De Carnis Resurrectione

1. The confidence of Christians is the resurrection of the dead; in believing it we are what we are. Truth compels us to believe it, and God lays open the truth; but the crowd mocks, supposing that nothing remains after death. And yet they offer sacrifices to the dead, and that with the most lavish observance, providing for their tastes and for the seasons of their feasting — so that those whom they deny to have any feeling, they presume nevertheless still to have desires. But I shall mock the crowd the more, precisely when it burns the dead most cruelly and then most greedily feeds them, in the same fires both serving and offending them. What piety, that makes sport of cruelty! Does it sacrifice or insult, when it cremates the cremated? Plainly, even the wise men sometimes join their verdict to the crowd's. That nothing exists after death is the school of Epicurus. Seneca too says that all things end after death, even death itself.

Yet it is enough that the philosophy of Pythagoras and Empedocles and the Platonists, no smaller, cries out to the contrary that the soul is immortal — indeed they go further and most nearly affirm that it may return into bodies, though not into the same ones, though not into human bodies only, so that Euphorbus is reckoned to pass into Pythagoras, and Homer into a peacock. Certainly they pronounced the soul's return to be bodily, having altered its quality more tolerably than they would have done by denying it — at least knocking at the truth, though not entering it. So the present age is not ignorant of the resurrection of the dead, even when it errs.

2. But if even in God's sight there is some sect more akin to the Epicureans than to the prophets, we shall know what the Sadducees are to hear from Christ. For it was reserved to Christ to lay bare all things hidden from of old, to set right what was doubtful, to make full what had only been foretasted, to make present what had been proclaimed — and certainly the resurrection of the dead, which He proved not only through Himself but also in Himself. But now we are arrayed against other Sadducees, sharers in their opinion. For so they acknowledge half a resurrection — that of the soul alone — while they spurn the flesh, just as they spurn the very Lord of the flesh. In short, no others begrudge salvation to the bodily substance except the heretics of another divinity. And therefore, compelled to dispose of Christ in another way lest He be reckoned the Creator's, they first went astray about His very flesh, contending either that it is no true flesh at all (as Marcion and Basilides hold) or that it is of a peculiar quality (as the heresies of Valentinus and Apelles hold). And so it follows that they exclude salvation from that substance of which they deny Christ to be a partaker — certain that it is furnished with the supreme guarantee of the resurrection, if the flesh has already risen in Christ. For this reason we sent ahead the volume On the Flesh of Christ, in which we prove both that it is solid, against the emptiness of a phantasm, and that it is human, against any peculiarity of quality — its very condition having inscribed Christ as both man and Son of Man. For by proving Him fleshly and corporeal we likewise block our adversaries' way, laying down the rule that no other God is to be believed than the Creator, since we show such a Christ as the one in whom is recognized the God promised by the Creator. Being thus blocked concerning God the author of the flesh and Christ the redeemer of the flesh, they will now be refuted concerning the resurrection of the flesh as well. Fittingly, of course. And it is in roughly this manner that we say a dispute with the heretics ought to be entered upon. For the order of things always demands that one proceed from first principles, so that it may first be established who is said to have ordained the matter in question. And indeed the heretics, conscious of their weakness, never treat things in order. For knowing how hard they labour to insinuate another divinity against the God of the world — naturally known to all from the testimony of His works, and certainly prior in the sacraments and more manifest in the preachings — under the pretext of a more pressing cause, namely the seeking of human salvation itself before all else, they begin from questions about the resurrection, because the resurrection of the flesh is believed with more difficulty than the single divinity. And so, with their treatment stripped of the strength of its own order and burdened rather with scruples that disparage the flesh, little by little they bend men toward the sense of another divinity by the very shaking and alteration of their hope. For each man, cast down or moved from the standing of the hope he had received in the Creator, is easily turned aside to suspecting, even of his own accord, an author of another hope. For through diversity of promises a diversity of gods is insinuated. Thus we see many ensnared, undone about the resurrection of the flesh before they are undone about the unity of the divinity. Therefore, as regards the heretics, we have shown with what wedge they must be met by us. And it has been met already, each under its own title: concerning the one God and His Christ, against Marcion; concerning the flesh of the Lord, against four heresies, chiefly to lay the foundation for this present question — so that now the resurrection of the flesh alone may be treated as something held uncertain even among us, that is, with the Creator. For there are many untaught, and very many doubtful in their faith, and more who are simple, who will need to be instructed, directed, and fortified — because in this corner too the unity of the divinity is defended. For just as it is shaken when the resurrection of the flesh is denied, so it is made firm when the flesh is vindicated. The salvation of the soul, however, I believe needs no re-examination. For nearly all heretics, in whatever way, allow it; they do not, at any rate, deny it. Let some one Lucanus see to it — he who does not spare even this substance, but, dissolving it after Aristotle's manner, substitutes for it something else, intending to raise up some third thing, neither soul nor flesh, that is, not a man, but perhaps a bear, in so far as he is a Lucanus. He too has from us a most full treatise on the whole state of the soul, which we maintain to be above all immortal, while of the flesh alone we acknowledge both the failing and most especially assert the restoring — having reduced to the ordinary body of the material those matters which elsewhere too we have touched in passing and deferred, as the run of the argument required. For just as it is customary to give certain things a foretaste, so it is necessary to defer others — provided that what was foretasted is supplied in its own place and what was deferred is rendered under its own name.

3. There is indeed even a knowing of God's matters by the common senses; but for the testimony of the true, not for the support of the false — namely such as agrees with the divine, not against the divine, disposition. For some things are known even by nature: as the immortality of the soul, to many; as our God, to all. I will therefore use even the verdict of some Plato pronouncing, "Every soul is immortal"; I will use too the conscience of the people attesting "the God of gods." I will use also the other common senses, which proclaim God a judge: "God sees," and "I commend it to God." But when they say, "What is dead is dead," and "Live while you live," and "After death all things end, even death itself" — then I shall remember both that the heart of the crowd is accounted ash by God, and that the very wisdom of the world is pronounced foolishness. Then, if even the heretic takes refuge in the vices of the crowd or the dispositions of the world, I shall say: "Depart from the heathen, heretic. Although you are all one who feign a god, yet while you do this in the name of Christ, while you seem to yourself a Christian, you are other than the heathen: give him back his own perceptions, since he is not instructed by yours. Why do you lean on a blind guide, if you see? Why are you clothed by a naked man, if you have put on Christ? Why do you use another's shield, if you are armed by the apostle? Let him rather learn from you to confess the resurrection of the flesh than you from him to deny it; for if it were right that it should be denied even by Christians, it would be enough for them to be instructed out of their own knowledge, not out of the crowd's ignorance." So far is he from being a Christian who shall deny what Christians confess, and shall deny it by those arguments which a non-Christian uses. Take away from the heretics, in short, the things in which they think with the heathen, so that they rest their questions on the Scriptures alone, and they will not be able to stand. For it is simplicity itself, and the fellow-feeling of opinions, and the familiarity of views, that commends the common senses; and on that account they are thought the more trustworthy, because they define things that are bare and open and known to all. But the divine reason lies in the marrow, not on the surface, and is often at odds with what is manifest.

4. And so the heretics begin at once from there, and build their first foundation there, and afterwards build in between — from that point at which they know minds are easily caught, the agreeable fellowship of the senses. Would you hear anything sooner or more often from a heretic than from a heathen? And is it not at once and everywhere abuse of the flesh — abuse of its origin, its matter, its mischance, its whole end: unclean from the very beginning out of the dregs of the earth, more unclean thereafter out of the slime of its own seed; trifling, weak, criminal, burdensome, troublesome; and after this whole eulogy of ignominy, falling away into its origin, the earth, and into the name of "corpse," and from this name too perishing into no name at all thereafter, into the death of every term whatsoever? This, then, the flesh snatched from your sight and touch and memory — would you, a wise man, persuade us that it will one day receive itself back entire from corruption, solid from collapse, full from emptiness, into something at all out of nothing — and that too with fires and waves and the bellies of beasts and the crops of birds and the entrails of fishes giving it back, and with the very seasons' own appetite? And will the same flesh be hoped for that perished, so that the lame, the one-eyed, the blind, the leper, the paralytic return — and so that there is no pleasure in having gone back to one's former state? Or will they be whole, so that they fear to suffer such things again? What then of the consequences of the flesh? Will all things again be necessary to it, and first of all food and drink — must the lungs swim, the intestines seethe, the privy parts not be ashamed, all the members toil? Again ulcers and wounds and fever and gout and death to be wished for back? Doubtless these will be the prayers of the flesh recovered — to long once more to escape from it. And we indeed say these things somewhat more decently, out of respect for the pen. For the rest, you may find by experience in conversation with them — heathen and heretics alike — how far their foul speech may go.

5. Therefore, since the untaught still think from the common senses, and the doubtful and the simple are again disquieted through those same senses, and since everywhere this is the first ram aimed against us, by which the condition of the flesh is battered — necessarily the condition of the flesh must first be fortified by us, its disparagement driven off by praise. So the heretics provoke us to play the rhetorician as well as the philosopher. This useless and trifling little body, which they do not even shrink from calling an evil — though it had been the work of angels (as Menander and Marcus would have it), though it were the construction of some fiery angel as well (as Apelles teaches) — would suffice, by the patronage of a second divinity, to establish the authority of the flesh. We know angels to be after God. Now then, whoever that supreme god of any given heretic may be, I should not unreasonably derive the dignity of the flesh from him too, since from him would have come the will to produce it. For surely he would have forbidden to be made what he knew would be made, had he not willed it to be made. So even according to them the flesh is equally a thing of God. There is no work that is not his who allowed it to be. But it is well that even the more numerous and harsher doctrines yield the whole moulding of man to our God. How great this God is you know well enough, you who have believed Him to be the only one. Now let the flesh begin to please you, whose craftsman is so great. "But the world too," you say, "is God's work, and yet the fashion of this world passes away — the apostle himself being witness; nor will the restoration of the world be prejudged because it is God's work. And surely, if the whole is beyond reform after its passing, what of the part?" Plainly so — if the part is matched to the whole. But it is to a difference that we appeal. First, indeed, because all things were made by the word of God, and without it nothing was made. But the flesh was established by the word of God too, for the sake of its form, that nothing be without the word; for "Let us make man," He first sent forth, and further, "with His hand," for the sake of its precedence, that it might not be compared to the universe. "And God formed man," He says. The reason for so great a difference is, without doubt, in keeping with the condition of things. For the things that were being made were lesser than the one for whom they were made, since they were made for man, to whom soon after they were assigned by God. Rightly, then, did all things come forth like a handmaid, at His bidding and command and by the bare power of His voice. But man, as their lord, was for this reason fashioned by God Himself, that he might be able to be lord, by being made by the Lord. And remember that "man" is properly said of the flesh, which first laid claim to the name of man: "And God formed man, the slime of the earth." Now there is man, who as yet is slime. "And He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man" — that is, the slime — "became a living soul; and God placed the man whom He had formed in paradise." So far is man first the thing moulded, then the whole. This I have urged for this reason: that whatever has been provided and promised by God for man at all, you may know to be owed not to the soul alone but to the flesh as well — if not from a partnership of kind, certainly at least from the privilege of the name.

6. I will therefore pursue my purpose, if only I am able to claim for the flesh as much as He bestowed who made it — even then glorying that that little thing, slime, came into the hands of God, whatever those hands are, blessed enough though only by their touch. For what if, with no further work, the thing moulded had stood firm at once from the touch of God? So great was the matter in hand, by which this material was being built up. And so it is honoured as often as the hand of God handles it — while it is touched, while it is plucked, while it is drawn out, while it is shaped. Reckon up to it the whole God, occupied and devoted: with hand, sense, work, counsel, wisdom, providence, and above all with that very affection which was dictating the lineaments. For whatever was being expressed in the slime, Christ was in mind, the man who was to be — for the word too was both slime and flesh, since the earth too was such then. For so runs the Father's preface to the Son: "Let us make man after our image and likeness." And God made man — that, namely, which He had formed — after the image of God He made him; that is, of Christ. For the Word too is God, who, being established in the figure of God, thought it no robbery to be equal with God. So that slime, even then putting on the image of the Christ who was to come in the flesh, was not only God's work but also His pledge. To what end now does it serve, for the darkening of the flesh's origin, to bandy about the name of "earth," as of a sordid, low-lying element? — when, even if other matter had been fit for the fashioning of man, the eminence of the craftsman ought to be reconsidered, who both judged that matter worthy by choosing it and made it by handling it. The hands of Phidias work the Olympian Jupiter out of ivory, and it is adored; and it is no longer the god of a beast — and a most witless beast at that — but the supreme deity of the age: not because it is elephant, but because it is so great a Phidias. The living God, the true God — could He not have purged whatever cheapness of matter by His own working and healed it of all weakness? Or shall this remain — that a man should have fashioned a god more honourably than God fashioned a man? Now even though the slime be a stumbling-block, it is already another thing. I hold now flesh, not earth, although the flesh too hears: "Earth you are, and into earth you shall go." Its origin is recounted, its substance is not recalled. It has been granted to be something nobler than its origin and happier by its transformation. For gold too is earth, because it is from earth; yet only so far earth, from the point when it is gold — far other matter, more splendid and more noble out of a more worthless mother-lode. So it was permitted to God too to refine the gold of the flesh out of the slime — out of those dregs, as you think them — its worth being cleared.

7. But the authority of the flesh may seem weaker, because the divine hand did not handle it too, properly, as it did the slime. When He handled the slime to this end, that flesh should afterward be made of slime, He surely conducted the business of the flesh. But I would still have you learn when and how the flesh flowered out of the slime. For those skin tunics, which Adam and Eve, stripped of paradise, put on, will not be, as some would have it, the reshaping of flesh out of slime — since somewhat earlier Adam recognized, already in the woman, the offshoot of his own substance as flesh ("This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh"), and the very portion drawn off from the male was filled out into the female with flesh — to be filled out, I suppose, with slime, if Adam were still slime. The slime, then, was effaced and swallowed up into flesh. When? When man became a living soul by the breath of God — a vapour, that is, fit to bake the slime in some way into another quality, as if into a baked thing, so into flesh. So even the potter is permitted, by the controlled blast of fire, to re-embody the clay into a sturdier material and to draw out of one form another, fitter than the first and now of its own kind and name. For although it is written, "Shall the clay say to the potter?" — that is, man to God — and although the apostle says, "in vessels of clay" — yet man is clay, because he was slime before; and the flesh is earthenware, because it is from slime through the vapour of the divine breath, which afterward the skin tunics, that is, the over-drawn skins, clothed. So far is this so, that if you strip off the skin, you bare the flesh. Thus what today, if it be stripped off, becomes a spoil, was a garment when it was being built over. Hence the apostle too, calling circumcision a stripping-off of the flesh, affirmed the skin to be a tunic. Since these things are so, you have both the slime glorious from the hand of God, and the flesh more glorious from the breath of God, by which at once the flesh laid aside the rudiments of slime and took up the ornaments of the soul. You are not more careful than God: you, indeed, do not encase Scythian and Indian gems and the white grains of the Red Sea in lead or bronze or iron — no, nor even in silver — but you dig them about with the choicest and moreover most laboured gold; and likewise you first see to the fitness of the vessels for the most precious wines and unguents; and accordingly to swords of perfect temper you match a dignity of scabbards — and shall God have entrusted the shadow of His own soul, the breath of His own spirit, the work of His own mouth, to some most worthless sheath, and by setting it unworthily have surely condemned it? But did He set it, or rather insert and mingle it, with the flesh? — and that with so close a blending that it may be held uncertain whether the flesh carries the soul or the soul the flesh, whether the flesh appears to belong to the soul or the soul to the flesh. But it is rather to be believed that the soul is borne in and rules, as the nearer to God. This too overflows to the glory of the flesh, that it both contains what is nearest to God and renders it partaker of that very rule. For what use of nature, what fruit of the world, what savour of the elements does the soul feed upon except through the flesh? How not? — through which it is propped by every instrument of the senses, sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch; through which it is sprinkled with divine power, accomplishing nothing without speech, even when sent silently before. For speech too is from the organ of the flesh. The arts are through the flesh, the pursuits, the talents through the flesh, the works, the affairs, the duties through the flesh; and indeed the whole living of the soul belongs to the flesh, so that for the soul not to live is nothing else than to depart from the flesh. So too its very dying belongs to the flesh, whose also is its living. Further, if all things lie subject to the soul through the flesh, they lie subject to the flesh as well. That through which you make use of a thing, with that thing it is necessary that you make use. Thus the flesh, while it is accounted the minister and handmaid of the soul, is found to be its consort and co-heir. If of things temporal, why not of things eternal as well?

8. And these things I would have procured for the flesh, as it were, out of the common form of the human condition. Let us now see, even out of the special form of the Christian name, how great a prerogative this trifling and sordid substance has with God — although it would be enough for it that no soul at all can attain salvation unless, while it is in the flesh, it has believed; so much is the flesh the hinge of salvation. And when by it the soul is bound to God, it is the flesh itself that brings it about that the soul can be bound. For the flesh is washed, that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed, that the soul too may be fortified; the flesh is overshadowed by the laying on of hands, that the soul too may be illumined by the Spirit; the flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul too may be fattened upon God. They cannot, then, be separated in their reward, whom their work joins together. For even the sacrifices acceptable to God — I mean the wrestlings of the soul, fastings and abstinences and dry meats and the squalor that is the appendage of this duty — the flesh undertakes out of its own discomfort. Virginity too, and widowhood, and the modest concealment of marriage in secret, and the sole knowledge of it, are offered to God out of the good things of the flesh. Come now, what do you think of it when, for the faith of the Name, it is dragged out into the open and publicly exposed to hatred and contends; when in prisons it is wasted by the most dismal exile from the light, by want of the world, by squalor, by filth, by the indignity of its fare, not even free in sleep — bound indeed even on its very couches and torn on the very straw; when now even in broad day it is mangled by every contrivance of torments; when at last it is paid out in punishments, striving to render Christ His due by dying for Him — and that often through the same cross, not to say through still more atrocious devices of penalties? Truly that flesh is most blessed and most glorious which can, before the Lord Christ, discharge so great a debt, so that it owes Him this alone — that it has ceased to owe Him — the more bound for being acquitted.

