On the Resurrection of the Flesh 46–52

Recognize the apostle to be like this everywhere: condemning the works of the flesh in such a way that he seems to condemn the flesh, but taking care, lest anyone think so, through the prompting of other or adjoining statements. For in saying that those who are in the flesh cannot please God, he at once calls it back from a wrong understanding to a sound one by adding: “But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit.” For by denying that those who plainly were in the flesh were in the flesh, he showed that they were not in the works of the flesh; and so those cannot please God, not who are in the flesh, but who live carnally; while those please God who, placed in the flesh, walk according to the spirit. And again he says that the body is dead, but because of sin, just as the spirit is life because of righteousness. And setting life against the death established in the flesh, he without doubt promised life from righteousness in the very place where he fixed death from sin. Otherwise he would have set life against death in vain, if it is not there where that death is to which he opposed it, which must surely be driven out of the body. Now, if life drives death out of the body, it cannot do so without entering where that is which it drives out. But why am I more knotty when the apostle is more straightforward? “For if,” he says, “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will also raise your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit dwelling in you”; so that even if someone presumes the soul to be the mortal body, since he cannot deny that the flesh is so too, he is forced to acknowledge the raising of the flesh as well, by fellowship in the same condition. From what follows you may learn further that the works of the flesh are condemned, not the flesh itself: “So, brothers,” he says, “we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.” Now, to answer point by point: if salvation is promised to those set in the flesh but living according to the spirit, it is no longer the flesh that is opposed to salvation, but the working of the flesh. And when the working of the flesh, which is the cause of death, is removed, the flesh is shown to be safe, lacking the cause of death. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” he says, “has set me free from the law of sin and death”: the law, surely, which he said before dwells in our members. So our members will no longer be held by the law of death, since they are no longer held by that of sin, from 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 the flesh of sin, and through sin, condemned sin in the flesh”: not the flesh in sin; for the house will not be condemned with its inhabitant. For he said that sin dwells in our body. But when sin is condemned, the flesh is acquitted, just as, while sin was uncondemned, the flesh was bound to the law of death and sin. So even if he called the mind of the flesh death, and then enmity toward God, he did not so call the flesh itself. “To what, then,” you will say, “will the mind of the flesh be charged, if not to the substance itself?” To it, certainly, if you prove that the flesh has any mind of its own. But if without the soul it has no sensation, understand that the mind of the flesh is to be referred to the soul, though sometimes assigned to the flesh because it is carried on for the flesh's sake and through the flesh. And therefore he says that sin dwells in the flesh, because the soul too, by which sin is brought in, is the flesh's lodger; the flesh is put to death, indeed, but not in its own name, rather in that of sin. For elsewhere too he says: “How is it that even now, as though living in the world, you pass judgment?” writing not to the dead, but to those who ought to cease living in a worldly way.

For this will be the worldly life which he calls the old man crucified with Christ: not bodiliness, but conduct. Otherwise, if we do not take it so, our bodiliness has not been crucified, nor has our flesh suffered the cross of Christ; but, as he added, “that the body of sin may be done away with,” by amendment of life, not by destruction of substance, as he says, “so that we may no longer serve sin,” and that on this account, having died with Christ, we may believe that we shall also live with him. “So you too,” he says, “reckon yourselves dead.” To what? To the flesh? No, but to sin. So they will be safe as to the flesh, “but alive to God in Christ Jesus”: through the flesh, surely, to which they will not be dead, being dead to sin, not to the flesh. For he presses further: “Let not sin, then, reign in your mortal body, so that you obey it and present your members to sin as weapons of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as living from the dead” (not as living, but as living from the dead) “and your members as weapons of righteousness.” And again: “As you presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and iniquity for iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification; for when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit, then, did you have from the things of which you are now ashamed? For their end is death. But now, having been set free from sin and become slaves of God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So throughout this whole series of statements, tearing our members away from unrighteousness and sin and joining them to righteousness and holiness, and transferring them from the wages of death to the gift of eternal life, he surely promises the flesh the recompense of salvation. It would not have been fitting at all to command it to keep a discipline of holiness and righteousness of its own, if the reward of the discipline were not also its own; nor even to entrust baptism itself to it, if through regeneration it were not also being consecrated for restoration. The apostle presses this too: “Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried with him, then, through baptism into death, so that, as Christ rose from the dead, so we too may walk in newness of life.” And lest you think this said only of this life, which is to be lived in newness from faith through baptism, he most providently adds: “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of Christ's death, so shall we be also of his resurrection.” For in baptism we die through a likeness, but we rise in reality in