there was no breath in them. And He said to me, 'Prophesy to the wind, son of man. Prophesy and say, "Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these dead men, and let them live."' So I prophesied to the wind, as He commanded me, and the spirit entered into the bones, and they lived, and stood on their feet, strong and very many. And the Lord said to me, 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They themselves say, "Our bones have become dry, and our hope has perished, and in them we have been violently destroyed." Therefore prophesy to them, and say, "Behold, I myself will open your tombs, and will bring you out of your tombs, O my people, and will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I, the Lord, opened your tombs and brought you, O my people, out of your tombs. And I will give my Spirit to you, and you shall live, and shall rest in your own land. And you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done these things, says the Lord."'" Ezekiel 37:1-14

I KNOW VERY WELL HOW THEY TWIST EVEN THIS PROPHECY TO SUPPORT AN ALLEGORICAL MEANING: They argue that when God says, "These bones are the whole house of Israel," He made the bones a figure of Israel and took them away from their proper literal meaning. Therefore, they claim that this is a figurative prediction, not a true prediction of the resurrection. For they say that the condition of the Jews is one of humiliation, in a sense dead, very dry, and scattered across the plain of the world. So they say that the picture of a resurrection is applied allegorically to their condition, because they must be gathered together again and joined bone to bone. That is, tribe to tribe and people to people. They must be put back together by the sinews of power and the nerves of royalty. They must be brought out, as if from graves, that is, from the most miserable and degraded places of captivity. They must breathe again in the sense of being restored, and from now on live in their own land of Judaea. And what will happen after all this? They will die, of course. And what will come after death? No resurrection from the dead, of course, if there is nothing of that kind revealed here to Ezekiel. But the resurrection is foretold elsewhere. So there will be a resurrection in this case too, and they are reckless to apply this passage only to the condition of Jewish affairs. Or even if it does point to a different kind of recovery than the resurrection that we are defending, what does that matter to me, as long as there is also a resurrection of the body, just as there is a restoration of the Jewish nation? In fact, the very fact that the recovery of the Jewish nation is pictured beforehand by the rejoining and reunion of bones gives proof that this event will also happen to the bones themselves. For the metaphor could not have been made from bones unless the same thing were also going to happen to them in reality. Now, although the image is a sketch of the real thing, the image itself still has a truth of its own. Therefore, what is used figuratively to express something else must first exist in itself. Emptiness is not a solid basis for a comparison, nor does something that does not exist make a suitable foundation for a parable. So it is right to believe that the bones are meant to receive a new clothing of flesh and breath, just as this passage says they will. And it is because of this that their renewed condition could express the restored condition of Jewish affairs, which some claim is the meaning of this passage. However, it is more fitting for a religious spirit to hold to the truth on the authority of the literal meaning, as the sense of the inspired passage requires. Now if this vision referred to the condition of the Jews, then as soon as God had shown him the position of the bones, He would immediately have added, "These bones are the whole house of Israel," and so on. But as soon as He showed the bones, He interrupted the scene by speaking about what was most appropriate to bones. Before even naming Israel, He tested the prophet's own faith: "Son of man, can these bones ever live?" So the prophet answered, "O Lord, You know." Surely God would not have tested the prophet's faith about something that was never going to be real, something Israel would never hear about, and something in which it would not be right to place belief. But the resurrection of the dead had in fact been foretold, and Israel, in the distrust of great unbelief, was offended by it. While looking at the condition of the decaying grave, Israel despaired of resurrection. Or rather, Israel did not mainly direct his mind to it, but to his own painful troubles. Therefore God first instructed the prophet, since he too was not free from doubt, by showing him the process of the resurrection, so that he might earnestly declare it. Then God commanded the people to believe what He had revealed to the prophet. He told them that they themselves, although they refused to believe in their resurrection, were the very bones that were going to rise again. Then in the closing sentence He says, "And you shall know that I the Lord have spoken and done these things." He clearly meant that He intended to do the very thing He had spoken of. He certainly did not mean that He would say one thing, but intend to do something different from what He had said.

CLEARLY: if the people were using a figure of speech when they complained that their bones had become dry and that their hope had perished, grieving over the results of their dispersion, then God might seem to have answered their figurative despair with a figurative promise. However, no harm from their dispersion had yet come upon the people, although the hope of the resurrection had very often failed among them. So it is clear that their faith in the resurrection had been shaken because their bodies were subject to decay. Therefore, God was rebuilding the faith that the people were tearing down. But even if it were true that Israel was then cast down because of some blow in their present situation, we still must not suppose that the purpose of the revelation stopped with a parable. Its purpose had to be to testify to a resurrection, so that it might lift the nation's hope even to an eternal salvation and a necessary restoration, and thus turn their minds away from brooding over their present troubles. This is also the purpose of other prophets. "You shall go forth," says Malachi, "from your sepulchres, like young calves let loose from their bonds, and you shall tread down your enemies." Malachi 4:2-3 And again, Isaiah says, "Your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall spring up like the grass," Isaiah 66:14 because grass too is renewed by the breaking down and decay of the seed. In short, if someone argues that the image of rising bones refers properly to the condition of Israel, why is the same hope announced to all nations instead of being limited to Israel alone? Why is there a promise of clothing those bony remains again with bodily substance and living breath, and of raising their dead out of the grave? For the words are universal: "The dead shall arise, and come forth from their graves; for the dew which comes from You is medicine to their bones." Isaiah 26:19 In another place it is written, "All flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord." Isaiah 66:23 When will this happen? When the form of this world begins to pass away. For He said earlier, "As the new heaven and the new earth, which I make, remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your seed remain." Then what is written afterward will also be fulfilled: "And they shall go forth"—that is, from their graves—"and shall see the carcasses of those who have transgressed; for their worm shall never die, nor shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh" Isaiah 66:24, even to that flesh which, being raised again from the dead and brought out from the grave, shall worship the Lord for this great grace.

BUT SO THAT YOU MAY NOT THINK THAT THE RESURRECTION IS FORETOLD ONLY FOR THOSE BODIES THAT ARE LAID IN TOMBS: Scripture also declares this: “And I will command the fish of the sea, and they shall cast up the bones that they have devoured; and I will bring joint to joint, and bone to bone.” You will ask, then, “Will the fish, and other animals, and flesh-eating birds also be raised again, so that they may vomit up what they have eaten, because you read in the law of Moses that blood is required even from all the beasts?” Certainly not. But the beasts and the fish are mentioned in connection with the restoring of flesh and blood, in order to express more strongly the resurrection of bodies that have even been devoured, since payment is said to be demanded from the very creatures that devoured them. Now I understand that in Jonah we have a clear proof of this divine power, when he comes out of the fish’s belly unharmed in both parts of his nature, his flesh and his soul. No doubt the inside of the whale would have had plenty of time during three days to consume and digest Jonah’s flesh, just as surely as a coffin, or a tomb, or the slow decay of a quiet and hidden grave would do. But Jonah was meant to foreshadow even those beasts, which especially symbolize the men who are fiercely opposed to the Christian name, or the angels of wickedness, from whom blood will be required by the full payment of an avenging judgment. Where, then, is the man who is more willing to learn than to make assumptions, more careful to believe than to argue, and more respectful of the wisdom of God than recklessly devoted to his own ideas? When he hears of a divine purpose concerning sinews and skin, and nerves and bones, will he immediately invent some different meaning for these words, as if everything said about these substances were not naturally meant for man? For either there is here no reference to the destiny of man, in the gracious provision of the kingdom of heaven, in the severity of the day of judgment, and in all the events of the resurrection; or else, if there is any reference to his destiny, then that destiny must necessarily refer to those substances of which the man is made, for whom that destiny is kept. I also have another question for these very clever people who transform bones and sinews, and nerves and tombs. Why, when something is said about the soul, do they not also interpret the soul to mean something else, and transfer it to another sense? Whenever a clear statement is made about a bodily substance, they stubbornly choose any meaning at all rather than the one the word plainly indicates. If things that belong to the body are figurative, why are not things that belong to the soul figurative too? But since the things that belong to the soul contain nothing allegorical, then neither do the things that belong to the body. For man is body just as much as he is soul. Therefore it is impossible for one of these natures to allow a figurative meaning while the other does not.

THIS IS ENOUGH EVIDENCE FROM THE PROPHETIC SCRIPTURES: I now appeal to the Gospels. But here too I must first answer the same sophistry put forward by those who argue that the Lord, like the prophets, said everything by way of allegory, because it is written, “Jesus spoke all these things in parables, and without a parable He did not speak to them,” Matthew 13:34, that is, to the Jews. Now the disciples also asked Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” And the Lord gave them this answer: “Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing, they do not see, and hearing, they do not hear,” according to the prophecy of Isaiah. But since it was to the Jews that He spoke in parables, it was not then to all men. And if not to all, it follows that it was not always and in all things parables with Him, but only in certain things, and when speaking to a particular class. But He addressed a particular class when He spoke to the Jews. It is true that He sometimes spoke even to the disciples in parables. But notice how the Scripture tells such a fact: “And He spoke a parable to them.” It follows, then, that He did not usually speak to them in parables. Because if He always did so, special mention would not be made of His using this way of speaking. Besides, there is not a parable that you will not find either explained by the Lord Himself, as the parable of the sower, which He interprets as the management of the word of God; or made clear by a preface from the writer of the Gospel, as in the parable of the arrogant judge and the importunate widow, which is expressly applied to earnestness in prayer; or able to be understood on its own, as in the parable of the fig-tree, which was spared for a while in hope of improvement, an emblem of Jewish sterility. Now, if even parables do not darken the light of the gospel, how unlikely it is that plain sentences and declarations, which have an unmistakable meaning, should mean anything other than their literal sense. But it is by such declarations and sentences that the Lord sets forth either the last judgment, or the kingdom, or the resurrection: “It shall be more tolerable,” He says, “for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you,” Matthew 11:22. And, “Tell them that the kingdom of God is at hand,” Matthew 10:7. And again, “It shall be recompensed to you at the resurrection of the just,” Luke 14:14. Now, if the mention of these events, I mean the judgment day, and the kingdom of God, and the resurrection, has a plain and absolute sense, so that nothing about them can be forced into an allegory, then neither should those statements be forced into parables when they describe the arrangement, and the process, and the experience of the kingdom of God, and of the judgment, and of the resurrection. On the contrary, things that are destined for the body should be carefully understood in a bodily sense, not in a spiritual sense, since they have nothing figurative in their nature. This is the reason why we have laid down as a preliminary consideration that the bodily substance both of the soul and of the flesh is liable to the recompense which will have to be awarded in return for the cooperation of the two natures. This is so that the bodily nature of the soul may not exclude the bodily nature of the flesh by suggesting a resort to figurative descriptions, since both of them must be regarded as destined to take part in the kingdom, and the judgment, and the resurrection. And now we proceed to the special proof of this proposition: that the bodily character of the flesh is indicated by our Lord whenever He mentions the resurrection, while at the same time without dishonor to the bodily nature of the soul, a point which has in fact been admitted by only a few.

