On the Resurrection of the Flesh 14–23

Such, meanwhile, are the outlines of the divine powers, God having worked in parables no less than he has spoken; let us come now to his very edicts and decrees, by which above all we are arranging a just division of the subject. For we began from the authority of the flesh, whether it is such that salvation befits it after it has decayed; then we went on to the power of God, whether it is great enough to be able to confer salvation on a thing that has decayed. Now, if we have proved both, I would have you inquire also about the cause, whether there is one so worthy as to claim the resurrection of the flesh as necessary and in every way owed to reason; for it remains to say: even if the flesh is capable of restoration, even if the divinity is able to restore it, a cause for restoration must also be at hand. Receive, then, the cause as well, you who learn that with God there is both the best and also the just: best of his own, just on our account. For had man not sinned, he would have known God only as best, from the property of his nature. But now he experiences him as just as well, from the necessity of the cause; yet in this very thing God is best, while he is also just. For in showing justice both by helping the good and by punishing the evil, he makes both sentences serve the good, avenging the one, rewarding the other. But with Marcion you will learn more fully whether this is the whole of God. Meanwhile, he is rightly judge because Lord, rightly Lord because author, rightly author because God. Hence that heretic too, whoever he is: “Rightly not judge, for not Lord; rightly not Lord, for not author.” I do not know now whether he is God, who is neither author, which God is, nor Lord, which the author is. If, then, it is most fitting for God, as Lord and author, to appoint a judgment upon man concerning this very thing, whether or not he took care to acknowledge and observe his Lord and author, that judgment will surely be carried out. This will be the whole cause, indeed the necessity, of the resurrection, most fitting, of course, to God who appoints the judgment. Consider, as to how it is arranged, whether the divine sentence presides over the judging of both human substances, the soul as well as the flesh. For what is fit to be judged will be fit also to be raised. We say, first, that the judgment of God must be believed full and complete, since it is final and thereafter everlasting; so that it is also just, lacking in nothing; so that it is also worthy of God, full and complete in proportion to his great patience. But the fullness and completeness of judgment consists only in the presentation of the whole man. And the whole man appears from the union of both substances, and therefore he must be presented in both, since he must be judged whole, who certainly did not live except as whole. As he lived, then, so will he be judged, because he must be judged concerning what he lived. For life is the cause of judgment, to be reckoned up through as many substances as it was carried out by.

Come now, let our adversaries first sever the bond of flesh and soul in the conduct of life, so that they may then dare to sever it in the reward of life too. Let them deny partnership in the works, so that they may rightly deny it in the wages also. Let the flesh have no share in the sentence if it had none in the cause. Let the soul alone be recalled, if it alone departs. But it no more departs alone than it alone ran through that from which it departs, this life, I mean. So far is the soul from passing through life alone that we do not remove even thoughts, though alone, though not carried into effect through the flesh, from partnership with the flesh, since what is done by the soul in the heart is done in the flesh, with the flesh, and through the flesh. This very part of the flesh, the citadel of the soul, the Lord also takes to task when he rebukes thoughts: “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” and “Whoever has looked in order to lust has already committed adultery in his heart.” So thought, even without deed and without effect, is an act of the flesh. But even if the governing seat of the senses, which is called the ἡγεμονικόν, is enshrined in the brain, or in the space between the eyebrows, or wherever the philosophers please, the whole thinking-place of the soul will be flesh. The soul is never without the flesh, as long as it is in the flesh; it does nothing without that without which it does not exist. Ask further whether thoughts too are not carried on through the flesh, since they are discerned outwardly through the flesh. Let the soul turn something over: the face gives the sign; the countenance is the mirror of all intentions. Let them deny partnership in deeds to that to which they cannot deny partnership in thoughts. They, indeed, list the misdeeds of the flesh: then as a sinner it will be held for punishment. We, however, set against them the virtues of the flesh as well: then, having done well, it will be held for reward. And even if it is the soul that acts and impels in all things, the obedience belongs to the flesh. It is not lawful to believe God either an unjust or an idle judge: unjust if he bars the partner in good works from the rewards, idle if he separates the partner in evil ones from the punishments; since human justice is held the more complete the more it demands also the agents of each deed, neither sparing nor grudging them, but letting them share with the principals the fruit of either penalty or favour.

