On the Resurrection

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.11 · 1.12–1.23 · 1.25–1.34 · 1.35–1.46 · 1.47–1.54 · 1.57–2.2 · 2.4–2.12 · 2.13–2.19 · 2.20–3.4 · 3.5–3.21

1. 1.1Sistelius proposes that the heretical view be stated fully before it is answered, and Theophilus, defending the practice from Solomon's portraits of the harlot and of the ungodly, asks the physician Aglaophon to state the case against the resurrection of the body.
2. 1.4Aglaophon, stating the case against bodily resurrection, argues that the 'garments of skins' given after the fall are our bodies, a fetter and tomb of the soul that clouds its knowledge.
3. 1.5Aglaophon argues that Adam lived incorruptibly before the fall without the flesh, and that Paul's lament in Romans 7 shows the body to be a prison and punishment.
4. 1.6Aglaophon reads Psalm 66 as speaking of souls tested in the body and mocks the idea that the soul would take up the body's yoke again in the kingdom of light.
5. 1.7Aglaophon objects that a resurrection of the same members would bring back eating, drinking and intercourse, whereas Christ said the risen will be like the angels.
6. 1.8Aglaophon argues that since heaven, earth and the elements will pass away, bodies made from them cannot survive, having no place left to exist.
7. 1.9Aglaophon argues from the physiology of digestion and the constant flux of bodily matter that no identical body persists to be raised.
8. 1.10Aglaophon concludes that a body in constant flux cannot be preserved, and urges hope to look to the things above rather than to earthly corruption.
9. 1.11Aglaophon asks which of a man's successive bodies would be judged, if the bodies he lived in chastely and in immorality are no longer the same.
10. 1.12Aglaophon closes his case with Scripture that laments the body as a burden of the soul, concluding with 1 Corinthians 15:50 that flesh and blood will not inherit God's kingdom.
11. 1.13Proclus of Miletus asks to add further arguments against bodily resurrection before the narrator replies, and the narrator agrees.
12. 1.14Proclus argues that at death the body dissolves into the four elements and its parts cannot be recovered and distinguished to form the same flesh again.
13. 1.15Proclus illustrates with wine poured into the sea that bodily matter dispersed into the elements cannot be retrieved unmixed for a resurrection.
14. 1.16Proclus argues that matter returned to the elements is mixed beyond recovery, so a body re-formed from the elements, like a statue recast from pooled wax, would not be the same body.
15. 1.17Proclus argues that a soul cannot justly be rewarded or punished in a different body, so the risen body must be spiritual, and introduces Origen's teaching as the strongest statement of this view.
16. 1.19Proclus presents Origen as a learned churchman who firmly rejected the resurrection of the same flesh, and introduces a quotation from his commentary on the first Psalm.
17. 1.20Origen, quoted by Methodius in his comment on Psalm 1:5, presses the simpler believers with the problem of bodily flux and of bodies eaten by animals and men.
18. 1.21Aglaophon reports that the defenders of bodily resurrection appeal to God's omnipotence and to Ezekiel's dry bones, the Gospel sayings on bodily punishment, and Romans 8:11.
19. 1.22Origen, quoted by Methodius, argues that the body's matter is always in flux like a river, and that what rises is the same bodily form, changed into a spiritual body suited to heaven.
20. 1.23Origen, still quoted, argues that the risen body keeps the bodily form but not its matter, and reads Ezekiel's dry bones, the gnashing of teeth and Paul's seed analogy in that light.
21. 1.25Proclus explains Origen's view with the image of a waterskin that keeps its shape while water flows in and out, and answers the appeal to Christ's risen flesh by stressing the difference between his virginal conception and ours.
22. 1.27The narrator, shaken by Proclus's speech, calls Auxentius to his aid and attacks the opponents' rhetoric and the presumption of those who interpret Scripture to win applause rather than to live rightly.
23. 1.28The narrator compares heterodox sophists to painters who imitate ships without knowing how to build or steer them, and Auxentius asks him to lead the reply.
24. 1.29The narrator shows that Aglaophon contradicted himself: if the soul sinned before receiving the 'garments of skins', the body cannot be the cause of sin, and Aglaophon concedes.
25. 1.30The narrator presses Aglaophon to defend his claim that the body is a fetter and prison of the soul, restating his charges against the body before refuting them.
26. 1.31By a Socratic exchange the narrator shows that a fetter prevents wrongdoing, whereas the body serves the soul for good or evil, so the body is not a punitive fetter; Scripture's appeal to free choice confirms it.
27. 1.34The narrator argues that man, fashioned by God's own hands as a body-and-soul whole, was made immortal, since what immortality makes is immortal.
28. 1.35The narrator argues that man, made in the image of the only-begotten Image, was meant to be immortal, and takes up the objection about where death and the devil's envy come from.
29. 1.37The narrator explains that the devil was an angel entrusted with governing matter who fell through pride and envy, and closes with lines of verse against the serpent and Error.