the flesh, as Christ did too, “so that, as sin reigned in death, so grace also may reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” How so, if not equally in the flesh? For where death is, there too is life after death, because where death came afterwards there was life before. For if the reign of death works nothing but the dissolution of the flesh, then life, the contrary of death, must work the contrary, that is, the reintegration of the flesh; so that, as death by prevailing had swallowed up what is mortal, so it too, swallowed up by immortality, may hear: “Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O death, is your strife?” For so grace too will superabound where iniquity abounded; so too power will be made perfect in weakness, saving what was lost, making alive what was dead, healing what was struck, curing what languished, redeeming what was snatched away, freeing what was enslaved, calling back what was led astray, raising what was dashed down; and indeed from earth to heaven, where the Philippians too learn from the apostle that our citizenship is, “from which also we await our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory”: without doubt after the resurrection, since Christ himself too was not glorified before his passion. These will be our bodies which he beseeches the Romans to present as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God. How living, if they are to perish? How holy, if they are profane? How pleasing, if they are condemned? Come now, how will these people who flee the light of the Scriptures take what was written to the Thessalonians, which I would think written with a ray of the sun itself, so bright it is: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly”? Is that not enough? But it goes on: “and may your whole body and soul and spirit be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord.” You have the whole substance of man destined for salvation, and at no other time than at the coming of the Lord, which is the key of the resurrection.

“But flesh and blood,” you say, “cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” We know that this too is written. But we have deliberately put it off until now, so that what our adversaries throw up at once in the front line we might overthrow in the last engagement, after all the questions, its auxiliaries as it were, had first been knocked down. But even now it will help to review what precedes, so that its origin may settle the sense of this too. The apostle, as I think, having set out for the Corinthians every point of church discipline, had summed up both his gospel and their faith in the commission of the Lord's death and resurrection, so as to derive the rule of our hope too from the point on which it rests. So he adds: “But if Christ is preached as having risen from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? And if there is none, neither has Christ risen. If Christ has not risen, our preaching is empty, our faith is vain. For we shall be found false witnesses of God, having testified that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise. For if the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen. If Christ has not risen, your faith is vain, for you are still in your sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.” By these words, what does he seem to be building us up to believe? “The resurrection of the dead,” you say, “which was being denied.” Surely wishing it to be believed on the pattern of the Lord's resurrection. “Surely,” you say. Now, is a pattern made from difference or from likeness? “From likeness, of course,” you say. But how did Christ rise? In the flesh, or not? Without doubt, if you hear that he died and was buried according to the Scriptures in no other way than in the flesh, you will grant equally that he was raised in the flesh. For the very thing that fell in death, that lay in the tomb, is what also rose: not so much Christ in the flesh as the flesh in Christ. So if we shall rise after the pattern of Christ, who rose in the flesh, we shall not rise after the pattern of Christ if we too do not rise in the flesh: “because through a man,” he says, “came death, and through a man the resurrection,” so as to separate the authors, Adam of death, Christ of resurrection, but to establish that the resurrection is of the same substance as the death, by comparing the authors themselves under the name “man.” “For if as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive,” they will be made alive in Christ in the flesh, as in Adam they die in the flesh. “But each in his own order,” that is, because each in his own body too. For the order will be arranged by merits; and since merits are ascribed to the body as well, an order of bodies too must be arranged, so that there can be an order of merits. “But if some are also baptized for the dead,” we shall see whether with good reason. Certainly he indicates that they instituted this out of the presumption by which others thought that a vicarious baptism would benefit the flesh too for the hope of resurrection, which, unless it were bodily, would not be pledged in a bodily baptism. Why does he say that they themselves are baptized … if the bodies that are baptized do not rise? For the soul is consecrated not by the washing but by the answer. “Why,” he says, “are we too in danger every hour?” Through the flesh, surely. “I die daily”: in the perils of the flesh, surely, in which he also fought with beasts at Ephesus, those beasts, namely, of the affliction in Asia, of which he speaks in the second letter to the same: “For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of our affliction in Asia, that we were weighed down beyond measure, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life.” All this, unless I am mistaken, he lists for this purpose: not wishing the struggles of the flesh to be thought vain, he wishes the resurrection of the flesh to be believed beyond doubt. For the struggle of that which will have no resurrection must be held vain. “But someone will say: How are the dead raised? And with what body will they come?” Here he now discusses the qualities of bodies, whether the very same are taken back or others. But since a question of that kind is held to be secondary, it will suffice meanwhile that the resurrection is defined as bodily by this too, that the question is about the quality of bodies.