TO BEGIN WITH: consider the passage where He says that He has come to seek and to save what was lost, in Luke 19:10. What do you think that lost thing is? It is man, without doubt. Is it the whole man, or only one part of him? Of course, it is the whole man. In fact, the sin that brought man's ruin was committed both by the soul, through desire, and by the flesh, through the act itself. So it placed the sentence of transgression on the whole man, and therefore rightly made him subject to destruction. As a result, he will be saved as a whole, since by sinning he was lost as a whole. Unless, of course, it is true that the sheep in the parable is lost apart from its body; then its recovery could happen without the body. But since the bodily substance, as well as the soul, makes up the whole living creature, and that whole creature was carried on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd, we clearly have here an example of how man is restored in both his natures. Otherwise, how unworthy it would be of God to bring only one part of man to salvation, and almost less than that, while even the generosity of rulers in this world likes to claim the credit for giving full favor. Then are we to understand that the devil is stronger because he harmed man and ruined him completely? And must God appear comparatively weak, since He does not rescue and help man in his whole condition? The apostle, however, suggests that where sin increased, grace increased much more, in Romans 5:20. How, in fact, can someone be called saved if he can at the same time be called lost? Lost in the flesh, that is, but saved in his soul? Unless, indeed, their argument now requires that the soul be put into a lost condition so that it can be capable of salvation, on the ground that what is properly saved is something that has been lost. We, however, understand the soul's immortality in such a way that we believe it is lost, not in the sense that it is destroyed, but in the sense that it is punished, that is, in hell. And if that is so, then salvation does not affect the soul, since by its own nature it is already secure because of its immortality. Rather, salvation affects the flesh, which, as everyone readily admits, is subject to destruction. Otherwise, if the soul is also perishable in this sense, in other words, not immortal, which is the condition of the flesh, then in all fairness that same condition should also benefit the flesh, since the flesh too is mortal and perishable, and the Lord intends to save what perishes. I do not want right now to follow our argument so far as to ask whether destruction claims man in one of his natures or in the other, so long as salvation is equally given to both substances and aims at man with respect to them both. For notice this: in whichever substance you suppose man has perished, in the other he has not perished. Therefore he will be saved in the substance in which he does not perish, and he will also receive salvation in that substance in which he does perish. So you have the restoration of the whole man, since the Lord intends to save that part of him which does perish, while of course He will not lose that part which cannot be lost. Who will still doubt the safety of both natures, when one of them is to receive salvation, and the other is not to lose it? And further, the Lord explains the meaning of this when He says, "I came not to do my own will, but the Father's, who has sent me," in John 6:38. What, I ask, is that will? "That of all which He has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." Now, what had Christ received from the Father except what He Himself had taken on? Man, of course, made of flesh and soul. Therefore, He will not allow either of those parts that He has received to perish. No, not any important part, and not even the smallest piece of either one. If the flesh is, as our opponents scornfully think, only a small fraction, then the flesh is safe, because no fraction of man is to perish. And no larger part is in danger, because every part of man is kept equally safe with Him. But if He will not also raise the flesh at the last day, then He will allow not only a fraction of man to perish, but, I dare to say, considering how important that part is, almost the whole man. But when He repeats His words more strongly, saying, "And this is the Father's will, that every one who sees the Son, and believes in Him, may have eternal life: and I will raise him up at the last day," He declares the full extent of the resurrection. For He gives to each nature the reward suited to its service: to the flesh, because by it the Son was seen; and to the soul, because by it He was believed in. Then you will say that this promise was given to those by whom Christ was seen. Very well, let the same hope pass from them to us. For if to those who saw and therefore believed, such fruit came from the work of the flesh and the soul, how much more will it come to us? For Christ says, in John 20:29, that those who have not seen and yet have believed are more blessed. So even if the resurrection of the flesh had to be denied to them, it should at least be given to us as a fitting gift, since we are the more blessed. For how could we be blessed if any part of us were to perish?

BUT HE ALSO TEACHES US THAT HE IS RATHER TO BE FEARED WHO IS ABLE TO DESTROY BOTH BODY AND SOUL IN HELL: That is the Lord alone. It is not those who kill the body but are not able to harm the soul, Matthew 10:28. That is to say, it is not any human powers. Here, then, we have a recognition of the soul's natural immortality, since men cannot kill it, and of the body's mortality, since it can be killed. From this we learn that the resurrection of the dead is a resurrection of the flesh. For unless it were raised again, it would be impossible for the flesh to be killed in hell. But a tricky question may be raised here about the meaning of the body, or the flesh. So I will state at once that by the human body I understand nothing other than that structure of flesh which, whatever kind of material it is made of and shaped into, is seen and touched, and is sometimes even killed by men. In the same way, I would not admit that anything but mortar and stones and bricks form the body of a wall. If anyone brings into our argument some body of a subtle, hidden kind, he must show it, uncover it, and prove to me that this very body is the one killed by human violence. Then I will grant that this is the kind of body our Scripture speaks of. If, again, the body or bodily nature of the soul is thrown in my face, it will only be an idle escape. For since both substances are set before us in this passage, which says that body and soul are destroyed in hell, a clear distinction is plainly made between the two. And we are left to understand the body as that which can be touched, that is, the flesh. Since it will be destroyed in hell because it did not rather fear destruction by God than death at human hands, so also it will be restored to eternal life because it chose to be killed by human hands. If, therefore, anyone violently supposes that the destruction of the soul and the flesh in hell means the final annihilation of the two substances, and not their penal treatment, as if they were to be consumed, not punished, let him remember that the fire of hell is eternal, plainly announced as an everlasting penalty. Then let him admit that it is for this reason that this never-ending killing is more fearful than a merely human murder, which is only temporary. He will then come to this conclusion: substances must be eternal when their penal killing is eternal. Since, then, after the resurrection the body has to be killed by God in hell along with the soul, we surely have enough information in this fact about both the outcomes awaiting it, namely, the resurrection of the flesh and its eternal killing. Otherwise it would be most absurd if the flesh should be raised up and appointed to killing in hell in order to be brought to an end, when it might suffer such annihilation more directly by not being raised again at all. What a fine paradox, to be sure, that a substance must be fitted again with life so that it may receive that annihilation which has in fact already come upon it! But Christ, while confirming us in this same hope, adds the example of the sparrows, that not one of them falls to the ground without the will of God, Matthew 10:29. He says this so that you may believe that the flesh which has been committed to the ground is likewise able to rise again by the will of the same God. For although this is not granted to sparrows, yet we are worth more than many sparrows, for this very reason, that when we have fallen, we rise again. Finally, He declares that even the very hairs of our head are all numbered, Matthew 10:30. And in saying this, He certainly includes the promise of their safety. For if they were to be lost, what would be the use of taking such a numbered care of them? Surely the only use lies in this truth: "Of all that the Father has given Me, I should lose none," John 6:39, not even a hair, and not an eye or a tooth either. And yet from where will that weeping and gnashing of teeth come, if not from eyes and teeth? This will be at that time when the body is slain in hell and cast out into that outer darkness, which will be the fitting torment of the eyes. He also who is not clothed at the marriage feast in the clothing of good works will have to be bound hand and foot, as being, of course, raised in his body. So too, the very reclining at the feast in the kingdom of God, and sitting on Christ's thrones, and standing at last on His right hand and His left, and eating of the tree of life, what are all these but the clearest proofs of a bodily appointment and destination?

NOW LET US SEE WHETHER THE LORD DID NOT GIVE EVEN GREATER STRENGTH TO OUR TEACHING WHEN HE BROKE DOWN THE CLEVER ARGUMENT OF THE SADDUCEES: Their main goal, I think, was to get rid of the resurrection completely. In fact, the Sadducees did not admit any salvation either for the soul or for the flesh. So they took what they thought was the strongest case against the resurrection, and shaped an argument from it to support the question they raised. Their persuasive question was about the flesh. They asked whether it would be subject to marriage after the resurrection. They supposed the case of a woman who had married seven brothers, so that it seemed uncertain to which of them she should be restored. Now keep the meaning of both the question and the answer clearly in view, and the discussion is settled at once. The Sadducees denied the resurrection, while the Lord affirmed it. Also, in affirming it, He rebuked them for being ignorant of the Scriptures, that is, of those Scriptures that had declared the resurrection. He also rebuked them for not believing the power of God, which is certainly able to raise the dead. Then He immediately added the words, "Now, that the dead are raised," in Luke 20:37. He spoke without hesitation and affirmed the very thing that was being denied, namely, the resurrection of the dead before Him who is the God of the living. It clearly follows that He affirmed this truth in the very same sense in which they were denying it. In fact, it was the resurrection of the two natures of man. And it does not follow, as they want to claim, that because Christ denied that men would marry, He therefore proved that they would not rise again. On the contrary, He called them the children of the resurrection, in a certain sense as having to undergo a birth by the resurrection. After that, they no longer marry. But in their risen life they are equal to the angels, since they are not to marry because they are not to die. Instead, they are destined to pass into the angelic state by putting on the clothing of incorruption, although there is a change in the substance that is restored to life. Besides, no question could be raised about whether we will marry again, or die again, or not, without also bringing into doubt the restoration especially of that substance which has a special relation both to death and to marriage, that is, the flesh. So then, you have the Lord affirming against the Jewish heretics what is now being denied by the Christian Sadducees: the resurrection of the whole man.

He does say that “the flesh profits nothing,” in John 6:63. But, as in the earlier case, the meaning must be guided by the subject he is talking about. They thought his teaching was harsh and unbearable, because they imagined that he had actually and literally commanded them to eat his flesh. So, in order to present the state of salvation as something spiritual, he began with this principle: “It is the Spirit that gives life.” Then he added, “The flesh profits nothing,” meaning, of course, with respect to giving life. He also goes on to explain what he means by “spirit”: “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit, and they are life.” In the same sense, he had said earlier, “He that hears my words, and believes in him that sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but shall pass from death to life,” in John 5:24. Therefore, since he made his word the life-giving principle, because that word is spirit and life, he also gave his flesh the same name. This is also because the Word had become flesh, in John 1:14. We therefore ought to hunger for him so that we may have life, and to devour him with the ear, to chew on him with the understanding, and to digest him by faith. Now just before this passage, he had declared that his flesh is the bread that comes down from heaven, in John 6:51. In this way, he kept pressing on his hearers, under the picture of necessary food, the memory of their forefathers, who had preferred the bread and flesh of Egypt to their divine calling. Then he turned his subject to their own thoughts, because he saw that they were about to be scattered from him, and he says, “The flesh profits nothing.” Now what is there in this to destroy the resurrection of the flesh? Could there not very reasonably be something that does not profit by itself, yet is still able to receive profit from something else? The Spirit profits, because it gives life. The flesh profits nothing, because it is subject to death. Therefore, he has put the two statements in a way that supports our belief. By showing what profits and what does not profit, he has also made clear the object that receives the profit as well as the subject that gives it. So, in the present case, we have the Spirit giving life to the flesh that has been overcome by death. For he says, “The hour is coming, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live,” in John 5:25. Now what are the dead except the flesh? And what is the voice of God except the Word? And what is the Word except the Spirit, who will rightly raise the flesh which he himself had once become, and raise it also from death, which he himself suffered, and from the grave, which he himself once entered? Then again, when he says, “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth; they that have done good, to the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of damnation,” in John 5:28-29, no one after such words will be able to explain “the dead that are in the graves” as anything other than bodies of flesh. This is because graves are nothing but the resting place of corpses. For it is beyond dispute that even those who belong to the old man, that is, sinful people—in other words, those who are dead through their ignorance of God, whom our heretics, of course, foolishly insist on understanding by the word “graves”—are clearly spoken of here as having to come out from their graves for judgment. But how can graves come out from graves?

After the Lord’s words, what should we think about the meaning of His actions when He raised dead people from their funeral stretchers and from their graves? Why did He do this? If it was only to show His power, or to give the temporary favor of restoring life, then it was really not such a great thing for Him to raise people only so they could die again. But if, as is true, it was instead to firmly establish people’s belief in a future resurrection, then it follows from the specific form of His own examples that this resurrection will be bodily. I can never allow anyone to say that the future resurrection, since it is supposed to be only for the soul, was illustrated beforehand by raising the flesh simply because it would have been impossible to show the resurrection of an invisible soul except by bringing back a visible substance to life. Those who think this have a poor knowledge of God. They imagine that He can do only what fits within the limits of their own thoughts. And yet they certainly can know very well what He has always been able to do, if they will become familiar with the writings of John. For the one who showed to our sight the souls of the martyrs, still without bodies, resting under the altar in Revelation 6:9-11, was certainly able to show them to our eyes rising without a body of flesh. But I, for my part, prefer to believe that it is impossible for God to practice deception. He would be weak indeed if He had to use trickery. He would not, out of fear, seem to give preliminary proofs of something in a way that does not match how He will actually carry it out. Even more, He would not act as if He were not powerful enough to show us an example of resurrection without the flesh, and then, with even greater weakness, be unable later to show the full completion of that example in the very same substance of the flesh. No example is greater than the thing of which it is a sample. Yet it would be greater if souls together with their bodies were raised as proof of their resurrection without the body. Then the complete salvation of the human being, in soul and body, would become a guarantee for only one half, the soul. But in all examples, the rule is that what would be thought the lesser thing — that is, the resurrection of the soul only — should be, so to speak, the foretaste of the rising of the flesh also at its appointed time. Therefore, according to our understanding of the truth, those examples of dead people whom the Lord raised were indeed proof of the resurrection of both the flesh and the soul. In fact, they proved that this gift would be denied to neither substance. However, considered only as examples, they showed something less significant — less indeed than Christ will show at the last. For they were not raised for glory and immortality, but only for another death.