30. 1.38The narrator argues that death was given as a remedy, the 'garments of skins' being mortality rather than bodies, so that sin might be destroyed root and all in the body's dissolution and the body raised pure, like a temple freed of a fig tree.
31. 1.42The narrator cites Paul's struggle with indwelling sin to show that sin's root remains until death, and compares death and resurrection to a craftsman recasting a damaged statue or a potter remaking a vessel.
32. 1.44God, like a potter, remoulds man through death to raise each to honour or dishonour, while our part is to keep the root of sin from bearing fruit, for which we are answerable.
33. 1.45No one may blame God for the punishment he chose by his own free will; death, like bitter medicine, serves our good, as the song of Deuteronomy confirms.
34. 1.46God's word 'I will kill and I will make alive' shows that the body dies in order to rise again, and nothing can snatch it from his hand, as Paul says in Romans 8.
35. 1.47The narrator refutes the argument that whatever is born must perish, and maintains that the world will be purified by fire and renewed, not destroyed, citing Wisdom, Romans 8 and Isaiah.
36. 1.48The narrator explains that Scripture calls the world's renewal 'passing away', and that the risen will be 'as angels' in incorruption without ceasing to be men, since each order of creatures keeps its own nature.
37. 1.50God did not make man by mistake or intend him to become an angel; he made man body and soul, and since man is immortal, the body does not perish.
38. 1.51Christ's answer to the Sadducees shows that the risen will be 'as angels' in not marrying, not in lacking flesh; 'resurrection' itself means the rising of what has fallen, the body.
39. 1.52Christ taught the soul's immortality in the story of the rich man and Lazarus and at the transfiguration, as does Wisdom 3; therefore 'resurrection' must refer to the body, which falls, not to the soul.
40. 1.53The resurrection is of the fallen flesh, the 'tent' of the soul, as the images of sleeping and waking and of seeds that die and spring up again show.
41. 1.54The narrator rejects the reading of Psalm 66 as souls falling from heaven into bodies, argues from Paul's two raptures that paradise is on earth, and reads the psalm as the thanksgiving of the martyrs tested by fire.
42. 1.57The narrator refutes the claim that Paul's 'I was once alive apart from the law' refers to souls living without bodies, and shows that Paul's 'flesh' in Romans 7-8 means a fleshly way of life, not the body.
43. 1.59Paul's 'mind of the flesh' is the flesh's impulse toward sin, not the flesh itself, which can be brought under God's law, as virginity, self-control and Paul's commands about the body show.
44. 1.61Paul's words on sexual immorality concern this visible body, which can be a temple of the Spirit and so will be raised and clothed with immortality.
45. 1.62Scripture, Plato and the physicians all call this visible flesh 'body', so Paul's statements about the body refer to it, and the narrator promises to show that Paul consistently teaches the resurrection of the flesh.
46. 2.1Methodius begins Book 2 by explaining 'I was once alive apart from the law' as the bodily life of Adam and Eve in paradise before the commandment, when they knew no desire.
47. 2.2Methodius explains Romans 7: the devil used the commandment in paradise to stir up desire, and Paul's 'I do what I do not want' refers to unwanted thoughts that assail the mind, not to evil deeds.
48. 2.4Paul did not mean that he actually committed sins he hated, since he urged others to imitate him as he imitated Christ; he meant the unwanted thoughts that assail us and must be resisted like besieging enemies.
49. 2.5Methodius urges the soul to resist the evil one with the armour of God, and resumes his reading of Romans 7:15-18.
50. 2.6Sin entered man through disobedience as desire lodged in the body; hence two kinds of thoughts arise in us, from that desire and from the natural law of the mind.
51. 2.7Methodius distinguishes three laws in Romans 7: the law of the mind, the law of the evil one's assaults, and the law of sin lodged in the flesh through desire.
52. 2.8Paul's 'body of this death' is the law of sin in the members, not the body itself, from which Christ delivers us so that the natural law of the good may be fulfilled; Methodius then pauses before the harder questions.
53. 2.9The Greek excerpts of Book 2, chapters 9-10: trees do not consume the earth they grow from, God alone gives growth through his wisdom, and man was made from the four elements as a small world, as Ezekiel's four-faced cherubim signify.
54. 2.10The narrator's companion argues that God formed the body from a mixture of the four elements, as Christ's healing of the man born blind with earth and spittle and the painter's four colours illustrate.
55. 2.11A fragment on cut-off members not growing back from food.
56. 2.12The speaker argues that food turns only into the body's various juices, which come and go, while the substance of flesh, bone and sinew remains, as the vessel of a river remains while the water flows through it.
57. 2.13The speaker distinguishes the body's substance from its changing juices, citing blood-letting, menstruation, scars that remain, and Scripture's assumption that the same person is born, called and baptized.
58. 2.14If constant change destroyed the identity of the body, it would destroy that of the soul too; and the opponents, who give the soul another spiritual body, make God unjust by their own standard.
59. 2.15Methodius interprets 2 Corinthians 5:1-7: the 'earthly house' is our short life in the body, not the body itself, and what we long to put on is immortality.
