On the Resurrection of the Flesh 24–34

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 wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus.” And again: “For what is our hope or joy or crown of exultation, if not you also, before our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?” Likewise: “before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.” Teaching them that those who had fallen asleep should be mourned less, he at the same time sets out the times of the resurrection: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so too God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of our Lord, shall not go before those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a command, and with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.” What voice of an archangel, what trumpet of God has yet been heard, unless perhaps in the bedrooms of the heretics? For even if the word of the gospel, which has already called them, can be called the trumpet of God, yet either they will already be dead bodily, so as to have risen (and how are they alive?), or snatched up into the clouds (and how are they here?). Most miserable indeed, as the apostle declared, will they be reckoned who hope in this life only, shutting themselves out, by snatching it beforehand, from what is promised after it, gone astray about the truth no less than Phygelus and Hermogenes. And therefore the majesty of the Holy Spirit, seeing through thoughts of this kind, suggests in that very letter to the Thessalonians: “But concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, there is no need to write to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say ‘Peace’ and ‘All is safe,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them.” And in the second letter, with fuller concern, to the same: “I beseech you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering to him, not to be quickly shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word” (that is, of false prophets) “or by letter” (that is, of false apostles) “as if from us, as though the day of the Lord were at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way; for unless the departure comes first” (of this empire, surely) “and the man of sin is revealed” (that is, the antichrist), “the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above everything that is called god or worship, so that he sits in the temple of God, declaring himself God. Do you not remember that when I was with you I told you these things? And now you know what restrains, so that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of iniquity is already at work; only he who now restrains, until he is taken out of the way.” Who is this but the Roman state, whose departure, divided among ten kings, will bring on the antichrist? “And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearing of his coming, whose coming is according to the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with every deceit of unrighteousness for those who are perishing.”

In the Apocalypse too the order of the times is laid out, which the souls of the martyrs under the altar, crying out for vengeance and judgment, learned to wait for: that first the world must drink its plagues from the bowls of the angels, and that harlot city receive its fitting end from the ten kings, and the beast antichrist with his false prophet make war on the church; and so, the devil meanwhile being banished to the abyss, the privilege of the first resurrection be ordered from the thrones; then, the devil given to the fire, the sentence of the universal resurrection be judged from the books. Since, then, the Scriptures both mark out the state of the last times and place the whole harvest of the Christian hope at the close of the age, it is clear either that the whole of whatever God promises us is fulfilled then, and what the heretics claim already here is empty; or, if the recognition of the mystery is also a resurrection, that is surely believed without prejudice to the one proclaimed at the end. And it follows that by the very fact that this spiritual one is claimed, the bodily one is already decided; because if none were announced for then, this one alone, and that only spiritual, would rightly be claimed; but since one is also proclaimed for the last time, it is recognized as bodily, since a resurrection of the same condition, that is, spiritual, would not also be announced for then, when it ought to be completed either now, without any distinction of times, or then, at the close of all times. So it suits us rather to defend a spiritual resurrection as well, from the entrance of faith, since we acknowledge its fullness at the end of the age.