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ALSO BEAR WITNESS TO THE RESURRECTION: Now the apostles had nothing else to do, at least among the Jews, than to explain the Old Testament and confirm the New, and above all, to preach God in Christ. Consequently, they brought in nothing new concerning the resurrection, except to announce it to the glory of Christ. In every other respect, it had already been accepted in simple and intelligent faith, without any question about what sort of resurrection it would be, and without meeting any opponents except the Sadducees. So much easier was it to deny the resurrection altogether than to understand it in some alien sense. You find Paul confessing his faith before the chief priests, under the protection of the chief captain, among the Sadducees and the Pharisees. He says, "Men and brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am now called in question by you," Acts 23:6. He was referring, of course, to the hope of the nation. He said this so that, in his present condition, as one who seemed to be a transgressor of the law, he would not be thought to come near the Sadducees in opinion on the most important article of the faith, even the resurrection. Therefore, the belief in the resurrection which he would not seem to impair, he actually confirmed in the opinion of the Pharisees, since he rejected the views of the Sadducees, who denied it. In the same way, before Agrippa also, he says that he was advancing nothing except those things which the prophets had announced, Acts 26:22. Therefore he was maintaining exactly such a resurrection as the prophets had foretold. He also mentions what was written by Moses concerning the resurrection of the dead. In doing so, he must have known that it would be a rising in the body, since in it demand will have to be made for the blood of man, Genesis 9:5-6. He therefore declared it to be such as the Pharisees had admitted, such as the Lord Himself had maintained, and such too as the Sadducees refused to believe. That refusal indeed led them to an absolute rejection of the whole truth. Nor had the Athenians understood Paul to announce any other resurrection, Acts 17:32. They had in fact mocked his announcement. But they would have shown no such mockery if they had heard from him nothing but the restoration of the soul, for they would have accepted that as the very common expectation of their own native philosophy. But when the preaching of the resurrection, of which they had not previously heard, stirred up the heathen by its complete novelty, and when a not unnatural unbelief in so wonderful a matter began to trouble simple faith with many discussions, then the apostle took care in almost every one of his writings to strengthen men's belief in this Christian hope. He pointed out that there was such a hope, and that it had not yet been fulfilled, and that it would be in the body. This was the special point under inquiry. And another question remained: that it would not be in a body different from ours.

NOW IT IS NOT SURPRISING IF PEOPLE TWIST ARGUMENTS OUT OF THE WRITINGS OF THE APOSTLE HIMSELF: since there must be heresies, as 1 Corinthians 11:19 says. But heresies could not exist unless the Scriptures could be falsely interpreted. So then, when heretics saw that the apostle mentioned two men—the inner man, that is, the soul, and the outer man, that is, the flesh—they gave salvation to the soul, or inner man, and destruction to the flesh, or outer man. They did this because it is written in the Epistle to the Corinthians, "Though our outer man is decaying, yet the inner man is being renewed day by day," in 2 Corinthians 4:16. Now the soul by itself alone is not a man. It was later placed into the clay body, to which the name man had already been given. And the flesh without the soul is not a man either, because after the soul leaves it, it is called a corpse. So the name man is, in a certain sense, the bond between these two closely joined substances. Under this name, they cannot help being united natures. As for the inner man, however, the apostle prefers that it be understood as the mind and heart rather than the soul. In other words, he means not so much the substance itself as the quality or disposition of the substance. So when, writing to the Ephesians, he spoke of Christ dwelling in their inner man, in Ephesians 3:17, he clearly meant that the Lord should be received into their thoughts and feelings. Then he added, "in your hearts by faith, rooted and grounded in love." By this he showed that faith and love are not substantial parts, but only states or conceptions of the soul. But when he used the phrase "in your hearts," since hearts are substantial parts of the flesh, he at once assigned the flesh to the actual inner man, which he located in the heart. Consider now in what sense he said that the outer man decays while the inner man is renewed day by day. Surely you would not say that he meant that corruption of the flesh which happens from the moment of death, in its appointed condition of continual decay. Rather, he meant the wearing down that the flesh suffers for the name of Christ during this life, before death and up to death, through exhausting cares and troubles, as well as through tortures and persecutions. Now of course the inner man must be renewed by the prompting of the Spirit, growing day by day in faith and holiness here in this life, not there after the resurrection. There, our renewal is not a gradual process from day to day, but a completed perfection all at once. You may also learn this from the next passage, where the apostle says, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen," that is, our sufferings, "but at the things which are not seen," that is, our rewards, "for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal," in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18. For the afflictions and injuries by which the outer man is worn away, he says are things we should despise, since they are light and temporary. He prefers instead those eternal rewards, which are also invisible, and that weight of glory which will balance the labors during which the flesh suffers decay here. So the subject of this passage is not that corruption which they assign to the outer man as the total destruction of the flesh, in order to cancel the resurrection. In the same way he says elsewhere, "If indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together; for I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us," in Romans 8:17-18. Here again he shows that our sufferings are less than their rewards. Now since it is through the flesh that we suffer with Christ—for it belongs to the flesh to be worn down by suffering—the reward promised for suffering with Christ also belongs to that same flesh. So when he is about to assign afflictions to the flesh as its special burden, according to what he had already said, he says, "When we had come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest," in 2 Corinthians 7:5. Then, to make the soul share in suffering with the body, he adds, "We were troubled on every side; without were fightings," which of course beat down the flesh, "within were fears," which afflicted the soul. Although, therefore, the outer man decays, this does not mean that it misses the resurrection, but that it endures tribulation. From this scripture it should be understood that it does not suffer apart from the inner man. Therefore both will be glorified together, just as they have suffered together. Their sharing in rewards must necessarily correspond to their sharing in troubles.

HE IS STILL FOLLOWING THE SAME LINE OF THOUGHT IN THE PASSAGE WHERE HE PLACES THE REWARD ABOVE THE SUFFERINGS: For he says, "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," 2 Corinthians 5:1. In other words, because our flesh is being destroyed through its sufferings, we will be given a home in heaven. He remembered the reward that the Lord assigns in the Gospel: "Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," Matthew 5:10. Yet when he contrasted the reward with the sufferings, he did not deny the restoration of the flesh. For the reward is owed to the same substance to which the destruction is attributed, that is, the flesh. However, because he had called the flesh a house, he wanted, in an elegant way, to use the same term when comparing it to the final reward. He promises to that very house, which is destroyed through suffering, a better house through the resurrection. In the same way, the Lord also promises us many dwelling places, like rooms of a house, in His Father's home, John 14:2. Although this may perhaps be understood as the dwelling place of this world, when its structure is dissolved and an eternal home in heaven is promised, the following context seems to show that these earlier words do not refer to that. For the apostle makes a distinction when he goes on to say, "For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked," 2 Corinthians 5:2-3. This means that before we take off the garment of the flesh, we want to be clothed with the heavenly glory of immortality. Now this special favor awaits those who, at the coming of the Lord, are found still in the flesh. Because of the pressures of the time of Antichrist, they will deserve, by an instant death accomplished through a sudden change, to become fit to join the saints who are rising. As he writes to the Thessalonians: "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord shall not go before them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we too shall ourselves be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord," 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17.

HE EXPLAINS TO THE CORINTHIANS WHAT TRANSFORMATION THESE PEOPLE WILL UNDERGO WHEN HE WRITES: "We shall all indeed rise again, though we shall not all undergo the transformation, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." For no one will experience this change except those who are found still in the flesh. And, he says, "The dead shall be raised, and we shall be changed." Now, if you carefully consider this appointed order, you will be able to fit what follows with what came before. For when he adds, "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality," this will certainly be that house from heaven, with which we so earnestly desire to be clothed over while we groan in this present body. He means, of course, this flesh, in which we shall be caught at the last. For he says that we are burdened while in this tent, which we do not wish to be stripped of, but rather to be clothed over while still in it, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life. That is, while we are being transformed, we put on over ourselves that clothing which is from heaven. For who is there that would not want, while still in the flesh, to put on immortality and continue life by a happy escape from death, through the transformation that must happen instead of death, and without also going into that Hades which will demand the very last farthing? Nevertheless, the one who has already passed through Hades is also destined to receive the change after the resurrection. From this fact we firmly declare that the flesh will certainly rise again and, through the change that is coming over it, will take on the condition of angels. Now, if the change had to be undergone only by those who are found in the flesh, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life—in other words, so that the flesh may be covered with the heavenly and eternal clothing—then one of two things would follow. Either those who are found in death would not obtain life, since they would then be deprived of the material, and so to speak the nourishment, of life, that is, the flesh. Or else these also must undergo the change, so that in them too mortality may be swallowed up by life, since it is appointed that they too should receive life. But, you say, in the case of the dead, mortality is already swallowed up by life. No, certainly not in every case. For how many people will probably be found who have only just died, so recently placed in their graves that nothing in them seems to have decayed? For, of course, you do not consider a thing decayed unless it has been cut off, destroyed, and removed from our sight, so that it has altogether ceased to appear. There are the bodies of the giants of ancient times. It is plain enough that they are not completely decayed, because their bones still remain. We have spoken of this elsewhere already. For example, even recently in this very city, when men were sacrilegiously laying the foundations of the Odeum over many ancient graves, people were horrified to discover, after about five hundred years, bones that still kept their moisture, and hair that had not lost its perfume. It is certain not only that bones remain hardened, but also that teeth stay undecayed for ages. Both are lasting seeds of that body which is to spring up into life again in the resurrection. Finally, even if everything mortal in all the dead is then found decayed—at least consumed by death, by time, and by age—is there then nothing that will be swallowed up by life, nothing that will be covered and clothed with the garment of immortality? Now, the one who says that mortality is going to be swallowed up by life has already admitted that what is dead is not destroyed by those other devourers mentioned before. And truly it is most fitting that all things should be completed and brought about by the working of God, and not by the laws of nature. Therefore, since what is mortal must be swallowed up by life, it must be brought into view in order to be swallowed up. It must also be swallowed up in order to undergo the final transformation. If you were to say that a fire must be lit, you could not possibly claim that what is needed to kindle it is sometimes necessary and sometimes not. In the same way, when he adds the words, "If so be that being unclothed we be not found naked"—referring, of course, to those who will not be found alive and in the flesh on the day of the Lord—he did not mean that those whom he had just described as unclothed or stripped were naked in any other sense than this: they were to be understood as being clothed again with the very same substance of which they had been stripped. For although they will be found naked when their flesh has been laid aside, or in some measure separated or worn away, and this condition may rightly be called nakedness, they will afterward receive it again. Then, being clothed again with the flesh, they will also be able to have put over it the outer garment of immortality. For it is impossible for the outer garment to fit unless it is put over someone who is already dressed.