9. Therefore, to recapitulate: she whom God built with His own hands after the image of God; whom He animated from His own breath after the likeness of His own vitality; whom He set over the dwelling, the fruition, the lordship of His whole work; whom He clothed with His own sacraments and disciplines; whose cleannesses He loves, whose chastisements He approves, whose sufferings He prizes for Himself — shall she not rise again, she who dies so many times a day? Far be it, far be it that God should abandon to everlasting destruction the labour of His own hands, the care of His own genius, the sheath of His own breath, the queen of His own building, the heir of His own bounty, the priestess of His own religion, the soldier of His own testimony, the sister of His own Christ. We know a good God; that He is the only one, the best, we learn from His Christ — who, enjoining love, after His own toward our neighbour, will Himself also do what He has commanded. He will love the flesh, in so many ways near to Him: though it be weak, yet "Strength is perfected in weakness"; though it be sickly, yet "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are ill"; though it be dishonourable, yet "Upon the more dishonourable parts we bestow the greater honour"; though it be lost, yet "I am come," He says, "to save that which was lost"; though it be sinful, yet "I prefer," He says, "the salvation of a sinner to his death"; though it be condemned, yet "I," He says, "will strike and will heal." Why do you cast up against the flesh those very things which await God, which hope in God, which are honoured by Him, to which He comes to aid? I would dare to say: if these things had not befallen the flesh, the kindness, the grace, the mercy, all the beneficent power of God would have been idle.

10. You hold the Scriptures by which the flesh is darkened; hold also those by which it is lighted. You read where it is put down; turn your eyes also to where it is unveiled. "All flesh is grass." Not this only did Isaiah pronounce, but also, "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." It is noted in Genesis that God says, "My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh." But it is also heard through Joel: "I will pour out of My spirit upon all flesh." The apostle too — do not know him by one pen only, with which he often pricks the flesh. For although he denies that anything good dwells in his flesh, although he affirms that those who are in the flesh cannot please God, because it lusts against the spirit, and though he sets down certain other things in such a way that not the substance but the act of the flesh is dishonoured — we shall indeed say elsewhere that nothing ought properly to be cast up against the flesh except to the reproach of the soul, which subdues the flesh to itself for its ministry. But meanwhile, even in those writings, there is the Paul who carries the marks of Christ in his body; who forbids our body, as God's temple, to be defiled; who makes our bodies members of Christ; who admonishes us to bear and to magnify God in our body. And so, if the ignominies of the flesh shut out its resurrection, why should not its dignities rather bring it in? Since it is more in keeping with God to recall unto salvation what He has sometimes reproved, than to deliver unto perdition what He has even sometimes approved.

11. Thus far concerning the proclamation of the flesh against its enemies — and yet its closest friends. For no one lives so carnally as those who deny the resurrection of the flesh. For in denying it they despise both punishment and discipline. Of whom the Paraclete too speaks luminously through the prophetess Prisca: "They are flesh, and they hate the flesh." But if so great an authority fortifies the flesh as can plead for it toward the merit of salvation, must we not also rehearse the very power and might and freedom of God Himself — whether He is great enough to avail to rebuild and restore the tabernacle of the flesh, fallen apart and devoured and snatched away by whatever means? And whether He has promulgated for us some examples too of this His own right in the public realm of nature — lest perhaps any still thirst to know God, who is to be believed on no other ground than that He is believed able to do all things? Plainly, among the philosophers you have those who defend this world as unborn and unmade; but far better is it that nearly all the heresies, granting the world to be born and made, ascribe its creation to our God. Be confident, then, that He brought forth this whole out of nothing, and you know God by being confident of this — that only God avails so much. For some of the weaker sort prefer to believe this first about matter — they wish the universe to have been dedicated by Him out of underlying matter, after the philosophers. Yet even if it were so held in truth, since He would still be said to have brought forth substances far other, and species far other, out of the reshaping of matter, than the matter itself had been — I should none the less maintain that He brought them forth out of nothing, if He had brought forth things that had not existed at all. For what does it matter whether a thing be brought forth out of nothing or out of something, provided that what was not comes to be — since even to have not been is as good as to be nothing? So, conversely, to have been is as good as to be something. Now, even though it matters, yet either way it applauds my case. For whether God built all things out of nothing, He will be able to express the flesh too, reduced to nothing, out of nothing; or whether He shaped all things out of other matter, He will be able to call forth the flesh too, drained away whither it will, out of something else. And surely He is fit to remake who made — by how much it is more to have made than to have remade, to have given a beginning than to have given back. So you may believe the restoration of the flesh easier than its institution.

12. Look now also at the very examples of the divine power. Day dies into night, and is everywhere buried in darkness. The honour of the world is laid in mourning; all substance is blackened. All things grow sordid, silent, stupefied; everywhere there is a cessation, a rest of things. So the lost light is lamented. And yet again, with its own adornment, with its dowry, with the sun, the same light, whole and entire, comes back to life for the whole world — slaying its own death, the night, rending its own grave, the darkness, becoming heir to itself, until the night too comes back to life with its own retinue. For the rays of the stars too are rekindled, which the morning's burning had quenched; the absences of the constellations are brought back, which the distinction of the seasons had removed; the mirrors of the moon are restored, which the monthly count had worn away. Winters and summers, springs and autumns roll round again, with their own forces, characters, fruits. Indeed, even the earth receives discipline from heaven: to clothe the trees again after their spoils, to colour the flowers anew, to set out the grasses once more, to exhibit the same seeds that had been consumed — and not to exhibit them before they are consumed. Wonderful reckoning: out of a defrauder, a preserver; to give back, it intercepts; to keep, it loses; to make whole, it spoils; even to enlarge, it first wastes away. For it restores things richer and more cultivated than it had banished — truly with destruction for interest, with injury for usury, with loss for gain. Let me say it once: the whole creation is recurrent. Whatever you meet with, has been; whatever you lose, is nothing if not again. All things return to their state when they have departed; all things begin when they have ceased; for this reason they end, that they may come to be. Nothing perishes but unto salvation. This whole revolving order of things, then, is a witness to the resurrection of the dead. God has prescribed it by His works before He prescribed it by His letters; He has proclaimed it by His powers before by His words. He has sent ahead Nature as your mistress, about to send under her also prophecy — that you may the more easily believe prophecy, being a disciple of nature; that you may admit it at once, when you have heard what you have already everywhere seen; nor doubt that God is the raiser of the flesh too, whom you have known to be the restorer of all things. And surely, if all things rise again for man, for whom they were provided — and they were provided not for man unless for the flesh as well — how is it that the flesh itself should perish utterly, for whose sake, and to whom, nothing perishes?

13. If the universe figures the resurrection too little, if the creation signifies nothing of the kind — because its single things are said not so much to die as to cease, and are thought not to be re-animated but reshaped — receive the fullest and firmest specimen of this hope, since it is a living thing, subject to life and to death: I mean that bird peculiar to the East, famous for its singularity, monstrous for its posterity — which willingly burying itself renews itself, departing by a natal end and succeeding, again a phoenix where now there is none, again the same which is now no more, another the same. What is more expressive and more significant for this cause, or to what other matter is there such a proof? God also in His Scriptures says, "And he shall flower like a phoenix" — that is, out of death, out of the funeral — that you may believe that the substance of the body can be required even from the fires. The Lord pronounced that we are of more worth than many sparrows; if not also than the phoenixes, it is no great thing. But shall men perish once for all, while the birds of Arabia are secure of resurrection?

14. With such lineaments of the divine powers meanwhile — God having wrought no less in parables than in speech — let us come also to His very edicts and decrees, by which most of all we now arrange this division of our subject. For we have begun from the authority of the flesh, whether it be such as salvation befits when it has fallen apart; then we have followed on concerning the power of God, whether it be such as is wont to confer salvation upon a thing fallen apart. Now, if we have proved both, I would have you ask also about the cause — whether there be any cause so worthy as may vindicate the resurrection of the flesh as necessary and certainly in every way due to reason; for it remains to be said that, even though the flesh be capable of being restored, even though the divinity be fit to restore, yet a cause of restoration ought to take precedence. Receive, then, the cause too, you who learn that with God there is the best as well as the just — the best from His own part, the just from ours. For had not man sinned, he would have known God as the best only, out of the property of His nature. But now he experiences Him also as just, out of the necessity of the case — yet by this very thing the best, while He is also just. For by aiding the good and punishing the evil, exhibiting justice in both sentences, He serves the good: here vindicating this, there rewarding that. But with Marcion you will learn more fully whether this be the whole of God. Meanwhile such is our God: rightly a judge, because Lord; rightly Lord, because Author; rightly Author, because God. Hence also that, I know not who, of the heretics is rightly no judge, for he is no lord; rightly no lord, for he is no author; I know not now whether he is even God, who is neither author (which God is) nor lord (which the author is). Therefore, if to God and Lord and Author it is most fitting to appoint judgment upon man concerning this very thing — whether he has cared to acknowledge and observe his Lord and Author or not — the resurrection too will discharge that judgment. This will be the whole cause, nay the necessity, of the resurrection: the appointment of judgment, most fitting, of course, to God. And concerning the disposition of that judgment you may consider whether the divine censure presides over both substances of man, to be judged — the soul as well as the flesh. For what it shall befit to be judged, this it will be fit also to be raised again. We say that the judgment of God is to be believed full and perfect from the first — as being now final and thenceforth perpetual; so being also just, while it is in nothing less; so being also worthy of God, while, for so great a patience of His, it is full and perfect. And so the fullness and perfection of judgment can consist of nothing but the representation of the whole man; the whole man, further, comes of the concretion of both substances; and therefore he is to be exhibited in both, whom it behoves to be judged as a whole — who, unless whole, has certainly not lived at all. As, then, he has lived, so is he to be judged, because he has to be judged concerning that whereby he has lived. For life is the cause of judgment, to be discharged through as many substances as it has also been performed through.

15. Come now, let our adversaries cut the joining of flesh and soul first in the administration of life, that so they may dare to cut it also in the rewarding of life. Let them deny a partnership of works, that they may justly be able also to deny a partnership of wage. Let the flesh have no share in the sentence, if it had none also in the cause. Let the soul alone be recalled, if it alone departs. But indeed it no more departs alone than it ran alone the course from which it departs — this present life, I mean. And so far is it from being the soul alone that transacts life, that we cannot remove even thoughts — though they be solitary, though not carried through into effect by the flesh — from the partnership of the flesh; since whatever is done in the heart is done by the soul in the flesh and with the flesh and through the flesh. This very seat of the flesh, the citadel of the soul, the Lord too marks for the reproof of thoughts: "Why do you think evil in your hearts?" and: "Whoever has looked upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart." So far is the thought, even without work and without effect, an act of the flesh. But even if in the brain, or in the midpoint between the brows, or wheresoever it pleases the philosophers, the principality of the senses has been consecrated — what is called the HEGEMONIKON — the whole place of the soul's thinking will be flesh. The soul is never without the flesh so long as it is in the flesh. There is nothing it does not do with that without which it does not exist. Ask still further whether thoughts too are administered through the flesh, which are discerned through the flesh from without. Let the soul revolve something, and the countenance works the index of it; the face is the mirror of all intentions. Let them deny a partnership of deeds to that to which they cannot deny a partnership of thoughts. And they indeed enumerate the delinquencies of the flesh: therefore as a sinner it will be held liable to punishment. But we, on the other hand, set against these the virtues of the flesh: therefore, as having wrought well, it will be held entitled to reward. And if it is the soul that acts and impels toward all things, it is the compliance of the flesh. God may not be believed either an unjust judge or an inert one: unjust, if He shut out from rewards the partner of good works; inert, if He sever from punishments the partner of evil ones — since even human judgment is held the more perfect the more it demands also the ministers of each deed, neither sparing nor envying them, but admitting them to share with the doers the fruit of either penalty or favour.

16. But when we assign the command to the soul and compliance to the flesh, we must take heed lest by another line of argument they overturn even this — wishing so to set the flesh in the office of the soul, not as a minister, that from this they may not be forced to acknowledge it as a partner. For they will say that ministers and partners have the choice of ministering and partnering and the power of their own will toward either — being themselves men, namely — and that therefore they share merits with the doers, to whom they lend their labour of their own accord; but that the flesh, knowing nothing, feeling nothing of itself, having of its own no willing or unwilling, appears rather as a vessel of the soul, as an instrument, not as a ministry. And so the judgment presides over the soul alone — how it has used the vessel of the flesh — while the vessel itself is not liable to the sentence; just as a cup is not condemned if a man has tempered it with poison, nor a sword sentenced to the beasts if a man has done a robbery with it. The flesh, then, is now innocent in that part wherein those evil works will not be reckoned to it, and nothing forbids that it be made safe under the name of innocence. For although good works are not reckoned to it, just as neither are evil, yet it is the more fitting to the divine kindness to set free the innocent. For He who is beneficent owes it; but it belongs to the best to offer even what is not owed. And yet a cup — I do not say a poison-cup, into which some death has belched, but one infected with the breath of a harlot or an arch-eunuch or a gladiator or an executioner — I ask, would you condemn it less than their very kisses? Even one clouded with our own filth, or not tempered to our liking, we are wont to dash down, so as to be the more angry with the slave. But a sword drunk with robberies — who would not banish it from the whole house, much more from the bedchamber, much more from the service of his own head — presuming, of course, that he would dream of nothing else than the mockings of souls, the souls that press and disquiet him, the bedfellow of his own blood? But on the other hand, a cup well conscious of itself, commended for the diligence of its service, will be adorned even with its drinker's garlands or honoured with a sprinkling of flowers. And a sword nobly bloodied in war, the better for being a slayer, will pay its praise with consecration. There is, then, a fixing of the sentence even upon vessels and upon instruments, so that they too share in the merits of their masters and doers — that I may have satisfied this argument too, although the difference of things lacks the support of the example. For every vessel or instrument comes into use from elsewhere, of matter wholly foreign to the substance of man. But the flesh, sown together from the beginning of the womb, formed together, born together with the soul, is mingled with it in every operation too. For although it is called a vessel in the apostle, which he bids be handled in honour, yet the same thing is by the same man called the outer man — that slime, namely, which was first inscribed with the title of man, not of a cup or a sword or any vessel. For it is called a vessel by reason of capacity, by which it holds and contains the soul; but man by reason of the fellowship of nature, which renders it not an instrument in operations but a ministry. So the ministry too will be held liable to judgment, even if it knows nothing of its own, because it is a portion of that which knows, not a piece of furniture. This too the apostle, knowing that the flesh does nothing of itself which is not also reckoned to the soul, none the less judges the flesh a sinner, lest, by being seen to be impelled by the soul, it be believed freed from judgment. So too, when he enjoins certain works of praise upon the flesh — "Glorify," he says, "and bear up God in your body" — certain though he is that this endeavour too is wrought by the soul, yet he commands it also of the flesh, because to it too he promises in turn the fruit. Otherwise neither would reproach have fitted upon another's fault, nor exhortation upon another's glory; for both reproach and exhortation toward the flesh would be idle, if the wage were idle that is grasped at in the resurrection.

17. Every simpler supporter of our view will think that the flesh must on this account too be presented to judgment, because otherwise the soul, being incorporeal, would not be capable of the suffering of torment or of refreshment; for so the crowd thinks. But we both profess here and prove in its own volume that the soul is corporeal, having its own kind of substance of solidity, through which it can both feel and suffer anything. For that even now souls are tortured and cherished among the dead — though naked, though as yet exiles from the flesh — the example of Lazarus will prove. I have therefore allowed the adversary to say: "Then that which has its own corpulence will suffice of itself for the faculty of suffering and feeling, so that it has no need of the presentation of the flesh." Nay rather, it will have need so far as this: not in that it cannot feel anything without the flesh, but in that it is necessary that it feel even with the flesh. For as far as it suffices of itself for acting, so far also for suffering. But for acting it suffices less of itself. For it has of its own only to think, to will, to desire, to dispose. But for completing the work it waits upon the flesh. So therefore for suffering too it requires the partnership of the flesh, that it may be able to suffer as fully through it as it could not, without it, fully act. And therefore in those things for which it suffices of itself — concupiscence and thought and will — it meanwhile pays the sentence of them. Further, if these were enough for the fullness of merits, so that deeds too were not required, the soul would suffice wholly for the perfection of judgment, to be judged concerning those things for which acting it alone had sufficed. But since deeds too are bound up with merits, and deeds are administered through the flesh, now it is not enough that the soul be cherished or tortured without the flesh even for the works of the flesh — though it have a body, though it have members, which accordingly do not suffice it for feeling fully, just as not for acting perfectly. Therefore, in whatever manner it has acted, for that it also suffers among the dead, tasting judgment beforehand, as it brought in beforehand the offence; yet waiting also for the flesh, that through it too it may make compensation for the deeds, to which it had entrusted the things thought. In short, this will be the reason of the judgment appointed for the uttermost end: that by the exhibition of the flesh the whole divine censure may be accomplished. Otherwise that which even now the souls pluck among the dead would not be sustained unto the end, if it were appointed to souls alone.