One thing more I will answer to their earlier proposition about allegorical Scriptures: that we too may claim the bodily resurrection with the support of the figurative style of prophetic speech. For see: the divine sentence at the beginning, pronouncing man earth (“Earth you are, and into earth you shall go”), according to the substance of the flesh, of course, which had been taken from the earth and had first been called man, as we have shown, gives me a rule for interpreting of the flesh too whatever wrath or favour God has decreed upon the earth; since the earth, properly speaking, is not liable to his judgment, having committed nothing good or evil. It was indeed cursed because it drank blood; but even this was a figure of the murderous flesh. For if the earth too is to be helped or harmed for man's sake, so that he may be helped or harmed through the fortunes of his dwelling-place, how much more will he himself pay for what even the earth will suffer for his sake? So when God threatens the earth, I will say that he rather threatens the flesh, and when he promises anything to the earth, I will understand that he rather promises it to the flesh. As in David: “The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice,” that is, the flesh of the saints, to which the fruit of the divine kingdom belongs. “It saw and the earth was shaken; the mountains melted like wax before the face of the Lord”: the flesh of the profane, that is; for “they will look on him whom they pierced.” Otherwise, if both are thought to be said simply of the element earth, how will it fit that it is shaken and melts before the face of the Lord, at whose reign it rejoiced above? So too in Isaiah: “You shall eat the good things of the earth”: the good things of the flesh will be meant, which await it in the kingdom of God, re-formed and made like the angels, and about to obtain what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered the heart of man. Otherwise it would be quite empty for God to invite to obedience with the fruits of the field and the food of this life, which he shares even with the irreligious and blasphemers, the condition having been assigned once for all to man, raining on the good and the evil and sending his sun on the just and the unjust. A happy faith indeed, if it is to obtain what the enemies of God and Christ not only use but abuse, worshipping the creation itself against the Creator! Will you count onions and truffles among the good things of the earth, when the Lord declares that man shall not live even by bread? So the Jews, hoping only for earthly things, lose the heavenly, not knowing of the bread promised from heaven, the oil of divine anointing, the water of the Spirit, and the wine that invigorates the soul from the vine that is Christ. So too they reckon the holy land itself to be properly the soil of Judaea, when it should rather be interpreted as the Lord's flesh, which thereafter is holy land also in all who have put on Christ: truly holy through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, truly flowing with milk and honey through the sweetness of that very hope, truly Judaea through intimacy with God (for he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he who is one inwardly), so that the same flesh is both the temple of God and Jerusalem, hearing from Isaiah: “Awake, awake, Jerusalem, put on the strength of your arm; awake as on the day of the beginning,” that is, in the integrity it had before the sin of transgression. For how will words of such exhortation and summons fit that Jerusalem which killed the prophets and stoned those sent to it and at last did away with its own Lord? But salvation is not promised to any land at all, since land must pass away with the form of the whole world. Even if anyone dares to argue that the holy land is rather paradise, which may be called the land of the fathers, namely of Adam and Eve, then too a restoration to paradise will be seen to be promised to the flesh, which was allotted to dwell in it and keep it, so that man may be called back there such as he was when driven out.

We can also allegorize the mention of garments in the Scriptures in favour of the hope of the flesh, since the Apocalypse of John too says: “These are they who have not defiled their garments with women,” meaning, of course, virgins and those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. So they will be in white robes, that is, in the brightness of unmarried flesh. And in the gospel the wedding garment can be recognized as the holiness of the flesh. So Isaiah, teaching what fast the Lord has chosen, when he adds concerning the reward of goodness, “Then,” he says, “your early light will break forth, and your garments will spring up quickly,” meaning, surely, not a silk tunic or a cloak but the flesh, proclaimed the rising of the flesh that is to rise again from the setting of death. So we too have an allegorical defence of the bodily resurrection at hand. For when we read, “My people, go into your storerooms for a little while, until my wrath passes by,” the storerooms will be the tombs, in which those who at the end of the age have departed under the last wrath, through the violence of the antichrist, will rest for a while. Or why did he use the word “storerooms” rather than that of some other place of shelter, unless because in storerooms flesh that has been salted and laid up for use is kept, to be brought out from there in its time? For just so bodies too, treated with the spices of burial, are set apart in mausoleums and monuments, to come forth from there when the Lord commands. Since it is fitting to understand it so (for what refuges of storerooms will save us from the wrath of God?), by this very phrase, “until the wrath passes by,” the wrath that will destroy the antichrist, he shows that after the wrath the flesh will come forth from the tomb into which it had been brought before the wrath. For nothing is brought out of storerooms but what is brought in. And after the rooting out of the antichrist the resurrection will take place.

We know, moreover, that prophecy was made by things as well as by words; the resurrection is proclaimed by deeds as much as by sayings. When Moses hides his hand in his bosom and brings it out dead, and puts it back again and draws it out living, does this not foreshow something concerning the whole man? For the threefold power of God was indicated in order by those three signs: first, that it would subject the devil, the serpent, however fearsome, to man; next, that it would draw the flesh back from the bosom of death; and so, that it would exact all blood in judgment. Of this God says through the same prophet: “For I will require your blood too from all beasts, and from the hand of man and from the hand of a brother I will require it.” Now nothing is required except what is demanded back; nothing is demanded back except what will also be given back; and surely what will be demanded back and required in the name of vengeance will be given back. For what does not exist at all cannot be avenged. But it will exist when it is restored, so that it may be avenged. Whatever is proclaimed about blood, then, is directed at the flesh, without which there will be no blood. The flesh will be raised so that the blood may be avenged. There are also some things said in such a way that they lack the cloud of allegory and yet thirst for the interpretation of their very plainness, as in Isaiah: “I will kill and I will make alive.” Certainly, after he has killed he will make alive. So, killing by death, he will make alive by resurrection. But it is the flesh that is killed by death; so it is the flesh also that will be made alive by resurrection. Surely, if to kill is to snatch the soul from the flesh, to make alive, its opposite, is to give the soul back to the flesh; the flesh must rise, to which the soul, snatched away by killing, must be given back by making alive.

