On the Resurrection of the Flesh

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.