Resurrection of the body in the early church

The future resurrection of the dead and the nature of the risen body. Part of Eschatology.

Didache 16.6Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · The signs of the end: an opening in heaven, a trumpet, and the resurrection.
Didache 16.7Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · The resurrection is of the saints, who come with the Lord.
1 Clement 24.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Christ's resurrection is the firstfruit of ours.
1 Clement 24.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Nature shows resurrection.
1 Clement 24.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Day and night picture resurrection.
1 Clement 24.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Sowing pictures resurrection.
1 Clement 24.5Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Seeds decay and rise to bear fruit.
1 Clement 25.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The sign of the phoenix.
1 Clement 25.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The phoenix dies in a nest of spices.
1 Clement 25.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · A new phoenix carries its parent's bones to Egypt.
1 Clement 26.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · If God shows resurrection through a bird, he will surely raise the faithful.
1 Clement 26.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The Psalms speak of being raised.
1 Clement 26.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Job looked for the resurrection of the flesh.
1 Clement 50.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God promises to raise his people from their tombs.
Epistle of Barnabas 21.1Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Walk in the Lord's decrees; there will be resurrection and recompense.
2 Clement 9.1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · The flesh will be judged and will rise.
2 Clement 9.2Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · We were saved in the flesh.
2 Clement 9.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Called in the flesh, we will come to judgment in the flesh.
2 Clement 19.3Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · The obedient may suffer briefly but will reap the fruit of the resurrection.
2 Clement 19.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · The godly who suffer now will live again and rejoice forever.
5 Ezra 2.16Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century
To the Trallians 9.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Christ truly rose, and the Father will raise believers in the same way.
Epistle of the Apostles 21Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ promises that the apostles will rise in the flesh as he did, and says he has received from the Father all authority to bring the lost into light, life, and freedom.
Epistle of the Apostles 22Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · The apostles ask whether the flesh will be judged with the soul and spirit, and Christ rebukes their questioning.
Epistle of the Apostles 24Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ affirms that every body will rise with its soul and spirit, rebukes the apostles' doubt, and bids them keep his commandments on the narrow way.
Epistle of the Apostles 25Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ welcomes the apostles' questions and teaches that the flesh, which perishes, will rise and be healed.
First Apology 19Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · The resurrection of the body is no harder to believe than human birth from a small seed.
First Apology 52Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · The prophets foretold two comings of Christ: the first in suffering, the second in glory, with the resurrection and judgment.
Acts of Paul (Coptic Heidelberg papyrus), page 45Anonymous · ca. 150-200 · The Corinthians fear for Paul because two teachers, Simon and Cleobius, are denying the resurrection of the flesh, God's creation of man and the world, and Christ's real crucifixion and birth.
Acts of Paul and Thecla 12Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · Demas and Hermogenes report that Paul makes chastity a condition of the resurrection.
Acts of Paul and Thecla 14Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · Demas and Hermogenes advise Thamyris to accuse Paul before the governor, and claim the resurrection has already happened in their children.
Correspondence of Paul and the Corinthians (3 Cor.), Paul's replyAnonymous · ca. 150-200 · Paul replies that he handed on what he received: Christ was truly born of Mary by the Holy Spirit to save the flesh, God made man and the world, and the flesh will rise, as seeds, Jonah, the dead man laid on Elisha's bones and the widow's son show.
On the Resurrection 3Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · If the members of the body rise, their functions need not be active: some are barren or virgins even now, and Christ was born of a virgin and foretold that marriage ceases in the age to come.
On the Resurrection 5Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · Against those who say the resurrection is impossible: even the pagans think their gods can do all things; believers have proof in the making of the first man and in human generation, and will argue also from worldly reasons.
On the Resurrection 6Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · By the principles of Plato, the Stoics and Epicurus alike, nothing perishes into nothing, so God can remake the body from its indestructible elements.
On the Resurrection 7Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · Against those who despise the flesh: man formed in God's image was fleshly, so the flesh is precious to God; it does not sin alone, and Christ came to call sinners.
On the Resurrection 8Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · God would not neglect his precious work: he has called the whole man, soul and body, to resurrection; to save the soul alone, a part of himself, would be no act of goodness.
On the Resurrection 9Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · Christ healed and raised the flesh, rose in the flesh in which he suffered, ate before his disciples and ascended in the flesh: the resurrection of the flesh is the power of God.
On the Resurrection 10Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · The resurrection is of the flesh that fell; the soul's immortality alone was Plato's teaching, while Christ brought a new hope, and the flesh he disciplines is kept for salvation.
Sibylline Oracles 8.201ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl foretells the cosmic signs of the end, the resurrection of the dead, the healing of the lame, deaf, and blind, and a common life on an undivided earth.
Dialogue with Trypho 80.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Those who deny the resurrection are not Christians, just as some Jewish sects are not true Jews.
Dialogue with Trypho 80.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin expects a resurrection of the flesh and a thousand-year reign in a rebuilt Jerusalem.
Oration to the Greeks 6Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The resurrection of the body will happen once, at the end, for judgment by God; nothing of a person is lost, however the body perishes.
Diatessaron, section 38Tatian · ca. 160-180
To Autolycus 1.7Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God, the Creator and Lord of all, can be seen only by a heart healed by him; the believer will see him when raised immortal in body and soul.
To Autolycus 1.8Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Faith comes first in every human undertaking; the God who made each person from nothing can raise them again.
To Autolycus 1.13Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Nature is full of pictures of resurrection: seasons, seeds, trees, the moon, and recovery from illness.
To Autolycus 2.14Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Plants growing from seeds foreshadow the resurrection; the world is like a salt sea kept alive by God's law and prophets, with the churches as safe harbors and the heresies as deadly reefs.
Fragment 12Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 170–200
A Plea for the Christians 36Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Belief in the resurrection of the body and in judgment makes cannibalism unthinkable for Christians; the full argument on the resurrection is postponed.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 1Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The introduction: the resurrection must first be defended against objections before its positive grounds are set out.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 2Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Those who deny the resurrection must show that God cannot or will not raise the dead; but God, who knew every element of our bodies before they existed, cannot be ignorant of where they go after death.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 3Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The God who made human bodies from nothing has the power to raise them, even if they have been devoured by animals.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 4Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The objection: human bodies eaten by animals, and those animals eaten by other humans, cannot be restored to their owners at the resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 5Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The answer begins: God has given each creature its proper food, and much of what is eaten is never absorbed into the body at all.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 6Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Only food natural to a creature becomes part of its body; unnatural food is expelled or does harm.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 7Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Even if some unnatural food were absorbed, it would not become a true part of the body, and so would not rise with it.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 8Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Human flesh is not natural food for humans and so is never truly absorbed; God will gather every part of each body, however it perished.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 9Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Comparing God with human craftsmen, who cannot restore broken works, is an insult to God; what is impossible for humans is possible for God.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 10Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Raising the dead wrongs no one, neither other creatures nor the soul or body of the one raised, and it is not unworthy of God.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 11Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Summary of the first part and plan of the second: the resurrection will be proved from the purpose of human creation, from human nature, and from God's judgment.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 12Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · God made human beings neither in vain nor for his own need, but for their own sake, to live forever; so the whole human being, soul and body, must endure, and the resurrection is the last of the body's changes.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 13Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · God's purpose in creating human beings, to contemplate him forever, guarantees their continuance and therefore the resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 14Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The proper order of proof: first God's purpose in creation and human nature, then the judgment; the resurrection is not only for judgment, since infants too will rise.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 15Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · A human being is a unity of soul and body with one common end; since the rational human being must endure, the body must rise to rejoin the soul.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 16Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Human continuance is uneven, interrupted by sleep and by death; as waking life after sleep is the same life, so is the life after death and resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 17Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · No one would believe, without experience, that a whole human body grows from a seed; so reason can be trusted when it shows that the resurrection follows in the natural sequence of human life.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 18Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The argument from judgment: since the whole person, soul and body, acted, the whole person must be judged, which does not happen in this life or in death; so the body must rise.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 23Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · God's commandments (honor parents, do not commit adultery, do not steal) were given to embodied human beings, not to souls, so the whole person must be judged.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 25Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The end of human life, which belongs to the whole person, is eternal contemplation of God; it requires the resurrection, by which the same souls receive the same bodies.