IN THE SAME WAY: when he says, "Therefore we are always confident and fully aware that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight," 2 Corinthians 5:6-7, it is clear that in this statement he does not mean to speak badly of the flesh, as if it separated us from the Lord. What he is clearly doing here is urging us to treat this present life lightly, since we are absent from the Lord as long as we are passing through it, walking by faith, not by sight; in other words, in hope, not yet in reality. So he adds, "We are indeed confident and consider it better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord." He means that then we may walk by sight rather than by faith, in actual realization rather than in hope. Notice how here also he connects contempt for the body with the excellence of martyrdom. For no one, after becoming absent from the body, immediately lives in the presence of the Lord, except by the special privilege of martyrdom. By that privilege, he receives a place in Paradise, not in the lower regions. Now, was the apostle unable to find words to describe departure from the body? Or does he deliberately use an unusual way of speaking? To express our temporary absence from the body, he says that we are away from it, because a man who goes abroad returns after a time to his home. Then he also says to everyone, "We therefore earnestly desire to be acceptable to God, whether absent or present; for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ Jesus." 2 Corinthians 5:9-10 If all of us must appear, then all of us completely. If completely, then both our inward man and our outward man also, that is, our bodies no less than our souls. This is so that every one, as he goes on to say, may receive the things done in his body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. 2 Corinthians 5:10 Now I ask, how do you read this passage? Do you take it as badly arranged, with the ideas out of order? Is the question about the things that the body will have to receive, or about the things that have already been done in the body? Well, if he means the things that are to be borne by the body, then without question the resurrection of the body is implied. And if he means the things that have already been done in the body, the same conclusion follows. For of course the repayment must be made by the body, since it was through the body that the actions were performed. So the apostle's whole argument from the beginning is unfolded in this final clause, where the resurrection of the flesh is set forth. And it should be understood in a sense that agrees exactly with this conclusion.

NOW: if you examine the words that come before the passage where the outward man and the inward man are mentioned, will you not discover the whole truth about both the dignity and the hope of the flesh? For when he speaks of the light that God has commanded to shine in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the person of Jesus Christ, 2 Corinthians 4:6, and says that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, he means, of course, the flesh. What, then, is meant? That the flesh will be destroyed because it is an earthen vessel, taking its origin from clay? Or that it is to be glorified, because it is the receptacle of a divine treasure? Now if that true light, which is in the person of Christ, contains life in itself, and that life with its light is entrusted to the flesh, is that destined to perish which has life entrusted to it? Then, of course, the treasure will perish also. For perishable things are entrusted to things that are themselves perishable. That is like putting new wine into old bottles. When he also adds, "Always bearing about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ," 2 Corinthians 4:10, what kind of substance is that which, after being called the temple of God, can now also be called the tomb of Christ? But why do we bear about in the body the dying of the Lord? In order, as he says, that His life also may be manifested. Where? In the body. In what body? In our mortal body. Therefore, in the flesh, which is indeed mortal through sin, but living through grace. You may see how great a grace this is, when the purpose is that the life of Christ may be manifested in it. Is it, then, in a thing that is a stranger to salvation, in a substance that is continually dissolved, that the life of Christ will be manifested, which is eternal, continuous, incorruptible, and already the life of God? Otherwise, to what time does that life of the Lord belong which is to be manifested in our body? It surely is the life that He lived up to His passion, which was not only openly shown among the Jews, but has now been displayed even to all nations. Therefore, that life is meant which has broken the adamantine gates of death and the brazen bars of the lower world, a life which from now on has been and will be ours. Lastly, it is to be manifested in the body. When? After death. How? By rising in our body, just as Christ also rose in His. But lest anyone should object here that the life of Jesus is even now to be manifested in our body by the discipline of holiness, and patience, and righteousness, and wisdom, in which the Lord's life abounded, the apostle's most provident wisdom adds this purpose: "For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that His life may be manifested in our mortal body." 2 Corinthians 4:11 Therefore, he says that this is to take place in us even when dead. And if so, how is this possible except in our body after its resurrection? Therefore he adds in the concluding sentence: "Knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Him," risen as He already is from the dead. But perhaps "with Him" means "like Him." Well then, if it is like Him, it is certainly not without the flesh.

BUT IN THEIR BLINDNESS: they again impale themselves on the point of the old man and the new man. When the apostle tells us to put off the old man, which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, and to put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, in Ephesians 4:22-24, they maintain that by here also making a distinction between the two substances, and applying the old one to the flesh and the new one to the spirit, he assigns to the old man, that is, the flesh, a permanent corruption. Now, if you follow the order of the substances, the soul cannot be the new man, because it comes later of the two. Nor can the flesh be the old man, because it is the earlier. For what amount of time came between the creating hand of God and His breath? I will venture to say that even if the soul was a good deal earlier than the flesh, yet by the very fact that the soul had to wait to be itself completed, it made the other really the former. For everything that gives the finishing stroke and perfection to a work, although it is later in mere order, still has priority in its effect. Much more is that prior, without which the things before it could have no existence. If the flesh is the old man, when did it become so? From the beginning? But Adam was wholly a new man, and in that new man no part could be an old man. And from that time, ever since the blessing pronounced upon man's generation in Genesis 1:28, the flesh and the soul have had a simultaneous birth, without any measurable difference in time. So the two have even been generated together in the womb, as we have shown in our Treatise on the Soul. Contemporary in the womb, they are also identical in time at birth. No doubt the two are produced by human parents from two substances, but not at two different times. Rather, they are so entirely one that neither is before the other in point of time. It is more correct to say that we are either entirely the old man or entirely the new, for we cannot tell how we could possibly be anything else. But the apostle mentions a very clear mark of the old man. For he says, "Put off, concerning the former conduct, the old man," in Ephesians 4:22. He does not say, concerning the seniority of either substance. It is not indeed the flesh that he tells us to put off, but the works, which in another passage he shows to be works of the flesh, in Galatians 5:19. He brings no accusation against men's bodies, about which he even writes as follows: "Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needs. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for the edification of faith, that it may minister grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you are sealed to the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: but be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ has forgiven you," in Ephesians 4:25-32. Why, therefore, do not those who suppose the flesh to be the old man hurry to their own death, so that by laying aside the old man they may satisfy the apostle's commands? As for us, we believe that the whole of faith is to be administered in the flesh, yes, more, by the flesh, which has both a mouth for speaking all holy words, and a tongue to refrain from blasphemy, and a heart to avoid all irritation, and hands to labor and to give. At the same time, we also maintain that both the old man and the new have to do with the difference of moral conduct, and not with any difference of nature. And just as we acknowledge that what according to its former conduct was the old man was also corrupt, and received its very name in keeping with its deceitful lusts, so also we hold that it is the old man in reference to its former conduct, in Ephesians 4:22, and not in respect to the flesh through any permanent dissolution. Moreover, it is still unimpaired in the flesh, and the same in that nature, even when it has become the new man, since it has been stripped of its sinful course of life, and not of its bodily substance.

YOU MAY NOTICE THAT THE APOSTLE EVERYWHERE CONDEMNS THE WORKS OF THE FLESH IN SUCH A WAY THAT HE SEEMS TO CONDEMN THE FLESH ITSELF: But no one can suppose that he means this, since he goes on at once to suggest another sense, even though it somewhat resembles that one. For when he actually declares that those who are in the flesh cannot please God, he immediately calls the statement back from a heretical sense to a sound one by adding, "But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit," in Romans 8:8-9. Now, by denying that they were in the flesh, though they obviously were in the flesh, he showed that they were not living among the works of the flesh. Therefore, those who could not please God were not those who were in the flesh, but only those who were living after the flesh. But those pleased God who, although they existed in the flesh, were still walking after the Spirit. And again, he says that the body is dead. But it is dead because of sin, just as the Spirit is life because of righteousness. When, however, he thus sets life over against the death that is established in the flesh, he unquestionably promises the life of righteousness to the same condition for which he assigned the death of sin. But this contrast that he makes between life and death is meaningless if the life is not there where the very thing is to which he opposes it, namely, the death that is, of course, to be rooted out from the body. Now, if life thus roots out death from the body, it can do this only by entering there where the thing is that it excludes. But why am I resorting to difficult arguments when the apostle treats the matter with complete plainness? For if, he says, "the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwells in you," in Romans 8:11. So then, even if a person were to suppose that the soul is the mortal body, he would still, since he cannot possibly deny that the flesh is also this, be forced to acknowledge a restoration even of the flesh, because it shares in that same condition. Moreover, from the words that follow, you may learn that it is the works of the flesh that are condemned, and not the flesh itself: "Therefore, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if you live after the flesh you shall die; but if you, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live." Now, to answer each point separately, since salvation is promised to those who are living in the flesh but walking after the Spirit, it is no longer the flesh that is an enemy to salvation, but the working of the flesh. When, however, this operativeness of the flesh is done away with, which is the cause of death, the flesh is shown to be safe, since it is freed from the cause of death. For "the law," he says, "of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death"—that, surely, which he had previously mentioned as dwelling in our members. Our members, therefore, will no longer be subject to the law of death, because they cease to serve that of sin, from both of which they have been set free. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and through sin condemned sin in the flesh, in Romans 8:3—not the flesh in sin, for the house is not to be condemned with its inhabitant. He did indeed say that sin dwells in our body, in Romans 7:20. But the condemnation of sin is the acquittal of the flesh, just as the non-condemnation of sin subjects it to the law of sin and death. In the same way, he first called the carnal mind death, in Romans 8:6, and afterward enmity against God. But he never said this of the flesh itself. But to what then, you will say, must the carnal mind be ascribed, if not to the carnal substance itself? I will allow your objection, if you will prove to me that the flesh has any understanding of its own. If, however, it has no thought of anything without the soul, you must understand that the carnal mind must be referred to the soul, although it is sometimes ascribed to the flesh, on the ground that it is ministered to for the flesh and through the flesh. And therefore he says that sin dwells in the flesh, because the soul, by which sin is stirred up, has its temporary lodging in the flesh, which is indeed doomed to death, though not on its own account, but on account of sin. For he says in another passage also, "How is it that you conduct yourselves as if you were even now living in the world?" in Colossians 2:20. There he is not writing to dead persons, but to those who ought to have ceased to live after the ways of the world.

FOR WHAT HE MUST MEAN BY LIVING AFTER THE WORLD IS THAT WHICH HE DECLARES: as the old man, to be crucified with Christ in Romans 6:6. He means not a bodily structure, but moral behavior. Besides, if we do not understand it in this sense, then it is not our bodily frame that has been transfixed at all, nor has our flesh endured the cross of Christ. Rather, the meaning is what he adds next: "that the body of sin might be made void," by an amendment of life, not by a destruction of the substance. As he goes on to say, this is "that from now on we should not serve sin," and that we should believe ourselves to be dead with Christ in such a way that we shall also live with Him. On the same principle he says, "Likewise reckon also yourselves to be dead indeed." Dead to what? To the flesh? No, but to sin. Accordingly, as to the flesh they will be saved, alive to God in Christ Jesus, through the flesh of course, to which they will not be dead, since it is to sin, and not to the flesh, that they are dead. For he presses the point even further: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it," and that you should yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin. But "yield yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead"—not simply alive, but as alive from the dead—"and your members as instruments of righteousness." And again: "As you have yielded your members servants of uncleanness, and of iniquity to iniquity, even so now yield your members servants of righteousness to holiness. For while you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Thus throughout this whole series of passages, while he withdraws our members from unrighteousness and sin, and applies them to righteousness and holiness, and transfers the same from the wages of death to the gift of eternal life, he undoubtedly promises to the flesh the recompense of salvation. Now it would not at all have been consistent for any rule of holiness and righteousness to be specially commanded for the flesh, if the reward of such discipline were not also within its reach. Nor could even baptism properly be ordered for the flesh, if by its regeneration a course were not begun that tends to its restoration. The apostle himself suggests this idea: "Do you not know, that so many of us as are baptized into Jesus Christ, are baptized into His death? We are therefore buried with Him by baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we also should walk in newness of life." Romans 6:3-4. And so that you may not suppose this is said merely of that life which we are to walk in in newness, through baptism, by faith, the apostle, with the greatest forethought, adds: "For if we have been planted together in the likeness of Christ's death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection." By a figure we die in baptism, but in reality we rise again in the flesh, just as Christ did, so that, as sin has reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 5:21. But how can this be so, unless equally in the flesh? For where the death is, there too must be the life after death, because the life also was first there, where the death later was. Now if the dominion of death works only in the dissolution of the flesh, then in the same way death's contrary, life, ought to produce the contrary effect, namely the restoration of the flesh. So that, just as death had swallowed it up in its strength, it also, after this mortal has been swallowed up by immortality, may hear the challenge spoken against it: "O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?" 1 Corinthians 15:55. For in this way grace shall there much more abound, where sin once abounded. Romans 5:20. In this way also strength shall be made perfect in weakness, 2 Corinthians 12:9—saving what is lost, reviving what is dead, healing what is stricken, curing what is faint, redeeming what is lost, freeing what is enslaved, recalling what has strayed, raising what is fallen, and this from earth to heaven. There, as the apostle teaches the Philippians, we have our citizenship, from where also we look for our Savior Jesus Christ, who shall change our body of humiliation, that it may be made like His glorious body, Philippians 3:20-21—of course after the resurrection, because Christ Himself was not glorified before He suffered. These must be the bodies that he urges the Romans to present as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. Romans 12:1. But how can it be a living sacrifice, if these bodies are to perish? How can it be a holy one, if they are profanely soiled? How can it be acceptable to God, if they are condemned? Come now, tell me how that passage in the Epistle to the Thessalonians—which, because of its clearness, I would suppose was written with a sunbeam—is understood by our heretics, who shun the light of Scripture: "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly." And as if this were not plain enough, it goes on to say: "And may your whole body, and soul, and spirit be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord." 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Here you have the entire substance of man destined for salvation, and that at no other time than at the coming of the Lord, which is the key of the resurrection.