18. Thus far I have wrought with foundation-layings to fortify the senses of all the Scriptures which promise the return of the flesh. For which, since so many authorities of just patronages provide — I mean the honours of the very substance, then the powers of God, then the examples of them, then the reasons of the judgment and its necessities — surely the Scriptures will have to be understood according to the prejudgments of so many authorities, not according to the inventions of the heretics, which come from mere incredulity, because it is held incredible that a substance withdrawn by destruction should be restored — not because it is either unmeritable to the substance itself, or impossible to God, or unfit for judgment. Plainly it would be incredible, had it not been foretold by God; except that, even if it had not been foretold by Him, it ought of its own accord to be presumed — so that on that account it was not foretold, because it was prejudged by so many authorities. But since it resounds also with divine voices, so far is it from being understood otherwise than they desire by whom it is proved even without the divine voices. Let us see, then, this first: by what title this hope has been proscribed. One edict of God, I think, hangs upon the mind of all: "The resurrection of the dead." Two words, ready, decisive, clear-cut. These same I will engage, these I will discuss — to which substance they make themselves over. When I hear that resurrection is impending upon man, I must of necessity ask what part of him has been allotted to fall; since nothing will look for rising again except what has first fallen down. He who does not know that the flesh falls through death can know it neither as standing through life. Nature pronounces God's sentence: "Earth you are, and into earth you shall go." And he who has not heard it, sees it. There is no death that is not a ruin of the members. This lot of the body the Lord too expressed, when, clothed in that very substance, He said, "Destroy this temple, and I in three days will raise it up again." For He showed whose it is to be destroyed, whose to be dashed down, whose to lie low, whose also to be lifted up and raised again — although He bore about also a soul trembling even unto death, but not falling through death; for the Scripture too had said, "He had spoken concerning His body." And so far is it the flesh that is overthrown by death, that thereafter from its falling it is called a "corpse." But the soul falls not even in name, because it sinks not even in posture. And yet it is itself that brings ruin upon the body when it is breathed out, just as it is itself that will raise it up from the earth when it has entered. That cannot fall which will raise up by entering; that cannot sink which dashes down by going forth. I will say it more strictly: the soul does not fall even into sleep with the body, nor is it even then laid low with the flesh. For it is agitated and tossed about in dreams; but it would be quiet if it lay, and would lie if it fell. So it falls not into the reality of death, since it sinks not even into its image. Now examine likewise the following word, "of the dead," on what substance it sits; although in this matter we may sometimes grant that mortality is assigned to the soul by the heretics, so that, if a mortal soul is to attain resurrection, there is a prejudgment also for the flesh, no less mortal, which is to share in resurrection. But for now the propriety of the word must be vindicated to its own lot. Already indeed by this very thing — that resurrection belongs to a fallen thing, that is, to the flesh — the same will hold also in the name "dead," because resurrection belongs to a fallen thing, which is called "of the dead." So too through Abraham, the father of faith, we learn a man of divine familiarity. For asking of the sons of Heth a place for the burial of Sarah, "Give me, then," he says, "a possession of a sepulchre among you, and I will bury my dead" — the flesh, namely. For he would not have desired space for the burial of a soul, even were the soul believed mortal, even did it deserve to be called "dead." But if "dead" is the body, the resurrection will be of bodies, when it is said "of the dead."

19. And so this examination of the title and of the proclamation itself, defending the faith of the words, must avail to this: that, if the opposing party throws anything into confusion under the cover of figures and riddles, the clearer passages may prevail, and prescribe the more certain things concerning the uncertain. For some, having lit upon the most customary form of prophetic speech — allegorical and figurative for the most part, yet not always — twist even the resurrection of the dead, manifestly announced, into an imaginary signification, asserting that even death itself is to be understood spiritually. For that this is not the true death which lies in the midst, the parting of flesh and soul, but ignorance of God, through which a man dead to God has lain in error no less than in a sepulchre. And so the resurrection too is to be claimed as that by which a man, having approached the truth, re-animated and re-quickened, the death of ignorance shaken off, has burst forth as from the sepulchre of the old man — because the Lord too likened the scribes and Pharisees to whitened sepulchres. Thence, then, having attained resurrection by faith, they are with the Lord when they have put Him on in baptism. By this device, in short, they are wont often to deceive our people even in conversations, as though they too admit the resurrection of the flesh. "Woe," they say, "to him who shall not have risen in this flesh," lest they strike them at once, if they at once deny the resurrection. But silently, according to their own conscience, they mean this: "Woe to him who, while he is in this flesh, shall not have known the heretical secrets" — for this is, with them, the resurrection. But very many, too, claiming resurrection from the departure of the soul, interpret "to go out of the sepulchre" as "to escape from the world," because the world too is the dwelling of the dead, that is, of those ignorant of God; or even from the body itself, because the body too detains the soul, shut up as in a sepulchre, in the death of worldly life.

20. On account, then, of conjectures of this kind, I will drive away their first foundation-laying, by which they will have it that the prophets harangued everything by images — since, were it so, not even the images themselves could have been distinguished, had not the truths also been proclaimed from which the images would be sketched. And indeed, if all things are figures, what will that be of which they are figures? How will you hold out a mirror, if there is nowhere a face? But so far are not all things images, but truths also, nor all shadows, but bodies also, that even concerning the Lord Himself the more remarkable things were proclaimed clearer than light. For the Virgin conceived in her womb not figuratively, and bore Emmanuel, "God with us," Jesus, not obliquely; and if obliquely, that "He should receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria" — yet manifestly, that "He should come for judgment with the elders and princes of the people." For the nations were in tumult in the person of Pilate, and the peoples meditated vain things in the person of Israel. "The kings of the earth stood up" — Herod — "and the rulers were gathered together into one" — Annas and Caiaphas — "against the Lord and against His Christ." Who also was led "as a sheep to the slaughter," and "as a lamb before its shearer" — Herod, namely — "without voice; so He opened not His mouth"; giving His back to the scourges, and His cheeks to the palms, and turning not His face from the darts of spittings; reckoned also among the wicked, His hands and feet pierced, suffering a casting of lots over His garment, and bitter draughts, and the noddings of mocking heads, valued at thirty pieces of silver by the betrayer. What are these figures in Isaiah, what images in David, what riddles in Jeremiah — when not even His mighty works were uttered through parables? Or were the eyes of the blind not opened, nor the tongue of the dumb made clear, nor the withered hands and loosened knees made strong again, nor the lame leaped like a hart? Which things, although we are wont to interpret spiritually too, according to the comparison of the vices of the soul healed by the Lord, yet since they were fulfilled carnally as well, show that the prophets prophesied in both kinds — saving the fact that very many of their voices can be defended as bare and simple and pure of every cloud of allegory: as when the downfalls of nations and cities resound — of Tyre and Egypt and Babylon and Idumaea and the ships of the Carthaginians — as when they speak through to the end of Israel's own plagues or pardons, captivities, restorations, and the issue of the final dispersion. Who will interpret these rather than recognize them? Things are held in the letters as the letters are read in the things. So the form of prophetic speech is not always nor in all things allegorical, but sometimes and in certain things.

21. "If, then, sometimes and in certain things," you say, "why not also in the edict of resurrection, to be understood spiritually?" Because a very great reason intervenes. For first, what will so many and such divine documents do, so openly attesting a bodily resurrection that they admit no suspicion of figured signification? And surely it would be fair — as we charged above too — that uncertain things be prejudged from certain, and obscure from manifest; lest, amid the discord of the certain and the uncertain, the manifest and the obscure, faith be dissipated, truth imperilled, the very divinity branded as inconstant. Then, because it is not likely that that form of the sacrament into which all faith is committed, upon which all discipline strives, should appear ambiguously announced and obscurely set forth — since the hope of resurrection, unless manifest concerning peril and reward, would persuade no one to a religion of this kind especially, liable to public hatred and a hostile sentence. No work is sure for an uncertain wage. No fear is just of a doubtful peril. But both the wage and the peril hang upon the event of the resurrection. And further, if temporal and local and personal decrees and judgments of God upon cities and nations and kings were hurled by prophecy so openly, how is it that His eternal and universal dispositions upon the whole race of men should have fled their own light? — which, the greater they are, the clearer they ought to be, that the greater things may be believed. And I think that neither spite nor guile nor inconstancy nor enticement can be ascribed to God, by which for the most part the promulgation of greater matters is cavilled at.

22. After these things we must look back also to those Scriptures which do not allow the resurrection, according to these soul-bound — not to say spiritual — men, either to be presumed already here in the recognition of the truth, or to be claimed immediately upon the departure of life. For since the times of the whole hope have been fixed by the sacrosanct pen, and it is not lawful for it to be established before the coming, I think, of Christ — our prayers sigh for the setting of this present age, for the passing of the world too unto the great day of the Lord, the day of wrath and retribution, the last and hidden day, known to none but the Father, and yet foremarked by signs and portents and shakings of the elements and conflicts of nations. I would unroll the prophecies, had the Lord Himself been silent (except that the prophecies too were the voice of the Lord); but it is more that He sets His seal to them with His own mouth. Asked by His disciples when those things would come to pass which He had meanwhile burst forth concerning the temple's downfall, He sets in order, first, the times of the Jews up to the destruction of Jerusalem, then, of the common things, up to the conclusion of the age. For after He had declared, "And then Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the nations, until the times of the nations be fulfilled" — those, namely, to be enrolled by God and gathered with the remnants of Israel — thence already, unto the world and unto the age, He proclaims, according to Joel and Daniel and the whole council of the prophets, signs to come in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, a clashing of nations with amazement at the sound of the sea, and the failing of men growing cold for fear and expectation of those things which threaten the world. "For the powers of the heavens," He says, "shall be shaken; and then they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds, with great power and glory. But when these things shall begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." And yet He said that it draws near, not that it is already present; and "when these things shall begin to come to pass," not "when they shall have been done" — because when they shall have been done, then our redemption will be present, which is said to draw near only so far, meanwhile raising and rousing our minds to the now-nearest fruit of hope. Of which a parable too is woven in, of the trees growing tender into the stalk of the flower, and the flower thereafter the forerunner of the fruit. "So you also, when you shall see all these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is near. Watch, therefore, at all times, that you may be held worthy to escape all these things, and to stand before the Son of Man" — surely through resurrection, all things being transacted before. So, although it sprouts in the recognition of the sacrament, yet it flowers and bears fruit in the presentation of the Lord. Who, then, has roused the Lord so unseasonably, so harshly — He being already at the right hand of God — to crush the earth according to Isaiah, which, I think, is still whole? Who has already subjected the enemies of Christ beneath His feet according to David — as if swifter than the Father — while still the whole assembly of the populace cries out, "The Christians to the lion"? Who has beheld Jesus descending from heaven, such as the apostles had seen Him ascending, according to the appointment of the angels? No tribes have to this day fallen breast to breast, recognizing Him whom they pierced. No one has yet received Elijah; no one has yet fled the antichrist; no one has yet wept the downfall of Babylon. And is there already one who has risen, except a heretic? Plainly he has already gone forth from the sepulchre of his body — even now liable to fevers and ulcers; and he has already trodden down his enemies — even now having to wrestle with the powers of the world. And surely he already reigns — even now owing to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

23. The apostle indeed teaches, writing to the Colossians, that we were once dead, alienated and enemies in mind to the Lord, when we were busy in the worst works; then buried together with Christ in baptism, and raised together in Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. "And you, when you were dead in your offences and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all offences." And again: "If you are dead with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you pass sentence?" But while He thus makes us dead spiritually, yet so as to acknowledge that we shall sometime die corporeally too, surely He, deeming us likewise raised again spiritually, equally does not deny that we shall rise corporeally too. In short, "If you have risen with Christ," he says, "seek the things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God; mind the things that are above, not those that are below." So he shows that we rise in mind, by which alone as yet we can touch heavenly things — which we should not seek nor mind, if we possessed them. He adds also: "For you are dead" — to your offences, namely, not to yourselves — "and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Not yet, then, has it been laid hold of, which is hidden. So John too: "And it is not yet manifest," he says, "what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him." So far are we from being already that which we know not — yet about to know it, were we already it. So far is it a contemplation of hope, in this span, through faith — not a presentation, nor a possession, but an expectation. Of which hope and expectation Paul to the Galatians: "For we through the spirit, from faith, expect the hope of righteousness" — he does not say "hold." "Of the righteousness of God" he speaks, from the judgment by which we shall be judged concerning the wage. Hanging upon which he himself too writes to the Philippians: "If by any means," he says, "I may attain unto the resurrection which is from the dead — not because I have already received, or am consummated." And surely he had believed, and had known all the sacraments, the vessel of election, the teacher of the nations; and yet he adds: "But I follow after, if I may lay hold, of that in which I am laid hold of by Christ." Yet more: "I, brethren, do not count myself to have laid hold; but one thing — forgetting the things behind, stretching myself toward the things before, according to the mark I follow after, unto the palm of accusation, through which I might attain" — surely unto the raising up from the dead, yet in its own time, as to the Galatians: "But in well-doing let us not be weary; for in its own time we shall reap." As also to Timothy concerning Onesiphorus: "May the Lord grant him to find mercy in that day." Unto which day and time he commands him too to keep the commandment immaculate, irreproachable, "unto the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, which in His own times He shall show, the blessed and only potentate, and King of kings, and Lord of lords" — speaking of God. Of which times Peter too in the Acts: "Repent, therefore, and be converted, for the blotting out of your offences, that the times of refreshment may come upon you from the presence of God, and He may send the Christ foredesigned for you, whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things which God has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets."

24. What these times are, learn with the Thessalonians. For we read: "How you turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to await from the heavens His Son, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus." And again: "For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of exultation — except even you, before our Lord God Jesus Christ, in His coming?" Likewise: "Before God and our Father, in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all His saints." Teaching them to mourn the less for the sleep of these, he at the same time sets forth the times of the resurrection, saying: "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring with Him those who have slept through Jesus. For this we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we who live, who remain unto the coming of our Lord, shall not anticipate those who have slept. For the Lord Himself, at the command and at the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God, shall descend from heaven; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who live, who shall together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." What voice of the archangel, what trumpet of God has been heard already — unless perhaps in the bedchambers of the heretics? For although the trumpet of God may be called the evangelic word, which would already call them — yet either they will already be corporeally dead, so as to have risen, and how do they live? or caught up into the clouds, and how are they here? Most wretched indeed, as the apostle pronounced, who will be held as hoping in this life only — to be shut out, while they snatch beforehand what is promised after that life — frustrated about the truth, no less than Phygellus and Hermogenes. And therefore the majesty of the Holy Spirit, perceptive of such notions, suggests even in the same epistle to the Thessalonians: "But of the times and the spaces of times, brethren, there is no need to write to you. For you yourselves know most surely that the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night. When they shall say, Peace, and All things are safe, then sudden destruction shall fall upon them." And in the second, with fuller solicitude, to the same: "But I beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him, that you be not soon moved in mind, nor troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word" — of pseudo-prophets, namely — "nor by epistle" — of pseudo-apostles, namely — "as though by ours, as if the day of the Lord were at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way. For unless there come first the falling away" — of this kingdom, surely — "and the man of delinquency be revealed, that is, the 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 himself to be God. Do you not remember that, when I was with you, I told you these things? And now you know what restrains, that he may be revealed in his own time. For already the mystery of iniquity is at work; only let him who now restrains restrain, until he be removed out of the way." Who, except the Roman state, whose falling away, dispersed into ten kings, shall bring on the antichrist? "And then the wicked one shall be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the spirit of His mouth, and shall make void by the manifestation of His coming — whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying portents, and in all the seduction of unrighteousness, to those who perish."

25. In the Apocalypse of John too the order of times is laid out, which even the souls of the martyrs under the altar, demanding vengeance and judgment, have learned to endure: that first the world too may drink down its plagues from the bowls of the angels, and that prostituted city receive from ten kings its worthy downfalls, and the beast antichrist, with his pseudo-prophet, wage war against the church of God; and so, the devil meanwhile relegated into the abyss, the prerogative of the first resurrection be ordered from thrones; thereafter, fire being given, by the censure of the universal resurrection judgment be passed out of the books. Since, therefore, the Scriptures both note the state of the last times and place the whole fruit of Christian hope at the going-out of the age, it appears either that then is fulfilled all whatsoever is promised us by God — and what is here already claimed by the heretics is empty; or, if even the recognition of the sacrament is resurrection, surely that is believed safe which is proclaimed at the last; and it follows that by this very thing, by which this spiritual one is claimed, that bodily one is prejudged. For if none were announced for then, rightly would this alone, and only the spiritual, be claimed. But since one is decreed even for the last time, the bodily one is acknowledged, because the spiritual one is not announced for then too. For why should a resurrection of the same condition — that is, spiritual — be announced a second time, when it ought either now to be discharged without any difference of times, or then, under every closing of times? So it is the more fitting for us to defend even the spiritual resurrection from the entry of faith, who acknowledge its fullness at the going-out of the age.