Adumbrations on 1 Peter, paragraph 1Clement of Alexandria · original ca. 200; Latin translation 6th century · On 1 Pet 1: regeneration through Christ's resurrection in us; the soul does not return to a body in this life but rejoins it at the resurrection; the soul becomes incorruptible by grace; the prophets spoke by the Spirit of Christ.
Against Heresies 2.29.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · If souls are saved by righteousness rather than by nature, the bodies that shared in righteousness must be saved too.
Against Heresies 2.29.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Since righteousness is done in the body, the body will share in the reward; God will raise our mortal bodies incorrupt.
Against Heresies 4.5.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ’s answer to the Sadducees shows that the God who spoke from the bush is the God of the living, and that Christ with the Father is that God.
Against Heresies 5.2.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · If the flesh were not saved, the cup and bread of the Eucharist would not be the communion of Christ’s blood and body, which nourish our flesh and blood.
Against Heresies 5.2.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · As the cup and bread receive the Word and become the Eucharist of Christ’s body and blood, so our bodies, nourished by it and laid in the earth, will rise by the Word of God.
Against Heresies 5.3.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The God who formed man from clay can much more easily raise the dissolved body, and the flesh that received his wise craftsmanship can receive his power.
Against Heresies 5.3.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The heretics, who live in the flesh while denying that flesh can share in life, refute themselves; the God who now gives the flesh life can give it eternal life.
Against Heresies 5.4.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · A “good” father who gave life only to soul and spirit and abandoned the body would be either powerless or spiteful, and inferior to the Creator who gives life to the whole man.
Against Heresies 5.4.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · If some cause prevents the heretics’ father from giving life to bodies, he is subject to that cause and not free.
Against Heresies 5.5.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Jonah and the three young men in the furnace show that nothing in nature can resist God’s will, so he can give raised bodies everlasting life.
Against Heresies 5.6.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The body is the temple of God and the members of Christ, so to deny its salvation is blasphemy; God will raise it by his power.
Against Heresies 5.7.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · As Christ rose with the marks of the nails in his flesh, so our mortal bodies, which alone die and decay, are what God will raise.
Against Heresies 5.7.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul’s “sown in weakness, raised in power” speaks of dead bodies, which rise as spiritual bodies through the Spirit and will see the Lord face to face.
Against Heresies 5.9.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Flesh without the Spirit is dead and cannot inherit the kingdom, but flesh possessed by the Spirit bears the heavenly image.
Against Heresies 5.9.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The flesh does not inherit but is inherited by the Spirit, as a bride is taken by the bridegroom; without the Spirit, mere flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom.
Against Heresies 5.10.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · As grafting changes the fruit but not the wood, the Spirit changes man’s works but not his flesh; Paul rejects the lusts of the flesh, not its substance.
Against Heresies 5.12.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Flesh capable of death is also capable of life; as death drove out life, so the life of the Spirit drives out death.
Against Heresies 5.12.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The same flesh that died is what Christ came to give life to; Paul bids us put to death not our bodies but the lusts of the flesh.
Against Heresies 5.13.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Jairus’s daughter, the widow’s son, and Lazarus rose in the same bodies in which they died, a pledge that at the last trumpet the dead will rise in their bodies.
Against Heresies 5.13.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The heretics cling to Paul’s words about flesh and blood like unskilled wrestlers who fall holding one limb, ignoring the apostle’s meaning.
Against Heresies 5.13.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul himself says the corruptible and mortal must put on incorruption and immortality and that Christ will transform our lowly body, so “flesh and blood” cannot mean the substance of the body.
Against Heresies 5.13.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul’s words about the life of Jesus made manifest in our mortal flesh, and his argument for the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, concern the body of flesh.
Against Heresies 5.13.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The heretics must either make Paul contradict himself or twist every passage in which he plainly teaches the resurrection of the flesh.
Against Heresies 5.15.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Isaiah and Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones promise the resurrection of the body by the same God who formed man.
Against Heresies 5.31.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Against those who say the soul rises to heaven at death, Christ himself remained three days among the dead before rising and ascending.
Against Heresies 5.32.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God promised the land to Abraham, who never possessed it; he and his seed, the Church of believers, will receive it at the resurrection of the just.
Against Heresies 5.34.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah foretell the resurrection of the just and the gathering of God’s people, the Church as Abraham’s seed, to dwell in their land.
Against Heresies 5.34.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Isaiah’s fruitful earth and healed wound, Christ’s promise to serve his watchful servants, John’s first resurrection, and Daniel’s kingdom of the saints all point to the kingdom of the just.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 27Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Plato's myth of Er, with Ardiaeus punished in body, shows he learned judgment and even bodily resurrection from the prophets.
Excerpts from Theodotus 15.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Paul's “image of the heavenly” shows that there are spiritual bodies.
Octavius 11.2Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians believe the dead will rise from their ashes.
Octavius 11.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Caecilius asks what kind of body could rise again.
Octavius 11.8Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · No one has ever come back from the dead.
Octavius 11.9Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The resurrection is a poets' fable that Christians have borrowed.
Octavius 34.6Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Pythagoras and Plato taught a garbled version of the resurrection.
Octavius 34.10Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · God who made man from nothing can remake him; no body is lost to God, whatever happens to it.
Octavius 34.11Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Nature's cycles of death and renewal point to the resurrection.
Apology 48Tertullian · ca. 197 · The resurrection of the same person, body and soul, for judgment is more credible than transmigration; God who made man from nothing can remake him, and the world is full of images of resurrection.
On the Dress of Women 2.7Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Elaborate hairstyles and wigs defy Christ's word and may use hair from the damned; God commands women to be veiled, and nothing artificial will rise at the resurrection.
To the Nations 1.19Tertullian · 197 · Christian courage rests on hope of resurrection and judgment, beliefs that pagans mock though their own poets and philosophers teach the return of souls and a judgment after death.
The Testimony of the Soul 4Tertullian · ca. 197–198 · The soul's habits of pitying, cursing, or blessing the dead, fearing death, and seeking posthumous fame show that it knows it survives death and faces judgment, and even hints at resurrection.
To His Wife 1.1Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Tertullian writes to his wife, urging her not to remarry if he dies first, since there is no marriage in the resurrection.
Didascalia 5.7–9 (English)Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 5.7–9 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · The resurrection is taught by the prophets, foreshadowed even by the Sibyl and by the phoenix, and guaranteed by Christ's resurrection, so believers should welcome martyrdom, for which a greater glory is promised.
On Christ and Antichrist 65Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–215 · Scripture's promises of resurrection to life for the saints and of eternal fire for the lawless are gathered.
On Christ and Antichrist 66Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–215 · Paul's teaching on the resurrection of those who sleep in Christ and the meeting with the Lord in the air is quoted.
Against the Greeks 2Hippolytus of Rome · 3rd century (disputed) · God will raise the same bodies, pure and incorruptible for the righteous, unchanged for the unrighteous, as seed rises from the earth.
On Proverbs, fragment 46Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 25:25b: the good news from afar is the message of the resurrection and the promises.
On the Raising of Lazarus (homily), part 2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · The second part of the Lazarus homily: Christ's tears teach ordered sympathy, the Jews roll away the stone as witnesses, and the voice that created the world raises Lazarus, a mirror of our own resurrection.
On the Resurrection and Incorruption, fragmentHippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · In the resurrection men will be like angels, incorruptible and free from all bodily needs and sufferings.
