On the Resurrection 2.13–2.19

Translated by Claude from N. Bonwetsch's German translation (1917) of the Old Church Slavonic; neither is shown

"Physicians call one bile yellow, another grey, another black, another green; and of blood, again, one yellow, another thick, another black. So when blood is drawn off for cleansing, it is not the substantial blood (for if it were, the constitution of the living being would be destroyed), but the juice that has increased from drink and food and, having taken on the form of blood, floats on top of it. That is why it spurts out at once when the vein is pricked. But if through the carelessness of the physician the true blood is touched, the living being suddenly grows weak. Hence the blood let out is not the true blood, nor part of the constitution of the body. And to make this clearer from the case of the male and the female sex: to men, who are always working and labouring, their labours bring the dew of the body, so that we do not need a superfluous cleansing; but to women, who have much surplus from food and, being without labour, have no evaporation of the flesh, the monthly cleansing was given. And as for the bodies that seem in sicknesses to waste away and be destroyed, you have judged rather unreasonably. For the substance of the flesh, being firm and moist and, so to speak, a gluing together of clay, covering the parts of the bones with fleshy parts, at one time receives fullness through food, at another deterioration through lack, like hollows filled by rain. For when the flesh is gripped by sicknesses of its nature and has not received what it desires, it falls away; but when it has become healthy and takes food again and is fattened, it becomes larger, never, however, decreasing or increasing in its substance. For how do wounds and other injuries remain in bodies, if, while the former flesh passes away completely, other flesh comes to the living being again from nourishment? It would rather have to become even and smooth through the flesh that comes in, and not grow together, nor would the place of the wound draw together, since what comes in constantly replaces what flows off. But in fact, as the flesh comes together, scars remain and arise all round the injured place, like the stitching together of torn garments. And we must see whether what the Lord Jesus said does not happen: 'No one puts a patch of new cloth on an old garment,' teaching by this that other, new flesh cannot be added from food to old flesh, as they think; since otherwise it would happen that one part in the body was old and another new. So too our bodies would not have to grow old, if some flesh came and other went. Further: if each of us cannot be the same, since, as they think, the underlying substance of the body very often comes and goes, so that one is another person on the tenth day and another today, then our mother has neither borne us nor reared us; for one is he who was born, another he who was reared, and another again he who exists today. And false too would be the word spoken to Jeremiah, 'Before I formed you I knew you'; for the one to whom the word came was another, in place of the one who was formed. Nor, then, have we received baptism or been purified, or come at all to the water of obedience, since the body once purified has vanished, and another has come in its place from food. For confession is a joy to each of us, since for one who does not want to be the same, three thousand bodies are counted in place of one."

Translated by Claude from N. Bonwetsch's German translation (1917) of the Old Church Slavonic; neither is shown

"And if we must be led down to the most unfitting of absurdities, let them by all means add this too, beyond what they have already brought forward: that we cannot be the same even in soul. For ideas and opinions and habits, which are properties of the soul, are never the same, but some come and others vanish; and skills begin at one time and vanish at another, for forgetting is the destruction of learning, and learning in turn is a replacement, creating a new skill in place of what was destroyed. For if there, because of cutting and chopping, they said without distinction that an addition of flesh takes place, why do they not much rather say of the soul too, as of the body, that it has a mobile and flowing nature, since the same thoughts and habits do not remain in us, but go and come? For at one time this pleases us, at another that, as our first insights depart and others come. And so its being, ever unmoved and immortal, will be destroyed, since it is shown to be corruptible and changing. Is it agreeable and fitting that they should contradict and overturn the structure of the body with words, but unfitting that we should answer and examine the sense of what they say? 'But this is not so,' they say; 'to say that the soul is mortal is altogether wicked; for even if impressions enter into its imaginations, it is not changed in its substance.' Neither, then, is this body, we too say, even if the juices, which are the product of food and the nourishment of the body, now increase and now decrease. So it is very wrong to say that other flesh comes again from food to suffering bodies that have become weak. And laughable too is this, that they attack us as not speaking rightly about the flowing change of the body, and say that it is not fitting for God that, while some bodies have sinned, others should be judged, and while some have acted righteously, others should receive salvation, when they themselves invent that the soul will have another, spiritual body, altogether better than the present one. How unreasonable and confused this is, is plain to everyone. For if it is not just to say that one will stand before the judge in another body, and you yourselves say that the souls will receive some other, spiritual body, you make God unjust by this saying; you convict yourselves by speaking contradictions. For we do not say, regarding the immortality and incorruption of this our body, that another body receives incorruption, but that this body does. As the most wise Paul too, rebuking those who mocked the resurrection of this body, answered: 'For this corruptible must be clothed with incorruption, and this mortal must be clothed with immortality.'"

Translated by Claude from N. Bonwetsch's German translation (1917) of the Old Church Slavonic; neither is shown

"... he called this restless life 'vanity of vanities.' For the body ... so the body too is not made with hands, for it too is God's creation and not made with hands. For 'God took dust from the earth and created man.' What is made by God is a work of God's power, not made with hands.