So if allegorical Scriptures, and the evidence of things, and simple sayings give glimmers of the resurrection of the flesh, though without naming that substance itself, how much less should those passages be brought into question which fix this hope on the bodily substances themselves by explicit mention? Hear Ezekiel: “And the hand of the Lord came upon me,” he says, “and the Lord brought me out in the spirit and set me in the middle of a plain; it was full of bones. And he led me round over them in a circle, and behold, there were many on the face of the plain, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, will these bones live?’ And I said, ‘Adonai, Lord, you know.’ And he said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones and say: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord Adonai to these bones: Behold, I bring spirit into you, and you shall live; and I will put sinews on you and bring flesh back upon you and cover you with skin and put spirit in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ And I prophesied according to the command; and behold, a sound as I prophesied, and behold, a movement, and the bones came together, bone to bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews on the bones, and flesh came up, and flesh was laid around 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: Come from the four winds, O spirit, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ And I prophesied to the spirit as he commanded me, and the spirit entered them, and they lived and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly 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 is lost; we are cut off in them.” Therefore prophesy to them: Behold, I open your tombs and will bring you up out of your tombs, my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I the Lord have opened your tombs and brought you out of your tombs, my people; and I will give you spirit and you shall live, and you shall rest in your land, and you shall know that I the Lord have spoken and done it,’ says the Lord.”

I know how they shake this prophecy too into an argument for allegory: 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, they say, it is a figurative, not a real, prophecy of resurrection. For the state of the Jews, they say, is portrayed as in some way dead and dried up and scattered over the plain of the world; and so the image of resurrection is allegorized of it, because it is to be gathered again and fitted together bone to bone, that is, tribe to tribe and people to people, and re-embodied with the flesh of resources and the sinews of kingship, and so brought out of the tombs, that is, out of the saddest and foulest dwellings of captivity, to breathe again under the name of refreshment and thereafter to live in its own land, Judaea. And what after this? They will die, no doubt. And what after death? No raising again, I suppose, if it is not this very one that is revealed to Ezekiel. But resurrection is proclaimed elsewhere too. So this one too will be it, and they rashly turn it to the state of Jewish affairs. Or if the one we defend is another, it makes no difference to me, so long as there is a resurrection of bodies as well as of Jewish affairs. Indeed, by the very fact that the renewal of the Jewish state is figured by the re-embodiment and re-animation of bones, it is proved that this will also happen to bones. For a figure could not be composed out of bones if this very thing were not also going to happen to bones. For even though the representation of the truth is in the image, the image itself is true in itself: it must first be something for itself, in order to be shaped to represent another. A likeness is not drawn from emptiness; a parable does not fit nothing. So we must believe also in the re-fleshing and re-breathing of bones, such as is described, from which the re-forming of Jewish affairs, as they imagine it, could be expressed. But it is more religious to defend the truth from the truth of its own plainness, which the sense of the divine declaration demands. For if this vision looked to Jewish affairs, as soon as the place of the bones had been revealed he would have added, “These bones are the whole house of Israel,” and the rest. But when, after the bones have been shown, he says something about their own hope before Israel is named, and tests the prophet's faith (“Son of man, will these bones live?”), so that he answered, “Lord, you know”: surely God would not have tested the prophet's faith about a thing that was not to be, which Israel had never heard of, which ought not to be believed. But since the resurrection of the dead was indeed being proclaimed, while Israel, distrustful through its unbelief, stumbled, and, looking at the appearance of burial growing old, despaired of the resurrection, or did not direct its mind to it but to its own circumstances, therefore God both prepared the prophet, since he too was in doubt, for steadfastness in preaching by revealing the order of the resurrection, and commanded the people to believe what he had revealed to the prophet, saying that they themselves were the bones that were to rise, who did not believe they would rise. Finally, in the conclusion: “And you shall know,” he says, “that I the Lord have spoken and done it,” intending, surely, to do what he had spoken; otherwise he would not be doing what he had spoken, if he were to do otherwise than he had spoken.