BUT FLESH AND BLOOD: you say, cannot inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians 15:50 We are quite aware that this too is written. But although our opponents put it at the front of the battle, we have purposely reserved this objection until now. We did this so that in our final attack we might overthrow it, after removing all the questions that support it. However, even now they must call to mind our earlier arguments, so that the occasion that first suggested this passage may help our judgment in reaching its meaning. As I understand it, the apostle, after setting before the Corinthians the details of their church discipline, had summed up the substance of his own gospel and of their belief in an explanation of the Lord's death and resurrection. He did this in order to draw from it the rule of our hope and its foundation. So he adds this statement: "Now if Christ is preached that He rose from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up, if it is true that the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not raised. And if Christ is not raised, your faith is vain, because you are still in your sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished." 1 Corinthians 15:12-18 Now what is the point that he is plainly working hard to make us believe throughout this passage? The resurrection of the dead, you say, which was denied. He certainly wanted it to be believed on the strength of the example he brought forward, the Lord's resurrection. Certainly, you say. Well then, is an example taken from different circumstances, or from similar ones? From similar ones, of course, is your answer. Then how did Christ rise again? In the flesh, or not? No doubt, since you are told that He died according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried according to the Scriptures, in no other way than in the flesh, you will also allow that it was in the flesh that He was raised from the dead. For the very same body that fell in death and lay in the tomb also rose again. And it was not so much Christ in the flesh, as the flesh in Christ. If, therefore, we are to rise again after the example of Christ, who rose in the flesh, we certainly will not rise according to that example unless we ourselves also rise again in the flesh. For he says, "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead." He says this, on the one hand, to distinguish the two authors, Adam of death and Christ of resurrection; and, on the other hand, to make the resurrection work on the same substance as death, by comparing the authors themselves under the name man. For if "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive," 1 Corinthians 15:22 then their being made alive in Christ must be in the flesh, since their death in Adam arises in the flesh. But "every man in his own order," because of course it will also be every man in his own body. For the order will be arranged separately, according to each one's merits. Now since the merits must be ascribed to the body, it must follow that the order also should be arranged with respect to the bodies, so that it may be in relation to their merits. But since some are also baptized for the dead, we will see whether there is a good reason for this. Now it is certain that they adopted this practice with such a presumption that they supposed the vicarious baptism would benefit another person's flesh in anticipation of the resurrection. For unless it were a bodily resurrection, there would be no pledge secured by this process of a bodily baptism. "Why then are they baptized for the dead," he asks, unless the bodies rise again that are thus baptized? For it is not the soul that is sanctified by the baptismal washing. Its sanctification comes from the answer. 1 Peter 3:21 And why, he asks, "do we stand in jeopardy every hour?" 1 Corinthians 15:30 Meaning, of course, through the flesh. "I die daily," he says. That is, no doubt, in the dangers of the body, in which he even fought with beasts at Ephesus, even with those beasts that caused him such peril and trouble in Asia, to which he refers in his second letter to the same church of Corinth: "For we do not want you, brothers, to be ignorant of our trouble that came to us in Asia, that we were pressed beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life." 2 Corinthians 1:8 Now, if I am not mistaken, he lists all these things so that, since he is unwilling to have his conflicts in the flesh thought useless, he may bring about an unshaken belief in the resurrection of the flesh. For that conflict must be considered useless, if it is endured in a body for which no resurrection lies ahead. But some man will say, "How are the dead to be raised? And with what body will they come?" 1 Corinthians 15:35 Now here he discusses the qualities of bodies, whether it is the very same ones, or different ones, that men are to receive again. However, since such a question as this must be regarded as a later one, for the present it is enough for us that the resurrection is decided to be a bodily one even from this, that the inquiry arises about the quality of bodies.

WE NOW COME TO THE VERY HEART OF THE WHOLE QUESTION: what are the substances, and what is their nature, that the apostle has excluded from the kingdom of God? The earlier statements also give us a clue about this point. He says, "The first man is of the earth, earthy"—that is, made from dust, that is, Adam. "The second man is from heaven," 1 Corinthians 15:47—that is, the Word of God, who is Christ. Yet He is man, though from heaven, in no other way than by being Himself flesh and soul, just as a human being is, just as Adam was. In fact, in an earlier passage He is called the second Adam, getting this identity of name from sharing the same substance, because even Adam was not flesh from human seed, and in this Christ is also like him. "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." 1 Corinthians 15:48 Does he mean such in substance? Or first in training, and afterward in the dignity and worth that this training aimed to gain? They will not, however, be separated as earthy and heavenly in substance. The apostle has once for all described them as men. For even if Christ were the only true heavenly—indeed, super-heavenly—Being, He is still man, as made up of body and soul. In no respect is He separated from the quality of earthiness, because of that condition of His by which He shares in both substances. In the same way, those who after Him are called heavenly are understood to have this heavenly quality said of them, not because of their present nature, but because of their future glory. For in an earlier sentence, which introduced this distinction about difference in dignity, it was shown that there is one glory in heavenly bodies, and another in earthly ones, 1 Corinthians 15:40—one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars. For even one star differs from another star in glory, though not in substance. Then, after first stating this difference in worth or dignity, which must now be aimed at and later at last enjoyed, the apostle adds an exhortation. We should both follow Christ's example here in our training, and there attain His greatness in glory: "As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the image of the heavenly." We have indeed borne the image of the earthy by sharing in his transgression, by taking part in his death, and by being driven out of Paradise. Now, although the image of Adam is borne by us here in the flesh, we are not being told to put off the flesh. If not the flesh, then it is our way of life that is meant, so that we may then bear in ourselves the image of the heavenly—not now the image of God, and not the image of a Being whose condition is in heaven, but according to the likeness of Christ, by our walking here in holiness, righteousness, and truth. And he is so completely focused throughout this passage on teaching moral conduct that he tells us we ought to bear the image of Christ in this flesh of ours, and in this time of instruction and discipline. For when he says, "let us bear," in the imperative mood, he fits his words to the present life, in which man exists in no other substance than as flesh and soul. Or if it is another substance, even a heavenly one, that this faith of ours looks forward to, still the promise is made to that substance to which the command is given to work hard and earnestly so as to deserve its reward. Since, then, he makes both the image of the earthy and the image of the heavenly consist in moral conduct—the one to be rejected, and the other to be pursued—and then accordingly adds, "For this I say" (that is, because of what I have already said, since the word "for" connects what follows with the words before), "that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," 1 Corinthians 15:50, he means that flesh and blood must be understood in no other sense than as the previously mentioned image of the earthy. And since this is understood to consist in the old way of life, which old way of life does not receive the kingdom of God, therefore flesh and blood, by not receiving the kingdom of God, are brought down to the life of the old way of life. Of course, since the apostle has never used the substance of man to mean the works of man, he cannot be using such a construction here. However, he has said about men who are still alive in the flesh that they are "not in the flesh," Romans 8:9, meaning that they are not living in the works of the flesh. So you ought not to overthrow either its form or its substance, but only the works done in the substance of the flesh, which separate us from the kingdom of God. After showing the Galatians these destructive works, he says that he warns them beforehand, just as he had told them before, that "they which do such things should not inherit the kingdom of God," Galatians 5:21, because they did not bear the image of the heavenly, as they had borne the image of the earthy. And so, because of their old way of life, they were to be regarded as nothing other than flesh and blood. But even if the apostle had suddenly stated that flesh and blood must be shut out from the kingdom of God, without any earlier hint of his meaning, would it not still have been our duty to understand these two substances as the old man given over to mere flesh and blood—in other words, to eating and drinking? One mark of this would be speaking against faith in the resurrection: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." 1 Corinthians 15:32 Now when the apostle inserted this as a parenthetical statement, he was condemning flesh and blood because of their pleasure in eating and drinking.

SETTING ASIDE: however, all interpretations of this kind, which accuse the works of flesh and blood, I may claim these very substances for the resurrection, understood in their plain, natural sense. For it is not resurrection itself that is directly denied to flesh and blood, but the kingdom of God, which is connected with resurrection. For there is also a resurrection for judgment. In fact, whenever one special resurrection is excluded, that confirms the general resurrection of the flesh. Now when it is clearly stated what condition the resurrection does not lead to, then it is understood what condition it does lead to. Therefore, since the difference in people's resurrection is made because of their merits, by how they acted in the flesh, and not by the substance of the flesh itself, it is clear even from this that flesh and blood are excluded from the kingdom of God because of their sin, not because of their substance. Yet in respect to their natural condition, they will still rise again for judgment, because they do not rise for the kingdom. Again, I say, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," 1 Corinthians 15:50. And the apostle rightly declares this about them when they are considered by themselves and alone, in order to show that the Spirit is still needed to qualify them for the kingdom. For it is the Spirit that gives us life for the kingdom of God. "The flesh profits nothing," John 6:63. However, there is something else that can be profitable for it, that is, the Spirit, and through the Spirit, also the works of the Spirit. Therefore, flesh and blood must in every case rise again, equally, in their proper nature. But those to whom it is granted to enter the kingdom of God will have to put on the power of an incorruptible and immortal life. For without this, or before they are able to receive it, they cannot enter the kingdom of God. So then, with good reason, flesh and blood, as we have already said, by themselves fail to obtain the kingdom of God. But since "this corruptible" — that is, the flesh — must put on incorruption, and "this mortal" — that is, the blood — must put on immortality, 1 Corinthians 15:53, by the change that follows the resurrection, it will happen, for the best of reasons, that flesh and blood, after that change and clothing, will become able to inherit the kingdom of God, but not without the resurrection. Some suppose that by the phrase "flesh and blood," because of its connection with the rite of circumcision, Judaism is meant. They say that Judaism itself is too far removed from the kingdom of God, since it is regarded as the old or former way of life, and since it is also called by this title in another passage of the apostle. There, when it pleased God to reveal His Son in him so that he might preach Him among the Gentiles, he says in his letter to the Galatians that he did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, meaning by that phrase the circumcision, that is, Judaism.