But when we assign command to the soul and obedience to the flesh, we must take care that they do not overturn this too with another argument, wishing to place the flesh in the soul's service in some other way, not as a minister, lest they be forced to acknowledge it as a partner too. For they will say that ministers and partners have the choice of serving and of sharing and power of their own will in both, being men themselves; that they therefore share merits with the principals to whom they have freely lent their work; but that the flesh, knowing nothing and feeling nothing by itself, having no willing or unwilling of its own, appears rather as a vessel of the soul, as an instrument, not as a minister. So, they say, the judgment concerns the soul alone, how it used the vessel of the flesh, while the vessel itself is not liable to sentence, since neither is a cup condemned if someone has mixed poison in it, nor a sword sentenced to the beasts if someone has committed robbery with it. So then the flesh is innocent in that respect, that evil works will not be charged to it, and nothing prevents it from being saved under the title of innocence. For even if good works are not credited to it, any more than evil ones, it better befits divine kindness to set the innocent free. For reward he owes to those who do good; but it belongs to the best to offer even what is not owed. And yet a cup (I do not say a poisoned one, into which some death has belched, but one tainted by the breath of a lewd woman, or a chief priest of Cybele, or a gladiator, or an executioner), I ask, do you condemn it less than their kisses? Even one clouded with our own dirt, or not mixed to our liking, we are used to dashing down, the more to vent our anger on the slave. And a sword drunk with robberies: who would not banish it from his whole house, not to say from his bedroom, not to say from its place at his head, presuming, of course, that he would dream of nothing but the grudges of the souls pressing on and troubling the bedfellow of their blood? But on the other hand, a cup with a good conscience, commended for the diligence of its service, will be adorned with its drinker's garlands too or honoured with a sprinkling of flowers; and a sword bloodied in war, a better killer, will be repaid with praise by consecration. So one can fix a sentence even on vessels and instruments, so that they too share in the merits of their masters and principals. So much to satisfy this argument too, although the difference of things empties the example. For every vessel or instrument comes into use from outside, a material wholly foreign to the substance of man; but the flesh, conceived, formed, and born together with the soul from the beginning in the womb, is also mingled with it in every operation. For although it is called a vessel by the apostle, which he bids us possess in honour, yet it is also called by him the outer man: that clay, namely, which was first engraved with the title of man, not of cup or sword or any vessel. It is called a vessel by reason of its capacity, by which it receives and contains the soul; but man from the fellowship of nature, which makes it not an instrument in operations but a minister. So it will be held to judgment, though it knows nothing of its own, because it is a part of that which knows, not a piece of furniture. The apostle too, knowing that the flesh does nothing by itself that is not charged to the soul, nevertheless judges the flesh a sinner, lest, because it seems to be driven by the soul, it be thought free from judgment. So too, when he enjoins praiseworthy works on the flesh (“Glorify and lift up God in your body”), sure that these efforts also are carried out by the soul, he still commands them to the flesh because he promises it the fruit as well. Otherwise neither reproach would have befitted it if the fault were another's, nor exhortation if the glory were foreign to it; for both reproach and exhortation would be empty as regards the flesh if the reward too were empty, which is looked for in the resurrection.

The simpler supporter of our view will think that the flesh must be presented at the judgment for this reason too, that otherwise the soul, being incorporeal, could not undergo the experience of torment or of refreshment. So the crowd thinks. We, however, both declare here and have proved in its own volume that the soul is corporeal, having its own kind of solidity, by which it can both feel and suffer something. For that souls even now are tormented and comforted in the underworld, though naked, though still exiles from the flesh, the example of Lazarus will prove. I have given the adversary occasion, then, to say: “So the soul, having a bodiliness of its own, will suffice of itself for the capacity to suffer and feel, so as not to need the flesh presented.” Yes, it will need it to this extent: not because it cannot feel anything without the flesh, but because it must also feel with the flesh. For as far as it suffices of itself for acting, so far does it suffice for suffering. But for acting it is less than sufficient of itself; for it has of itself only thinking, willing, desiring, and planning, but for carrying out it waits for the work of the flesh. So too for suffering it requires partnership with the flesh, that it may suffer as fully through the flesh as it could not act fully without it. And therefore, for the things in which it suffices of itself, desire, thought, and will, it pays the penalty meanwhile. Now, if these were enough for the full measure of deserts, so that deeds were not required as well, the soul would be wholly sufficient for the completion of judgment, being judged for the things for whose doing it alone had sufficed. But since deeds too are bound up with deserts, and deeds are carried out through the flesh, it is no longer enough for the soul to be comforted or tortured without the flesh for the works of the flesh as well. Even if it has a body, even if it has members, these no more suffice for it to feel completely than to act completely. Therefore it suffers in the underworld in proportion to the way it acted, tasting judgment first, as it was first to lead on to the offence, yet waiting for the flesh as well, so that through the flesh it may also pay for the deeds to which it committed its thoughts. This, in short, will be the reason for the judgment appointed at the last end: that by the presentation of the flesh the whole divine sentence may be completed. Otherwise there would be no waiting until the end, since even now souls receive their foretaste in the underworld.