On the resurrection, to the Empress Mammaea, Syriac fragment IHippolytus of Rome · ca. 200-235 · From Hippolytus's sermon on the resurrection to the empress Mammaea: the Nicolaitan sect began with the deacon Nicolaus, who taught that the resurrection had already happened in faith and baptism.
On the resurrection, to the Empress Mammaea, Syriac fragment IIHippolytus of Rome · ca. 200-235 · Hippolytus says that Paul, facing confusion at Corinth, weighed whether to answer first the deniers of the resurrection or those who would return to the law.
On the resurrection, to the Empress Mammaea, Syriac fragment VHippolytus of Rome · ca. 200-235 · Hippolytus argues that the body that has received the Spirit does not finally perish, citing Rom 8:10–11.
On the resurrection, to the Empress Mammaea, Syriac fragment VIHippolytus of Rome · ca. 200-235 · Hippolytus concludes that the Spirit dwelling in the flesh makes the body incorruptible through faith in Christ, the firstfruits of the resurrection.
Against All Heresies 1Anonymous · early 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author passes over the Jewish sects and begins his list of Christian heresies with Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, and Nicolaus.
Against Hermogenes 34Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Scripture foretells that heaven and earth will pass away; what ends in nothing began from nothing, and God's promise to raise our flesh shows he makes the greater from the lesser.
Commentary on Daniel 2.28Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · The youths' garments, unharmed in the fire, prove against the heretics that the flesh, sanctified by a holy soul, will rise incorruptible.
4.51Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · The great tribulation under the Antichrist, Christ's warnings and his coming in glory; Antiochus's abomination and the Antichrist's; Edom, Moab and Ammon as his first followers; the 1,290 and 1,335 days; and the resurrection of the righteous to life and of the Antichrist's followers to shame.
On the Flesh of Christ 1Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Those who deny the resurrection of the flesh also deny that Christ had real human flesh; Marcion denied both his flesh and his birth, and Tertullian sets out to examine them.
On the Flesh of Christ 12Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · The soul was never ignorant of itself, for it naturally knows God and his judgement; Christ came not to show the soul to itself but to save it.
On the Flesh of Christ 15Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Scripture everywhere calls Christ a man; the Valentinian objections to his earthly flesh are the same as the heathen's, and our flesh's resurrection simply awaits Christ's final victory.
Against Marcion 1.24Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god saves only a few, and saves only their souls, abandoning the flesh that bears baptism, celibacy, and martyrdom; and he leaves his followers suffering under the Creator's hand, so his goodness is not perfect.
Against Marcion 3.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · If Christ's flesh was a phantom, as Marcion holds, then his works, sufferings, death, and resurrection were unreal, and our faith and resurrection are empty.
Against Marcion 4.38Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's questions about John's baptism, his answer about Caesar's coin, his reply to the Sadducees on marriage and the resurrection, and his words on David's son and Lord all belong to the Creator's Christ.
Against Marcion 5.7Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 1 Corinthians 4–10 Tertullian finds the Creator's judgment, his festivals fulfilled in Christ, the resurrection of the body, the regulation (not abolition) of marriage, the one Father from whom are all things, and the law of the ox and the rock in the wilderness as figures of Christ.
Against Marcion 5.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Those who denied the resurrection denied the resurrection of the body, which the very words “dead” and “rise again” require; and Christ, who reigns until his enemies are subdued, is the Christ of Psalms 110 and 72, not Hezekiah or Solomon.
Against Marcion 5.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's arguments against those who denied the resurrection, his analogies of seed and body, the first and last Adam, and the change of the flesh at the end all assume the resurrection of the body, which Marcion denies.
Against Marcion 5.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 2 Corinthians 1–4 the Father of mercies, the new covenant of the Spirit, the veil of Moses, the “god of this age,” and the treasure in earthen vessels all point to the Creator and to the resurrection of the body.
Against Marcion 5.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 2 Corinthians 5–13 Paul's hope of being clothed over, the judgment seat of Christ, the new creation, and his thorn in the flesh and threats of discipline point to the Creator and to the resurrection of the body.
Against Marcion 5.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, not in a phantom body; God will raise mortal bodies as he raised Christ; and Paul's lament over Israel's ignorance, his praise of God's riches, and his moral precepts in Romans 8–14 all come from the Creator's Scriptures.
Against Marcion 5.20Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In Philippians the differing motives of preachers show no difference of doctrine; Christ, found in the form of a servant, truly became man and truly died; and the promised transformation of our lowly body means the body will rise.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 1Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Christians hope in the resurrection of the dead; pagans mock it yet feed their dead, and even the philosophers who teach transmigration half-glimpse it.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 2Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Heretics who deny another God than the Creator attack the resurrection of the flesh first; Tertullian, having written against Marcion and on Christ's flesh, now defends the flesh's resurrection itself.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 3Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Common human notions may support the truth, but heretics who borrow the pagans' denial of life after death should be made to argue from Scripture alone.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 4Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Heretics and pagans alike scorn the flesh as vile and ask mockingly whether a body devoured and dissolved, with all its needs and defects, could ever return.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 9Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · God will not abandon the flesh he made, adorned, and loves; its very weakness, sin, and condemnation are what his mercy came to heal.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 11Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Those who deny the resurrection live most carnally; God, who made the world out of nothing (or even from matter), can surely remake the flesh.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 12Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Nature teaches resurrection before Scripture does: day and night, the seasons, and seeds all die and return, so the flesh for whose sake they exist will not perish.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 13Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The phoenix, which dies in fire and rises again, is a living example of resurrection, and Scripture itself says the righteous will flourish like the phoenix.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 14Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The cause of the resurrection is God's judgment: since the whole man, body and soul, lived and acted, the whole man must be raised to be judged.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 15Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Flesh and soul act together even in thought, so God, as a just judge, must reward or punish the flesh along with the soul.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 18Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The phrase “resurrection of the dead” itself points to the flesh: only what falls can rise, and it is the body, not the soul, that falls in death and is buried.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 19Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Some heretics turn the resurrection into a figure for coming to knowledge or escaping the body, and deceive believers by saying one must “rise in this flesh.”
