Against Celsus 5.18

Since he has further mocked the resurrection of the flesh, which is preached in the churches but understood more clearly by the more intelligent, and there is no need to set out again his passage, already quoted once, come, let us set out and present a few things on this problem too, as best we can, aiming at those who will read, since this is a defence written against a man alien to the faith, for the sake of those who are still infants and tossed to and fro and carried about "by every wind of doctrine, by human trickery, by craftiness in deceitful scheming." Neither we nor the divine writings say that those who died long ago will rise from the earth and live in the very same flesh, having undergone no change for the better; Celsus slanders us in saying this. For we hear many scriptures speaking about the resurrection in a way worthy of God, but it is enough for the present to cite Paul's passage from the First Letter to the Corinthians, where he says: "But someone will say: How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each of the seeds its own body." See how he says in these words that it is "not the body that is to be" that is sown, but that from what is sown and thrown bare onto the earth, with God giving "to each of the seeds its own body," a kind of resurrection takes place, an ear rising from the seed cast down, in such things as these, or, as it were, in mustard, or, with a larger tree, in an olive stone or one of the fruit trees.