So far I have used preliminary arguments to fortify the sense of all the Scriptures that promise the renewal of the flesh. Since so many authorities of just pleading support it (I mean the honours of the substance itself, then the powers of God, then examples of them, then the reasons and the necessities of the judgment itself), the Scriptures must surely be understood according to the prior verdicts of so many authorities, not according to the ingenuity of the heretics, which comes from unbelief alone: because it is held incredible that a substance removed by death should be restored, not because it is undeserved by the substance itself, or impossible for God, or unsuited to judgment. Incredible indeed, if it had not been divinely proclaimed; except that even if it had not been proclaimed by God, it ought to have been presumed of our own accord, so that it would have gone unproclaimed only because so many authorities had already decided it. But since it resounds in divine utterances too, it is all the further from being understood otherwise than those authorities require, by which one is persuaded even without divine utterances. Let us see first, then, under what title this hope has been posted. One edict of God, I think, hangs before all: the resurrection of the dead. Two words, ready, clear-cut, clean. I will address these very words and examine to what substance they assign themselves. When I hear that resurrection awaits man, I must ask what part of him has been allotted to fall, since nothing will expect to rise again except what has first fallen down. He who does not know that the flesh falls through death may not know either that it stands through life. Nature pronounces God's sentence: “Earth you are, and into earth you shall go,” and he who does not hear it sees it: there is no death that is not a collapse of the limbs. This lot of the body the Lord too expressed when, himself clothed in the substance, he said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” For he showed to what it belongs to be destroyed, to be dashed down, to lie, and also to be lifted up and raised again (though he was also carrying about a soul troubled even to death, yet not falling through death), for the Scripture says he had spoken of his body. And indeed it is the flesh that is overthrown by death, so that from falling (cadendo) it is thereafter called a corpse (cadauer). The soul, however, does not fall even in name, since it does not collapse in its condition. On the contrary, it is the soul that brings ruin on the body when it is breathed out, as it is the soul that raised it from the earth when it entered. What raised by entering cannot fall; what dashes down by departing cannot collapse. I will put it more closely: the soul does not fall with the body even into sleep; it is not laid low with the flesh even then, but in sleep it is stirred and tossed about; yet it would rest if it lay down. So it does not fall in the reality of death, since it does not collapse in its image. Now consider likewise the next word, “of the dead,” in what substance it resides. Although in this subject we sometimes grant that heretics assign mortality to the soul (so that if a mortal soul is to obtain resurrection, that prejudges that the flesh, no less mortal, will share in resurrection), yet now the proper sense of the word must be claimed for its own lot. By this very fact that resurrection belongs to a thing that falls, that is, the flesh, the same will hold for the name “dead.” So we learn also from Abraham, the father of faith, a man in God's friendship. For when he asked the sons of Heth for a place to bury Sarah, he said: “Give me, then, possession of a tomb among you, and I will bury my dead,” the flesh, of course. For he would not have wanted room to bury a soul, even if the soul were believed mortal and deserved to be called dead. But if “the dead” is the body, then the resurrection, when it is called “of the dead,” will be of bodies.

This examination of the title and of the proclamation itself, defending the plain sense of the words, should serve this purpose: that if the other side causes confusion under cover of figures and riddles, the plainer passages prevail and the more certain rule over the uncertain. For some, having seized on the very customary form of prophetic speech, which is usually allegorical and figurative, though not always, twist even the resurrection of the dead, plainly announced, into an imaginary meaning, asserting that death itself too must be understood spiritually. Death in truth, they say, is not the one in plain view, the separation of flesh and soul, but ignorance of God, through which man, dead to God, has lain in error no less than in a tomb. And so the resurrection too must be claimed as that by which one, having come upon the truth, is re-animated and brought to life again for God, and, the death of ignorance shaken off, breaks out as from the tomb of the old man, since the Lord too likened the scribes and Pharisees to whitewashed tombs. From then on, therefore, those who have obtained the resurrection by faith are with the Lord, since they have put him on in baptism. With this cleverness they have often been accustomed to deceive our people even in conversation, as though they too admitted the resurrection of the flesh. “Woe,” they say, “to him who has not risen in this flesh,” so as not to strike them at once by denying the resurrection outright. But silently, in their own minds, they mean this: “Woe to him who has not come to know the heretical secrets while he is in this flesh”; for this is resurrection among them. And many too, claiming the resurrection from the moment of the soul's departure, interpret coming out of the tomb as escaping from the world, since the world too is the dwelling of the dead, that is, of those who do not know God; or even as coming out of the body itself, since the body too, like a tomb, keeps the soul shut up in the death of worldly life.