[16] "Come now, I will set before you the very words of the apostle, so that you may recognize how entirely consistent with themselves are the words the apostle speaks. For he says, 'Always carrying about in our body the dying of Jesus,' and soon after, 'For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.' And since 'the life of Jesus' appears 'in our flesh' (and this is incorruption), the flesh in which the life of Jesus appears does not perish. He adds again, saying, 'Having the same Spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke,' and so on, 'knowing that he who raised Jesus from the dead will raise us also.' But since he saw how readily the easily moved accept things, and feared that, looking at the weakness of the body, they might not believe in the resurrection, he said, 'Therefore, though our outer man is decaying, yet the inner man is renewed day by day.' 'The outer man,' he says, meaning the present one, decays through sicknesses and other sufferings; yet, seeing ourselves strengthened by the Spirit, we cannot be distressed while God delays the promise, as it seems to us. And he declares, 'For our present light affliction is working for us, beyond all measure, a weight of glory, as we look not at the things that are seen,' and so on. That is: even if we now think we have light sufferings in the body, yet such suffering works 'beyond all measure a weight of glory for us, who look not at the things seen, but at what is not yet revealed.' So, rather confirming what has been said, he says, 'For we know that if the earthly tent of our house is destroyed,' and so on. For one must consider how these words too hold fast to the old bodies, since we long to be clothed with immortality over the mortal body. That is why the body naturally belongs with us to that life. For 'no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it'; for the heavenly dwelling with which we long 'to be clothed over' is immortality. When we are clothed with it, 'all that is mortal' in us 'will be swallowed up' by eternal 'life.' That is why he also calls our body dead, 'so that we may not be found naked,' he says, of every good deed by which the soul is adorned. Leading us to confident expectation of what has been said, he answers: 'Being always confident, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight,' and so on. That is: we are confident, knowing that even if in our present existence we have gone away from the Lord by transgressing the commandment, yet, going out of the body, we come to the Lord. For unless we first 'go out of the body,' so that it may be refashioned and renewed, we cannot 'come to the Lord' with it, since we have all the sins of impurity. So, knowing well that the life of the present time is a going away 'from the Lord,' we do not grieve as those who die. But if this is not so, and he greatly hoped to go out of the body so as no longer to be in it, how then did he say that 'the life of Jesus will be manifested' in this mortal flesh? For he would appear to say contradictory things; how could he not? For after first saying himself that 'the life of Christ will be manifested' in the mortal flesh, he would ask a little further on to 'go out of the body,' the opposite. But it is very dangerous to say of such a man, in whom Christ spoke, that he contradicts himself. It is very clear, rather, that he says consistent things. For he adds at once, 'For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what he has done through his body, whether good or evil,' when the soul was in the body.

[17] "And now, so that the discussion of this may become clearer to us on every side, let us also understand what the same saint said, that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.' 'Flesh and blood,' the apostle said, 'cannot receive the kingdom of God.' Something other than flesh can be understood here, since flesh is understood in two ways, both of the flesh itself and of fleshly deeds. He begins from this word: 'But if Christ has risen, how do some say that there is no resurrection of the dead?' and again, 'The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven,' and so on in order, up to 'But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Since, then, the words before us include the one that is not understood, when he says at one time, 'Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,' and at another, 'This corruptible must put on incorruption,' mentioning no other corruptible thing besides this body, we must recognize whether he also speaks of body in two senses, just as world is spoken of in two senses; otherwise we would make ourselves ridiculous by saying that the apostle contradicts himself. But he himself makes it known, saying, 'If you have died to the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you submit to decrees?' For here he does not call 'world' the very structure of heaven and earth, which is properly called world, but the abandoned belief that accords with human error. That he is not speaking of the four elements of the world's fabric, by which we live, is certainly clear; for we cannot remain alive without water, or without fire, or without air, or without earth; and if we are sustained by them through God's ordering, how could he command us to die to the things that sustain us? And the Lord, in saying that 'the world lies in the evil one,' does not mean the world itself; for the evil one does not rule over the adornment of the world, since he neither waters it nor gives 'all their food in due season'; it is he 'who makes his sun shine on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust.' What then is this 'world that lies in the evil one'? The obedience of man gone astray into sin. You will find law too spoken of in two ways: once as the commandment itself, another time as the desire that resists the commandment. And just as the free will of man turned toward injustice is called 'world,' and the 'elements of the world' are not earth or fire or the rest, but the misleading teaching of the evil one's idolatry, so too 'flesh' is said to be unable to inherit the kingdom of God not as the flesh itself, but as the sin-loving way of life, of which he himself says, 'Neither the sexually immoral, nor robbers, nor murderers will receive the kingdom of God.' For those who live in evil and wicked lusts, 'whose god is the belly,' are fittingly called flesh instead of men; it was proper that those who live like cattle should be called 'flesh and blood.' Blessed Moses shows this too, for he says, 'God said: My Spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh.' As if the earlier men, born before these, had come into the world without flesh! So he is speaking of an evil way of life and conduct. For 'in these men,' he says, 'my Spirit will not remain,' as having remained in the others but not remaining in these. So it was not because of this flesh of ours that it was said, 'My Spirit will not remain in these men,' but because of the men who are unmoved toward the good. These words now destroy not only the arguments of Aglaophon, but also those of other heretics."