26. One thing more I will answer to the former proposition concerning allegorical Scriptures: that it is lawful for us too to claim the bodily resurrection from the patronage of likewise figured prophetic speech. For behold, the divine sentence at the beginning, pronouncing man to be earth — "Earth you are, and into earth you shall go," according to the substance of the flesh, namely, which had been taken from the earth, and which had first been called man, as we have shown — gives me a discipline of interpreting into the flesh too, if God has established anything of wrath or grace upon the earth; because the earth is not properly liable to His judgment, having admitted nothing of good or evil. Cursed indeed is the earth that drinks blood — but this too into a figure of the homicide flesh. For even if the earth is to be helped or harmed, that too is on account of man, that he be helped or harmed through the downfalls of his own consistory; the more shall he weigh what the earth too suffers on his account. And so, when God threatens the earth, I will say that He threatens the flesh rather; and when He promises anything to the earth, I will understand that He promises to the flesh rather, as in David: "The Lord has reigned; let the earth exult" — that is, the flesh of the saints, to which the fruit of the divine kingdom pertains. Then he subjoins: "He looked, and the earth was shaken; the mountains were melted like wax from the face of the Lord" — the flesh of the profane, namely; and, "For they shall see Him whom they pierced." And indeed, if both will be thought pronounced simply of the earth as an element, how will it fit that it be both shaken and melted from the face of the Lord, at whose reigning above it exulted? So too in Isaiah: "You shall eat the good things of the earth" — the good things of the flesh shall be understood, which await it reformed in the kingdom of God and made angelic, and about to attain those things "which neither eye has seen nor ear heard, nor have they ascended into the heart of man." Otherwise it is vain enough that God should invite to obedience by the fruits of the field and the foods of this life, which He shares, by a condition once assigned to man, even with the irreligious and the blasphemers — "raining upon the good and the evil, and sending His sun upon the just and the unjust." A happy faith indeed, if it is to attain those things which the enemies of God and of Christ not only use but even abuse, worshipping the very creation against the Creator! Will you reckon bulbs and tubers among the good things of the earth, when the Lord pronounces that man shall not live by bread alone? So the Jews, by hoping for earthly things only, lose the heavenly — ignorant both of the bread promised from heaven, and of the oil of divine anointing, and the wine of the spirit, the water of the soul made vigorous from the vine of Christ. Just as they reckon the very holy land to be properly the Jewish soil, which is rather to be interpreted of the flesh of the Lord, which thereafter is holy land in all who have put on Christ — truly holy by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, truly flowing with milk and honey by the sweetness of the hope itself, truly Jewish by familiarity with God. "For he is not a Jew who is so in the open, but who is so in secret." So that the temple of God may be the same, and Jerusalem, hearing from Isaiah, "Arise, arise, Jerusalem, put on the strength of your arm. Arise, as in the beginning of the day" — that is, in that integrity which had been before the offence of transgression. For what voices of exhortation and summons of this kind would fit upon that Jerusalem which killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her, and at last pierced her own Lord? But neither is salvation promised to any earth at all, which must pass away with the fashion of the whole world. Even if anyone will dare to argue the holy land to be paradise rather, which it may also receive to be called the land of the fathers — of Adam and Eve, namely — then likewise a restitution into paradise will seem promised to the flesh, which was allotted to dwell in it and keep it, so that such a man be recalled thither as was driven thence.

27. We have also mention of garments in the Scriptures to allegorize to the hope of the flesh, since the Apocalypse of John too says, "These are they who have not defiled their garments with women" — signifying virgins, namely, and those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. And so they shall be in white garments, that is, in the brightness of unwedded flesh. And in the Gospel the wedding garment can be recognized as the sanctity of the flesh. And so Isaiah, teaching what kind of fast the Lord has chosen, when he subjoins concerning the reward of goodness, "Then," he says, "your light shall break forth in due season, and your garments shall sooner spring up" — not silk, surely, nor a cloak, but wishing the flesh to be understood, he proclaimed the springing up of the flesh that is to rise from the setting of death. So far does an allegorical defence of the bodily resurrection lie at hand for us too. For even when we read, "My people, enter into your storehouses for a little while, until my wrath pass over" — the storehouses will be the sepulchres, in which they shall have to rest a little who in the borders of the age, under the last wrath, shall have departed through the force of the antichrist. Or why has he used the term "storehouses" rather, and not of some place of reception, except because in storehouses the salted flesh, laid up for use, is kept, to be brought forth thence in its own time? For likewise bodies too, prepared with the condiments of burial, are sequestered in mausoleums and monuments, to go forth thence when the Lord shall command. Which, since it fits to be so understood — for what refuges of storehouses shall keep us from the wrath of God? — by this very thing, that he says "until the wrath pass over," which shall extinguish the antichrist, he shows that after the wrath the flesh shall go forth from the sepulchre, into which before the wrath it had been brought. For from storehouses nothing else is carried out than what is brought in; and after the rooting-out of the antichrist the resurrection shall be set in motion.

28. We know, moreover, that as by voices, so by things too, it was prophesied. As much by deeds as by words is the resurrection proclaimed: when Moses hides his hand in his bosom and brings it forth as dead, and again puts it in and draws it out alive — does this not portend concerning the whole man? — since the threefold power of God was denoted through those three signs: in its own order, first to subdue to man the devil, the serpent, though formidable; then to draw back the flesh from the bosom of death; and so to bring all blood to judgment. Concerning which, in the same prophet: "For your blood too," God says, "I will require of all the beasts, and of the hand of man and of the hand of his brother I will require it." Further, nothing is required except what is demanded back; nothing is demanded back except what shall also be rendered; and surely that shall be rendered which in the name of vengeance shall be demanded back and required. For that cannot be avenged which was not at all. But it shall be, while it is restored, that it may be avenged. So whatever is proclaimed upon the blood is directed unto the flesh, without which there will be no blood. The flesh shall be raised up, that the blood may be avenged. There are also some things so pronounced that they lack indeed the cloud of allegory, yet none the less thirst for the interpretation of their very simplicity — such as that in Isaiah: "I will kill, and I will make alive." Certainly after He has killed He will make alive. Therefore, killing through death, He will make alive through resurrection. But it is the flesh that is killed through death; the flesh, therefore, shall also be made alive through resurrection. Certainly if to kill is to snatch the soul from the flesh, to make alive — its contrary — is to bring the soul back to the flesh; the flesh must of necessity rise again, to which the soul, snatched away by killing, must be brought back by making-alive.

29. If, therefore, both allegorical Scriptures and the arguments of things and simple voices shed light upon the resurrection of the flesh — though without the naming of the substance itself — how much more shall those not be drawn into question which determine this hope upon the very bodily substances by special mention? Take Ezekiel. "And the hand of the Lord," he says, "was upon me, and the Lord brought me out in the spirit and set me in the midst of a field" — it was filled with bones — "and led me round about over them in a circuit, and behold, many upon the face of the field. And behold, very dry. And He said to me, Son of man, shall these bones live? And I said, Adonai, Lord, you know. And He said to me, Prophesy upon these bones, and you shall say, Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord Adonai to these bones: Behold, I bring into you spirit, and you shall live; and I will give into you spirit, and I will bring back into you flesh; I will put skin about you, and will give into you spirit, and you shall live, and shall know that I am the Lord. And I prophesied according to the command, and behold a voice, while I prophesy, and behold a motion, and the bones came together, bone to bone. And I saw, and behold, upon the bones sinews and flesh came up, and flesh was set about them, and there was no spirit in them. And He said to me, Prophesy to the spirit, son of man, prophesy and say to the spirit, Thus says the Lord Adonai: From the four winds come, O spirit, and breathe upon these slain, and let them live. And I prophesied to the spirit as He commanded me, and the spirit entered into them, and they lived and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great host. And He said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished; we are torn away among them. Therefore prophesy to them: Behold, I open your sepulchres, and will bring you up out of your sepulchres, my people, and will lead you into the land of Israel; and you shall know that I am the Lord, that I have opened your sepulchres and brought you out of your sepulchres, my people; and I will give you spirit, and you shall live and shall rest in your own land; and you shall know that I the Lord have spoken and have done it, says the Lord."

30. This proclamation too I know how they shake into an allegorical argument: because by saying, "These bones are the whole house of Israel," He made them an image of Israel, and transferred them from their proper condition; and so it is a figured, not a true, proclamation of resurrection. For the state of the Jews is somehow figured as dead and dried up and dispersed over the field of the world. And so even the image of resurrection is allegorized upon it, because it must be gathered together again and joined again, bone to bone — that is, tribe to tribe and people to people — and re-embodied with the flesh of resources and the sinews of a kingdom; and so out of the sepulchres — that is, out of the most dismal and foul dwelling-places of captivity — be led forth, and breathe again under the name of refreshment, and live thenceforth in their own land of Judaea. And what after these things? They will die, without doubt. And what after death? No raising up, I suppose, if this be not the very thing that is revealed to Ezekiel. But indeed resurrection is proclaimed elsewhere too; therefore this also will be it, and they rashly turn it into the state of Jewish affairs. Or if that is another than the one we defend, it is nothing to me, provided there be both a resurrection of bodies, as also of Jewish affairs. In short, by this very thing, that the return of the Jewish state is figured by the re-embodying and re-uniting of bones, it is proved that this too shall befall the bones. For a figure could not be composed of bones, were not this very thing to befall the bones too. For although the moulding of the truth is in the image, the image itself is in the truth of itself. It must of necessity first be to itself that to which another is configured. From an empty thing no likeness fits; of a nothing no parable agrees. So it will be necessary to believe also a re-quickening and a re-breathing of bones, such as is said, from which can be expressed the reformation of Jewish affairs, such as is fashioned thereon. But it is more religious that the truth be defended from the authority of its own simplicity, which the sense of the divine proposition demands. For if this vision regarded Jewish affairs, immediately upon the situation of the bones being revealed He would have subjoined, "These bones are the whole house of Israel," and the rest in order. But when, the bones being shown, He says something concerning their own hope, Israel not yet named, and tries the faith of the prophet — "Son of man, shall these bones live?" — so that he too answers, "Lord, you know" — surely God would not have tried the faith of the prophet concerning a matter which was not to be, which Israel had never heard, which it ought not to be believed. But because the resurrection of the dead was indeed proclaimed, while Israel, distrusting through its incredulity, was scandalized, and looking at the aspect of an aging burial despaired of resurrection — or rather directed its mind not to it, but to its own circumstances — therefore God both prepared the prophet, who himself was likewise doubtful, for steadfastness of proclamation, the order of resurrection being revealed, and commanded the people to believe what He revealed to the prophet, saying that they themselves were the bones that were to rise again, who did not believe that they would rise again. In short, in the close: "And you shall know," He says, "that I the Lord have spoken and have done it" — about to do, surely, what He had spoken. But not about to do what He spoke, if about to do otherwise than He spoke.

31. Plainly, if the people too were murmuring allegorically about their dried-up bones and their lost hope, querulous at the issue of the dispersion, God would rightly seem to have consoled a figured despair with a figured promise. But since the injury of the dispersion had not yet befallen the people, while the hope of resurrection had very often fallen among them, and it is manifest that, shaken by the destruction of bodies, he was undermining their confidence in resurrection — so God too was rebuilding the faith which the people was destroying. And yet, even if Israel was then mourning under some conflict of present affairs, not on that account was the intention of the revelation to be taken as a parable, but as a testimony of resurrection — so that He might raise them into that hope, of eternal salvation, namely, and a more necessary restitution, and turn them from regard to present affairs. For to this end also the other prophets: "You shall go forth from the sepulchres, like calves loosed from bonds, and you shall tread down your enemies." And again: "Your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall spring up like grass" — because grass too is reformed from the dissolution and corruption of seed. In sum, if the image of the rising bones is properly contended to be of the state of Israel, why is the same hope announced not to Israel only, but to all nations also — of the re-embodying and re-animating of the remnants, and of the dead to be roused up from the sepulchres? For it is said of all: "The dead shall live, and shall rise from the sepulchres; for the dew which is from You is healing to their bones." Likewise elsewhere: "All flesh shall come to adore in My sight, says the Lord." When? When the fashion of this world shall begin to pass away. For above: "As the new heaven and the new earth which I make abide in My sight, says the Lord, so shall your seed stand." Then, therefore, what He subjoins too shall be fulfilled: "And they shall go forth" — out of the sepulchres, surely — "and shall see the limbs of those who acted impiously, for their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh" — that flesh, namely, which, raised up and gone forth from the sepulchres, shall adore the Lord for this grace.

32. But lest the resurrection seem proclaimed only of those bodies which are committed to sepulchres, you have it written: "And I will command the fishes of the sea, and they shall belch up the bones that are eaten, and I will make joint to joint and bone to bone." "Therefore," you say, "the fishes too shall be raised up, and the other beasts and the carnivorous birds, to vomit back those whom they have eaten — since in Moses too you read that blood is required of all the beasts?" Not at all. But beasts and fishes are named in the rendering-back of flesh and blood for this reason: that the resurrection even of devoured bodies may be the more expressed, since the exaction is decreed of the devourers themselves. I think, moreover, that a fit document of this divine power too is Jonah, when, uncorrupted in both substances, flesh and soul, he is unrolled from the belly of the fish. And surely the entrails of the whale would have sufficed for three days to digest the flesh, more than the coffin, more than the sepulchre, more than the age of some quiet and hidden burial — saving the fact that He figured both beasts (men savage especially toward the Christian name, or even the very angels of iniquity) of whom blood shall be exacted through a vengeance to be weighed out. Who, then, is more disposed to learning than to presumption, and more diligent in believing than in contending, and more religious toward the divine wisdom than wanton toward his own — who, hearing that anything is appointed by God upon flesh and skins and sinews and bones, will devise some other meaning of these, as though what is proclaimed upon these substances be not appointed upon man? For either nothing is appointed upon man — not the bounty of the kingdom, not the severity of judgment, not whatever the resurrection is — or, if it is appointed upon man, it must of necessity be appointed upon those substances of which man is built, upon whom it is appointed. This too I ask of those most subtle transmuters of bones and flesh and sinews and sepulchres: why, if at any time anything is pronounced upon the soul, they interpret the soul as nothing else, nor refashion it into an argument for another thing — but when anything is decreed upon some bodily form, they assert anything rather than what is named? If the bodily things are parables, then the soul-things too; if not the soul-things too, then neither the bodily. For man is body as much as soul; so that the one form cannot admit riddles, the other exclude them.

33. Enough of this from the prophetic instrument. Now I appeal to the Gospels — here too about to meet first that same cunning of theirs who likewise contend that the Lord pronounced everything in parables, because it is written: "All these things Jesus spoke in parables, and without a parable He did not speak to them" — to the Jews, namely. For the disciples too say, "Why do you speak in parables?" and the Lord, "Therefore I speak in parables to them, that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not hear," according to Isaiah. But if to the Jews in parables, then not to all; if not to all in parables, then not always nor all things parables, but certain things, when to certain men. To certain men, that is, while to the Jews; sometimes plainly even to the disciples. But consider how the Scripture reports it: "But He spoke also a parable to them." Therefore He also spoke what was not a parable; for it would not be noted, when He spoke a parable, if He always spoke so. And yet you will find no parable that is not either expounded by Himself — as that of the sower in the administration of the word — or pre-illumined by the commentator of the Gospel — as of the proud judge and the insistent widow, toward perseverance in prayer — or to be conjectured of one's own accord — as of the fig tree deferred in hope, after the likeness of Jewish unfruitfulness. But if not even parables overshadow the light of the Gospel, so far is it from being that sentences and definitions, whose nature is open, should taste otherwise than they sound. But by definitions and sentences the Lord decrees whether judgment or the kingdom of God or resurrection. "It shall be more tolerable," He says, "for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment"; and, "Tell them that the kingdom of God has drawn near"; and, "It shall be recompensed to you in the resurrection of the just." If the names are absolute of the things — that is, of judgment and the kingdom of God and resurrection — so that none of them can be compressed into a parable, neither let those things be forced into parables which are proclaimed concerning the disposition and the transaction and the suffering of the kingdom, the judgment, and the resurrection; and so the bodily things will be defended as appointed for bodily things — that is, not spiritual, because not figured. For on this account too we laid the foundation that the body of the soul, as much as that of the flesh, is liable to wages to be weighed out for the common operation — lest the corporeality of the soul, supplying an occasion of figures, exclude the corporeality of the flesh, when both must be believed partakers of the kingdom and the judgment and the resurrection. And now we proceed to this, that we may demonstrate the carnal corporeality properly to be signified by the Lord in every mention of resurrection — saving the soul-bound one, which too few have received.

