from death, through the transformation which must be experienced instead of it, without encountering too that Hades which will exact the very last farthing?^ Nothwithstanding, he who has already traversed Hades is destined also to obtain the change after the resurrec- tion. For from this circumstance it is that we definitively declare that the flesh will by all meatis rise again, and, from the change that is to come over it, will assume the condition of angels. Now, if it were merely in the case of those who shall be found in the flesh that the . scomp. Matt. v. 26, and see Tertullian's De Anzma, zuvt. [and see cap. xliii., in/ra, p. 576.]
ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH.
[chap, xliii.
change must be undergone, in order that mor- tality may be swallowed up of life — in other words, that the flesh (be covered) with the heavenly and eternal raiment — it would either follow that those who shall be found in death would not obtain life, deprived as they would then be of the material and so to say the ali- ment of life, that is, the flesh; or else, these also must needs undergo the change, that in them too mortality may be swallowed up of life, since it is appointed that they too should obtain life. But, you say, in the case of the dead, mortality is already swallowed up of life. No, not in all cases, certainly. For how many will most probably be found of men who had just died — so recently put into their graves, that nothing in them would seem to be decayed? For you do not of course deem a thing to be decayed unless it be cut off, abolished, and withdrawn from our percep- tion, as having in every possible way ceased to be apparent. There are the carcases of the giants of old time; it will be obvious enough that they are not absolutely decayed, for their l)ony frames are still extant. We have al- ready spoken of this elsewhere.' For in- stance,^ even lately in this very city,^ when they were sacrilegiously laying the foundations of the Odeum on a good many ancient graves, people were horror-stricken to discover, after some five hundred years, bones, which still retained their moisture, and hair which had not lost its perfume. It is certain not only that bones remain indurated, but also that teeth continue undecayed for ages — ^both of them the lasting germs of that body which is to sprout into life again in the resurrection. Lastly, even if everything that is mortal in all the dead shall then be found decayed — at any rate consumed by death, by time, and through age, — is there nothing which will be " swallowed up of life," * nor by being covered over and arrayed in the vesture of immortal- ity? Now, he who says that mortality is going to be swallowed up of life has already admit- ted that what is dead is not destroyed by those other before-mentioned devourers. And verily it will be extremely fit that all shall be con- summated and brought about by the opera- tions of God, and not by the laws of nature. Therefore, inasmuch as what is mortal has to be swallowed up of life, it must needs be brought out to view in order to be so swal- lowed up; (needful) also to be swallowed up, in order to undergo the ultimate transforma- tion. If you were to say that a fire is to be »S«d: for "scilicet."
3 Carthage.
lighted, you could not possibly alllege that what is to kindle it is sometimes necessary and sometimes not. In like manner, when he inserts the words "If so be that being un- clothed s we be not found naked."* — refer- ing, of course, to those who shall not be found in the day of the Lord alive and in the flesh — he did not say that they whom he had just described as unclothed or stripped, were naked in any other sense than meaning that they should be understood to be reinvested with the very same substance they had been divested of. For although they shall be found naked when their flesh has been laid aside, or to some extent sundered or worn away (and this condition may well be called nakedness,) they shall afterwards recover it again, in order that, being reinvested with the flesh, they may be able also to have put over that the supervestment of immortality; for it will be impossible for the outside garment to fit except over one who is already dressed.
CHAP. XLIII. NO DISPARAGEMENT OF OUR DOC- TRINE IN ST. Paul's phrase, which calls OUR residence in the flesh absence from the lord.
In the same way, when he says, " Therefore we are always confident, and fully aware, that while we are at home in the body we are ab- sent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not be sight, "7 it is manifest that in this state- ment there is no design of disparaging the flesh, as if it separated us from the Lord. For there is here pointedly addressed to us an exhortation to disregard this present life, since we are absent from the Lord as long as we are passing through it — walking by faith, not by sight; in other words, in hope, not in reality. Accordingly he adds: "We are indeed confident and deem it good rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord;"^ in order, that is, that we may walk by sight rather than by faith, in realization rather than in hope. Observe how he here also ascribes to the excellence of martyrdom a contempt for the body. For no one, on be- coming absent from the body, is at once a dweller in the presence of the Lord, except by the prerogative of martyrdom, « he gains a lodging in Paradise, not in the lower regions. Now, had the apostle been at a loss for words to describe the departure from the body? Or does he purposely use a novel phraseology? For, wanting to express our temporary absence S Exuti. He must have read «K5u<r<i/*«»'oi, instead of the read- ing of nearly all the MS. authorities, ei/^vcrdftefot. SComp. his De Anima, c. Iv. [Elucidation III.]