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 21Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The resurrection cannot be merely figurative, because the plain texts must govern the obscure and a hope on which faith and martyrdom depend must have been announced clearly.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 22Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Christ's discourse on the last things shows that the resurrection comes at his return, after the signs of the end, not now in the knowledge of the truth or at death.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 23Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Paul speaks of a spiritual rising with Christ in baptism, but he and John and Peter place the real resurrection in the future, at Christ's appearing.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 25Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Revelation sets the resurrection at the end of the age; a spiritual rising at conversion may be granted, but only because the bodily one is promised at the end.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 27Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Scriptural garments can signify the flesh, and Isaiah's “storerooms” in which God's people hide until his wrath passes are the tombs from which bodies will come forth.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 28Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Moses' signs, God's promise to require the blood of the slain, and the word “I will kill and make alive” all point to the raising of the flesh.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 29Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones, clothed with sinews, flesh, and skin and brought to life, names the bodily substances explicitly.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 30Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Even if Ezekiel's vision figures Israel's restoration, a figure drawn from bones implies that bones will really rise, and God's testing of the prophet shows that the bodily resurrection is meant.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 31Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Israel doubted a bodily resurrection, not its political fortunes, and the prophets promise the rising of the dead to all nations, not to Israel alone.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 32Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · God will restore even bodies devoured by beasts and fish, as Jonah shows; if what Scripture says of the soul is taken literally, so must be what it says of the body.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 33Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Christ did not speak only in parables, and even his parables are explained; his plain statements about judgment, the kingdom, and resurrection must be taken literally.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 34Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Christ came to save the whole man who was lost, and he promised to lose nothing the Father gave him but to raise it on the last day; so the flesh too will be saved.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 35Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Christ's warning about God who can destroy body and soul in Gehenna, the numbered hairs, the gnashing of teeth, and the wedding feast all presuppose a bodily resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 36Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Christ's answer to the Sadducees about the woman with seven husbands confirms a real resurrection of the flesh, which will then be changed and made like the angels.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 37Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · “The flesh profits nothing” in John 6 refers to giving life, which belongs to the Spirit and the Word; the same Gospel says that all in the tombs will hear the Son's voice and come forth.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 38Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The dead whom Christ raised were a foretaste and pledge of the bodily resurrection, though they were raised only to die again, not to glory.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 39Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The apostles preached the same bodily resurrection the Pharisees believed and the Sadducees denied, and the Athenians mocked Paul precisely because he preached a bodily one.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 41Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Paul's promise of a heavenly house when the earthly tent is dissolved rewards the flesh that suffers; the wish to be “clothed over” belongs to those alive at Christ's coming, who will be changed without dying.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 42Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The change Paul promises, in which the mortal is swallowed up by life, requires that the flesh be present; the dead will receive their flesh back and then, like the living, be clothed with immortality.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 43Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Paul's longing to be away from the body and at home with the Lord speaks of a temporary absence, and the judgment of all “through the body” implies a bodily resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 44Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The treasure of Christ's life carried in earthen vessels, and the life of Jesus to be manifested in our mortal body after death, show that the flesh will be raised like Christ's.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 46Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · In Romans 8 Paul condemns the works and mind of the flesh, not the flesh itself, and promises that God will raise our mortal bodies through his indwelling Spirit.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 47Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The old man crucified with Christ is sinful conduct, not the body; Paul promises the members of the body sanctification and eternal life, and baptism in the flesh points to its resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 48Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Before turning to “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom,” Tertullian shows that 1 Corinthians 15 models our resurrection on Christ's bodily resurrection and assumes that bodies will rise.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 49Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · In the context of 1 Corinthians 15, “flesh and blood” that cannot inherit the kingdom means the earthly way of life of the old Adam, not the substance of the body.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 50Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Even taken literally, “flesh and blood” are denied the kingdom only on their own; all flesh will rise, and in the saved it will be changed and clothed with immortality so that it can inherit the kingdom.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 51Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Christ sits in heaven in the flesh as a pledge that ours will follow; Paul's “this corruptible” and “this mortal” point to the very flesh that must put on incorruption and immortality.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 52Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Paul's image of the seed shows that the same flesh that is sown in death rises, clothed by God with a new glory, just as grain rises as the same kind of plant, fuller and adorned.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 53Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The “animal body” that is sown and raised a “spiritual body” is the flesh, not the soul, as the examples of Lazarus and of the first and last Adam show.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 54Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Paul’s “swallowed up by life” means that the mortal flesh is taken into and clothed with immortality, not destroyed; it is death that is swallowed up for destruction.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 55Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · To be changed is not to be destroyed: Scripture shows people transformed yet remaining themselves, and so the flesh will be changed at the resurrection without ceasing to be the same flesh.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 56Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · It would be unjust for one flesh to suffer or sin and another to be rewarded or punished, and the risen person must remember being the one who is judged.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 57Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The flesh will rise not with its injuries and defects but whole, as a freed slave keeps the same body yet no longer suffers a slave’s punishments.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 58Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Scripture promises the end of pain and death, and its examples of preserved garments and bodies (Israel in the desert, the three young men, Jonah, Enoch and Elijah) foreshadow the flesh made whole.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 59Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Isaiah’s “all flesh is grass” and “all flesh shall see God’s salvation” distinguish the destinies of the same flesh, not two different kinds of flesh.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 60Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Even if the bodily organs lose their present functions in the resurrection, they will still exist, since the whole man must stand before God’s judgment, as a restored ship remains a ship even when laid up.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 61Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The bodily organs have higher uses than eating and procreation, and fasting, continence, and virginity already show that they can be idle without the person ceasing to be whole.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 62Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Jesus said the risen will be “like angels,” not angels: they keep their flesh while being freed from its bodily needs, just as angels who ate with Abraham remained spirits.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 63Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The whole, same flesh will rise, kept safe with God by Christ, who unites flesh and spirit, and the Paraclete’s New Prophecy has cleared away the ambiguities that heretics exploited.
On First Principles 2.3.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · To learn whether matter exists only at intervals, Origen asks whether anyone can live without a body, and explains how “this corruptible will put on incorruption” when the soul, clothed with Christ, clothes the body.
On First Principles 2.10.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Before discussing punishment, Origen argues against heretics that the body rises, our own body, but changed from a soulish into a spiritual and incorruptible body.
On First Principles 2.10.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Against heretics who deny bodily resurrection, Origen reads Paul's comparison of heavenly and earthly bodies as describing the differing glory of the saints and the condition of unpurified sinners.
On First Principles 2.10.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Against a low idea of the resurrection, Origen explains that the body rises spiritual and incorruptible from a principle preserved in it, as a grain grows into an ear.
On First Principles 3.6.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The spiritual body will be of a purity and glory beyond all visible bodies; our body can be brought to it, and when all are one there will be no more diversity.
On First Principles 3.6.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The last enemy, death, will be destroyed not in its substance, which God made, but in its hostile will; so too the flesh is changed by death, not annihilated, and rises again.
On First Principles 3.6.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · All our bodily substance will be brought to the glory of a spiritual body gradually, over immeasurable ages, as all rational souls are restored and God becomes all in all.
PG 12:1091 (Ps 1 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 1:5 Origen examines the simpler believers’ view of the resurrection of the same flesh, raising the problems of bodily flux and of bodies eaten by other bodies; they appeal to God’s omnipotence and to Ezekiel’s dry bones.
PG 12:1093 (Ps 1 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Origen’s answer: the material substrate of the body is always in flux, but the bodily form that makes Peter or Paul himself remains, and it is this form, changed for the better into a spiritual body suited to heaven, that rises.
PG 12:1095 (Ps 1 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The spiritual body keeps the form but not the flesh; Ezekiel’s dry bones signify the restoration of the captive people, and the “gnashing of teeth” cannot be taken literally.
PG 12:1097 (Ps 1 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The gnashing of teeth is the soul’s anguish at conviction; Paul’s words on the mortal body made alive and the seed show that the form, not the same matter, rises; a further note on the bodies of the righteous and the ungodly at the judgment.
PG 12:1409 (Ps 40 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 40 LXX (41):3–12: the bed of pain, Judas who saw but did not understand, and Christ asking mercy and resurrection for us.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.10.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Heraclitus calls mortals and immortals one, and Hippolytus reads him as speaking of a bodily resurrection caused by God.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.27.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says the Essenes believe in the resurrection of the flesh and a bright resting place for souls until the judgment.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.29.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sadducees deny resurrection and the survival of the soul, saying one lives on only in one's children.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.19.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcion denies the resurrection of the flesh and calls marriage corruption, to spite the Creator.
Commentary on John 1.54Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ is the resurrection and the door to blessedness.
Commentary on John 10.232Origen · ca. 230–248 · Believers have risen with Christ in pledge, walking in newness of life, while awaiting the full resurrection.
Commentary on John 10.233Origen · ca. 230–248 · The mystery of resurrection appears in Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones.
Commentary on John 10.236Origen · ca. 230–248 · At the resurrection Christ's members, now like dry bones, will be joined together into the perfect man.
Commentary on John 10.242Origen · ca. 230–248 · Each purified soul is destroyed and raised by Jesus, and the text says “in three days,” not “on the third day.”
Commentary on John 10.243Origen · ca. 230–248 · The raising unfolds over the three days: resurrection has begun and will be completed.
Commentary on John 10.244Origen · ca. 230–248 · The resurrection happens in stages: Christ, then his people at his coming, then the end.
Commentary on John 20.231Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some are “dead in Christ” and will rise first, as Paul says.