We come now to flesh and blood, the real crux of the whole question. Under what condition the apostle has disinherited these substances from the kingdom of God is likewise to be learned from what precedes. “The first man,” he says, “is from the earth, earthy,” that is, of clay, that is, Adam; “the second man from heaven,” that is, the Word of God, that is, Christ; yet man in no other sense, though from heaven, than that he too is flesh and soul, which man is, which Adam is. For even if above he is called “the last Adam,” he drew the sharing of the name from the sharing of the substance, since Adam too was flesh not from seed, as Christ also was. “As is the earthy, so are the earthy; as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly.” Such in substance? Or first in discipline, then also in the dignity which discipline has won? For in substance the earthy and the heavenly, once called men by the apostle, will in no way be separated. For if Christ too, alone truly heavenly, indeed super-heavenly, yet man, as flesh and soul, is in no way distinguished by this condition of substances from the earthy quality, then likewise those who are heavenly after his pattern will be understood to be proclaimed heavenly not from their present substance but from their future glory; since earlier too, from where this distinction flowed, a difference of dignity was shown: one glory of the super-heavenly, another of the super-earthly, and one of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars, since star differs from star in glory, yet not in substance. Finally, having first set out the difference of dignity in the same substance, to be pursued now and to be grasped then, he adds an exhortation too, that here we may pursue the character of Christ by discipline and there attain its height by glory: “As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the image of the super-heavenly.” For we have borne the image of the earthy through partnership in transgression, through fellowship in death, through exile from paradise. For even if the image of Adam is borne here in the flesh, yet we are not told to put off the flesh; if not the flesh, then the way of life, so that likewise we may bear the image of the heavenly in ourselves, not now of God, nor now set in heaven, but walking according to the lineaments of Christ in holiness and righteousness and truth. And indeed he directs all this to discipline, so that he says here that the image of Christ is to be borne in this flesh and in this time of discipline. For in saying “let us bear,” in the mood of command, he speaks to this time, in which man is no other substance than flesh and soul. Or even if this faith looks to some other, that is, heavenly, substance, still it is promised to that which is commanded here to labour toward it. Since, then, he places the image both of the earthy and of the heavenly in conduct, the one to be renounced and the other to be pursued, and then adds, “For this I say” (that is, because of what I said above; for “for” is a conjunction that completes the sense from what precedes) “that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” he bids us understand by flesh and blood nothing other than the image of the earthy mentioned above. And if that image is reckoned in the conduct of oldness, and the conduct of oldness does not attain the kingdom of God, then flesh and blood, in not attaining the kingdom of God, are reduced to the conduct of oldness. Plainly, if the apostle has never put the substance for the works, let him not be taken to do so here either. But if he denied that those still set in the flesh were in the flesh, denying that they were in the works of the flesh, you ought not to overturn his pattern: it is not the substance but the works of the substance that estrange from the kingdom of God. Having set these works out plainly to the Galatians too, he declares that he forewarns and has forewarned that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, not bearing, that is, the image of the heavenly as they had borne that of the earthy; and therefore, by their old way of life, they are to be reckoned nothing but flesh and blood. And yet even if the apostle had suddenly burst out with this definition, that flesh and blood are to be shut out of the kingdom of God, without any preparation of the sense beforehand, would we not likewise interpret these two substances as the old man given over to flesh and blood, that is, to eating and drinking, whose saying it is against faith in the resurrection: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”? For in inserting this too, the apostle rebuked flesh and blood by their fruits of eating and drinking.