34. First, when He says that He came to this end, that He might save what had perished, what do you say has perished? Man, without doubt. The whole, or in part? The whole, surely. Since transgression, which is the cause of human perdition, committed as much by the prompting of the soul out of concupiscence as by the act of the flesh out of tasting, has inscribed the whole man with the sentence of transgression, and thence has filled him with the deserved perdition. The whole, then, shall be made safe who perished wholly by sinning. Unless that sheep too is lost without a body and recalled without a body. For if its flesh too with its soul — which is the whole beast — is borne upon the shoulders of the good shepherd, surely it is an example of man to be restored out of both substances. Or how unworthy of God, to bring half a man unto salvation — almost to do less; when even among secular princes a full indulgence is always claimed! Is the devil understood the stronger for man's injury, dashing the whole of him down — while God shall be reported the weaker, not revealing the whole of him? But on the other hand the apostle too suggests, "Where offence has abounded, there grace has superabounded." How, in short, shall he be held safe who can also be called lost? — lost in flesh, namely, but safe in soul. Unless that even the soul be of necessity set in the perished, that it may be able to be made safe; for that ought to be made safe which has been lost. But further, we receive the immortality of the soul, so that, when lost, it is believed not unto destruction, but unto punishment, that is, unto hell. And if so, salvation will now look not to the soul — safe, namely, by its own nature through immortality — but to the flesh rather, which all agree to be perishable. Or if the soul too is perishable — that is, not immortal, like the flesh — then to the flesh too that form must equally avail, being likewise mortal and perishable, because the Lord is about to save what perishes. I do not now wish, with a contentious rope, to draw man this way or that, according as perdition demands him, since salvation from both sides appoints him, made equal in both substances. For behold, of whichever substance you presume man to have perished, of the other he does not perish. Safe, then, he will already be of that of which he does not perish, and none the less shall be made safe of that of which he perishes. You have the restitution of the whole man, while both whatever of him perishes the Lord is about to make safe, and whatever does not perish He surely will not let perish. Who further will doubt of the security of either substance, when the one is to attain salvation, the other is not to lose it? And yet the Lord still expresses the sense of the matter, saying, "I came not to do My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me." What, I ask you? "That of all that He gave Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up in the last day." What had Christ received from the Father, except that which He had also put on? Man, without doubt, the texture of flesh and soul. Neither, then, of those things which He received will He suffer to perish — nay, not anything of either, nay, not even a little. But if a little is the flesh, then not the flesh either, because not a little, nor anything, because not anything. But on the other hand, if He shall not raise up the flesh too in the last day, then He suffers no little of man to perish, but — for so great a part, I should say — nearly the whole. Pressing further, "This is the will of the Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I should raise him up in the last day" — He builds the fullness of resurrection. For He distributes to each substance, through its offices, the proper wage of salvation: both to the flesh, through which the Son was beheld, and to the soul, through which He was believed. "Then," you will say, "the thing will be promised to those by whom Christ was seen." Be it plainly so, provided that the same hope flowed thence to us also. For if to those who saw, and therefore believed, the works of flesh and soul were then fruitful, much more to us. For "happier," He says, "are those who have not seen and believe" — since, even were the resurrection of the flesh denied to those, surely it would have fitted the happier. For how happy, if they are to perish in part?

35. But He also commands that He rather be feared who kills body and soul in hell — that is, the Lord alone — not those who kill the body, but can do nothing to the soul — that is, human powers. So far is the soul here recognized as immortal by nature, which cannot be killed by men, and the flesh as having mortality, whose is the killing; and so too the resurrection of the dead is of the flesh, which, unless raised up, cannot be killed in hell. But since here too a quibble is raised over the interpretation of "body," I will understand the body of man as nothing else than all that mass of flesh, by whatever kind of matters it is fitted and varied, which is seen, which is held, which finally is killed by men. So too I will admit the body of a wall to be nothing else than the masonry, the stones, the bricks. If anyone brings in some hidden body, let him show, reveal, prove it to be also that which is killed by man, and of that it will have been said. Likewise if the body of the soul is opposed, the cunning will be idle. For when both are proposed — body and soul killed in hell — the body is distinguished from the soul, and it is left to understand the body to be that which is at hand, the flesh, namely, which, just as it shall be killed in hell, if it has not rather feared to be killed by God, so shall it also be made alive unto eternal life, if it has preferred rather to be slain by men. Likewise if anyone shall snatch the killing of flesh and soul in hell as unto the destruction and end of both substances, not unto punishment (as though to be consumed, not to be punished), let him recall that the fire of hell is proclaimed eternal unto eternal penalty, and thence recognize the eternity of the killing, which therefore is to be more feared than the human and temporal one. Then too he will believe substances eternal whose killing unto penalty is eternal. Certainly, since after the resurrection the body with the soul is to be killed by God in hell, it will be sufficiently established concerning both — both the carnal resurrection and the eternal killing. Most absurd, otherwise, if the flesh be on this account raised up to be killed in hell, that it may be ended — which not even unraised it would suffer. For this, namely, it would be remade: that there be no one to whom not-being has now befallen! Propping us upon the same hope, He subjoins also the example of the sparrows: that of two not one shall fall to the ground without the will of God — that you may believe that the flesh too, which has fallen to the ground, can likewise rise again through the will of the same God. For although this is not granted to sparrows, yet we are of more worth than many sparrows, in that, falling, we rise again — affirming that the very hairs of whose head are all numbered, surely He promises in turn to be safe. For what reason would have reduced to number things about to perish — unless because this is the meaning: "That of all that the Father gave Me I should lose nothing," that is, not a hair, just as not an eye nor a tooth? For whence shall there be weeping and gnashing of teeth, except from eyes and from teeth? — the body, namely, killed too in hell and thrust into the outer darkness, which are the proper torments of the eyes; if anyone has been clothed at the wedding with works less worthy, to be bound at once hand and foot, as one who has risen with a body. So therefore his reclining too in the kingdom of God, and sitting on the thrones of Christ, and standing then at the right hand or the left, and eating of the tree of life, are most faithful tokens of a bodily disposition.

36. Let us now see whether, dashing down also the craft of the Sadducees, He has not the more set up our view. The cause, I think, of the question was the destruction of the resurrection — since the Sadducees admit the salvation neither of the soul nor of the flesh — and therefore from that very form of resurrection by which faith is most undermined they fitted an argument to their problem: under the pretext, namely, of the flesh's marrying or not after the resurrection, under the person of that woman who, married to seven brothers, was held in doubt to which of them she should be restored. Now let the senses both of the question and of the answer be kept, and the controversy is met. For if the Sadducees indeed spurned the resurrection, while the Lord confirmed it — both rebuking them as ignorant of the Scriptures, namely those which had proclaimed the resurrection, and as incredulous of the power of God, fit surely for raising up the dead — at last subjoining, "But that the dead rise" — without doubt, by confirming that there is that which was denied, that is, the resurrection of the dead with God of the living, He confirmed it also to be such as was denied, of both human substances, namely. For if He then denied that they would marry, He did not therefore demonstrate that they would not rise either. Rather He called them sons of the resurrection, having somehow to be born through it; after which they shall not marry, but, being raised up — "For they shall be like the angels" — in that they shall not marry, because they shall not die; but in that they shall pass over into the angelic state, through that garment of incorruptibility, yet through a transmutation of the raised-up substance. For the rest, it would not even be asked whether we should be married or about to die again or not, were not the restitution most especially called into doubt of that substance which properly is occupied with both death and marriage, that is, the flesh. You have, therefore, the Lord confirming against the heretics of the Jews — what is even now denied among the Sadducees of the Christians — a solid resurrection.

37. So too, if He says that the flesh profits nothing, the sense must be directed from the matter of the saying. For because they thought His word hard and intolerable — as though He had determined that His flesh was truly to be eaten by them — that He might dispose the state of salvation into the spirit, He premised, "It is the spirit that quickens," and so subjoined, "The flesh profits nothing" — for quickening, namely. He follows out also what He would have understood by spirit: "The words which I have spoken to you are spirit, are life." As also above: "He who hears My words, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and shall not come into judgment, but shall pass from death to life." And so, constituting the word the quickener — because the word is spirit and life — He also called the same His flesh, because the word too had been made flesh, and therefore was to be sought after unto the cause of life, and devoured by hearing, and ruminated by understanding, and digested by faith. For a little before He had also pronounced His flesh to be the heavenly bread too, urging everywhere through allegory the memory of the necessary foods of the fathers, who had preferred the bread and flesh of the Egyptians to the divine calling. Therefore, turned to their reconsiderings — because He had perceived that they were to be scattered — "The flesh," He says, "profits nothing." What is this to the destruction of the flesh's resurrection? — as though it may not be that there is something which, though it profit nothing itself, yet something else can profit it? The spirit profits; for it quickens. The flesh profits nothing; for it is mortified. And so, according to us, He rather set down the proposition of both. For showing what profits and what profits not, He at once illumined what profits which — the spirit, namely, quickener of the mortified flesh. "For the hour shall come," He says, "when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live." What is dead, but the flesh? and what is the voice of God, but the word? and what is the word, but the spirit — rightly about to raise up the flesh, which it was made itself, and out of the death which it suffered itself, and out of the sepulchre into which it was brought itself? In short, when He says, "Marvel not, for the hour shall come in which all who are in the monuments shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth — those who did good, unto the resurrection of life; those who did evil, unto the resurrection of judgment" — no one can any longer interpret the dead who are in the monuments as other than bodies and flesh; because the monuments themselves are nothing else than the stables of corpses, since even those very men of old — that is, sinners, that is, dead through ignorance of God, whom the heretics argue to be understood as the monuments — are openly proclaimed to be about to come forth from the monuments unto judgment. But how shall monuments come forth from monuments?

38. After the sayings of the Lord, what shall we believe His deeds too mean — His raising the dead from coffins, from sepulchres? To what end is this? If to a simple display of power, or to a present grace of re-animation, it is no such great thing for Him to raise up those about to die again. But indeed, if rather to set apart faith in a future resurrection, then that one too is prescribed as bodily, from the form of His own document. Nor will I endure those who say that the resurrection, then appointed for the soul alone, ran forward into the flesh too because the resurrection of the invisible soul could not otherwise be shown than through the raising up of a visible substance. They know God ill who think He cannot do what they do not think; and yet they know He could, if they know the instrument of John. For He who set before the sight souls as yet alone, of the martyrs, resting under the altar, could surely also have shown them rising again to the eyes without flesh. But I prefer that God cannot deceive — weak only in falsehood — lest He seem to have premised documents otherwise than He disposed the matter; nay rather, lest, if He could not bring in an example of resurrection without flesh, much more He could not exhibit the fullness of the example in the same substance. But no example is greater than that of which it is an example. But it is greater, if souls shall be raised up with the body unto a document of rising again without the body — so that the whole salvation of man should patronize the half — when the condition of examples would rather require that which was the less held, the resurrection, I mean, of the soul alone, as a taste of the flesh too about to rise again in its own time. And indeed, according to our true estimation, those examples of the dead raised up by the Lord did indeed commend the resurrection of both flesh and soul, lest this gift be denied to either substance; yet, in so far as they were examples, they set forth something the less (for they were raised up not unto glory nor unto incorruptibility, but unto another death) than Christ set forth.

39. The apostolic instruments too attest the resurrection. For the apostles too had no other business — at least among Israel — than of unsealing the old testament and sealing the new, and rather now of preaching God in Christ. So too concerning resurrection they brought in nothing new, except that they announced it too unto the glory of Christ — for the rest, received by a simple and now known faith, without any question of its quality, the Sadducees alone gainsaying. So far was it easier to deny the resurrection of the dead altogether than to understand it otherwise. You have Paul before the high priests, under the tribune, among the Sadducees and Pharisees, a professor of his faith. "Men, brethren," he says, "I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees; concerning the hope and the resurrection I am now judged before you" — the common one, surely — lest, because he now seemed a transgressor of the law, he be thought to side with the Sadducees on the chief article of the whole faith, that is, on the resurrection. So, what he did not wish to seem to rescind, he surely confirmed — the faith of resurrection, according to the Pharisees — spurning its deniers, the Sadducees. Likewise before Agrippa he says that he brings forward nothing beyond what the prophets had announced. Therefore he kept the resurrection too such as the prophets had announced. For commemorating that concerning the resurrection of the dead it is written in Moses, he knew it bodily, in which, namely, the blood of man shall have to be required. And so he proclaimed it such as both the Pharisees had received and the Lord Himself had defended, and such as the Sadducees, lest they believe it such too, had wished not to be at all. But neither had the Athenians understood any other to be portended by Paul. In short, they mocked — about to mock not at all, if they had heard from him the restitution of the soul alone; for they would have received the more frequent presumption of their own native philosophy. But when the proclamation of a resurrection unheard of before struck the nations by its very novelty, and a worthy incredulity began to torture faith with questions concerning so great a matter, then the apostle too, through almost the whole instrument, took care to corroborate faith in this hope — both showing that it is, and not yet transacted; and — what was the more asked — bodily; and — what was moreover doubted — not bodily otherwise.

40. But it is no wonder if arguments are caught even from his own instrument, since "there must be heresies" — which could not be, if the Scriptures could not also be understood perversely. In short, the heresies, having lit upon two men set forth by the apostle — the inner, that is, the soul, and the outer, that is, the flesh — have adjudged salvation indeed to the soul, that is, the inner man, but destruction to the flesh, that is, the outer; because it is written to the Corinthians: "For although our outer man is corrupted, yet the inner is renewed day by day." Now neither is the soul of itself man, which was inserted afterward into the moulding already called man, nor is the flesh man without the soul, which after the exile of the soul is inscribed a corpse. So the word "man" is, as it were, a clasp of the two joined substances, under which word they cannot exist except as cohering. Further, the apostle prefers that the inner man be understood not so much the soul as the mind and the disposition — that is, not the substance itself, but the savour of the substance. Since, writing to the Ephesians that Christ dwells in the inner man, he signified the Lord to be intimated, surely, to the senses. In short, he added: "By faith, and in your hearts, and in love" — setting down faith and love not as substantives of the soul, but as conceptives; but saying "in your hearts," which are substantives of the flesh, he has now reckoned even the inner man himself to the flesh, whom he constituted in the heart. Look now how he has alleged that the outer man indeed is corrupted, but the inner is renewed day by day. Do not affirm that corruption of the flesh which it suffers from the day of death in perpetuity henceforth; but that which in the span of this life, before death and up to death, it experiences through vexations and pressures, torments and punishments, for the cause of the Name. For here too the inner man shall have to be renewed by the suggestion of the spirit, advancing in faith and discipline day by day — not there, that is, not after the resurrection, where surely we shall not be renewed day by day, but once for all, to the sum. Learn from what follows: "For that which is at present," he says, "temporal and light of our pressure, by a surpassing into a surpassing, shall accomplish for us an eternal weight of glory — we looking not at the things which are seen" — that is, sufferings — "but at the things which are not seen" — that is, the wages. "For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." For the pressures and injuries by which the outer man is corrupted, he affirms to be on that account contemptible, as light and temporal — preferring the weight of eternal, invisible wages and glory, in compensation of the labours by which here the flesh is corrupted by suffering. So far is that not the corruption which they ascribe to the outer man as the perpetual destruction of the flesh, to drive out resurrection. So too elsewhere: "Since," he says, "we suffer together, that we may also be glorified together: for I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy of the future glory which is to be revealed in us." And here he shows the lesser troubles by their wages. Further, if through the flesh we suffer together — whose it properly is to be corrupted by sufferings — to the same will belong also what is promised for the suffering-together. And indeed, about to ascribe to the flesh the propriety of pressures, as above, he says, "But when we came into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest"; then, that he might give the soul too a suffering-together, "In all things," he says, "we were pressed — without, fightings" — warring down the flesh, namely — "within, fear" — afflicting the soul, namely. So far, even if the outer man is corrupted, it shall be understood corrupted not as losing resurrection, but as enduring vexation, and from this not without the inner. So it will belong to both to be glorified together too, as also to suffer together. According to the colleges of labours, the consortia of wages too must of necessity run their course.

41. He pursues the same view still further, preferring rewards to vexations. "For we know," he says, "that even if the earthly house of this our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens" — that is, through this, that our flesh shall be dissolved through sufferings, we are to attain a dwelling in the heavens. He had remembered the evangelic definition: "Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Yet he did not deny the restitution of the flesh, if he set against it the compensation of a wage — since the compensation is owed to that very thing to which the dissolution is reckoned, namely the flesh. But because he had called the flesh a house, he wished elegantly, even in the comparison of the wage, to use the word "house" — promising to the very house which shall be dissolved through suffering a better house through resurrection (for the Lord too promises many mansions, as it were houses, with the Father; although it can be understood also of the dwelling of the world, which being dissolved, an eternal seat is promised in the heavens, because the things which follow, manifestly pertaining to the flesh, show that the former do not pertain to the flesh): for the apostle makes a division when he subjoins, "For in this too we groan, desiring to be clothed over with our dwelling which is from heaven, if so be that, unclothed, we be not found naked" — that is, we wish to be clothed over with the heavenly virtue of eternity before we are unclothed of the flesh. For the privilege of this grace awaits those who at the coming of the Lord shall be caught in the flesh, and on account of the hardships of the times of the antichrist shall deserve, by the compendium of a death discharged through transmutation, to run together with those who rise — as he writes to the Thessalonians: "For this we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we who live, who remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not anticipate those who have slept; for the Lord Himself, at the command and at the voice of the archangel and at the trumpet of God, shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, together with them, shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

42. The transmutation of these he renders to the Corinthians, saying, "We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be transmuted, in an atom, in a momentary motion of the eye, at the last trumpet" — but those alone, namely, who shall be found in the flesh. "And the dead," he says, "shall rise, we shall be transmuted." With this disposition, then, first foreseen, you will recall the rest to the higher sense. For when he adds, "For this corruptive must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" — this will be that dwelling from heaven which, groaning in this flesh, we desire to be clothed over with — surely over the flesh in which we shall be caught; because he says that we are burdened, who are in the tabernacle, which we would not be unclothed of, but rather clothed over, that the mortal may be devoured by life — that is, while we are transmuted, by clothing over with that which is of the heavens. For who would not desire, while he is in the flesh, to be clothed over with immortality and to continue life, death being made gain through a substitutionary transmutation, that he experience not hell, which would exact even to the last farthing? For the rest, even after the resurrection he is to attain transmutation, having now experienced hell. For hence we define that the flesh shall in every way rise again, and that from that transmutation it shall, supervening, take up the angelic state. Or, if in those alone who shall be found in the flesh it must be transmuted, that the mortal may be devoured by life — that is, the flesh by that heavenly and eternal over-garment — then those who shall be caught dead will not attain life, being deprived now of the material and, so to speak, the food of life, that is, the flesh; or it is necessary that they too receive it, that in them too the mortal may be devoured by life, if they are to attain life. "But in the dead," you say, "this mortal will already have been devoured." Not in all, surely. For how many may be found even but a day old — corpses so recent that nothing in them can seem devoured? For surely you reckon "devoured" as nothing else than intercepted, abolished, snatched from every sense, ceasing in every kind to appear. But neither will it be established that the most ancient corpses of the Giants are devoured, whose frames yet live. We have already spoken of this elsewhere. But also lately in this city, when the sacrilegious foundations of the odeon were being laid upon so many old burials, the people shuddered at bones of nearly five hundred years still moist and at hairs still smelling. It is agreed that not only bones endure, but even teeth last incorrupt — which are retained as it were seeds of the body about to sprout in the resurrection. Finally, even if then the mortal be found devoured in all the dead — surely by death, surely by age, surely through time — yet is it by life, is it by the over-garment, is it by the in-pouring of immortality? Further, he who says that the mortal shall be devoured by these, has denied it of those. And surely it will be fitting that this be accomplished and afforded by the divine powers, not by natural laws. Therefore, since that which is mortal is to be devoured by life, it must in every way be exhibited, that it may be devoured, and devoured that it may be transmuted. If you should say that fire must be kindled, you cannot affirm that by which it is kindled to be necessary in one place, not in another. So too when he infulces, "If so be that, unclothed, we be not found naked" — concerning those, namely, who shall not be caught in life nor in the flesh by the day of the Lord — he denied that those whom he foretold as unclothed should be otherwise naked, except that he wished them understood as reclothed with the same substance of which they had been spoiled. For as naked they shall be found, the flesh laid down, or in part torn off or worn away (for this too may be called nakedness); thereafter they shall receive it, that, reclothed with flesh, they may be able to become also clothed over with immortality; for to be clothed over cannot be fitting except to one already clothed.