Because of conjectures of this kind, then, I will first overthrow their basic assumption, by which they would have the prophets preach everything in images. For if that were so, not even the images themselves could have been distinguished unless realities had also been proclaimed from which the images were drawn. Indeed, if everything is figure, what will that be of which they are figures? How will you hold up a mirror if there is no face anywhere? But so far is everything from being images that there are also realities; nor is everything shadows, there are also bodies; so that even about the Lord himself the most notable things were proclaimed more clearly than daylight. For the virgin conceived in her womb not figuratively, and bore Emmanuel, God with us, not obliquely. And though it was said obliquely that he would receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, it was said plainly that he would come into judgment with the elders and rulers of the people. For the nations raged in the person of Pilate, and the peoples imagined vain things in the person of Israel; the kings of the earth stood up, Herod, and the rulers were gathered together, Annas and Caiaphas, against the Lord and against his Christ. He too was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearer, namely Herod, without a voice (so he did not open his mouth), giving his back to the scourges and his cheeks to blows, and not turning his face from the darts of spittle; reckoned also among the lawless, pierced in hands and feet, suffering the casting of lots for his garment, bitter drinks, and the nodding heads of mockers, valued at thirty pieces of silver by the betrayer. What figures are these in Isaiah, what images in David, what riddles in Jeremiah? Did they foretell even his mighty works in parables? Or were the eyes of the blind not opened, the tongue of the dumb not made clear, the withered hands and loosened knees not strengthened, the lame not leaping like a deer? Even if we are accustomed to interpret these spiritually as well, by comparison with the vices of the soul healed by the Lord, yet since they were also fulfilled in the flesh, they show that the prophets preached in both senses; granted that many of their utterances can be defended as bare and simple and clear of every cloud of allegory: as when they proclaim the downfall of nations and cities, of Tyre and Egypt and Babylon and Idumaea and the ships of Carthage; as when they declare the plagues or pardons of Israel itself, its captivities, its restorations, and the outcome of its final dispersion. Who will interpret these rather than recognize them? The events are contained in the writings, as the writings are read in the events. So the form of prophetic speech is not always, nor in everything, allegorical, but sometimes and in some things.

“If, then, sometimes and in some things,” you say, “why not also in the edict of resurrection, so that it is to be understood spiritually?” Because a great many reasons stand in the way. First, what will so many other divine documents do, which testify to a bodily resurrection so openly as to admit no suspicion of figurative meaning? And surely it is fair, as we laid down above, that the uncertain be judged by the certain and the obscure by the plain, lest amid discord between the certain and the uncertain, the plain and the obscure, faith be scattered, truth be endangered, and the divinity itself be branded as inconsistent. Then, it is not likely that that part of the sacrament on which the whole faith is staked, on which the whole discipline rests, should appear ambiguously announced and obscurely set forth, since the hope of resurrection, unless it were plain about both peril and reward, would persuade no one, least of all to a religion of this kind, exposed to public hatred and hostile indictment. No work is sure whose wage is uncertain; no fear is just whose danger is doubtful. And both the wage and the danger hang on the event of the resurrection. And if prophecy has launched God's decrees and judgments, limited in time, place, and person, against cities, nations, and kings so openly, how could his eternal and universal dispositions for the whole human race have fled from their own light? The greater they are, the clearer they ought to be, so that they might be believed great. And I think neither envy nor deceit nor inconstancy nor seductive artifice can be ascribed to God, the usual means by which the announcement of great matters is made captious.