CHAP. XLIV.]
ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH.
from the body, he says that we are strangers, absent from it, because a man who goes abroad returns after a while to his home. Then he says even to all: "We therefore earnestly desire to be acceptable unto God, whether absent or present; for we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ Jesus."' If all of us, then all of us wholly; if wholly, then our inward man and outward too — that is, our bodies no less than our souls. "That every one," as he goes on to say, " may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.""^ Now I ask, how do you read this passage? Do you take it to be con- fusedly constructed, with a transposition 3 of ideas? Is the question about what things will have to be received by the body, or the things which have been already done in the body? Well, if the things which are to be borne by the body are meant, then undoubtedly a res- urrection of the body is implied; and if the things which have been already done in the body are referred to, (the same conclusion follows): for of course the retribution will have to be paid by the body, since it was by the body that the actions were performed. Thus the apostle's whole argument from the begin- ning is unravelled in this concluding clause, wherein the resurrection of the flesh is set forth; and it ought to be understood in a sense which is strictly in accordance with this conclusion.
CHAP. XLIV. SUNDRY OTHER PASSAGES OF ST.
PAUL EXPLAINED IN A SENTENCE CONFIRMA- TORY OF OUR DOCTRINE.
Now, if you will examine the words which precede the passage where mention is made of the outward and the inward man, will you not discover the whole truth, both of the dig- nity and the hope of the flesh? For, when he speaks of the " light which God hath commanded.to shine in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the person of Jesus Christ,"" and says that "we have this treasure in earthen vessels," ^ meaning of course the flesh, which is meant — that the flesh shall be destroyed, because it is "an earthen vessel," deriving its origin from clay; or that it is to be glori- fied, as being the receptacle of a divine treas- ure? Now if that true light, which is in the person of Christ, contains in itself life, and that life with its light is committed to the 3 Per hyperbaton. SVer. 7.
37 flesh, is that destined to perish which has life entrusted to it? Then, of course, the treas- ure will perish also; for perishable things are entrusted to things which are themselves per- ishable, which is like putting new wine into old bottles. When also he adds, "Always bearing about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ" ^ what sort of substance is that which, after (being called) the temple of God, can now be also designated the tomb of Christ? But why do we bear about in the body the dying of the Lord? In order, as he says, " that His life also may be manifested." ^ Where? "In the body." In what body? "Incur mor- tal body." * Therefore in the flesh, which is mortal indeed through sin, but living through grace — how great a grace you may see when the purpose is, "that the life of Christ may be manifested in it." Is it then in a thins: which IS a stranger to salvation, in a substance which is perpetually dissolved, that the life of Christ will be manifested, which is eternal, continuous, incorruptible, and already the life of God? Else to what epoch belongs that life of the Lord which is to be manifested in our body? It surely is the life which He lived up to His passion, which was not only openly shown among the Jews, but has now been displayed even to all nations. There- fore that life is meant which " has broken the adamantine gates dif death and the brazen bars of the.Jower world," 5— a life which thenceforth has been and will be ours. Last- ly, it is to be manifested in the body. When? After death. How? By rising in our body, as Christ also rose in His. But lest any one should here object, that the life of Jesus has even now to be manifested in our body by the discipline of holiness, and patience, and righteouness, and wisdom, in which the Lord's life abounded, the most provident wisdom of the apostle inserts this purpose: " For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that His life may be manifested in our mortal body."'° In us, therefore, even when dead, does he say that this is to take place in us. And if so, how is this pos- sible except in our body after its resurrection? Therefore he adds in the concluding sentence: " Knowing that He which raised up the Lord Jesus, shall raise up us also with Him," " risen as He is already from the dead. But perhaps '"'' 7vith Him" means '"''like Him:" well then, if it be like Him, it is not of course without the flesh.