BUT WHAT WE SAVED FOR OUR CLOSING ARGUMENT WILL NOW SERVE AS A DEFENSE FOR EVERYONE: and for the apostle himself. He really would have to be charged with extreme recklessness if, as some claim, he had so suddenly, so blindly, so indiscriminately, and so absolutely shut out all flesh and blood from the kingdom of God, and indeed from heaven itself. For Jesus is still sitting there at the right hand of the Father, Mark 16:19, man and yet God — the last Adam, 1 Corinthians 15:45, yet the primary Word — flesh and blood, yet purer than ours. He will come down in the same way as He went up into heaven, Acts 1:9, the same in substance and form, as the angels declared, so that He may even be recognized by those who pierced Him. Since He is appointed the Mediator between God and man, He keeps in Himself the deposit of the flesh that has been entrusted to Him by both sides. It is the pledge and guarantee of its complete perfection. For just as He has given us the guarantee of the Spirit, 2 Corinthians 5:5, so He has received from us the guarantee of the flesh, and has carried it with Him into heaven as a pledge of that full wholeness which will one day be restored to it. Do not be troubled, O flesh and blood, with any anxiety. In Christ you have gained both heaven and the kingdom of God. Otherwise, if they say that you are not in Christ, let them also say that Christ is not in heaven, since they have denied heaven to you. Likewise, he says, corruption will not inherit incorruption. 1 Corinthians 15:50 He says this, not so that you would take flesh and blood to mean corruption, for flesh and blood are rather what corruption acts upon. I mean through death, since death does not merely corrupt our flesh and blood, but actually consumes them. But since he had plainly said that the works of flesh and blood could not obtain the kingdom of God, and wanted to say this with added force, he excluded corruption itself — that is, death, which gains so much from the works of flesh and blood — from any inheritance in incorruption. For a little later he describes what is, so to speak, the death of death itself: "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin" — here is the corruption — "and the strength of sin is the law," 1 Corinthians 15:54-56, that other law, no doubt, which he describes in his members as fighting against the law of his mind, Romans 7:23. He means, of course, the actual power of sinning against his will. Now in an earlier passage of our Epistle to the Corinthians, he says that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:26 In this way, then, corruption will not inherit incorruption. In other words, death will not continue. When and how will it cease? In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, when the dead will rise incorruptible. But who are these, if not those who were corruptible before — that is, our bodies; in other words, our flesh and blood? And we will be changed. But in what condition, if not in the condition in which we are found? For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. What is this mortal, if not the flesh? What is corruptible, if not the blood? Moreover, so that you may not think the apostle meant anything else in his careful teaching, and so that you may understand that he truly applies his statement to the flesh when he says "this corruptible" and "this mortal," he speaks these words while touching the surface of his own body. He certainly could not have spoken these phrases except with reference to something tangible and visible. The wording points to a bodily demonstration. Moreover, a corruptible body is one thing, and corruption is another. In the same way, a mortal body is one thing, and mortality is another. For the thing that suffers is one thing, and the thing that causes it to suffer is another. Therefore, the things subject to corruption and mortality, namely flesh and blood, must also be capable of incorruption and immortality.

LET US NOW SEE IN WHAT BODY HE SAYS THE DEAD WILL RISE: He skillfully begins to explain the point at once, as if someone had asked him this very question. “You fool,” he says, “what you sow is not made alive unless it dies.” From this example of seed, it is clear that no flesh is made alive except the flesh that has first undergone death. Therefore, the rest of the question becomes plain enough. Nothing can be understood here that goes against the meaning of the example. And when the next words say, “What you sow, you do not sow the body that shall be,” you are not allowed to suppose that in the resurrection a different body will rise from the one that was sown in death. If you do that, you have abandoned the example. For if wheat is sown and breaks down in the ground, barley does not come up. Still, what rises is not exactly the same grain in appearance. Its condition, quality, and form are not the same. Then from where does it come, if it is not the very same thing? Even its decay proves the point, because it is the decay of that actual grain. But perhaps, you say, the apostle himself explains in what sense the body that shall be is not the body that is sown, when he says, “But bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain; but God gives it a body as it pleases Him.” Of course, He gives it to the grain that he says is sown bare. No doubt, you say. Then the grain is certainly preserved, because God must assign a body to it. But how can it be preserved if it no longer exists? How can it be preserved if it does not rise again as its actual self? If it does not rise again, it is not preserved. And if it is not preserved, it cannot receive a body from God. But there is every possible proof that it is preserved. Why, then, will God give it a body as it pleases Him, when it already has its own bare body, unless it is so that in the resurrection it may no longer be bare? Therefore, what is added is something placed over the bare body. And the thing on which that added matter is placed is not destroyed at all. Rather, it is increased. And what receives increase is preserved. The truth is that it is sown as the barest grain, without a husk covering it, without even a spike beginning to form, without the protection of a bearded top, without the glory of a stalk. Yet it rises out of the furrow rich with abundant produce, built up into a solid structure, arranged in beautiful order, strengthened by cultivation, and clothed all around. These are the things that make it another body from God. It is changed, not by being abolished, but by being enlarged. “And to every seed God has assigned its own body” — not its own in the sense of its original body, but so that what it receives from God from outside may, in the end, also be called its own. Hold firmly, then, to the example, and keep it clearly in view as a mirror of what happens to the flesh. Believe that the very same flesh that was once sown in death will bear fruit in resurrection life. It is the same in substance, only fuller and more perfect. It is not another flesh, although it appears again in another form. For it will receive in itself the grace and beauty that God will be pleased to spread over it, according to its merits. Without question, this is the meaning when he says, “All flesh is not the same flesh.” He does not mean to deny that all flesh shares a common substance. He means that there is not an equal rank or honor. He is making the difference one of honor, not of nature. With this in mind, he adds, in a figurative sense, examples from animals and from heavenly bodies: “There is one flesh of man” — that is, servants of God, though truly human; “another flesh of beasts” — that is, the heathen, of whom the prophet actually says, “Man is like the senseless cattle”; “another flesh of birds” — that is, the martyrs who try to rise up to heaven; “another of fishes” — that is, those whom the water of baptism has plunged under. In the same way, he also uses examples from the heavenly bodies: “There is one glory of the sun” — that is, of Christ; “and another glory of the moon” — that is, of the Church; “and another glory of the stars” — in other words, of the seed of Abraham. “For one star differs from another star in glory.” In the same way, there are bodies earthly as well as heavenly — that is, Jews as well as Christians. Now, if this language is not to be understood figuratively, then it was quite absurd for him to compare the flesh of mules and kites, and also heavenly bodies and human bodies. These things cannot be compared in their condition, nor in regard to attaining resurrection. Then at last, after showing clearly by his examples that the difference is one of glory, not of substance, he adds, “So also is the resurrection of the dead.” In what way? In no way except that it differs in glory only. For again, while speaking of the resurrection of the same substance, and returning once more to the comparison of grain, he says: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” Certainly, nothing is raised except what is sown. And nothing is sown except what decays in the ground. And what decays in the ground is nothing other than the flesh. For this was the substance that God’s decree condemned: “Earth you are, and to earth shall you return,” because it was taken out of the earth. It was from this fact that the apostle borrowed his way of speaking about the flesh as being sown, since it returns to the ground. And the ground is the great storehouse for seeds that are put into it and then sought again from it. Therefore, he confirms the passage again by placing on it the mark of his own inspired authority, saying, “For so it is written,” so that you may not suppose that being sown means anything other than “you shall return to the ground, out of which you were taken,” nor that the words “for so it is written” refer to anything other than the flesh.

SOME: however, argue that the soul is the natural, or animate, body. They do this so they can separate the flesh from any connection with the body that rises again. But it is a clear and settled point that the body which will rise again is the one that was sown in death. So they must be pressed to examine the fact itself. Otherwise, let them show that the soul was sown after death. In other words, let them show that it underwent death — that it was destroyed, torn apart, dissolved in the ground. Yet God never declared any such thing against it. Let them show us its corruption and dishonor, as well as its weakness, so that it too may be said to rise again in incorruption, in glory, and in power, as 1 Corinthians 15:42-43 says. Now in the case of Lazarus, which we may take as the chief example of a resurrection, the flesh lay helpless in weakness. The flesh was nearly rotten in the dishonor of decay. The flesh gave off a bad smell in corruption. And yet Lazarus rose again as flesh — with his soul, of course. But that soul was not corruptible. No one had wrapped it in burial cloths. No one had placed it in a tomb. No one had yet noticed it smelling bad. No one had seen it sown for four days. Well then, all men still experience this whole condition, this whole end, in the flesh, but no one does in the soul. Therefore, the substance to which the apostle's whole description plainly refers, and of which he clearly speaks, must be the natural, or animate, body when it is sown, and the spiritual body when it is raised again. For so that you may understand it this way, he points to the same conclusion when, using the authority of the same passage of Scripture, he shows us that the first man Adam was made a living soul. Now since Adam was the first man, and since the flesh was man before the soul, it clearly follows that it was the flesh that became a living soul. Moreover, since it was a bodily substance that took on this condition, it was of course the natural, or animate, body that became a living soul. By what name would they have it called, except the name it became through the soul, except what it was not before the soul, except what it can never be after the soul except through its resurrection? For after it has received the soul again, it once more becomes the natural, or animate, body, so that it may become a spiritual body. For in the resurrection it only takes back the condition it once had. Therefore there is no equally good reason why the soul should be called the natural, or animate, body, as there is for the flesh to bear that name. In fact, the flesh was a body before it was an animate body. When the flesh was joined with the soul, then it became the natural, or animate, body. Now although the soul is a bodily substance, it is not an animated body, but rather something that gives animation. So it cannot be called the animate, or natural, body, nor can it become the thing that it produces. In fact, it is when the soul comes to something else that it makes that thing animate. But unless it comes to something else, how will it ever produce animation? Therefore, just as the flesh was at first an animate, or natural, body when it received the soul, so at the end it will become a spiritual body when clothed with the spirit. Now the apostle, by bringing forward this order separately in Adam and in Christ, clearly distinguishes between the two states in the very points where they differ. And when he calls Christ the last Adam, in 1 Corinthians 15:45, you may see from this how strongly he works throughout his teaching to establish the resurrection of the flesh, not of the soul. So then, the first man Adam was flesh, not soul, and only afterward became a living soul. And the last Adam, Christ, was Adam only because He was man, and man only because He was flesh, not because He was soul. So the apostle goes on to say, "However, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual," in 1 Corinthians 15:46, as in the case of the two Adams. Now, do you not think that he is distinguishing between the natural body and the spiritual body in the same flesh, after he has already made that distinction there in the two Adams, that is, in the first man and in the last? For from what substance do Christ and Adam have likeness with each other? No doubt it is from their flesh, although it may also be from their soul. However, it is with respect to the flesh that both are man, for the flesh was man before the soul. It was actually from the flesh that they were able to be ranked, so as to be considered one the first man, and the other the last man, or Adam. Besides, things that differ in character can only fail to be arranged in the same order when their difference is a difference of substance. But when the difference is one of place, or time, or condition, they probably can be grouped together. Here, however, they are called first and last because of the substance of their shared flesh, just as later the first man is said to be of the earth, and the second of heaven. But although He is of heaven with respect to the spirit, He is still man according to the flesh. Now since it is the flesh, and not the soul, that makes this ordering of the two Adams possible, so that the distinction is drawn between the first man becoming a living soul and the last becoming a life-giving spirit, in the same way this distinction between them has already suggested the conclusion that the distinction belongs to the flesh. So these words speak of the flesh: "However, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." And so too, the same flesh must be understood in the earlier passage: "That which is sown is the natural body, and that which rises again is the spiritual body," because "that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural," since "the first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit," as 1 Corinthians 15:44-45 says. It is all about man, and it is all about the flesh because it is about man.

WHAT: then, shall we say? Does not the flesh even now, in this life, have the Spirit by faith? So the question still remains: how can the natural body be said to be sown? Certainly, even here the flesh has received the Spirit, but only as a pledge. Yet from the soul it has received, not a pledge, but full possession. Therefore it is called a natural body, specifically because of the higher substance of the soul, or anima, in which it is sown. Later it is meant to become, through the full possession of the Spirit that it will receive, the spiritual body, in which it is raised again. What wonder is it, then, if it is more commonly called by the substance with which it is fully supplied, rather than by that of which it has as yet only a small portion?