Certainly, if the people too had been muttering allegorically that their bones were dried up and their hope lost, complaining of the outcome of their dispersion, it might rightly seem that God had also comforted a figurative despair with a figurative promise. But since the injury of dispersion had not yet befallen the people, while the hope of resurrection had very often been sung among them, it is plain that they were undermining their confidence in the resurrection because of the destruction of bodies. So God was rebuilding the faith that the people were tearing down. And even if Israel was then caught in some struggle over present affairs, the purpose of the revelation should not on that account be taken as a parable, but as a testimony to the resurrection, to raise them to that hope, of eternal salvation, that is, and of a more necessary restoration, and to turn them away from regard for present affairs. For to this end other prophets too say: “You shall go out” (from the tombs) “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,” since grass too is re-formed out of the dissolution and decay of the seed. In sum: if the image of the rising bones is contended to apply properly to the state of Israel, why is the same hope announced not only to Israel but to all nations as well, of remains to be re-embodied and re-animated and of the dead to be raised from their tombs? For of all it is said: “The dead shall live, they shall rise from the tombs; for the dew that is from you is healing to their bones.” Likewise elsewhere: “All flesh shall come to worship in my sight, says the Lord.” When? When the form of this world begins to pass away. For above it says: “As the new heaven and the new earth which I make stand in my sight, says the Lord, so shall your seed stand.” Then, therefore, what he adds will also be fulfilled: “And they shall go out” (from the tombs, surely) “and they shall see the limbs of those who acted wickedly, 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 and gone out of the tombs, will worship the Lord for this grace.

But lest the resurrection seem to be proclaimed only of those bodies that are committed to tombs, you have it written: “And I will command the fishes of the sea, and they shall cast up the bones that were eaten, and I will join joint to joint and bone to bone.” “So,” you say, “the fishes too will be raised, and the other beasts and the flesh-eating birds, so that they may vomit up those they devoured, since in Moses too you read that blood is required from all beasts?” Surely not. But beasts and fishes are named for this reason, with regard to the giving back of flesh and blood, so that the resurrection even of devoured bodies may be the more clearly expressed, when the demand is decreed upon the devourers themselves. And I think Jonah a fit proof of this divine power too, when he is rolled out of the belly of the fish unharmed in both substances, flesh and soul; and surely the bowels of the whale would have sufficed to digest flesh in three days as well as a coffin, a tomb, or the decay of some burial long at rest and closed; granted that the beast also figured men savage above all against the Christian name, or even the very angels of iniquity, from whom blood will be required by a vengeance to be paid out. Who, then, more inclined to learn than to presume, more careful to believe than to dispute, more reverent toward divine wisdom than eager for his own, hearing something appointed by God for flesh and skin and sinews and bones, will interpret these as something else, as though what is proclaimed for these substances were not appointed for man? For either nothing is appointed for man, not the generosity of the kingdom, not the severity of the judgment, not whatever the resurrection is; or, if it is appointed for man, it must be appointed for those substances of which the man is built for whom it is appointed. I ask this too of these most subtle transformers of bones and flesh and sinews and tombs: why, whenever something is said about the soul, do they interpret the soul as nothing else and do not transform it into a figure of some other thing, but when something is declared about some bodily kind, they assert that it is anything rather than what is named? If bodily things are parables, so are things of the soul; if things of the soul are not, neither are bodily things. For man is body as much as soul, so that one kind cannot admit riddles while the other excludes them.