43. Likewise when he says, "And so, confident always, and knowing that, while we dwell in the body, we are away from the Lord — for we walk by faith, not by sight" — it is manifest that this too does not pertain to the darkening of the flesh, as though separating us from the Lord. For here too an exhortation to disdain this life is set forth, since we are away from the Lord so long as we live, walking by faith, not by sight — that is, by hope, not by reality. And therefore he subjoins, "But being confident, and accounting it good rather to be away from the body and to dwell with the Lord" — that is, that we may walk rather by sight than by faith, by reality rather than by hope. You see how here too he refers the contempt of bodies to the excellence of martyrdoms. For no one, away from the body, dwells at once with the Lord, except by the prerogative of martyrdom, being about to lodge in paradise, namely, not in hell. But had words failed the apostle for signifying departure from the body? Or does he by design speak even with novelty? For, wishing to signify a temporal absence from the body, he said that we are away from it, since he who is away will also return into his dwelling. Thence too, to all: "And therefore we strive," he says, "whether away or dwelling, to be pleasing to God; for we must all be made manifest before the tribunal of Christ Jesus." If all, then also wholly; if wholly, then both the inner and the outer, that is, both souls and bodies: "that each one," he says, "may carry back the things done through the body, according as he has done, good or evil." How now you should read this, I ask. For he has built it, as it were confusedly, by hyperbaton. Whether the things to be carried back through the body, or the things done through the body? But even if the things to be carried back are through the body, the resurrection is undoubtedly bodily; and if the things done are through the body, surely they must be weighed out through the body, through which also they were done. So this whole treatment of the apostle from the head, woven down to such a close — by which the resurrection of the flesh is shown — shall be understood according to those things which consort with the close.

44. For if you look back still further, whence the mention of the outer and inner man was brought in, will you not find both the dignity and the hope of the flesh entire? For when, concerning the light which God has shone in our hearts unto the illumination of the recognition of His glory in the person of Christ, he says that we have this treasure in earthen vessels — that is, in the flesh — shall it be destroyed because it is earthen according to its origin in slime, or exalted because it is the storehouse of a divine treasure? But on the other hand, if the very light of God, that true one which is in the person of Christ, contains life in itself, and that life is committed with the light into the flesh — is that to perish into which life is committed? Plainly thus the treasure too is to perish; for perishable things are committed to perishable things, as new wine to old skins. When likewise he subjoins, "Always carrying about the mortification of Christ Jesus in our body" — what kind of thing is that which, after the temple of God, can now be called also the sepulchre of Christ? But why do we carry about the mortification of the Lord in the body? "That the life too," he says, "may be manifested." Where? In the body. In what kind? In the mortal. Therefore in the flesh, plainly mortal according to fault, but also vital according to grace — see how great, that in it the life of Christ may be manifested! In a thing, then, foreign to salvation, in a substance of perpetual dissolution, shall the eternal, perennial, incorrupt — now even the divine — life of Christ be manifested? Or of what time shall the life of the Lord be manifested in our body? That, indeed, which He lived up to the passion, which was not only in the open among the Jews, but is now also published to all nations? So far does he signify that life which broke the adamantine gates of death and the brazen bars of hell, which thenceforth is now ours. In short, it shall be manifested in the body. When? After death. How? While we rise again in the body, as Christ too. For lest anyone argue that the life of Jesus has now to be manifested in our body through the discipline of sanctity and patience and righteousness and wisdom, by which the life of the Lord flourished, the most provident intention of the apostle presses in: "For if we who live are delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Him may be manifested in our mortal body." So far does he say that this shall be in our body when we are dead. But if then, how, except by its being raised up? Likewise too in the close: "Knowing," he says, "that He who raised up Jesus will raise us up too with Him, because He has already risen from the dead." Except that "with Him" tastes of "as Him"; but if "as Him," surely not without flesh.

45. But again, by another blindness, they stumble upon two men — the old and the new — the apostle admonishing us to lay aside the old man, who is corrupted through the concupiscence of seduction, and to be renewed in the spirit of our disposition, and to put on the new man, who is created according to God in righteousness and the religion of truth — so that here too, by distinguishing into two substances — oldness to the flesh, newness to the soul — he may defend a perpetual corruption to the old, that is, the flesh. Further, if according to substances, neither is the soul a new man because later, nor the flesh therefore old because earlier. For how little time between the hand of God and the breath? I would dare to say: even if the soul be much earlier than the flesh, by this very thing, that the soul awaited to be filled, it made the flesh the earlier. For every consummation and perfection, even though in order it comes last, yet in effect it anticipates. That is rather the first without which the former cannot be. If the flesh is the old man, when is this? From the beginning? But Adam was wholly new, and out of the new no one was old. For even thenceforward, from the blessing of generation, flesh and soul come into being together, without a reckoning of time, as being sown together even in the womb — which we have taught in the commentary on the soul. They are tempered together in conception, are coeval in birth. These two men, indeed, of a double substance, yet not of differing age, so produce one man, while neither is the earlier. It is more correct that we be wholly either old or new; for by what means one of us could be the other we do not know. But the apostle manifestly marks the old man. For "Put off," he says, "according to the former conversation, the old man" — not according to the senility of any substance. For he does not bid us put off the flesh, but those things which elsewhere too he shows to be carnal — accusing works, not bodies — concerning which here too he subjoins, "Putting off lying, speak truth each one to his neighbour, for we are members one of another. Be angry, and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil. Let him who stole steal no more, but rather labour, working with his hands, that he may have to impart to him who is in need. Let no foul speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is best for the edification of faith, that it may give grace to the hearers. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and clamour and blasphemy and indignation be taken away from you, with all malice. But be kind one to another, merciful, forgiving one another, as God too forgave you in Christ." Therefore those who reckon the flesh the old man — why do they not hasten death for themselves, that, the old man laid aside, they may meet the precepts of the apostle? But we, who have believed that the whole faith is to be administered in the flesh — nay, even through the flesh, whose is both the mouth for uttering each best word, and the tongue for not blaspheming, and the heart for not being indignant, and the hand for working and bestowing — we defend that both the oldness of man and the newness pertain to a moral, not a substantial, difference. And so we likewise recognize the man who shall have been old according to the former conversation, the same to be said corrupted according to the concupiscence of seduction, just as old according to the former conversation, not according to the flesh, through perpetual destruction. For the rest, as safe in flesh as the same — having put off, namely, a vicious discipline, not a corpulence.

46. Such everywhere you may recognize the apostle, so condemning the works of the flesh that he seems to condemn the flesh — yet, lest anyone so think, providing it from the suggestion of other or cohering senses. For even when he says that those who are in the flesh cannot please God, he at once recalls from a depraved understanding to a sound one, adding, "But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit." For those who, it was agreed, were in the flesh, by denying them to be in the flesh, he showed to be not in the works of the flesh; and so that those alone cannot please God, not who were in the flesh, but who lived carnally — but that those please God who, set in the flesh, walked according to the spirit. And again he says that the body indeed is dead, but on account of delinquency, just as the spirit is life on account of righteousness. But opposing life to death set in the flesh, without doubt he promised life too out of righteousness there where he determined death out of delinquency. For the rest, in vain did he oppose life to death, if it is not there where is also that to which he opposed it, surely to be excluded from the body. Further, if life excludes death from the body, it cannot accomplish this except it penetrate thither where is that which it excludes. And why do I speak more knottily, when the apostle speaks more absolutely? "For if," he says, "the spirit of Him who raised up Jesus dwells in you, He who raised up Jesus from the dead will raise up also your mortal bodies, on account of His spirit dwelling in you" — so that, even if anyone presume the soul to be the mortal body, since with this he cannot deny the flesh too, he be forced to acknowledge the resurrection of the flesh also, according to the communion of the same state. From what follows you may further learn that the works of the flesh are condemned, not the flesh itself. "And so, brethren," he says, "we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you live according to the flesh, you shall die; but if by the spirit you mortify the acts of the flesh, you shall live." Now, to answer each point: if to those set in the flesh, yet living according to the spirit, salvation is promised, then the flesh is not contrary to salvation, but the operation of the flesh. But the operation of the flesh excluded — which is the cause of death — the flesh is now shown safe, lacking the cause of death. "For the law," he says, "of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has manumitted me from the law of delinquency and of death" — surely from that which he premised to dwell in our members. Therefore now our members shall not be held by the law of death, because not by that of delinquency, from which they are manumitted. "For what was invalid in the law, in which it was weakened through the flesh, God, having sent His Son in the likeness of delinquent flesh, and through delinquency condemned delinquency in the flesh" — not the flesh in delinquency; for neither is the house condemned with its dweller. For he said that sin dwells in our body. But, delinquency condemned, the flesh is acquitted, just as, uncondemned, it was bound by that law of death and delinquency. So too he called the disposition of the flesh death, then also enmity toward God — but not the flesh itself. "To whom, then," you will say, "shall the disposition of the flesh be reckoned, if not to the substance itself?" Plainly, if you shall have proved that the flesh tastes anything of its own. But if without the soul there is no sense of anything, understand the disposition of the flesh to be referred to the soul, sometimes reckoned to the flesh, because it is administered on account of the flesh and through the flesh. And therefore he says that delinquency dwells in the flesh, because the soul too, by which delinquency is brought in, is a tenant of the flesh — mortified indeed, but not in its own, but in delinquency's name. For elsewhere too: "How," he says, "do you, as though living in the world, even now pass sentence?" — writing not to the dead, but to those who ought to cease living worldly.

47. For this will be the worldly life which he says is the old man crucified with Christ — not the corporeality, but the morality. For the rest, if we do not so take it, our corporeality is not crucified, nor has our flesh suffered the cross of Christ; but, as he added, "That the body of delinquency may be made void" — through the amendment of life, not through the destruction of the substance, as he says, "That hereafter we serve not delinquency." And so, that on this reckoning we who have died together with Christ may believe that we shall also live together with Him. "For so," he says, "do you too reckon yourselves indeed dead." To what? to the flesh? No, but to delinquency. Therefore they shall be safe to the flesh, but living to God in Christ Jesus — through the flesh, surely, to which they shall not be dead — dead to delinquency, namely, not to the flesh. For he further presses in: "Let not, then, delinquency reign in your mortal body, to obey it, and to exhibit your members as weapons of unrighteousness unto delinquency; but exhibit yourselves to God as living from the dead" — not as living, but as living from the dead — "and your members as weapons of righteousness." And again: "As you have exhibited your members servants to uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now too exhibit your members servants to righteousness unto sanctification; for when you were servants of delinquency, you were free of righteousness. What fruit, then, had you in those things of which you are now ashamed? for their end is death. But now, made free from delinquency, and made servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life. For the wages of delinquency is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." So through this whole series of senses, tearing our members away from injustice and delinquency and joining them to righteousness and holiness, and transferring the same from the wages of death to the gift of eternal life, he surely promises to the flesh the compensation of salvation — to which it would have fitted not at all that a proper discipline of holiness and righteousness be enjoined, were not the reward of the discipline also its own; nor would baptism itself be committed, if through regeneration it were not also inaugurated unto restitution — this too the apostle pressing in: "Or do you not know that whoever of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried, then, with Him through baptism into death, that, as Christ rose from the dead, so we too may walk in newness of life." And lest you think it said of that life only which from faith through baptism is to be walked in newness, most providently he builds on: "For if we have been planted together with the likeness of the death of Christ, so shall we be also of His resurrection." For through the likeness we die in baptism, but through the truth we rise in the flesh, as Christ too — "That, as delinquency reigned in death, so grace too may reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." How so, if not equally in the flesh? For where there is death, there too is life after death, because there too is life before, where afterward death. For if the reign of death works nothing but the dissolution of the flesh, accordingly life, contrary to death, must work the contrary — that is, the reintegration of the flesh — that, as death had devoured by prevailing, so too the mortal devoured by immortality may be able to hear, "Where, O death, is your sting? where, O death, is your contention?" For so too grace shall there superabound where iniquity too abounded. So too shall virtue be perfected in weakness — saving what perished, quickening what is dead, healing what is stricken, doctoring what languished, redeeming what was snatched away, freeing what was enslaved, recalling what was seduced, raising up what was dashed down; and indeed from earth into heaven, where the Philippians too learn from the apostle our citizenship is, whence too we await our Saviour Jesus Christ, who shall transfigure the body of our humility, conformable to the body of His glory — without doubt after the resurrection, since not even Christ Himself was glorified before His passion. These shall be our bodies, which he beseeches the Romans to exhibit a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God. How living, if they are to perish? how holy, if they are profane? how pleasing, if they are condemned? Come now — what to the Thessalonians I should think written by the very ray of the sun, so clearly does it shine — how shall these light-shunners of the Scriptures take it? "But may the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly." Is it not enough? But there follows: "And may your whole body and soul and spirit be preserved without complaint in the presence of the Lord." You have the whole substance of man appointed unto salvation, and at no other time than at the coming of the Lord, which is the key of the resurrection.

48. "But flesh," you say, "and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God by inheritance." We know this too is written, but of set purpose we deferred it until now — so that what the adversaries set up as a barrier in the very first line of battle, we might lay low in the last encounter, all their questions, as it were its auxiliaries, first cast down. But even now the preceding things will demand to be recognized, so that to this sense too its own origin may make a prejudgment. The apostle, I think, having disposed to the Corinthians with every distinction of ecclesiastical discipline, had concluded the sum both of his Gospel and of their faith in the commendation of the Lord's death and resurrection, that he might draw from there the rule of our hope too, whence it might stand firm. And so he subjoins: "But if Christ is preached, that He rose from the dead, how do some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? which if there is not, neither has Christ risen. But if Christ has not risen, vain is our preaching, empty too is your faith. We are even found false witnesses of God, who have given testimony that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up. For if the dead rise not, neither has Christ risen. If Christ has not risen, vain is your faith, because you are yet in your sins, and those who have slept in Christ have perished." By these things, to the believing of what matter does he seem to build us up? To the resurrection, you say, of the dead, which was being denied — surely wishing it to be believed by His own example, the Lord's resurrection. Surely, you say. But is an example composed of diversity or of parity? Of parity, surely, you say. But how did Christ rise? in the flesh, or not? Without doubt, if you hear that He died, that He was buried, according to the Scriptures, not otherwise than in the flesh; equally you grant Him raised up in the flesh. For that very thing which fell in death, which lay in burial, the same too rose again — not so much Christ in the flesh as the flesh in Christ. Therefore, if to the example of Christ we shall rise, who rose in the flesh, then we shall not rise to the example of Christ, if we too rise not in the flesh. "Because through man," he says, "came death, and through man the resurrection" — so that he separated indeed the authors, of death Adam, of resurrection Christ, but constituted the resurrection of the same substance as the death, through the comparison of the authors themselves under the name of man. For "if, as in Adam all die, so too in Christ all shall be made alive" — in the flesh shall they be made alive in Christ, as in Adam they die in the flesh. "But each in his own order" — namely, because also in his own body. For the order of merits shall be disposed under the name of things disposed. But since merits are ascribed also to the body, the order of bodies too must of necessity be disposed, that there may be an order of merits. "But if some are even baptized for the dead" — we shall see whether reasonably. Surely he contends that they instituted this from that presumption by which others too thought a vicarious baptism would profit the flesh unto the hope of resurrection — which, unless bodily, would not otherwise be so bound by a bodily baptism. Why does he say that they too are baptized, if the bodies which are baptized do not rise? For the soul is sanctified not by washing, but by response. "Why are we too," he says, "in peril every hour?" — through the flesh, surely. "I die daily" — surely by the perils of the flesh, through which he even fought with beasts at Ephesus — those beasts, namely, of the Asiatic pressure, concerning which in the second to the same: "For we would not have you ignorant, brethren, of our pressure in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, beyond our strength, so that we doubted of life." All these things, unless I am deceived, he enumerates to this end: that, unwilling that the flesh's conflict be believed vain, he wishes the flesh's resurrection to be believed beyond doubt. For the conflict of that must be held vain whose resurrection will be none. But someone will say: "How do the dead rise? and with what body do they come?" Now here he discusses the qualities of bodies — whether the same very ones or others are resumed. But since a question of this kind is held later, it will suffice meanwhile that from this too the resurrection is defined as bodily, when it is asked concerning the quality of bodies.