THEN AGAIN: questions are often raised by occasional and isolated words, just as much as by connected sentences. For example, because of the apostle's statement that mortality may be swallowed up by life, in 2 Corinthians 5:4, referring to the flesh, they twist the word "swallowed up" to mean the actual destruction of the flesh. But we also speak of swallowing bile or swallowing grief, and by that we mean that we conceal it, hide it, and keep it within ourselves. The truth is this: when it is written, "This mortal must put on immortality," in 1 Corinthians 15:53, it explains in what sense mortality is swallowed up by life. It is swallowed up in the sense that, when it is clothed with immortality, it is hidden, concealed, and contained within it, not consumed, destroyed, or lost. But you will reply to me, "At that rate, death too must remain safe, even when it has been swallowed up." Well then, I ask you to distinguish words that look similar according to their proper meanings. Death is one thing, and mortality is another. It is one thing for death to be swallowed up, and another thing for mortality to be swallowed up. Death cannot receive immortality, but mortality can. Besides, since it is written that "this mortal must put on immortality," in 1 Corinthians 15:53, how could this happen if it were swallowed up by life? And how is it swallowed up by life, if that means destroyed by it, when it is actually received, restored, and included in it? As for the rest, it is only fair and right that death should be swallowed up in complete destruction, since death itself devours with that very purpose. The apostle says that death has devoured by using its strength, and therefore it has itself been devoured in the contest, swallowed up in victory. "O death, where is your sting? O death, where is your victory?" Therefore life also, as the great opponent of death, will in the struggle swallow up for salvation what death, in its struggle, had swallowed up for destruction.

NOW ALTHOUGH: in proving that the flesh will rise again, we thereby prove that no flesh other than the very flesh in question will share in that resurrection, yet separate questions, and the occasions that raise them, require discussions of their own, even if they have already been answered well enough. Therefore, we will give a fuller explanation of the force and the reason of a change so great that it almost suggests the idea that it is a different flesh which is to rise again. That would be as if so great a change meant utter cessation and complete destruction of the former self. However, a distinction must be made between a change, however great, and everything that has the character of destruction. For to undergo change is one thing, but to be destroyed is another. Now this distinction would no longer exist if the flesh were to suffer such a change as amounts to destruction. Yet it must be destroyed by the change, unless it itself remains throughout the altered condition that will appear in the resurrection. For just as it perishes if it does not rise again, so it also equally perishes even if it does rise again, if it is lost in the change. It would fail of future existence just as much as if it did not rise again at all. And how absurd it is to rise again for the purpose of not having a being, when it had it in its power not to rise again, and so lose its being, because its non-existence had already begun! Now, things that are absolutely different, as change and destruction are, will not allow mixture and confusion. Their operations also differ. One destroys; the other changes. Therefore, as what is destroyed is not changed, so what is changed is not destroyed. To perish is altogether to cease to be what a thing once was, whereas to be changed is to exist in another condition. Now, if a thing exists in another condition, it can still be the same thing itself. For since it does not perish, it still has its existence. It has indeed experienced a change, but not a destruction. A thing may undergo a complete change and yet remain the same thing. In the same way, a man may be quite himself in substance even in the present life, and yet undergo various changes: in habit, in bodily size, in health, in condition, in dignity, and in age; in taste, business, means, houses, laws, and customs. And still he loses nothing of his human nature, nor is he made into another man so as to cease to be the same man. Indeed, I ought hardly to say another man, but another thing. The Holy Scriptures also give us examples of this kind of change. The hand of Moses is changed, and it becomes like a dead one, bloodless, colorless, and stiff with cold. But when warmth returns and its natural color is restored, it is again the same flesh and blood. Exodus 4:6-7 Afterwards the face of the same Moses is changed with a brightness the eye could not bear. But he was still Moses, even when he was not visible. So also Stephen had already put on the appearance of an angel, Acts 6:15 although the knees that bent beneath the stoning were still his human knees. Acts 7:59-60 The Lord, again, on the mountain in seclusion, had changed His clothing for a robe of light. But He still kept features Peter could recognize. Matthew 17:2-4 In that same scene Moses also and Elias gave proof that the same condition of bodily existence may continue even in glory: the one in the likeness of a flesh which he had not yet recovered, the other in the reality of one which he had not yet put off. It was as full of this splendid example that Paul said, "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like His glorious body." Philippians 3:21 But if you maintain that a transfiguration and a conversion amount to the annihilation of any substance, then it follows that Saul, when changed into another man, 1 Samuel 10:6 passed away from his own bodily substance, and that Satan himself, when transformed into an angel of light, 2 Corinthians 11:14 loses his own proper character. Such is not my opinion. So likewise changes, conversions, and reformations will necessarily take place to bring about the resurrection, but the substance of the flesh will still be preserved safe.

HOW ABSURD: and really how unjust, and in both ways how unworthy of God, it would be for one substance to do the work and another to receive the reward. That would mean this flesh of ours is torn apart in martyrdom, and another wears the crown. Or, on the other hand, this flesh of ours rolls in uncleanness, and another receives the condemnation. Is it not better to give up all faith at once in the hope of the resurrection than to make a mockery of the wisdom and justice of God? It would be better for Marcion to rise again than Valentinus. For it cannot be believed that the mind, or the memory, or the conscience of a living person is destroyed by putting on that change of clothing which immortality and incorruption provide. If that were so, then all the benefit and fruit of the resurrection, and the lasting effect of God's judgment on both soul and body, would certainly come to nothing. If I do not remember that I am the one who has served Him, how shall I give glory to God? How shall I sing to Him the new song, if I do not know that I am the one who owes Him thanks? But why is an objection made only against the change of the flesh, and not also against the change of the soul, which is greater than the flesh in every way? How is it that the very same soul which, in our present flesh, has gone through the whole course of life, has learned the knowledge of God, has put on Christ, and has sown the hope of salvation in this flesh, must reap its harvest in another flesh that we know nothing about? Truly that would have to be a very highly favored flesh, which would enjoy life at such a free cost! But if the soul is not to be changed also, then there is no resurrection of the soul. Nor will it be believed to have itself risen, unless it has risen as some different thing.

WE NOW COME TO THE MOST USUAL OBJECTION OF UNBELIEF: They say, if it is really the very same substance that is called back to life, with all its form, features, and quality, then why not with all its other characteristics as well? Then the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, and anyone else who has passed away with some noticeable mark, will return again with the same one. What, then, is the fact, although in your great pride you refuse to accept from God so vast a grace? Does it not happen that, when you now allow the salvation of only the soul, you assign it to men at the cost of half their nature? What is the good of believing in the resurrection unless your faith embraces all of it? If the flesh is to be repaired after its dissolution, much more will it be restored after some violent injury. Greater cases lay down rules for lesser ones. Is not the cutting off or crushing of a limb the death of that limb? Now, if the death of the whole person is rescinded by the resurrection, what must we say about the death of a part of him? If we are changed for glory, how much more for integrity! Any loss our bodies suffer is an accident to them, but their entirety belongs to them by nature. In this condition we are born. Even if we are injured in the womb, this is loss suffered by one who is already a human being. Natural condition comes before injury. As life is bestowed by God, so it is restored by Him. As we are when we receive it, so we are when we recover it. We are restored to nature, not to injury. We rise again to our state by birth, not to our condition by accident. If God does not raise men entire, then He does not raise the dead. For what dead man is entire, even if he dies entire? Who is without injury when he is without life? What body is uninjured when it is dead, when it is cold, when it is ghastly, when it is stiff, when it is a corpse? When is a man more infirm than when he is entirely infirm? When more paralyzed than when he is completely motionless? Thus, for a dead man to be raised again amounts to nothing less than his being restored to his entire condition, lest, of course, he should still be dead in the part in which he has not risen again. God is fully able to remake what He once made. He has already sufficiently guaranteed this power and this unstinting grace in Christ. In Him, He has shown Himself to us not only as the restorer of the flesh, but also as the repairer of its breaches. And so the apostle says, "The dead shall be raised incorruptible," or "unimpaired," in 1 Corinthians 15:52. But how can this be, unless those become entire who have wasted away either through the loss of health or through the long decay of the grave? For when he states the two clauses, that "this corruptible must put on incorruption," and that "this mortal must put on immortality," in 1 Corinthians 15:53, he is not repeating the same statement. He is setting out a distinction. By assigning immortality to the reversal of death, and incorruption to the repair of the body that has wasted away, he has fitted one to the raising of the body and the other to its recovery. I suppose, moreover, that he promises to the Thessalonians the integrity of the whole substance of man. So for the great future there is no need to fear blemished or defective bodies. Integrity, whether it comes from preservation or restoration, will be able to lose nothing more after the time when it has given back whatever it had lost. Now when you argue that the flesh will still have to undergo the same sufferings, if the same flesh is said to rise again, you rashly set nature against her Lord, and impiously set her law against His grace, as if the Lord God were not permitted both to change nature and to preserve it, without subjection to a law. How is it, then, that we read, "With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible," in Matthew 19:26, and again, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise," in 1 Corinthians 1:27? Let me ask you this. If you were to free your slave, since the same flesh and soul would remain in him that had once been exposed to the whip, the fetter, and the stripes, would it therefore be proper for him to undergo those same old sufferings? I think not. Instead, he is honored with the grace of the white robe, the favor of the gold ring, and the name and tribe, as well as the table, of his patron. Give, then, the same prerogative to God: that by such a change He may reform our condition, not our nature, by taking away from it all sufferings and surrounding it with safeguards of protection. Thus our flesh will remain even after the resurrection. It will indeed, so far as it is flesh, and the same flesh too, be capable of suffering. But at the same time it will be unable to suffer, since it has been liberated by the Lord for this very end and purpose: that it should no longer be capable of enduring suffering.

"Everlasting joy," says Isaiah, "shall be upon their heads," in Isaiah 35:10. Well, nothing is eternal until after the resurrection. And, he continues, "sorrow and sighing shall flee away." The angel says the same thing to John: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes," in Revelation 7:17. These are indeed the same eyes that had wept before, and that might weep again, if the loving-kindness of God did not dry up every fountain of tears. And again: "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death," in Revelation 21:4. And therefore there will be no more corruption, since incorruption drives it away, just as immortality drives away death. If sorrow, and mourning, and sighing, and death itself, come upon us from the afflictions both of soul and body, how shall they be removed, except by the ending of their causes, that is, the afflictions of flesh and soul? Where will you find adversities in the presence of God? Where, incursions of an enemy in the bosom of Christ? Where, attacks of the devil in the face of the Holy Spirit? Now the devil himself and his angels are cast into the lake of fire. Where now is necessity, and what they call fortune or fate? What plague awaits those redeemed from death, after their eternal pardon? What wrath is there for the reconciled, after grace? What weakness, after their renewed strength? What risk and danger, after their salvation? The clothing and shoes of the children of Israel remained unworn and fresh for forty years, as Deuteronomy 29:5 says. In their very persons, the exact point of convenience and propriety kept the growth of their nails and hair in check, so that any excess in this might not be attributed to indecency. The fires of Babylon did not injure either the turbans or the trousers of the three brothers, however foreign such clothing might be to the Jews, as Daniel 3:27 says. Jonah was swallowed by the monster of the deep, in whose belly whole ships were devoured, and after three days he was vomited out again safe and sound. Enoch and Elias, who even now, without experiencing a resurrection, because they have not even encountered death, are learning fully what it is for the flesh to be exempted from all humiliation, and all loss, and all injury, and all disgrace. They have been translated from this world, and for this very reason are already candidates for everlasting life. To what faith do these remarkable facts bear witness, if not to the faith that ought to inspire in us the belief that they are proofs and documents of our own future integrity and perfect resurrection? For, to borrow the apostle's phrase, "these were figures of ourselves," in 1 Corinthians 10:6. And they are written so that we may believe both that the Lord is more powerful than all natural laws concerning the body, and that He shows Himself to be the preserver of the flesh all the more strongly because He has preserved for it even its very clothing and shoes.