Enough of the prophetic documents. I now appeal to the Gospels, here too first meeting the same cunning of those who contend that the Lord likewise spoke everything in parables, because it is written: “All these things Jesus spoke in parables, and without a parable he did not speak to them,” that is, to the Jews. For the disciples too say, “Why do you speak in parables?” And the Lord: “For this reason I speak to them in parables, 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 is everything a parable, but some things, when spoken to some; and to some, namely to the Jews; now and then, admittedly, to the disciples too. But consider how Scripture reports it: “And he told them also a parable.” So he also spoke without parables, since it would not be noted when he spoke a parable if he always spoke so. And yet you will find no parable that was not either explained by himself, as that of the sower, of the ministry of the word; or lit up beforehand by the Gospel's narrator, as that of the proud judge and the persistent widow, of perseverance in prayer; or open to conjecture, as that of the fig tree spared in hope, after the pattern of Jewish unfruitfulness. But if not even the parables darken the light of the Gospel, much less do sentences and definitions, whose nature is open, mean anything other than they sound. And it is by definitions and sentences that the Lord declares the judgment, or the kingdom of God, or the resurrection: “It will 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 will be repaid to you at the resurrection of the just.” If these are the absolute names of things, that is, of judgment, the kingdom of God, and resurrection, so that none of them can be squeezed into a parable, then neither can the things proclaimed about the arrangement and conduct of the kingdom and the undergoing of judgment and resurrection be forced into parables; and so they will be defended as bodily, as appointed for bodily beings, that is, not spiritual, because not figurative. For this is why we laid down beforehand that the body of the soul as well as that of the flesh is liable to the rewards to be paid for their common work: lest the bodiliness of the soul, furnishing occasion for figures, exclude the bodiliness of the flesh, since both must be believed partners in the kingdom, the judgment, and the resurrection. And now we go on to show that it is properly the bodiliness of the flesh that the Lord signifies in every mention of resurrection, without prejudice to that of the soul, which few have accepted.

First, when he says that he came for this, to save what was lost, what do you say was lost? Man, without doubt. Whole or in part? Whole, surely, since the transgression which is the cause of human perdition, committed as much by the soul's impulse out of desire as by the flesh's act of tasting, inscribed the whole man with the charge of transgression and so filled him with the desert of perdition. So the whole man will be saved who perished wholly by sinning; unless that sheep too is lost without its body and brought back without its body. For if its flesh too, together with its soul, which makes the whole animal, is carried on the shoulders of the good shepherd, it is surely an example of man to be restored in both substances. Or how unworthy of God to bring half a man back to salvation, to do almost less …, when even the pardon of worldly princes is always claimed as full! Will the devil be understood to be stronger in injuring man, dashing him down whole? Will God be declared weaker, not raising him up whole? Yet the apostle too suggests that where sin abounded, there grace has superabounded. How, finally, will he be held saved who can also be called lost? Lost in the flesh, of course; except that the soul too must be placed among the lost, so that it can be made safe, for what must be made safe is what was lost. Now, however, we accept the immortality of the soul, so that, when lost, it is believed lost not to destruction but to punishment, that is, to Gehenna. And if so, salvation will no longer look to the soul, safe by its nature through immortality, but rather to the flesh, which all agree is perishable. Or if the soul too is perishable, that is, not immortal, like the flesh, then that rule by which the Lord will save what perishes must equally benefit the flesh, being likewise mortal and perishable. I do not wish now to drag out with a contentious rope whether perdition claims man this way or that, so long as salvation, levelled equally over both substances, claims him from both sides. For see: in whichever substance you suppose man to have perished, in the other he does not perish. So he will be safe in the one in which he does not perish, and will be made safe no less in the one in which he perishes: you have the restoration of the whole man, since the Lord will save whatever of him perishes and surely will not lose whatever does not perish. Who will any longer doubt the safety of either substance, when one is to obtain salvation and the other is not to lose it? And yet the Lord expresses the matter still more plainly, saying: “I have come not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.” What will, I ask you? “That of all that he has given me I should lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.” What had Christ received from the Father but what he had also put on? Man, without doubt, the fabric of flesh and soul. So he will not let either of those he received perish, nor anything of either, nor even a little. If the flesh is a little, then not the flesh either, because not even a little. And yet, if he does not raise the flesh too on the last day, he will let not a little of man perish but, I would say, since it is so large a part, nearly the whole. Adding further, “This is the will of the Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day,” he builds up the fullness of the resurrection. For he distributes the reward of salvation to both substances according to their proper functions: to the flesh, through which the Son was seen, and to the soul, through which he was believed. “So,” you will say, “the promise will belong to those by whom Christ was seen.” Let it be so, provided the same hope has flowed from there to us as well. For if the works of flesh and soul were fruitful then to those who saw and therefore believed, much more to us. For more blessed are those who do not see and yet believe; so that even if the resurrection of the flesh were denied to those others, it would surely have belonged to the more blessed. But how are they blessed if they are to perish in part?