But even setting aside interpretations of this kind, which censure the works of flesh and blood, we may claim for the resurrection the substances themselves, understood as nothing other than what they are. For it is not resurrection that is directly denied to flesh and blood, but the kingdom of God, which falls to the resurrection (for there is also a resurrection to judgment); indeed, the general resurrection of the flesh is confirmed when a particular one is excepted. For while it is declared to what state it does not rise, it is implied to what state it does rise. And so, since the distinction within the resurrection according to merits concerns the conduct of the substance, not its kind, it appears from this too that flesh and blood are kept from the kingdom of God on the ground of guilt, not of substance, yet rise to judgment on the ground of their nature, since they do not rise to the kingdom. I will say more: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”; rightly, alone and by themselves, to show that the Spirit is still needed for them. For it is the Spirit that gives life for the kingdom of God; the flesh profits nothing. Yet something else can profit it, that is, the Spirit, and through the Spirit the works of the Spirit too. So all flesh and blood rise equally in their own quality. But those whose part it is to enter the kingdom of God will have to put on the power of incorruptibility and immortality, without which they cannot enter the kingdom of God, before they can obtain it. Rightly, then, as we have said, flesh and blood alone fail to attain the kingdom of God. But now, since this corruptible, that is, the flesh, is to be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and this mortal, that is, the blood, by immortality, after the resurrection, through change, then rightly flesh and blood, changed and swallowed up, can inherit the kingdom of God; yet not without being raised. There are some who would have flesh and blood taken as Judaism, because of circumcision, which is itself foreign to the kingdom of God, since it too is reckoned to oldness and is marked under this title by the apostle elsewhere as well, who, after the Son of God was revealed in him to be preached among the nations, did not at once refer to flesh and blood, that is, to circumcision, that is, to Judaism, as he writes to the Galatians.

But what we have reserved for the conclusion will now stand in place of everything, even on behalf of the apostle himself, who would truly be convicted of the greatest thoughtlessness if, as some would have it, he had so abruptly, with eyes shut, as they say, without distinction, without condition, thrust all flesh and blood indiscriminately out of the kingdom of God, and surely out of the very palace of heaven, when Jesus still sits there at the right hand of the Father: man, though God; the last Adam, though the primal Word; flesh and blood, though purer than ours; yet the same in substance and form as when he ascended, and such as he will also descend, as the angels affirm, to be recognized, namely, by those who pierced him. He, called the mediator between God and men, from the deposit of both parties entrusted to him, keeps in himself the deposit of the flesh too, the earnest of the whole sum. For as he left us the earnest of the Spirit, so he has received from us the earnest of the flesh and carried it into heaven as a pledge that the whole sum will one day be brought there. Be at peace, flesh and blood: you have taken possession of both heaven and the kingdom of God in Christ. Or if they deny that you are in Christ, let those who have denied you heaven deny that Christ is in heaven. “Nor will corruption,” he says, “inherit incorruption”: not so that you should think flesh and blood are corruption, since they are rather subject to corruption, through death, that is; for it is death that not only corrupts flesh and blood but consumes them. But since he had declared that the works of flesh and blood cannot obtain the kingdom of God, to heighten this he took away the inheritance of incorruption from corruption itself too, that is, from death, to which the works of flesh and blood lead. For a little later he also expressed, in a way, the death of death itself, saying: “Death has been swallowed up in strife. Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O death, is your power? The sting of death is sin” (this will be the corruption), “and the power of sin is the law”: that other law, without doubt, which he placed in his members, warring against the law of his mind, namely the very force of sinning against the will. For even if above he says that the last enemy, death, is to be abolished, in this way corruption does not obtain the inheritance of incorruption, that is, death will not last. When and how will it fail? When “in an atom, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, the dead too will rise incorrupt” (who are these but those who were corrupted before, that is, bodies, that is, flesh and blood?) “and we shall be changed” (from what condition, if not the one in which we shall be found?); “for this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal put on immortality.” What is mortal but the flesh? What is corruptible but the blood? And lest you think the apostle means something else …, providing for you and taking pains that you understand it as said of the flesh: when he says “this corruptible” and “this mortal,” he says it touching his own skin. Certainly he could not have said “this” except of something at hand, something visible. It is a word of bodily pointing. But the corruptible will be one thing, corruption another; the mortal one thing, mortality another. For that which suffers is one thing, that which makes it suffer another. So the things that suffer corruption and mortality, namely flesh and blood, must also undergo incorruption and immortality.