BUT YOU OBJECT THAT THE WORLD TO COME HAS THE CHARACTER OF A DIFFERENT DIVINE ARRANGEMENT: even an eternal one. Therefore, you maintain that the non-eternal substance of this life is incapable of possessing a state with such different features. This would be true enough if man were made for the future divine arrangement, and not the divine arrangement for man. However, the apostle says in his epistle, "Whether it be the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours," 1 Corinthians 3:22. And here he makes us heirs even of the future world. Isaiah gives you no help when he says, "All flesh is grass," Isaiah 40:7, and in another passage, "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." He distinguishes the outcomes of men, not their substances. But who does not hold that the judgment of God consists in a twofold sentence, of salvation and of punishment? Therefore all flesh is grass which is destined to the fire; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God which is appointed to eternal life. For myself, I am quite sure that it is in no other flesh than my own that I have committed adultery, nor in any other flesh am I striving after continence. If there is anyone who bears about in his person two instruments of lasciviousness, he certainly has it in his power to mow down the grass of the unclean flesh, and to reserve for himself only that which shall see the salvation of God. But when the same prophet presents to us even nations, sometimes estimated as the small dust of the balance, Isaiah 40:15, and as less than nothing, and vanity, and sometimes as about to hope and trust in the name and arm of the Lord, are we at all misled about the Gentile nations by this diversity of statement? Are some of them to become believers, and are others counted as dust, from any difference of nature? No. Rather, Christ has shone as the true light on the nations within the ocean's limits, and from the heaven that is over us all. Why, it is even on this earth that the Valentinians have gone to school for their errors. And there will be no difference of condition, as respects body and soul, between the nations that believe and those that do not believe. Precisely then, as He has put a distinction of state, not of nature, among the same nations, so also He has distinguished their flesh, which is one and the same substance in those nations, not according to their material structure, but according to the recompense of their merit.

BUT SEE HOW STUBBORNLY THEY STILL HEAP UP THEIR OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE FLESH: especially against its identity. They even draw their arguments from the functions of our limbs. On the one hand, they say that these ought to go on forever in their labors and enjoyments, as parts attached to the same bodily frame. On the other hand, they argue that since the functions of the limbs will one day come to an end, the bodily frame itself must be destroyed. They think its continued existence without its limbs is just as impossible as the limbs themselves continuing without their functions. They ask, what then will be the use of the cavity of our mouth, and its rows of teeth, and the passage of the throat, and the branching way of the stomach, and the gulf of the belly, and the tangled tissue of the bowels, when there will no longer be any place for eating and drinking? What more will these members have to take in, chew, swallow, separate, digest, and cast out? Of what use will our hands and feet be, and all our limbs that labor, when even all care about food has ceased? What purpose can be served by the loins, aware of seminal secretions, and all the other organs of generation in the two sexes, and the workshops of embryos, and the fountains of the breast, when concubinage, and pregnancy, and the care of infants, have ceased? In short, what will be the use of the whole body, when the whole body has become useless? In reply to all this, we have already settled the principle that the divine arrangement of the future state ought not to be compared with that of the present world, and that in the interval between them a change will take place. And now we add this remark: these functions of our bodily limbs will continue to supply the needs of this life up to the moment when life itself passes from time to eternity, as the natural body gives place to the spiritual, until this mortal puts on immortality, and this corruptible puts on incorruption: 1 Corinthians 15:53. So when life itself becomes free from all wants, our limbs will then also be freed from their services, and therefore will no longer be wanted. Still, although released from their offices, they will still be preserved for judgment, so that each one may receive the things done in his body: 2 Corinthians 5:10. For the judgment seat of God requires that man be kept whole. Yet he cannot be whole without his limbs, from the substance of which, and not from their functions, he consists. Unless, of course, you are bold enough to maintain that a ship is complete without its keel, or its bow, or its stern, and without the solidity of its whole frame. And yet how often have we seen the same ship, after being shattered by the storm and broken by decay, with all its timbers repaired and restored, riding bravely on the wave in all the beauty of a renewed frame! Do we then trouble ourselves with doubts about God's skill, and will, and rights? Besides, if a wealthy shipowner, who does not grudge money merely for his amusement or display, fully repairs his ship, and then decides that it should make no more voyages, will you argue that the vessel's old form and finish is still unnecessary, although it is no longer meant for actual service, when the mere safety of a ship requires such completeness apart from service? The one question, therefore, that is enough for us to consider here is this: whether the Lord, when He ordains salvation for man, intends it for his flesh; whether it is His will that this very flesh should be renewed. If so, it will be improper for you to decide, from the uselessness of its limbs in the future state, that the flesh is incapable of renewal. For a thing may be renewed, and yet be useless because it has nothing to do. But it cannot be called useless if it has no existence. If indeed it has existence, it will be quite possible for it also not to be useless. It may perhaps have something to do. For in the presence of God there will be no idleness.

NOW YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR MOUTH: O man, for the purpose of devouring your food and taking in your drink. Why not, however, for the higher purpose of speaking, so as to distinguish yourself from all other animals? Why not rather for preaching the gospel of God, so that you may even become His priest and advocate before men? Adam indeed gave the animals their several names before he plucked the fruit of the tree. Before he ate, he prophesied. Then again, you received your teeth for the consuming of your meal. Why not rather for wreathing your mouth with a fitting defense at every opening of it, small or wide? Why not, too, for restraining the impulses of your tongue, and guarding your clear speech from failure and violence? Let me tell you, if you do not know, that there are toothless persons in the world. Look at them, and ask whether even a cage of teeth is not an honor to the mouth. There are openings in the lower parts of man and woman, by means of which they no doubt gratify their animal passions. But why are they not rather regarded as outlets for the clean discharge of natural fluids? Women, moreover, have within them receptacles where human seed may collect. But are they not designed for the secretion of those blood-like flows, which their slower and weaker sex is unable to disperse? For even details like these need to be mentioned, since heretics single out whatever parts of our bodies may suit them, handle them without delicacy, and, as their whim suggests, pour torrents of scorn and contempt upon the natural functions of our members, for the purpose of overthrowing the resurrection and making us blush over their cavils. They do not reflect that before the functions cease, the very causes of them will have passed away. There will be no more food, because there will be no more hunger. No more drink, because there will be no more thirst. No more concubinage, because there will be no more child-bearing. No more eating and drinking, because there will be no more labor and toil. Death, too, will cease. So there will be no more need of the nourishment of food for the defense of life, nor will mothers' limbs any longer have to be burdened for the replenishing of our race. But even in the present life there may be cessations of their function for our stomachs and our generative organs. For forty days Moses, Exodus 24:8, and Elias, 1 Kings 19:8, fasted, and lived upon God alone. For even so early was the principle consecrated: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." See here the faint outlines of our future strength! We even, as we are able, excuse our mouths from food, and withdraw our sexes from union. How many voluntary eunuchs there are! How many virgins espoused to Christ! How many, both of men and women, whom nature has made sterile, with a structure that cannot procreate! Now, if even here on earth both the functions and the pleasures of our members may be suspended, with an intermission which, like the divine arrangement itself, can only be temporary, and yet man's safety is nevertheless unimpaired, how much more, when his salvation is secure, and especially in an eternal divine arrangement, shall we not cease to desire those things for which, even here below, we are not unaccustomed to check our longings!

HOWEVER: our Lord's declaration puts an effective end to this discussion: "They shall be equal to the angels," He says. By not marrying, because they do not die, they also, of course, do not have to yield to any similar necessity of our bodily state. In the same way, the angels too were sometimes equal to men, by eating and drinking, and by submitting their feet to be washed in the bath. They had clothed themselves in human form, without losing their own true nature. If, therefore, angels, when they became like men, submitted in their own unchanged substance of spirit to be treated as if they were flesh, why should not men in the same way, when they become equal to the angels, undergo in their unchanged substance of flesh the treatment proper to spiritual beings? In their angelic form, they will be no more subject to the usual urges of the flesh than the angels once were to the demands of the spirit when they were clothed in human form. Therefore, we will not cease to exist in the flesh because we cease to be pressed by the usual needs of the flesh. In the same way, the angels did not cease to remain in their spiritual substance because their spiritual conditions were suspended. Finally, Christ did not say, "They shall be angels," so that He might not cancel their existence as men. But He said, "They shall be equal to the angels," so that He might preserve their humanity unharmed. When He ascribed an angelic likeness to the flesh, He did not take from it its proper substance.

AND SO THE FLESH WILL RISE AGAIN: whole in every man, in its own identity, in its complete integrity. Wherever it may be, it is kept safe in God's presence through that most faithful Mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, 1 Timothy 2:5, who will reconcile both God to man and man to God, the spirit to the flesh and the flesh to the spirit. He has already united both natures in Himself. He has joined them together like bride and bridegroom in the mutual bond of married life. Now if anyone should insist on making the soul the bride, then the flesh will follow the soul as her dowry. The soul will never be an outcast, brought home by the bridegroom bare and naked. She has her dower, her outfit, her fortune in the flesh, which will go with her in the love and faithfulness of a foster-sister. But suppose the flesh to be the bride. Then in Christ Jesus, in the contract of His blood, she has received His Spirit as her spouse. Now what you take to be her extinction, you may be sure is only her temporary withdrawal. It is not the soul only that withdraws from sight. The flesh too has her departures for a while: in waters, in fires, in birds, in beasts. She may seem to be dissolved into these, but she is only poured into them, as into vessels. And if the vessels themselves afterwards fail to hold her, and she escapes even from these and returns to her mother earth, she is absorbed once more, as it were, by its secret embraces. In the end, she is to stand forth in view, like Adam when he was summoned to hear from his Lord and Creator the words, "Behold, the man has become as one of us!" Genesis 3:22. By that time she will know fully the evil she escaped and the good she has gained. Why then, O soul, should you envy the flesh? There is none, after the Lord, whom you should love so dearly. None is more like a brother to you, for it is even born along with you in God. You ought rather to have been obtaining resurrection for her by your prayers. Her sins, whatever they were, were owing to you. However, it is no wonder if you hate her, for you have rejected her Creator. You have accustomed yourself either to deny her existence or to change it even in Christ, corrupting the very Word of God Himself, who became flesh, either by mutilating Scripture or by misinterpreting it, and above all by introducing apocryphal mysteries and blasphemous fables. But Almighty God, in His most gracious providence, by pouring out His Spirit in these last days upon all flesh, upon His servants and upon His handmaidens, has checked these impostures of unbelief and perverseness. He has reanimated men's faltering faith in the resurrection of the flesh. He has also cleared from all obscurity and equivocation the ancient Scriptures of both God's Testaments by the clear light of their sacred words and meanings. Now, since it was necessary that there should be heresies, in order that those who are approved might be made manifest, 1 Corinthians 11:19, and since these heresies would be unable to put on a bold front without some support from the Scriptures, it is plain enough that the ancient Holy Writ has furnished them with various materials for their evil doctrine. Those very materials, indeed, though distorted, are refuted from the same Scriptures. It was fitting, therefore, that the Holy Spirit should no longer withhold the outpourings of His gracious light upon these inspired writings, so that they might be able to spread the seeds of truth with no mixture of heretical subtleties, and pluck out from it their tares. Accordingly, He has now scattered all the perplexities of the past, and their self-chosen allegories and parables, by the open and clear explanation of the entire mystery through the new prophecy, which descends in abundant streams from the Paraclete. If you will only draw water from His fountains, you will never thirst for other doctrine. No feverish craving after subtle questions will consume you again. But by drinking in more and more the resurrection of the flesh, you will be satisfied with the refreshing draughts.