Commentary on John 20.311Origen · ca. 230–248 · Why call him a Samaritan, when Samaritans deny the resurrection he taught?
Homily on Luke 39Origen · ca. 233–250 · Against the Sadducees, the risen do not marry but are like the angels, and the blessings of children promised in Scripture are spiritual; “render to Caesar” means casting off the earthly image and restoring God’s image, which God asks of us in order to give back more.
Exhortation to Martyrdom 16Origen · 235 · Christ's promise of a hundredfold reward does not include a wife, because in the resurrection there is no marriage.
Homilies on Joshua 25.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · If the order of the Levites’ lots is hard to follow even literally, its mystery is deeper still: in the resurrection God will order the saints like the stars, each in his place in the kingdom of heaven.
Homilies on Leviticus 5.10Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The three uncleannesses that bar eating sacred flesh signify sound teaching corrupted by error (such as denying the resurrection of the flesh), receiving the mysteries before purification, and defilement through companionship with sinners.
Homilies on Leviticus 7.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Christ does not yet drink the wine of gladness because, as our advocate at the heavenly altar, he mourns our sins; he, the apostles, and the saints await the perfection of the whole body, when all are subject to God and the new wine is drunk in the kingdom.
Homilies on Numbers 1.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The ordered tribes and camps of Numbers prefigure the ranks of the resurrection, and the land distributed by Joshua points to the inheritance Jesus Christ gives.
Homilies on Numbers 2.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · As each person has his own face and handwriting, each soul has its own signs, and believers can advance from lower to brighter signs toward the glory of the resurrection.
Homilies on Numbers 9.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The rod's sprout, leaves, blossoms, and nuts figure the fourfold glory of the resurrection body and show that God's promised goods surpass all that can be seen or imagined.
Homilies on Numbers 11.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · As God once divided the nations among the angels and kept Israel as his own portion, so at the resurrection he will divide humanity again, and believers should strive to be the Lord's portion rather than the portion of demons.
Homilies on Numbers 18.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The star out of Jacob is the star of the Magi, which remained on Christ as a sign of his divinity, while the man out of Israel signifies his humanity; Christ destroys the demonic princes, takes humanity as his plunder, makes even the flesh an heir, and saves those whom he “destroys” by setting them free from the world.
Homilies on Numbers 25.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The heavier vengeance on the Midianites shows that causing another to stumble is graver than sinning oneself; and God’s word that Moses will be “added to his people” proves, against the Samaritans, that there is life after death.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 5.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Innocence harms no one; the “remains” of the peaceable man are his body raised incorruptible; the salvation of the righteous is with the Lord, who protects them in tribulation and delivers them from the demons that meet the soul at death; one must hope in God alone.
Homilies on Jeremiah 8.6Origen · ca. 240 · The many treasuries of God may be the different resting places of the ranks of the risen, all contained in the one treasure, Christ.
Lines 1027–1058Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The world is shaken and cleansed by fire, Christ comes from heaven with his angels, the righteous dead rise to meet him in the air, and his crucifiers see his glory before being returned to the depths.
On the Trinity 10Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The heretics' Christ, who rejects the Old Testament and comes only in appearance, is a fiction; the true Christ took real flesh from Mary, died, and rose in that body as the pattern of our resurrection.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.66Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The inner man has his own food, drink, barrenness and fruitfulness; so besides carnal love there is a spiritual love that sows in the spirit.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.210Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Each item in Wisdom's list has a visible and a hidden sense: the world, the elements, the times, the years, and the stars as the saints and the glory of the resurrection.
Against Celsus 2.57Origen · ca. 248 · Origen notes that a Jew could not deny bodily resurrection, since Scripture tells of boys raised by Elijah and Elisha, and suggests Jesus came to the Jews because they were prepared for such marvels.
Against Celsus 2.65Origen · ca. 248 · Origen explains that even the apostles could not always behold the risen Christ, whose appearances were given to those able to see them, and that Christ died and rose to be Lord of both dead and living.
Against Celsus 2.77Origen · ca. 248 · Origen notes that the Jew in Celsus himself believes in bodily resurrection, yet ignores that Jesus is “the firstborn from the dead,” and answers his demand to see Jesus by asking where the God of the prophets can now be seen.
Against Celsus 4.30Origen · ca. 248 · Humanity was made in God's image but not yet in his likeness, so Christians do not claim to be wholly like God; and Origen refuses to mock the philosophers as Celsus mocks Christians, while noting that they knew God yet fell into idolatry.
Against Celsus 4.57Origen · ca. 248 · Paul teaches that bodies differ in glory and that the resurrection body is raised in incorruption and power; God can change the qualities of matter, and even the popular belief that animals arise from corpses does not prove that bodies are not God's work.
Against Celsus 5.10Origen · ca. 248 · God allotted the heavenly bodies to the nations but chose Israel for himself; his people, promised to shine like stars in the resurrection and possessing the true light of Christ, have no reason to worship sun, moon, or stars.
Against Celsus 5.14Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus ridicules the Christian hope of bodily resurrection as 'the hope of worms,' calling it impossible and unworthy of God, who cannot act against reason.
Against Celsus 5.17Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus misunderstood the Christian teaching on the last day; Paul's words in 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians about the dead raised and the living changed carry a hidden meaning.
Against Celsus 5.18Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not teach that the dead rise in the same unchanged flesh; Paul compares the resurrection to a seed that dies and is given a new body by God.
Against Celsus 5.19Origen · ca. 248 · Paul teaches that the resurrection body is spiritual, incorruptible, and glorious, not the rotted flesh, and speaks of it as a 'mystery'; Christians hope that the mortal will be clothed with immortality and death's sting destroyed.
Against Celsus 5.20Origen · ca. 248 · The Stoic doctrine of endlessly repeated world-cycles, in which Socrates is born, tried, and condemned again and again, is far more absurd than the Christian resurrection, yet Celsus does not mock it.
Against Celsus 5.22Origen · ca. 248 · Origen distances himself from Christians who deny the resurrection: following Paul's seed image, he holds that God raises a transformed, incorruptible body, and that the 'words' of things, rooted in the divine Word, never pass away.
Against Celsus 5.23Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not claim the decayed body returns as it was, as the Stoics do; like wheat from a grain, a new incorruptible body rises from a principle in the old; and God's power, though limitless, never acts shamefully or against reason.
Against Celsus 5.24Origen · ca. 248 · Origen agrees that God does nothing shameful and gives the soul eternal life; human corpses deserve honorable burial because of the soul that lived in them, and what God makes eternal is the new body raised from the seed.
Against Celsus 6.29Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus accuses Christians of both honouring and cursing the Creator; Origen answers that Christians always worship the one God of the Jews, and that the resurrection body is not the same flesh and blood that was sown.
Against Celsus 6.36Origen · ca. 248 · Origen gives biblical meanings for some of Celsus's phrases, such as death being destroyed and the gates of righteousness, and points out that the tree of life comes from Genesis, not from Jesus' trade.
Against Celsus 7.32Origen · ca. 248 · The resurrection is not a borrowing from reincarnation: the incorporeal soul receives a body suited to each place, and at the resurrection the mortal “puts on” incorruption and immortality like a garment.
Against Celsus 8.49Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks Christians for both longing for the body's resurrection and consigning bodies to punishment, but agrees that the righteous will be happy and the wicked punished for ever; Origen answers that Christians value the rational soul above the body, and God is not a body as the Stoics say.
Against Celsus 8.50Origen · ca. 248 · Christians long only for what God promises the righteous, including the resurrection; the body is honoured when it suffers for virtue and dishonoured by vice, and a true lover of mankind would reason even with the simple rather than despise them.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 138Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Christ's last loud cry was “Into your hands I commend my spirit”; to commit one's spirit to God in death belongs only to the saints, whom God will raise as he raised Christ; the tearing of the outer veil reveals the mysteries hidden until Christ, while the inner veil will be removed when what is perfect has come.