After this we must look also at those Scriptures which do not allow the resurrection, as these “soul-men” (not to say “spiritual men”) would have it, either to be presumed already here in the recognition of the truth or to be claimed immediately upon departure from life. For since the times of the whole hope have been fixed by the sacred pen (at the coming of Christ, I think), and it may not be settled before then, our prayers sigh for the setting of this age, for the passing away of the world too, for 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 foreshown by signs and portents, shakings of the elements and conflicts of the nations. I would unroll the prophecies if the Lord himself had been silent (except that the prophecies too were the Lord's voice); but it is more that he seals them with his own mouth. Asked by the disciples when the things would come about that he had just then burst out with concerning the end of the temple, he sets out the order of the times: first the Jewish times up to the destruction of Jerusalem, then the common ones up to the close of the age. For after he declared, “And then Jerusalem will be trodden down by the nations, until the times of the nations are fulfilled” (the nations, that is, to be chosen by God and gathered with the remnant of Israel), from there he goes on to proclaim for the world and the age, in accord with Joel and Daniel and the whole council of the prophets, signs to come in the sun and moon and stars, distress of nations, with bewilderment at the roar of the sea, and men fainting for fear and expectation of what threatens the earth. “For the powers of the heavens,” he says, “will be shaken, and then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. But when these things begin to happen, you will come up and lift up your heads, because your redemption has drawn near.” Yet he said that it draws near, not that it is already present; and “when these things begin to happen,” not “when they have happened,” because when they have happened, then our redemption will be present, which until then is said to draw near, lifting and rousing our minds meanwhile to the fruit of hope now close at hand; and to this is joined the parable of the trees growing tender into shoots, the forerunner of the flower and then of the fruit. “So you too, when you see all these things happen, know that the kingdom of God is near. Watch, then, at all times, that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things and to stand before the Son of Man,” surely through the resurrection, when all these things have first taken place. So although it sprouts in the recognition of the mystery, it flowers and bears fruit at the Lord's appearing. Who, then, has roused the Lord so untimely, so prematurely, already from the right hand of God to shatter the earth, as Isaiah says, which, I think, is still whole? Who has already put Christ's enemies under his feet, as David says, as though quicker than the Father, while the whole throng of the populace still shouts, “Christians to the lion!”? Who has seen Jesus descending from heaven such as the apostles saw him ascending, according to the angels' declaration? To this day no tribe after tribe has beaten its breast, recognizing him whom they pierced; no one has yet welcomed Elijah; no one has yet fled from the antichrist; no one has yet wept over the fall of Babylon: and is there already someone who has risen, unless it be a heretic? He, no doubt, has already come out of the tomb of the body, though still liable to fevers and ulcers; he has already trampled his enemies, though he still has to wrestle with the powers of the world; and of course he already reigns, though he still owes to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

The apostle does indeed teach, writing to the Colossians, that we were once dead, alienated and hostile in mind toward the Lord, when we were engaged in the worst works; then buried 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 trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses”; and again: “If you have died with Christ from the elements of the world, why do you pass judgment as though living in the world?” But while he makes us dead spiritually in this way, so as still to acknowledge that we shall one day die bodily too, surely in reckoning us raised in the same way spiritually he equally does not deny that we shall rise bodily too. In short: “If you have risen with Christ,” he says, “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God; set your mind on the things above, not on those below.” So he shows that we rise in mind, by which alone we can as yet reach heavenly things. We would not seek them or set our minds on them if we possessed them. He adds too: “For you have died” (to sins, that is, not to yourselves) “and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” What is hidden, then, has not yet been grasped. So too John: “And it has not yet been made manifest,” he says, “what we shall be. We know that when he is made manifest, we shall be like him.” So far are we from already being what we do not know; we would surely know it if we already were. So in this interval it is a contemplation of hope through faith, not a presentation of it; not possession, but expectation. Of this hope and expectation Paul says to the Galatians: “For we through the Spirit, by faith, await the hope of righteousness.” He does not say “we hold”; and he speaks of the righteousness of God that comes from the judgment by which the reward will be judged. Hanging on this himself, he writes to the Philippians: “if by any means I may attain to the resurrection that is from the dead; not that I have already received it or am perfected.” And certainly he had believed and come to know all the mysteries, the chosen vessel, the teacher of the nations; and yet he adds: “But I press on, if I may grasp that for which I was grasped by Christ.” And further: “I do not think, brothers, that I have grasped it; but one thing: forgetting what lies behind and stretching out to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, for the prize of the calling, by which I may attain”: to the resurrection from the dead, surely, yet in its own time, as he says to the Galatians: “And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in its own time we shall reap”; as also to Timothy about Onesiphorus: “May the Lord grant him to find mercy on that day.” For that day and time he also charges Timothy himself to keep the commandment spotless and irreproachable until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, “which in his own times the blessed and only Sovereign and King of kings will show,” speaking of God. Of these times Peter too says in the Acts: “Repent, then, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come upon us from the presence of God, and he may send the Christ appointed beforehand for us, whom heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things, of which God spoke by the mouth of the holy prophets.”