60. 2.16The speaker shows from 2 Corinthians 4-5 that Paul expects the life of Jesus to appear in this mortal flesh, and from Paul's and Moses' usage that 'flesh and blood' in 1 Corinthians 15:50 means a fleshly way of life.
61. 2.18Methodius explains that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom' refers to the flesh's impulses and to corruption, not to the body, which God restores to incorruption, as Justin Martyr also taught.
62. 2.19If God makes a man from a drop of seed, much more can he remake a man from a body that already existed.
63. 2.20The growth of a child from a tiny seed, preserved in the womb by God's wisdom, and the clothes of Israel that did not wear out in the desert, show God's power to raise the body.
64. 2.21The feast of Tabernacles prefigures the resurrection, when God will fix our fallen 'tents', our bodies, together again for ever.
65. 2.22The human body, though more honourable than those of animals, is short-lived now, which shows that its lasting existence belongs to the time after the resurrection.
66. 2.23A plant flourishing unburned beside a natural fire on Mount Olympus in Lycia prefigures the righteous passing unharmed through the final fire; and since even humble images of a king are honoured, God will not let his images perish but raised them up through the incarnate Word.
67. 2.25The story of Jonah is read as a figure of man's fall, his swallowing by time and death, and his resurrection after the three intervals of time, as Christ's three days in the earth also teach.
68. 2.26Memianius restates Proclus's objection that a body dissolved into the elements cannot be separated out again unmixed, like statues melted into one mass of wax.
69. 2.27Fragments: God, who is more powerful than men who can separate mixtures, will give back each person's own body; the sea, Hades and death of Revelation 20:13 are the elements returning their portions; Origen imagined a risen body of pure air and fire.
70. 2.29Since even visible nature shows that mixed waters can be separated, those who deny bodily resurrection measure God's power by their own and invent airy or luminous bodies instead.
71. 2.30The speaker rejects the atomists and those who hold that the elements change into one another, arguing that God, who holds all things together, can give each body its own form again.
72. 3.1At the beginning of Book 3 the narrator, satisfied that mixed elements can be separated, turns to the prophets' witness to the resurrection: Daniel, the Psalms and 2 Maccabees.
73. 3.2The narrator states Origen's view that only the bodily form, not the flesh, rises in a spiritual body, and quotes Origen's own words again.
74. 3.3The narrator turns to refute Origen's own account of the resurrection, beginning with his image of the waterskin, and objects that the bodily form changes with age more than the flesh does.
75. 3.4A spiritual body merely like the present one, as a gold statue replaces a bronze one, would not be a resurrection of the body that died.
76. 3.5If Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration had already risen in the bodily form, Christ would not be 'the firstborn of the dead'; so the resurrection must be of the flesh, and those raised before Christ died again.
77. 3.6Since a form cannot subsist apart from its matter, as the shape of a melted statue perishes with it, Origen's risen 'form' in a spiritual body would only be a likeness of the person, not the person himself.
78. 3.7Greek phrases of Origen quoted in Book 3, chapters 7-8.
79. 3.8Against Origen's spiritual reading of the 'gnashing of teeth', the narrator argues that Scripture speaks sometimes literally and sometimes spiritually, as its uses of 'garments' show, so bodily teeth are meant here.
80. 3.9The return from Babylon did not fulfil Ezekiel's promise, since Jerusalem was repeatedly captured afterwards, as Josephus records.
81. 3.10Origen's seed analogy, quoted again in Book 3, chapter 10.
82. 3.11Origen cannot consistently give the saints glorious new bodies while the punished sinners must also have incorruptible bodies to endure torment.
83. 3.12Against Origen's claim that the risen Christ showed the disciples a body adapted to their sight rather than his real one, the narrator insists from Luke 24 and John 20 that Christ rose in the same body of flesh and bones.
84. 3.13If the disciples could see Christ's glory as novices at the transfiguration, they could have seen it after the resurrection; instead Christ showed them his flesh and bones, as Paul's creed also teaches.
85. 3.14The 'body of humiliation' was once a body of glory before the fall, and it is this same body that will rise glorified.
86. 3.15Methodius asks what shape Origen's risen body would have if not the human one, which bears God's image, and explains 'spiritual body' as a body filled with the Holy Spirit, not one made of air.
87. 3.17Origen's argument from the rich man and Lazarus and from Samuel's appearance that the soul after death has a body-like shape.
88. 3.18Origen's claim that the soul after death has a body-shaped vehicle contradicts itself: souls are themselves rational bodies shaped in members, so the body that belongs to them must take the same form.
89. 3.19If, as the opponents admit, bodiless angels sinned, a spiritual body would not keep souls from sin; so there is no advantage in denying the resurrection of this body.
90. 3.20The narrator rejects the argument that 'all flesh shall see the salvation of God' would imply the resurrection of animals, since Scripture's 'all flesh' elsewhere plainly means human beings.
91. 3.21Romans 14:9: the living are the souls, the dead the bodies.