49. We have now come to flesh and blood, the very heart, in truth, of the whole question — which substances, with what condition the apostle disinherited from the kingdom of God, it is likewise to be learned from the preceding. "The first man," he says, "of the earth, earthy" — that is, of slime, that is, Adam; "the second man, from heaven" — that is, the word of God, that is, Christ; yet not otherwise man, though from heaven, except that He too is flesh and soul, which is man, which is Adam. For above too, called the last Adam, He drew the dealing of the name from the partnership of substance — since neither was Adam flesh from seed, which Christ also was not. "As, therefore, the earthy, such too the earthy; as the heavenly, such too the heavenly." Such in substance? or first in discipline, then in dignity too, which discipline grasped at? But by substance the earthy and the heavenly, once called by the apostle "men," will in no way be separated. For if Christ alone is truly heavenly — nay, even super-heavenly — yet man, in that He is flesh and soul, by nothing of that condition of substances is He discerned from the earthy quality; accordingly those too who are heavenly according to Him are understood proclaimed heavenly not of present substance, but of future brightness — because before, too, whence this distinction flowed, from the difference of dignity there was shown one glory of the super-heavenly, another of the super-earthly, and one of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars, since star too differs from star in glory, yet not in substance. In short, having premised the difference of dignity in the same substance — to be followed now and to be grasped then — he subjoins also an exhortation: that here we follow the habit of Christ out of discipline, and there attain the height out of glory: "As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us bear too the image of the super-heavenly." For we have borne the image of the earthy through the college of transgression, through the partnership of death, through the exile of paradise. For although here the image of Adam is borne in the flesh, yet we are not admonished to lay aside the flesh; if not the flesh, then the conversation — that we may accordingly bear the image of the heavenly too in us, set now not as God, nor now in heaven, but walking according to the lineaments of Christ in sanctity and righteousness and truth. And so to discipline he directs this whole thing, so that here he says the image of Christ is to be borne in this flesh and in this time of discipline. For saying "let us bear" in the preceptive mode he speaks to this time, in which man is no other substance than flesh and soul; or, if any other — that is, heavenly — substance this faith regards, yet it is promised to that one to whom it is commanded to labour toward the other. Since, therefore, he constitutes the image both of the earthy and of the heavenly in the conversation — the one to be abjured, the other to be followed — then adds, "For this I say" (that is, on account of those things which I said above, for the conjunction is the supplement of the sense, rendering the antecedents), "that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God by inheritance" — he commands flesh and blood to be understood as nothing else than the above-said image of the earthy; which, if it is reckoned in the conversation of oldness, but the conversation of oldness does not grasp the kingdom of God, accordingly flesh and blood, by not grasping the kingdom of God, are reduced to the conversation of oldness. Plainly, if the apostle never set substance for works, neither let him so use it here. But if those still set in the flesh he denied to be in the flesh — denying them to be in the works of the flesh — you ought to subvert its form, not its substance, but the works of the substance alienating from the kingdom of God. Which things being made manifest to the Galatians too, he professes that he foretells and has foretold that those who do such things shall not attain the kingdom of God by inheritance — not bearing, namely, the image of the heavenly, as they had borne the earthy, and therefore from their old conversation to be reckoned nothing else than flesh and blood. For even if the apostle had burst suddenly into this definition — that flesh and blood are to be eliminated from the kingdom of God — without any foundation-laying of a higher sense, should we not accordingly interpret those two substances as the old man given over to flesh and blood — that is, to eating and drinking — whose it is to say, against faith in the resurrection, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die"? For this too the apostle, infulcing, has rebuked flesh and blood by their own fruits of eating and drinking.

50. But even setting aside interpretations of this kind, which charge the works of flesh and blood, it will be lawful to claim for resurrection the very substances themselves too, understood as nothing else than they are. For resurrection is not directly denied to flesh and blood, but the kingdom of God, which befalls resurrection (for there is also a resurrection unto judgment); nay rather, the general resurrection of the flesh is confirmed, when a special one is excepted. For while it is decreed into what state it does not rise, into what state it does rise is understood. And so, while according to merits the distinction of resurrection is suffered by the work of the substance, not the kind, it appears hence too that flesh and blood are kept from the kingdom of God under the name of fault, not of substance — yet under the name of their form they rise unto judgment, because they do not rise unto the kingdom. Still I will say: flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God by inheritance — rightly, alone and by themselves, that he might show the spirit still necessary to it. For it is the spirit that quickens unto the kingdom of God; the flesh profits nothing. Yet something else can profit it — that is, the spirit, and through the spirit the works of the spirit too. And so all flesh and blood rise equally in their own quality. But whose it is to enter the kingdom of God shall have to put on the power of incorruptibility and immortality, without which they cannot enter the kingdom of God before they can attain it. Rightly, then, flesh and blood, as we said, alone fail to grasp the kingdom of God. But now, since this corruptive — that is, the flesh — is to be devoured by incorruptibility, and this mortal — that is, the blood — by immortality, after the resurrection, out of transmutation, rightly flesh and blood, transmuted and devoured, can possess the kingdom of God by inheritance — yet not unless raised up. There are those who would have flesh and blood taken as Judaism, on account of circumcision — itself too foreign to the kingdom of God, because that too is reckoned to oldness, and is even elsewhere noted by the apostle under this title, who, after the Son of God was revealed in him to evangelize Him among the nations, did not at once refer it to flesh and blood — that is, to circumcision, that is, to Judaism — as he writes to the Galatians.

51. But it will now stand for all — even for the apostle himself, to be acquitted in truth of the greatest inconsiderateness — what we have reserved for the close: if so abruptly, as some would have it, with closed eyes, as they say, without distinction, without condition, he thrust out all flesh and blood everywhere from the kingdom of God — surely from the very royal palace of the heavens too, since there even now Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, man, though God, the last Adam, though the primary word, flesh and blood, though purer than ours, yet the same in substance and in form in which He ascended, such also to descend, as the angels affirm — to be recognized, namely, by those who pierced Him through. He, called the sequester of God and of men, out of the deposit of either party committed to Him keeps in Himself the deposit of the flesh too, the earnest of the whole sum. For as He left us the earnest of the spirit, so too He received from us the earnest of the flesh, and bore it into heaven, the pledge of the whole sum to be one day brought together thither. Be secure, flesh and blood: you have usurped both heaven and the kingdom of God in Christ. Or, if they deny that you are in Christ, let them deny too that Christ is in heaven — they who have denied heaven to you. "So neither," he says, "shall corruption have incorruption by inheritance." Not that you should reckon flesh and blood to be corruption, when they are rather themselves liable to corruption — through death, namely; since it is death that not only corrupts but even consumes flesh and blood. But because he had decreed that the works of flesh and blood cannot attain the kingdom of God, the more to exaggerate this, he took away the inheritance of incorruption from corruption itself too — that is, from death, to which the works of flesh and blood are profitable. For a little after he expressed in a manner the death even of death itself: "Death is devoured," he says, "into contention. Where, O death, is your sting? where, O death, is your power?" But the sting of death is delinquency; this will be the corruption. But the power of delinquency is the law — that other one, without doubt, which he constituted in his members warring against the law of his mind, that very force of delinquency, namely, against the will. For above too he says that the last enemy, death, is made void. In this way too corruption shall not attain the inheritance of incorruption — that is, neither shall death endure. When and how is it to fail? When in an atom, in a momentary motion of the eye, at the last trumpet, the dead too shall rise incorrupt. Who these, if not those before corrupt — that is, bodies, that is, flesh and blood? "And we shall be transmuted." From what condition, if not that in which we shall be caught? "For this corruptive must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." What mortal, if not the flesh? what corruptive, if not the blood? And lest you think the apostle to mean otherwise — providing for you, and labouring that you understand it said of the flesh, when he says "this corruptive" and "this mortal" — he says it holding the very skin. Surely he could not have pronounced "this" except of a subject, except of something present. It is a word of bodily demonstration. But one thing is "corruptive," another "corruption," and one thing "mortal," another "mortality." For one thing is that which suffers, another that which makes to suffer. So those things which suffer corruption and mortality, that is, flesh and blood, must of necessity suffer also incorruption and immortality.

52. Let us now see with what body he disputes the dead are to come. And it is well that he burst out at once to show, as though someone should ask of this kind. "Fool," he says, "what you sow is not made alive unless it has died." This, then, let it now be established from the example of the seed, that no other flesh is made alive than that very one which shall have died; and so the following things will shine forth. For nothing may be understood against the rule of the example; lest, because it follows, "And what you sow, you sow not the body that shall be," you therefore think another body shall rise than that which by dying is sown. For the rest, you have fallen away from the example. For never, wheat being sown and dissolved in the earth, does barley burst forth, and not that very kind of grain and the same nature and quality and form. In short, whence, if not that very thing? for corruption too is that very thing, since it is its own. For does he not also suggest how the body that shall be is not sown — saying, "But a bare grain, perchance, of wheat, or of some such thing; but God gives it a body as He wills"? Surely to that grain which he says is sown bare. Surely, you say. Then it is safe, to which God has to give a body. But how is it safe, if it is nowhere, if it does not rise, if that very thing does not rise? If it does not rise, it is not safe. If it is not safe either, it cannot receive a body from God. But indeed it is established in every way to be safe. To what end, then, shall God give it a body as He wills — it having surely its own body, that bare one — except that it may rise now not bare? Therefore that will be added which is built over the body, nor is that destroyed over which it is built, but increased. But that is safe which is increased. For the grain only is sown, without the vesture of a husk, without the foundation of an ear, without the defence of a beard, without the pride of a stalk. But it rises increased with abundance, built up with structure, framed in order, defended with adornment, and clothed throughout. These are to it a body from God, "another" — into which it is changed not by abolition, but by enlargement. "And to each of the seeds He has reckoned its own body" — not its own, that is, not its former — so that then that too be its own which it acquires from God from without. Keep, then, to the example, and preserve its mirror for the flesh, believing the same to bear fruit which is sown, the same, even if fuller, not another, even if returning otherwise. For it too shall receive the augmentation and adornment which God shall have willed to add to it according to merits. Without doubt to this he directs, "Not all flesh is the same flesh" — not to deny the communion of substance, but to make even the prerogative — reducing to a difference a body of honour, not of kind. To this end he subjoins also figured examples of animals and of elements. "One flesh of man" — that is, of the servant of God, who truly is man; "another of cattle" — that is, of the heathen (of whom the prophet too: "Man has been likened," he says, "to the irrational cattle"); "another flesh of birds" — that is, of the martyrs, who strive toward higher things; "another of fishes" — that is, of those for whom the water of baptism suffices. So too of the super-celestial bodies he commits his arguments. "One glory of the sun" — that is, of Christ; "and another of the moon" — that is, of the church; "and another of the stars" — that is, of the seed of Abraham. "For star differs from star in glory" — and "earthly and heavenly bodies," the Jew, namely, and the Christian. For the rest, if not figuratively, vainly enough did he set the flesh of mules and kites and the bodies of the heavenly luminaries beside human ones — they not pertaining to a comparison of condition, just as not to the consequence of resurrection. Finally, when through these he had concluded a difference of glory, not of substance, "So," he says, "is the resurrection of the dead too." How? Differing not in any other thing, but in glory alone. For again, recalling the resurrection to the same substance, and looking once more to the grain, "It is sown," he says, "in corruption, it rises in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it rises in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises in power; it is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual." Certainly nothing else rises than what is sown, nor is anything else sown than what is dissolved in the ground, nor is anything else dissolved in the ground than the flesh. For this the sentence of God dashed down: "Earth you are, and into earth you shall go" — because it too had been taken from the earth. Hence too the apostle conceived to say that it is sown, when it is rendered back into the earth, because for seeds too the earth is a place of safekeeping, to be there laid down and thence sought back. And therefore he reseals it, impressing, "For so it is written" — lest you think it anything else to be sown than "Into earth you shall go, from which you were taken"; so lest of any other than the flesh; for so it is written.

53. But "a natural body" some argue to be the soul, that they may call it away from the return of the flesh. Further, since it is established and fixed that the body shall rise which was sown, they will be challenged to the exhibition of the thing itself. Either let them show the soul sown after death — that is, dead, that is, dashed to the ground, scattered, dissolved (which is decreed upon it by God not at all) — let them set forth its corruption and dishonour, its weakness, that it too may rise unto incorruption and unto glory and unto power. But indeed in Lazarus, the chief example of resurrection, the flesh lay in weakness, the flesh had almost rotted into dishonour, the flesh meanwhile stank into corruption, and yet Lazarus rose as flesh — with the soul indeed, but the incorrupt one, which no one had bound with linen bands, no one had laid in a sepulchre, no one had now perceived to stink, no one had seen for four days sown. The whole condition, the whole issue of Lazarus the flesh of all men too experiences today, but the soul of none. In what, then, the pen of the apostle is found — concerning which it is established that he speaks — that will be both a natural body, when it is sown, and a spiritual, when it is raised up. For that you may so understand, he stretches out his hand still further, likewise weaving anew from the authority of the same Scripture the making of the first man Adam into a living soul. If Adam was the first man, but the flesh was man before the soul, without doubt the flesh shall have been made into a living soul. Further, when, being into a soul, it was a body, surely it was made a natural body. What would they have it called but that it was made through a soul, but that before the soul it was not, but that after the soul it shall not be — except when it rises? For, the soul received again, it is again made a natural body, that it may become a spiritual. For nothing rises except what was. So, whence it fits the flesh to be called a natural body, thence it in no way fits the soul. For the flesh is a body before it is a natural body. For having been animated afterward, it was made a natural body. But the soul, although a body — yet because it is itself a body not animated, but rather animating — cannot be called a natural body, nor become what it makes. For it makes the natural to be accidental to another; but, itself not accidental to another, how shall it make itself natural? As, therefore, before the natural body the flesh received the soul, so afterward, putting on the spiritual, it receives the spirit. This order the apostle, disposing it in Adam too and in Christ, rightly distinguishes, as in the heads of the distinction itself. And when he calls Christ the last Adam, recognize hence that He laboured with all the powers of His doctrine unto the resurrection of the flesh, not of the soul. For if the first man Adam too was flesh, not soul — who was at last made into a living soul — and the last Adam, Christ, is therefore Adam because man, therefore man because flesh, not because soul — and so he subjoins, "Not first that which is spiritual, but that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual," according to either Adam. Does it seem to you that he distinguishes the natural body and the spiritual body in the same flesh, whose distinction in either Adam — that is, in either man — he laid the foundation of? For of what substance do Christ and Adam bring forth between themselves? Of the flesh, namely — though also of the soul. But under the name of flesh both are man; for first the flesh is man. From it too they could admit an order, that one be reckoned the first, the other the last man — that is, Adam. For the rest, diverse things cannot be disposed into an order, at least of substance. For of place or time or condition perhaps they can. But here, of the substance of the flesh, they are called the first and the last, as again "the first man of the earth, and the second from heaven"; because, even if from heaven according to the spirit, yet man according to the flesh. And so, since the order in either Adam fits the flesh, not the soul — that the first man be distinguished into a living soul, the last into a quickening spirit — equally their distinction prejudged a distinction of the flesh; so that it was said of the flesh, "Not first that which is spiritual, but that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual," and so the same is to be understood above too: "And what is sown a natural body, and what rises a spiritual body," because "not first that which is spiritual, but that which is natural," because the first Adam into a soul, the last Adam into a spirit. The whole is of man, the whole of the flesh, since of man. What, then, shall we say? Has not the flesh even now the spirit from faith? — so that it must be asked how it is said to be sown a natural body. Plainly here too the flesh has received the spirit, but the earnest; the soul, however, not the earnest, but the fullness. And so for this reason too, under the name of the greater substance, it was named a natural body, in which it is sown, being accordingly through the fullness of the spirit moreover spiritual, in which it is raised up. What wonder, if it is named rather from that with which it is filled than from that with which it is sprinkled?

54. So very many questions are suborned from the occasions of words, as also from the communities of words. For because that too is set down in the apostle, "That the mortal be devoured by life" — the flesh, namely — they snatch even "devouring" unto the perdition of the flesh — as though we are not said to "devour" gall and grief, that is, to hide and cover and contain them within ourselves. In short, since that too is written, "This mortal must put on immortality," it is shown how the mortal is devoured by life — while, clothed with immortality, it is hidden and covered and contained within, not while it is consumed and lost. "Then death too," you say, "shall be safe, when it has been devoured." Therefore discern, according to the senses, the community of words, and you understand wholly. For one thing is death, another the mortal. So in one way death shall be devoured, in another the mortal. Death does not grasp immortality, but the mortal does. In short, it is even written that this mortal must put on immortality. How, then, does it grasp it, while devoured by life? How is it devoured by life, while received and reduced and included into it? For the rest, death is rightly devoured into destruction, because it too devours unto this. "Death," he says, "devoured by prevailing, and therefore is devoured into contention. Where, O death, is your sting? where, O death, is your contention?" Accordingly life too — death's rival, namely — through contention shall devour unto salvation what through its own contention death had devoured unto destruction.