Let us see now with what body he argues the dead will come. And it is good that he broke out at once to show it, as though someone were asking such a thing. “Fool,” he says, “what you sow is not brought to life unless it dies.” From the example of the seed, then, let this now be established: that no other flesh is brought to life than the very flesh that has died; and so what follows will shine out clearly. For nothing may be understood against the rule of the example, so that, because there follows, “and what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be,” you should not therefore think that a different body will rise from the one that is sown in dying. Otherwise you have fallen away from the example. For never, when wheat has been sown and dissolved in the earth, has barley sprung up, rather than the very same kind of grain, with the same nature, quality, and form. In short, where would another come from, if not from this very one? For even its corruption is itself, since it is the corruption of this. But he also indicates how it is not the body that is to be that is sown, saying: “but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of some such kind; but God gives it a body as he wills.” To that grain, surely, which he says is sown bare. “Surely,” you say. Then that to which God is to give a body is preserved. But how is it preserved if it is nowhere, if it does not rise, if it is not the very same that rises? If it does not rise, it is not preserved; if it is not preserved, it cannot receive a body from God. But it is agreed to be preserved in every way. For what purpose, then, will God give it a body as he wills, when it certainly has its own bare body, unless that it may rise no longer bare? So what is built on to the body will be an addition; nor is that on which it is built destroyed, but increased. And what is increased is preserved. For the grain is sown alone, without the clothing of the husk, without the foundation of the ear, without the defence of the beard, without the pride of the stalk. But it rises enriched with abundance, built up in structure, arranged in order, defended by its array, and clothed on every side. These are for it a different body from God, into which it is changed not by abolition but by enlargement, so that then that too is its own which it acquires from God from outside. “And to each of the seeds its own body”: not its own, that is, not its former one. Keep to the example, then, and keep its mirror for the flesh: you will believe that the same flesh will bear fruit that was sown, the very same, though fuller; not another, though returning in another way. For it too will receive the array and adornment which God wills to put upon it according to its merits. Without doubt it was to this that he directed the words, “Not all flesh is the same flesh”: not to deny community of substance but equality of privilege, bringing the body into a difference of honour, not of kind. To this end he adds figurative examples of animals and elements too: “one flesh of man,” that is, of the servant of God, who is truly man; “another of beasts,” that is, of the heathen, of whom the prophet too says, “Man has been likened to the senseless beasts”; “another flesh of birds,” that is, of martyrs, who strive toward higher things; “another of fishes,” that is, of those for whom the water of baptism is enough. So too he brings arguments from the super-heavenly bodies: “one glory of the sun,” that is, of Christ; “and another of the moon,” that is, of the church; “and another of the stars,” that is, of the seed of Abraham; “for star differs from star in glory”; “and bodies earthly and heavenly,” the Jew, that is, and the Christian. Otherwise, if not figuratively, he quite pointlessly set the flesh of mules and kites and the bodies of the heavenly lights beside human bodies, when they bear neither on a comparison of condition nor on the attainment of resurrection. Finally, when by these he had concluded a difference of glory, not of substance, “So too,” he says, “is the resurrection of the dead.” How? Differing in nothing else but in glory alone. For again recalling the resurrection to the same substance, and looking back to the grain: “It is sown,” he says, “in corruption, it rises in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it rises in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises in power; it is sown an animal body, it rises a spiritual body.” Certainly nothing else rises than what is sown, nor is anything else sown than what is dissolved in the ground, nor is anything else dissolved in the ground than the flesh. For this is what God's sentence struck down: “Earth you are and into earth you shall go,” since it had also been taken from the earth. Hence the apostle too conceived the idea of saying that it is sown when it is given back to the earth, since the earth is also a depository for seeds, to be laid down there and sought back from there. And therefore he also seals it, pressing it home: “for so it is written,” lest you think that to be sown means anything other than “into the earth you shall go, from which you were taken”; and so it is said of nothing other than the flesh.