Commentary on Matthew 10.3Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen reconciles Daniel and Paul, who speak of differing glory among the righteous, with Jesus' saying that they will shine as one sun.
Commentary on Matthew 15.22Origen · ca. 246–248 · Taken figuratively, Peter left everything in which he had been a sinner and followed Christ as righteousness, wisdom, and truth; the twelve thrones belong to the regeneration at the resurrection.
Commentary on Matthew 17.29Origen · ca. 246–248 · The Sadducees, like the Samaritans and some Corinthians, denied not only the resurrection of the flesh but any survival of the soul; Origen argues that Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15 are aimed at that denial.
Commentary on Matthew 17.30Origen · ca. 246–248 · The Sadducees’ fable of seven brothers assumed that the risen keep male and female bodies; Jesus answered that the risen neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels, and Origen leaves aside the question whether some angels were once human.
Commentary on Matthew 17.33Origen · ca. 246–248 · The Sadducees’ story wrongly assumes that earthly relations continue after the resurrection; in the new age there will be no marriage or fleshly kinship, and the only marriage is the spiritual one of the bridegroom, the king’s son.
Commentary on Matthew 17.35Origen · ca. 246–248 · Since the Old Testament teaches the absence of marriage in the resurrection only figuratively, reading it literally leads to absurdities; Jesus proved the resurrection to the Sadducees from God’s words at the bush, for he is God of the living, and the patriarchs live to him.
Commentary on Romans 8.10Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Paul makes his ministry illustrious by ministering well, as deacons, presbyters, bishops, widows, virgins and all believers must; if Israel's casting away reconciled the world, its reception at the end will mean the resurrection of the dead and the world's incorruption.
To Quirinus 3.58Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians should not grieve at death, since life is toil and danger while death brings peace and the sure hope of resurrection.
Letter 4Anonymous · uncertain · A spurious letter consoles a father on the death of his daughter, arguing that Christian hope in the resurrection forbids excessive mourning, since she has gone home to God.
Symposium 6.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The lamp of the old law gave way to the Sun of righteousness; the parable's delay, sleep, midnight, and cry signify the time before Christ's coming, death, the Antichrist's reign, and the resurrection trumpet.
Symposium 9.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The law is a shadow, the gospel an image, and the resurrection the truth; God allowed death so that sin might die with the body, which will rise immortal.
Symposium 9.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · As Israel went from Egypt to the booths and then to the promised land, the faithful rise to celebrate the thousand-year rest with Christ and then pass into heaven; Domnina is called on last.
Cib. 13Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The dead man in the house means the soul dead in sin, whose ways defile those who enter; dead bodies themselves are not unclean, since God will raise them.
Res. 1.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon, 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.
Res. 1.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon 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.
Res. 1.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon 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.
Res. 1.7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon 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.
Res. 1.8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon argues that since heaven, earth and the elements will pass away, bodies made from them cannot survive, having no place left to exist.
Res. 1.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon argues from the physiology of digestion and the constant flux of bodily matter that no identical body persists to be raised.
Res. 1.10Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon concludes that a body in constant flux cannot be preserved, and urges hope to look to the things above rather than to earthly corruption.
Res. 1.12Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon 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.
Res. 1.14Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Proclus 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.
Res. 1.15Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Proclus illustrates with wine poured into the sea that bodily matter dispersed into the elements cannot be retrieved unmixed for a resurrection.
Res. 1.16Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Proclus 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.
Res. 1.17Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Proclus 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.
Res. 1.19Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Proclus 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.
Res. 1.20Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Origen, 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.
Res. 1.21Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Aglaophon 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.
Res. 1.22Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Origen, 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.
Res. 1.23Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Origen, 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.
Res. 1.25Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Proclus 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.
Res. 1.30Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 1.38Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 1.42Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 1.44Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God, 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.
Res. 1.46Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God'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.
Res. 1.48Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 1.50Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God 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.
Res. 1.51Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Christ'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.
Res. 1.52Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Christ 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.
Res. 1.53Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 1.61Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Paul'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.
Res. 1.62Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Scripture, 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.
Res. 2.11Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · A fragment on cut-off members not growing back from food.
Res. 2.12Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 2.13Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 2.14Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If 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.
Res. 2.15Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius 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.
Res. 2.16Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 2.18Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius 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.
Res. 2.19Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If God makes a man from a drop of seed, much more can he remake a man from a body that already existed.
Res. 2.20Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 2.21Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The feast of Tabernacles prefigures the resurrection, when God will fix our fallen 'tents', our bodies, together again for ever.
Res. 2.22Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 2.25Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 2.26Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Memianius 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.
Res. 2.27Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Fragments: 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.
Res. 2.30Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 3.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · At 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.
Res. 3.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 3.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 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.
Res. 3.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · A 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.
Res. 3.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If 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.
Res. 3.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Since 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.
Res. 3.7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Greek phrases of Origen quoted in Book 3, chapters 7-8.
Res. 3.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The return from Babylon did not fulfil Ezekiel's promise, since Jerusalem was repeatedly captured afterwards, as Josephus records.
Res. 3.10Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Origen's seed analogy, quoted again in Book 3, chapter 10.
Res. 3.11Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Origen cannot consistently give the saints glorious new bodies while the punished sinners must also have incorruptible bodies to endure torment.
Res. 3.12Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Against 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.
Res. 3.14Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The 'body of humiliation' was once a body of glory before the fall, and it is this same body that will rise glorified.
Res. 3.15Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius 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.
Res. 3.18Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Origen'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.
Res. 3.19Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If, 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.
Res. 3.21Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Romans 14:9: the living are the souls, the dead the bodies.
Against the Nations 2.13Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Platonists mock Christian teaching on God, resurrection, and the soul's salvation, though Plato taught similar things.
Church History 5.1.63Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The pagans destroyed the bodies to mock the Christian hope of resurrection.
Church History 6.37.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · In Arabia some taught that the soul dies with the body until the resurrection; Origen persuaded them otherwise at a synod.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 58Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus argues that denying Christ's birth from Mary destroys his passion, resurrection, the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment, and asks Manes on whom the Spirit descended at the baptism.
Recognitions 1.52Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter explains that Christ was present to the righteous of every generation; some were translated to paradise, and the souls of others await the resurrection in happy regions.
Recognitions 1.56Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · In the temple debate Andrew answers a Sadducee who denies the resurrection.
Recognitions 3.30Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter explains that God is seen by the spirit, as men will see him when made like angels at the resurrection; Simon leaves, demanding a proof of the soul's immortality.
Divine Institutes 7.20.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Sibyl: God will raise the dead and judge them.
Divine Institutes 7.22.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The poets distorted a rumor of the resurrection.
Divine Institutes 7.22.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Objection: no one has ever risen.
Divine Institutes 7.22.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The resurrection cannot occur while injustice rules.
Divine Institutes 7.23.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just will rise in bodies, remembering their lives.
Divine Institutes 7.23.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Chrysippus: we will be restored to our present form.
Divine Institutes 7.23.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Creator can restore the dead.
Divine Institutes 7.26.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The second, general resurrection raises the unjust to eternal torment.
Divine Institutes 7.27.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The virtuous will be raised to eternal life.
Apology for Origen 0Pamphilus of Caesarea · ca. 308–310 (Rufinus's Latin about 397) · An anonymous prologue, Rufinus's preface with his creed, and Pamphilus's preface, which defends Origen's humility as an inquirer and announces a defence from Origen's own words.
Apology for Origen 5.7Pamphilus of Caesarea · ca. 308–310 (Rufinus's Latin about 397) · The seventh charge: that Origen denied the resurrection and the punishment of sinners.