55. Although, therefore, by proving that the flesh shall rise we prove by this very thing that no other shall rise than that which is in question, yet the several questions and their causes demand their own encounters too, though already cut down from another side. We will interpret, then, more fully both the force and the reason of transmutation, which commonly ministers the presumption of another flesh about to rise — as though to be transmuted is to cease to be wholly and to perish from the former. But transmutation must be distinguished from every argument of perdition. For one thing is transmutation, another perdition. Further, it is not another, if the flesh shall be so transmuted as to perish. But it shall perish, transmuted, if it shall not itself remain in the transmutation which shall have been exhibited in the resurrection. For as it perishes if it does not rise, so too if it indeed rises, but is withdrawn into a transmutation, it equally perishes. For it shall equally not be, as if it had not risen. And how foolish, if it rise to this end, that it be not — which could not have risen, and not be, because it had now begun not to be! Things diverse shall in no way be mingled, change and perdition — in their works diverse. The one perishes, the other changes. As, therefore, what is perished is not changed, so what is changed is not perished. For to have perished is wholly not to be what one was; to have been changed is to be otherwise. Further, while it is otherwise, it can be that very thing; for it has being, which does not perish. For it has suffered change, not perdition. And so a thing can both be transmuted and none the less be itself — as the whole man too in this age is indeed himself in substance, yet is in many ways transmuted — in habit and in very corpulence and in health and in condition and in dignity and in age, in pursuit, in business, in craft, in resources, in seats, in laws, in manners — and yet loses nothing of the man, nor is so made another that he ceases to be the same; nay, is not made another, but other. This form of transmutation the divine documents too attest. The hand of Moses is changed, and indeed after the likeness of a dead one — bloodless and whitened, cold; but, heat recovered and colour poured back, it is the same flesh and blood. His face too is afterward changed with a brightness not to be gazed on. But Moses was likewise he who was not seen. So too Stephen had now put on the angelic height, but no other knees sank under the stoning. The Lord too, in the recess of the mountain, had changed even His garments with light, but had kept His lineaments recognizable to Peter; where also Moses and Elijah — the one in the image of flesh not yet recovered, the other in the truth of flesh not yet deceased — yet taught that the same condition of the body endures even in glory. Instructed by which example Paul too says, "Who transfigured the body of our humility, conformable to the body of His glory." But if you defend both transfiguration and conversion as a passing-over of each one's substance, then Saul too, converted into another man, departed from his own body, and Satan himself, when he is transfigured into an angel of light, loses his own quality. I think not. So too in the event of the resurrection it will be lawful to be changed, converted, reformed, with the safety of the substance.

56. For how absurd, how unjust indeed — but both how unworthy of God — that one substance should labour, another be discharged with the wage; that this flesh should be torn by martyrdoms, but another be crowned; likewise, on the contrary, that this flesh should wallow in filth, but another be condemned! Is it not better at once to lead away all faith from the hope of resurrection than to make sport of the gravity and justice of God? Marcion to be raised up for Valentinus? — since it is not credible that the mind or the memory or the conscience of the present-day man should be abolished through that exchanging garment of immortality and incorruption — the emolument and fruit of resurrection being thus idle, and the state of the divine judgment on either side. If I shall not remember that I am he who deserved, how shall I give glory to God? how shall I sing Him a new song, not knowing that I am he who owes the grace? But why is the transmutation of the flesh alone excepted, and not of the soul too at the same time, which in all things presided over the flesh? How is it that the same soul which in this flesh ran through the whole order of life, which in this flesh learned God and put on Christ and sowed the hope of salvation, should in some other flesh I know not which reap the fruit? Truly that flesh is most gracious, for which life shall stand free of charge. But if the soul too shall not be changed, then there is no resurrection of the soul either; for not even it shall be believed to have risen, if it has not risen another.

57. Hence now comes that subtlety of vulgar incredulity. "If," they say, "the very same substance is recalled with its own form, line, quality, then with its remaining marks too. And so the blind and the lame and the paralytic, and as anyone has departed marked, so too he shall return." What now, even if you so disdain to attain so great a grace, of whatever kind, from God? For do you not even now, admitting the salvation of the soul alone, ascribe the same to halved men? What is it to believe the resurrection, except to believe it entire? For if the flesh shall be repaired from dissolution, much more shall it be recalled from vexation. By lesser things they prejudge the greater. Is not the truncation or blunting of any member a death of the member? If universal death is rescinded by resurrection, what of the partial? If we are transmuted into glory, how much more into soundness? The maiming of bodies is an accidental thing; integrity is proper. In this we are born. Even if we are vexed in the womb, it is now a passion of the man. The kind is before the mischance. As life is conferred by God, so too it is restored. As we receive it, such too we recover it. We are rendered back to nature, not to injury; we revive as we are born, not as we are harmed. If God does not raise up the whole, He does not raise up the dead. For what dead man is whole, even if he dies whole? Who is sound who is breathless? What body is unharmed, when slain, when cold, when grown pale, when stiff, when a corpse? When is a man more disabled than when he is wholly so? When more paralytic than when immovable? So to be raised up a dead man is nothing else than to be made whole, lest in that part he be still dead in which he has not risen. God is fit to remake what He made. This His power and bounty He has now sufficiently pledged in Christ — nay, even shown — not only the raiser of the flesh, but also its reintegrator. And so the apostle too: "And the dead," he says, "shall rise incorrupt." How, if not whole — they who before were corrupt as much by the vice of health as by the senility of burial? For above too, proposing both — that this corruptive must put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality — he did not repeat the sentence, but charged a difference. For dividing immortality unto the rescinding of death, incorruption unto the obliteration of corruption, he tempered the one to the resurrection, the other to the reintegration. I think, moreover, that to the Thessalonians too he promised the integrity of the whole substance. And so neither henceforth shall the ruins of bodies be feared. Integrity, whether preserved or restored, will be able to lose nothing — since to it even what it had lost, if it had lost anything, is given back. For prescribing still that the flesh shall undergo the same sufferings, if it be said to rise the same, you rashly defend nature against her Lord, you impiously assert law against grace — as though it were not lawful for the Lord God both to change nature and to preserve it without law. How, then, do we read, "The things impossible with men are possible with God," and, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world, that He may confound the wisdom of the world"? I ask you — if you should change your slave by liberty, since the same flesh and soul shall remain which before had been liable to scourges and fetters and brands, ought he therefore to suffer those same things? I think not. Rather he is honoured with the brightness of a white robe and the honour of a golden ring and the name and tribe and table of a patron. Permit this power to God too — by the force of transmutation to reform that one's condition, not its nature — while both the sufferings are taken away and defences are conferred. So the flesh shall indeed remain even after the resurrection, so far passible as it is itself, as it is the same — yet so far impassible as it is for this very thing manumitted by the Lord, that it may no longer be able to suffer.

58. "Eternal gladness," says Isaiah, "upon their head." Nothing eternal, except after the resurrection. "Pain and mourning and groaning," he says, "shall flee from them." Accordingly too the angel to John: "And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes" — surely from those same eyes which had before wept, and which could still weep, did not the divine indulgence dry up every shower of tears. And again: "For God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death thus far" — therefore corruption thus far too; accordingly driven away by incorruption, just as death by immortality. If pain and mourning and groaning and death itself come from the injuries of both soul and flesh, how shall they be taken away, unless the causes have ceased — namely the injuries of flesh and soul? Where are adverse mischances with God? or where the hostile assaults with Christ? where the demonic onsets with the Holy Spirit — the devil himself with his angels now plunged into the fires? where necessity, or what is called fortune or fate? what blow to the raised-up after pardon? what wrath to the reconciled after grace? what weakness after power? what infirmity after salvation? That the garments and sandals of the sons of Israel remained for those forty years unworn and unwasted; that even in the bodies themselves justice fixed the easy growths of nails and hairs to a fitness of habit and dignity, lest even an enormity of corruption be reckoned; that the Babylonian fires injured neither the tiaras nor the trousers of the three brothers, though foreign to Jews; that Jonah, devoured by the beast of the sea, in whose belly shipwrecks were being digested, after three days is spat out unharmed; that today Enoch and Elijah — not yet discharged by resurrection, because not yet having undergone death, yet translated from the world, and these very ones now candidates of eternity — learn an immunity of the flesh from every vice and from every loss and from every injury and contumely: to what faith do they set a seal of testimony, except that by which it ought to be believed that these are documents of future integrity? "For these were figures of us," the apostle being author, "which were written" — that we may both believe the Lord more powerful than every law of bodies, and surely the more the preserver of the flesh, whose very garments, very sandals, He protected.

59. "But the future age," you say, "is of another disposition and an eternal one; therefore the substance of this age, not eternal, cannot possess a different one." Plainly, if man is on account of the future disposition, and not the disposition on account of man. But indeed the apostle, writing, "Whether the world, or life, or death, or things future, or things present, all are yours," has constituted the same men heirs even of things future. Isaiah grants you nothing, saying, "All flesh is grass," and elsewhere, "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God." He distinguished issues, not substances. For who has not set the judgment of God in a double sentence of salvation and penalty? "All flesh," therefore, "is grass" — that which is appointed to fire; and "all flesh shall see the salvation of God" — that which is ordained to salvation. I know of myself that I have neither committed adulteries with another flesh, nor now strive toward continence with another flesh. If anyone is carrying about double privy parts, he can now both take away the grass of the unclean flesh and reserve for himself alone that which shall see the salvation of God. But since the same prophet also shows the nations now reckoned as it were dust and spittle, now about to hope and believe in the name and in the arm of the Lord — are we deceived about the nations too? and are some indeed about to believe, others reckoned into dust, out of a diversity of substance? But even Christ, beyond the ocean, and from this heaven which lies upon us, shone forth the true light to the nations. And the Valentinians themselves have learned to err here; nor will the form of the believing nations be other than that of the unbelieving too — of flesh, of soul. As, therefore, He distinguished the same nations not by kind, but by lot, so too the fleshes — which in those very nations are one substance — He disjoined not by material, but by wage.

60. But behold — that they may still exaggerate the controversy against the flesh, against that very same flesh most of all — he argues also from the offices of the members; either saying that they too ought to remain in their works and fruits, as ascribed to the same corpulence, or, because it is agreed that the offices of the members are to depart, that they may scrape away the corpulence too, whose perseverance, namely, is not to be believed, as being without members, because members are not to be believed without offices either. "For to what end now," they say, "this cavern of the mouth and station of the teeth and slope of the throat and crossways of the stomach and gulf of the belly and the tangled length of the intestines, when there shall be no place for eating and drinking? to what end do members of this kind admit, subdue, roll down, divide, digest, expel? to what end the hands themselves and feet and all the labouring limbs, when even the care of food shall cease? to what end the kidneys, conscious of seeds, and the rest of the genitals of either sex, and the stables of conceptions, and the founts of the breasts, when coition and offspring and rearing shall depart? finally, to what end the whole body, the whole, namely, about to be idle?" To these things, then, we have laid the foundation that the dispositions of things future and present ought not to be confused, transmutation being about to intervene then; and now we build on that these offices of the members hold together for the necessities of this life so long until that very life too be transferred from temporality into eternity, as the natural body into the spiritual, while this mortal puts on immortality and this corruptive incorruption; and that very life freed then from necessities, the members too shall be freed from offices — yet not on that account shall they not be. For although they be freed from offices, yet they are retained for tokens, that each may carry back through the body according as he has done. For the tribunal of God demands man safe; but safe he cannot be without members, of whose not offices, but substances, he consists. Unless perhaps you will assert a ship safe without a keel, without a prow, without a stern, without the soundness of the whole frame. And yet a ship scattered by a storm or dissolved by rot, all its members brought back and recured, we have often beheld the same, glorying even in the title of restoration. Are we tormented over the workmanship and judgment and right of God? Further, if a rich and bountiful master, indulging his own affection or glory, willed the restoration of the ship only to work this far, will you therefore deny the former frame necessary to it, as though henceforth idle, since restoration alone, without operation, befits the safety of the ship? Therefore it suffices to learn only this: whether the Lord, in appointing man to salvation, has appointed the flesh; whether He wishes the same to be anew, which you may not, from the future idleness of the members, prescribe to be unable to be anew. For a thing may be anew and none the less be idle; but it cannot be said to be idle if it is not. But indeed if it is, it can also not be idle; for nothing with God shall be idle.

61. But you have received, O man, a mouth for devouring and drinking: why not rather for speaking, that you may differ from the other animals? why not rather for preaching God, that you may even preside over men? In short, Adam named the animals before he plucked from the tree, prophesied even before he devoured. But you have received teeth for gnawing meat: why not rather for crowning your every gape and opening? why not rather for tempering the beats of the tongue, for marking with their stop the articulations of the voice? In short, hear that there are even toothless men, and see how you require the instrument of teeth too for the honour of the mouth. Lower openings are bored in man and in woman, surely by which lusts may flow: why are they not rather cultivated as about to flow off? There is still in women within a place where seeds may be gathered; or is it where the burdens of blood may withdraw, which the more sluggish sex does not suffice to shake off? For these things too must be said, since they bark in mockery, of set purpose to flood out the resurrection — what offices of members they wish, and how they wish, and of whom they wish — not reconsidering that the very causes of necessity shall then be idle: of food, hunger; and of drink, thirst; and of coition, generation; and of operation, livelihood. For death taken away, neither the props of food shall be a burden to the members, as defences of life, nor the equipment of generation. For the rest, even today it is lawful to be idle of intestines and privy parts. For forty days Moses and Elijah, discharging a fast, were fed by God alone. For even then it was being dedicated, "Man lives not on bread, but on the word of God." Behold the lineaments of future virtue. We too, as we can, excuse the mouth from food, even withdraw the sex from intercourse. How many voluntary eunuchs? how many virgins married to Christ? how many barren of either nature, built with unfruitful genitals? For if even here it is now to be idle, both of the offices and of the emoluments of the members, by a temporal idleness, as in a temporal disposition, and yet man is no less safe — accordingly, man being safe, and indeed the more then, as in an eternal disposition, the more shall we not desire those things which we have already grown accustomed here not to desire.

62. But to this discussion the Lord's pronouncement sets an end. "They shall be," He says, "as the angels." If not by marrying, because not by dying — surely also by sinking under no like necessity of the bodily condition — since the angels too were sometime as men, eating and drinking and offering their feet to the washing; for they had put on a human surface, their own substance safe within. Therefore, if angels, made as men, took up in the same substance of spirit a carnal handling, why should not men too, made as angels, undergo in the same substance of flesh a spiritual disposition — no more liable to the solemnities of the flesh under an angelic garment than the angels then to the solemnities of the spirit under a human one? — nor therefore not about to remain in the flesh, because not in the solemnities of the flesh; since neither did the angels therefore not remain in the spirit, because not in the solemnities of the spirit. In short, He did not say, "They shall be angels," lest He deny them men, but, "as the angels," that He might preserve them men. He did not take away the substance to which He attributed the likeness.

63. The flesh, therefore, shall rise again — and indeed all of it, and indeed the very same, and indeed entire. It is on deposit, wheresoever, with God, through that most faithful sequester of God and men, Jesus Christ, who shall render both God to man and man to God, the spirit to the flesh and the flesh to the spirit. He has now confederated both in Himself; He has matched the bride to the bridegroom and the bridegroom to the bride. For even if anyone shall contend that the soul is the bride, yet even in the name of dowry the flesh shall follow the soul. The soul shall not be a prostitute, to be received naked by the bridegroom. It has its equipment, its adornment, its bond-servant, the flesh, which shall accompany it as a foster-sister. But the flesh is the bride, which also in Christ Jesus contracted the spirit for bridegroom through blood. The downfall of this, which you suppose, know to be a withdrawal. The soul is not set apart alone. The flesh too has its withdrawals meanwhile — in waters, in fires, in birds, in beasts; when it seems to be dissolved into these, it is, as it were, poured into vessels. If the vessels themselves too fail, when out of them too it has flowed into its mother earth, it is reabsorbed as it were by a roundabout way, that from her it may be presented anew — an Adam to hear from the Lord, "Behold, Adam is become as one of us" — then truly possessed of the evil which he escaped, and of the good which he gained. Why, O soul, do you envy the flesh? No one is so near to you, whom you should love after the Lord; no one is more your brother, who is born with you even in God. You ought rather to have entreated resurrection for it; through you, perhaps, it sinned. But it is no wonder if you have hated her whose author too you have spurned — whom you have grown accustomed either to deny or to change even in Christ — accordingly corrupting even the very word of God, who was made flesh, either by pen or by interpretation, drawing over besides the secrets of apocrypha, the fables of blasphemy. But indeed God almighty, against these inventions of incredulity and perversity, by His most provident grace pouring out in the last days from His spirit upon all flesh, upon His servants and handmaids, has both animated the labouring faith of the carnal resurrection and purged the former instruments of every obscurity of ambiguity by the manifest lights of words and senses. For because heresies had to be, that the approved might be made manifest, and these could not dare without some occasions of the Scriptures, therefore the former instruments seem to have ministered to them certain materials — yet themselves refutable by those same letters. But since it was not fitting that the Holy Spirit should dissemble, but that He should overflow even with words of this kind, which should scatter the seeds of no heretics' cunning — nay, should pluck up even their old turfs — therefore He has now dispelled all former ambiguities, and whatever parables they will, by an open and perspicuous preaching of the whole sacrament, overflowing through the new prophecy that streams down from the Paraclete. If you drink His founts, you will be able to thirst for no doctrine; no ardour of questions will consume you; by drinking on every side, you will cool also the resurrection of the flesh.