Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Anti-Marcion/On the Resurrection of the Flesh/LXIII

by Tertullian

Chapter LXIII.—Conclusion. The Resurrection of the Flesh in Its Absolute Identity and Perfection. Belief of This Had Become Weak. Hopes for Its Refreshing Restoration Under the Influences of the Paraclete.

And so the flesh shall rise again, wholly in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity. Wherever it may be, it is in safe keeping in God’s presence, through that most faithful “Mediator between God and man, (the man) Jesus Christ,”^[1] who shall reconcile both God to man, and man to God; the spirit to the flesh, and the flesh to the spirit. Both natures has He already united in His own self; He has fitted them together as bride and bridegroom in the reciprocal bond of wedded life. Now, if any should insist on making the soul the bride, then the flesh will follow the soul as her dowry. The soul shall never be an outcast, to be had home by the bridegroom bare and naked.  She has her dower, her outfit, her fortune in the flesh, which shall accompany her with the love and fidelity of a foster-sister. But suppose the flesh to be the bride, then in Christ Jesus she has in the contract of His blood received His Spirit as her spouse. Now, what you take to be her extinction, you may be sure is only her temporary retirement.  It is not the soul only which withdraws from view. The flesh, too, has her departures for a while—in waters, in fires, in birds, in beasts; she may seem to be dissolved into these, but she is only poured into them, as into vessels. And should the vessels themselves afterwards fail to hold her, escaping from even these, and returning to her mother earth, she is absorbed once more, as it were, by its secret embraces, ultimately to stand forth to view, like Adam when summoned to hear from his Lord and Creator the words, “Behold, the man is become as one of us!”^[2]—thoroughly “knowing” by that time “the evil” which she had escaped, “and the good” which she has acquired. Why, then, O soul, should you envy the flesh? There is none, after the Lord, whom you should love so dearly; none more like a brother to you, which is even born along with yourself in God. You ought rather to have been by your prayers obtaining resurrection for her: her sins, whatever they were, were owing to you.  However, it is no wonder if you hate her; for you have repudiated her Creator.^[3] You have accustomed yourself either to deny or change her existence even in Christ^[4]—corrupting the very Word of God Himself, who became flesh, either by mutilating or misinterpreting the Scripture,^[5] and introducing, above all, apocryphal mysteries and blasphemous fables.^[6] But yet Almighty God, in His most gracious providence, by “pouring out of His Spirit in these last days, upon all flesh, upon His servants and on His handmaidens,”^[7] has checked these impostures of unbelief and perverseness, reanimated men’s faltering faith in the resurrection of the flesh, and cleared from all obscurity and equivocation the ancient Scriptures (of both God’s Testaments^[8]) by the clear light of their (sacred) words and meanings. Now, since it was “needful that there should be heresies, in order that they which are approved might be made manifest;”^[9] since, however, these heresies would be unable to put on a bold front without some countenance from the Scriptures, it therefore is plain enough that the ancient Holy Writ has furnished them with sundry materials for their evil doctrine, which very materials indeed (so distorted) are refutable from the same Scriptures. It was fit and proper, therefore, that the Holy Ghost should no longer withhold the effusions of His gracious light upon these inspired writings, in order that they might be able to disseminate the seeds of truth with no admixture of heretical subtleties, and pluck out from it their tares. He has accordingly now dispersed all the perplexities of the past, and their self-chosen allegories and parables, by the open and perspicuous explanation of the entire mystery, through the new prophecy, which descends in copious streams from the Paraclete. If you will only draw water from His fountains, you will never thirst for other doctrine: no feverish craving after subtle questions will again consume you; but by drinking in evermore the resurrection of the flesh, you will be satisfied with the refreshing draughts.

Footnotes

1. 1 Tim. ii. 5.
2. Gen. iii. 22.
3. In this apostrophe to the soul, he censures Marcion’s heresy.
4. Compare the De Carne Christi.
5. See the De Præscript. Hæret. ch. xxxviii. supra, for instances of these diverse methods of heresy. Marcion is mentioned as the mutilator of Scripture, by cutting away from it whatever opposed his views; Valentinus as the corrupter thereof, by his manifold and fantastic interpretations.
6. See the Adv. Valentinianos, supra.
7. Joel ii. 28, 29; Acts ii. 17, 18. [See last sentence. He improves upon St. Peter’s interpretation of this text (as see below) by attributing his own clear views to the charismata, which he regards as still vouchsafed to the more spiritual.]
8. We follow Oehler’s view here, by all means.
9. 1 Cor. xi. 19.