Apology for Origen 7.1Pamphilus of Caesarea · ca. 308–310 (Rufinus's Latin about 397) · Pamphilus answers the charge that Origen denied the resurrection with passages from his books On the Resurrection and his commentaries: the same body will rise, transformed, and Christ carried his flesh into heaven.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.50Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The reward of the law-keeper is resurrection to a better life.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.33.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The dead rise from the earth, except those God has taken to another lot.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 67.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God will renew the world, make the righteous like angels forever, and raise the wicked to eternal punishment.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.13.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Word’s touch raised the dead and clothed the mortal with immortality.
On the Incarnation 10.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Christ's sacrifice ended the law of death and began new life; as in Adam all die, in Christ all will be made alive.
On the Incarnation 21.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Since Christ's death, believers no longer die under condemnation but are only dissolved for a time, to gain a better resurrection.
On the Incarnation 21.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Believers are like seeds sown for resurrection, as 1 Corinthians 15 promises.
On the Witch of Endor 22Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius criticizes Origen's allegories built on names, since the righteous and wicked often share names, refers to Methodius's refutation of Origen's view of the resurrection, and notes that Origen alone refused to allegorize the medium's words.
Theophany 1.73Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.77Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Book 4, lines 342–366Juvencus · ca. 330 · Jesus is the resurrection and the life; Martha confesses him as Christ, the Son of God; Mary comes.
Demonstration 6.18Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 8.1Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 8.3Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 8.4Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 8.10Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 8.15Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 8.19Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 8.25Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 22.13Aphrahat · 337-345
On Ecclesiastical Theology 3.10.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Christ's glorified body and ours, conformed to it, refute Marcellus's view of the flesh.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 3.15.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Christ's power to subject all things will transform our bodies to his glorious body.
Catechetical Lecture 15.20Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Cyril reads the closing poem of Ecclesiastes as a prophecy of the darkening of the heavens, Christ's coming, and the resurrection of the body.
Catechetical Lecture 18.1Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Hope of the resurrection is the root of good works and of bodily purity; it is denied by Greeks, Samaritans, and heretics alike.
Catechetical Lecture 18.2Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Greeks and Samaritans object that a body rotted, eaten, or burned and scattered cannot be gathered again.
Catechetical Lecture 18.3Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Distance is nothing to God, who holds the earth in his hand; if a man can sort mixed seeds in his hand, God can gather and restore bodies.
Catechetical Lecture 18.6Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Trees, harvests, transplanted shoots, and sown seed all come back to life; how much more will man, for whose sake they exist.
Catechetical Lecture 18.7Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The yearly revival of trees in spring, and of drowned insects and hibernating dormice, are images of the resurrection.
Catechetical Lecture 18.8Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The phoenix, said to rise from its own decay every five hundred years, is offered to the Greeks as a sign of the resurrection.
Catechetical Lecture 18.9Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The daily wonder of human generation from weak and shapeless matter shows that God can raise the fallen body.
Catechetical Lecture 18.10Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The waxing of the moon and its recovery after an eclipse are proofs of the resurrection for those who do not accept Scripture.
Catechetical Lecture 18.12Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · From the Law itself: if Moses' rod became a serpent, Aaron's rod budded, Lot's wife became salt, and Moses' hand was changed, God can raise bodies.
Catechetical Lecture 18.15Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Job's words on the tree that blossoms again, read as a question, and texts of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel teach the resurrection.
Catechetical Lecture 18.16Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Scripture records many raisings of the dead, culminating in Christ's; even Elisha's dead body raised a corpse.
Catechetical Lecture 18.17Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Elisha's bones raised a dead man to show that a power remains in the bodies of the saints, as Paul's handkerchiefs healed the sick.
Catechetical Lecture 18.18Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The apostles raised the dead, and Paul teaches that this very body will rise, transformed and incorruptible; glow-worms show that God can make the righteous shine.
Catechetical Lecture 18.19Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · All will rise with eternal bodies, the righteous to live with angels and sinners to endure eternal fire, because the body shared in every deed.
Long recension, Tarsians 7Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius cites Christ and Paul for the resurrection of the body.
Commentary on Matthew 5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary treats secret prayer, fasting, treasure in heaven, the eye as lamp, the two masters, freedom from anxiety (applied to the resurrection body), the lilies as angels, the grass as the nations destined for fire, and judging and the beam in the eye.
Commentary on Matthew 8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · The calming of the storm shows Christ watching over the church; the Gadarene demoniacs and the pigs figure the nations freed and the heretical Sadducees; the healing of the paralytic shows Christ as God forgiving sins and promising resurrection.
Commentary on Matthew 22Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary expounds the wicked tenants (vineyard as Israel, winepresses as prophets, tower as law, the son as Christ cast out) and the wedding feast (the resurrection, the bulls as martyrs, the guests as Israel then the nations, the wedding garment as the Spirit’s glory).
Commentary on Matthew 23Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary treats the tribute to Caesar (we owe God body, soul, and will), the Sadducees’ question (in the resurrection women will be like angels; God of the living), the great commandment (the neighbor is Christ; love of Father and Son equal), and David’s Lord as showing unity of substance.
Commentary on Matthew 27Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary applies the faithful and unfaithful servant to bishops, interprets the ten virgins (bridegroom and bride as the divine Spirit and the flesh in Christ, lamps as souls shining from baptism, oil as good works), and, after a gap in the text, the servant who hid his talent as the people of the law.
On the Trinity 11.35Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The defeat of death is the resurrection (1 Cor 15:53–55); subjection also means our transformation into the likeness of Christ's glorious body (Phil 3:21).
On the Trinity 11.43Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · If Christ will glorify us, he can glorify his own humanity into God; the heretics wrongly read 1 Cor 15:28 as the Father gaining perfection through the Son's subjection.
That One Must Die for the Son of God 8Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer recalls Constantius's killings at Alexandria, charges that he now tortures without killing to deny the bishops martyrdom, and answers with Psalm 27 and Paul's armour of God, trusting in the resurrection of the tortured body.
That One Must Die for the Son of God 14Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer tells Constantius that whatever death he inflicts will bring the martyr immortality and bodily resurrection, while the emperor, unless he confesses the eternal Son and the one Godhead of the Trinity, faces the undying worm and outer darkness.
On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 21Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer calls Constantius a second Bar-Jesus, resisting the faith as the false prophet did, and quotes the fourth, fifth and sixth Maccabean brothers' defiance of Antiochus as precedents for his own words.
Letter 301Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil consoles Maximus on the death of his wife, praising their harmonious marriage, reminding him that death is the common law of nature, and pointing him to the hope of the resurrection.
Against Arius 1.64Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus ends Book 1 by suggesting that man was made in the image of God even in the body, since the Word was to take flesh, rise and ascend, and our bodies will become spiritual.
To Justinus the Manichaean 8Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author concludes that contraries do not require two principles, that the one Creator of the world is his maker, and he calls the flesh to rejoice that, redeemed by the cross, it will be clothed with immortality.
Homilies on the Psalms 33.13Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil asks how Ps 34:20 can say the bones of the righteous are not broken, since the martyrs' bones were broken.
Moral Rules (Moralia) 68Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixty-eighth rule: the life of the resurrection is angelic and free from need, and the Lord's coming will not be local or fleshly but in glory over the whole world at once.
On the Holy Spirit 41Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · Exposition of Rom 8:10-13: when the body is dead to sin, Christ gives the Spirit of life, and the Spirit dwelling in believers will raise their mortal bodies.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.5.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · Eve's creation from bone and flesh foreshadows bodily resurrection.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.5.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones shows the same order of resurrection.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.5.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · The mystery hidden for ages is the Gentiles' inclusion in Christ's body and the glorifying of our bodies.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.5.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · The church, like Eve, is formed from the risen Christ, in whom the resurrection of all flesh is already accomplished.
Tractates on the Psalms 2.41Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Breaking the potter's vessel also signifies death and the resurrection of the same body transformed, and our dying with Christ in baptism.