7 Ver. lo.
8 Ver. ID. 9Ps. cvii. i6.
ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH.
[chap. xlvi.
CHAP. XLV. — THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW MAN OF ST. PAUL EXPLAINED.
But in their blindness they again impale themselves on the point of the old and the new man. When the apostle enjoins us "to put off the old man, which is corrupt accord- ing to the deceitful lusts; and to be renewed in the spirit of our mind; and to put on the new man, which after God is created in right- eousness and true holiness,"' (they maintain) that by here also making a distinction between the two substances, and applying the old one to the flesh and the new one to the spirit, he ascribes to the old man — that is to say, the flesh — a permanent corruption. Now, if you follow the order of the substances, the soul cannot be the new man because it comes the later of the two; nor can the flesh be the old man because it is the former. For what frac- tion of time was it that intervened between the creative hand of God and His afflatus? I will venture to say, that even if the soul was a good deal prior to the flesh, by the very cir- cumstance that the soul had to wait to be it- self completed, it made the other ^ really the former. For everything which gives the fin- ishing stroke and perfection to a work, al- though it is subsequent in its mere order, yet has the priority in its effect. Much more is that prior, without which preceding things could have no existence. If the flesh be the old man, when did it become so? From the beginning? But Adam was wholly a new man, and of that new man there could be no part an old man. And from that time, ever since the blessing which was pronounced upon man's generation, ^ the flesh and the soul have had a simultaneous birth, without any calcu- able difference in time; so that the two have been even generated together in the womb, as we have shown in our Treatise on the Soul.* Contemporaneous in the womb, they are also temporally identical in their birth. The two are no doubt produced by human parents ^ of two substances, but not at two different periods; rather they are so entirely one, that neither is before the other i?i point of time. It is more correct (to say), that we are either entirely the old man or entirely the new, for we cannot tell how we can possibly be any- thing else. But the apostle mentions a very clear mark of the old man. For " put off," says he, " concerning the former conversation, the old man;"* (he does) not say concerning the seniority of either substance. It is not indeed » The flesh.
*See ch. xxvit.
5 We treat " homines" as a nominative, after Oehler.
the flesh which he bids us to put off, but the works which he in another passage shows to be "works of the flesh. '^ He brings no accu- sation against men's bodies, of which he even writes as follows: " Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands (the thing which is good), that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communi- cation proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for the edification of faith, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: but be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one an- other, even as God in Christ hath forgiven you."^ Why, therefore, do not those who suppose the flesh to be the old man, hasten their own death, in order that by laying aside the old man they may satisfy the apostle's precepts? As for ourselves, we believe that the whole of faith is to be administered in the flesh, nay more, by the flesh, which has both a mouth for the utterance of all holy words, and a tongue to refrain from blasphemy, and a heart to avoid all irritation, and hands to labour and to give; while we also maintain that as well the old man as the new has rela- tion to the difference of moral conduct, and not to any discrepancy of nature. And just as we acknowledge that that which according to its former conversation was "the old man" was also corrupt, and received its very name in accordance with " its deceitful lusts," so also (do we hold) that it is "the old man in reference to its former conversation,"' and not in respect of the flesh through any per- manent dissolution. Moreover, it is still un- impaired in the flesh, and identical in that nature, even when it has become "the new man;" since it is of its sinful course of life, and not of its corporeal substance, that it has been divested.
CHAP. XLVI. IT IS THE WORKS OF THE FLESH NOT THE SUBSTANCE OF THE FLESH, WHICH ST. PAUL ALWAYS CONDEMNS.
You may notice that the apostle everywhere condemns the works of the flesh in such a CHAV. XLVII.]
ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH.
way as to appear to condemn the flesh; but no one can suppose him to have any such view as this, since he goes on to suggest an- other sense, even though somewhat resemb- ling it. For when he actually declares that " they who are in the flesh cannot please God," he immediately recalls the statement from an heretical sense to a sound one, by adding, " But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit."' Now, by denying them to be in the flesh who yet obviously were in the flesh, he showed that they were not living amidst the works of the flesh, and therefore that they who could not please God were not those who were in the flesh, but only those who were living after the flesh; whereas they pleased God, who, although existing in the flesh, were yet walking after the Spirit. And, again, he says that " the body is dead; " but it is " be- cause of sin," even as "the Spirit is life be- cause of righteousness."- When, however, he thus sets life in opposition to the death which is constituted in the flesh, he unques- tionably promises the life of righteousness to the same state for which he determined ti^e death of sin. But unmeaning is this opposi- tion which he makes between the " life" and the "death," if the life is not there where that very thing is to which he opposes it — even the death which is to be extirpated of course from the body. Now, if life thus extirpates death from the body, it can accomplish this only by penetrating thither where that is which it is excluding. But why am I resorting to knotty arguments, 3 when the apostle treats the subject with perfect plainness? " For if," says he, " the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you. He that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwelleth in you;"'* so that even if a person were to assume that the soul is " the mortal body," he would (since he cannot pos- sibly deny that the flesh is this also) be con- strained to acknowledge a restoration even of the flesh, in consequence of its participation in the selfsame state. From the following words, moreover, you may learn that it is the works of the flesh which are condemned, and not the flesh itself: "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if ye live after the flesh ye shall die; but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." 5 Now (that I may answer each point separately), since salvation is promised 3 Nodosius.
to those who are living in the flesh, but walk- ing after the Spirit, it is no longer the flesh which is an adversary to salvation, but the working of the flesh. When, however, this operativeness of the flesh is done away with, which is the cause of death, the flesh is shown to be safe, since it is freed from the cause of death. "For the law," says he, "of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death,"* — that, surely, which he previously mentioned as dwelling in our members. ^ Our members, therefore, will no longer be subject to the law of death, because they cease to serve that of sin, from both which they have been set free. " For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and through^ sin condemned sin in,tfie flesh " ' — not the flesh in sin, for the house is not to be condemned with its inhabitant. He said, in- deed, that "sin dwelleth in our body." '° But the condemnation of sin is the acquittal of the flesh, just as its non-condemnation sub- jugates it to the law of sin and death. In like manner, he called "the carnal mind " first "death,"" and afterwards "enmity against God; " ''' but he never predicated this of the flesh itself. But to what then, you will say, must the carnal mind be ascribed, if it be not to the carnal substance itself? I will allow your objection, if you will prove to me that the flesh has any discernment of its own. If, however, it has no conception of anything without the soul, you must understand that the carnal mind must be referred to the soul, although ascribed sometimes to the flesh, on the ground that it is ministered to for the flesh and through the flesh. And therefore (the apostle) says that " sin dwelleth in the flesh," because the soul by which sin is pro- voked has its temporary lodging in the flesh, which is doomed indeed to death, not how- ever on its own account, but on account of sin. For he says in another passage also' " How is it that you conduct yourselves as W you were even now living in the world? " •' where he is not writing to dead persons, but to those who ought to have ceased to live after the ways of the world CHAP. XLVII. ST. PAUL, ALL THROUGH, PROM- ISES ETERNAL LIFE TO THE BODY.
For that must be living after the world, 8 Per delinquentiara: "see the De Came Christ i, xvi.
»3Col. ii. ao.
ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH.
[chap. XLvir.
which, as the old man, he declares to be "crucified with Christ,"' not as a bodily structure, but as moral behaviour. Besides, if we do not understand it in this sense, it is not our bodily frame which has been trans- fixed (at all events), nor has our flesh endured the cross of Christ; but the sense is that which he has subjoined, " that the body of sin might be made void,"^ by an amendment of life, not by a destruction of the substance, as he goes on to say, "that henceforth we should not serve sin;"^ and that we should believe ourselves to be " dead with Christ," in such a manner as that "we shall also live with Him."* On the same principle he says: " Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed." s To what? To the flesh? No, but "unto sin."* Accordingly as to the flesh they will be saved — " alive unto God in Christ Jesus,"' through the flesh of course, to which they will not be dead; since it is "unto sin," and not to the flesh, that they are dead. For he pursues the point still further: " Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it, and that ye should yield your members as instru- ments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield ye yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead " — not simply alive, but