Tractates on the Psalms 9.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The end is the consummation of 1 Corinthians 15: resurrection, glorification of the saints, destruction of death, and the Son's handing over the kingdom so that God may be all in all.
Tractates on the Psalms 52.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Bones signify the hope of eternity, as in Christ's unbroken bones and Ezekiel's vision; God guards the bones of the righteous and scatters those of men-pleasers.
Tractates on the Psalms 52.17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · All will rise, but the despised will rise to shame without being changed into glory.
Tractates on the Psalms 54.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Those who refused to believe even in the risen Christ will rise but not be changed into glory; they defiled the covenant and were scattered.
Tractates on the Psalms 55.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Those "saved for nothing" will be raised but not changed into glory, rising only to punishment, while those justified by Christ's blood are saved from wrath.
Tractates on the Psalms 55.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ is lord of his own resurrection; the same body will rise, changed rather than newly created, and he will please the Father in the reconciliation of the world.
Tractates on the Psalms 56.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's mercy reaching the heavens and truth the clouds refer to the resurrection, when the saints meet Christ in the clouds and creation is freed from corruption.
Tractates on the Psalms 57.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The wicked are not annihilated: their souls are punished even before the resurrection, like the rich man in the Gospel, and their raised bodies will bear the thorns of their sins.
Tractates on the Psalms 62.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Both soul and flesh thirst for God; the body, often thought incapable of salvation, shares in the hope of eternity if it lives by the Spirit; the saint longs to appear before God.
Tractates on the Psalms 64.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The "year of kindness" is the eternal age of recompense; its crown is Christ's victory over corruption and death, surrounded by his saints.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.35Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ’s voice of power, shown in his miracles, will above all raise the dead and clothe them with incorruption.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.36Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God’s glory rests on the spiritual Israel caught up in the clouds; all will rise, but some to life and some to judgment.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.37Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God is wonderful in his saints, whom he will raise, conform to Christ’s glorious body, and bring into unity with the Father and eternal life.
Tractates on the Psalms 69.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · His enemies will be shamed by his resurrection, kept from meeting Christ in the clouds, and sent back to judgment; all will rise, but not all will be changed.
Tractates on the Psalms 124.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Those who trust in the Lord are like Zion, beholding their resurrection in Christ's; dwelling now in the church, the earthly form of the heavenly Jerusalem, they must stand firm.
Tractates on the Psalms 131.26Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The priests' clothing with salvation and the saints' full exultation signify the resurrection, when our bodies are conformed to Christ's glorious body.
Tractates on the Psalms 138.24Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Wings signify the transformation of bodies into heavenly nature at the resurrection; Christ's wings are his own, given by his nature and power after his voluntary passion.
Tractates on the Psalms 141.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The apostles' faith trembled until the resurrection; Christ was sorrowful 'unto death' for them. His reward is exaltation, and the righteous await their own transformation into his glory.
Tractates on the Psalms 145.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The soul praises God now; the whole person will praise him in true life after the resurrection, since present life is a kind of death; meanwhile the body serves him in good works.
Tractates on the Psalms 146.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ came to heal the contrite of heart; this healing has begun but will be complete in the resurrection, when the soul returns to the rest lost through Adam.
Tractates on the Psalms 146.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The stars God numbers and names are the saints, Abraham's promised seed, whom Christ will call by name from their tombs and make shine.
Commentary on Philippians 3.12Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul is not yet perfected while he lives, but pursues Christ through sharing his sufferings to the end, so as to go out to meet him at the resurrection, laying hold of Christ as Christ laid hold of him through those sufferings.
Commentary on Philippians 3.21Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · At the resurrection Christ will transform the lowly body into the likeness of his glorious, spiritual body by the power of God working through him, and will subject all things to God, to whom, as 1 Cor 15:28 says, the Son himself is subject.
Commentary on Philippians 4.7Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Those who pray rightly receive God’s peace, which brings full understanding of God and guards their hearts, and their bodies are kept in Christ for the resurrection.
Oration 7.20Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Death has freed Caesarius from life's troubles; Gregory looks to the resurrection, examines himself, and contemplates the destiny of man in Christ.
Tractates 1.16.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno argues from Christ's promise to the penitent robber, his resurrection, Paul and Ezekiel that the dead live and will rise.
Tractates 1.16.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno rebukes Christians, especially widows, who mourn the dead like pagans and then quickly remarry, as if they did not believe in the resurrection.
Tractates 1.16.7Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno teaches that the dead will be raised to judgment and argues that it is easier for God to restore what was than to create from nothing.
Tractates 1.16.8Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno illustrates resurrection from nature: falling stars, the daily death and rising of the sun, and the moon's monthly waning and renewal.
Tractates 1.16.9Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno takes the phoenix, reborn from its own ashes, as a sign that Christians will rise the same and better.
Tractates 1.16.10Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno illustrates the resurrection by the seed that dies and rises, quoting 1 Corinthians 15:36, 42–44.
Tractates 1.16.12Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno reconciles 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom' with the creed's resurrection of the flesh: the flesh is renewed in baptism by the seed of the Spirit and will rise glorious.
Tractates 1.16.13Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno compares the resurrection to the grafting of a wild olive, which becomes a true olive, and cites Galatians 6:8 and the parable of the weeds.
Tractates 1.16.14Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno explains that the risen will be recognised, since only what is useless in the body is changed, and that death brings the just into rest.
Hexaemeron 8.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Basil closes the homily on birds, points to the silkworm's metamorphosis as an image of the resurrection, and urges his hearers to spend their fast on spiritual food rather than dice.
Homilies 4.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Christ's tears are a measure, not a license, for grief; Job and the hope of resurrection teach Christians to bear bereavement and loss calmly and so to rejoice always.
Homilies 8.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil closes with the certainty of the resurrection and the judgment, when each will receive what he deserves.
Homilies 21.12Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Job received back double wealth but only the same number of children, since the dead children still live; Basil urges the victims of the fire to bear their loss in the same way.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Food and belly will pass away, but the body belongs to the Lord, who will raise it to immortality.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ, God's power, raised his own body and will raise ours.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · All Christian hope rests on the resurrection; abandoning Paul's teaching on it would make faith vain.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:12–14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Denying the resurrection, as the false apostles did, would make Christ unrisen and the Corinthians' faith empty and shameful.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:15Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · If there is no resurrection, the apostles are false witnesses and believers remain in their sins.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Denying the resurrection would mean that departed loved ones and martyrs have perished.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Without the future life, Christian fasting, purity and martyrdom would be pitiable.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:20–21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ, a true man, rose as the firstfruits; as death came by Adam's sin, resurrection came by Christ's righteousness.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:22Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · As all die through Adam, all will rise through Christ, believers to life and unbelievers to endless punishment in their bodies.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:23Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ rose first; those who are his rise at his coming, which includes both the saints raised at his resurrection and those raised at his return.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:29Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul cites those who were baptized on behalf of the unbaptized dead, not approving the practice but showing their firm belief in the resurrection.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:30–31Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Those baptized for the dead were not catholics, and their act, like Jephthah's vow, is cited only for its faith; the apostles face daily danger in hope of the resurrection.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:32Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul faced the beasts at Ephesus only because of hope in the resurrection; without it, the gluttons' motto in Isaiah would be right.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:35Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul quotes the doubters' question about the resurrection body.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:36Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul answers sceptics from nature: seed dies and comes to life multiplied.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:37–38Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · As a bare seed rises clothed and multiplied, the dead will rise in their own body, improved but not replaced.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:39Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · As one matter yields different kinds of flesh, people of one flesh will differ in glory at the resurrection according to merit.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:40Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Risen bodies are heavenly like Christ's; present bodies are earthly like Adam's.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:41Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Like sun, moon and stars, the risen will differ in glory: the hundredfold, sixtyfold and thirtyfold, then sinners, and the faithless in darkness.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:42Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The body buried in decay will rise incorruptible.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:43Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The decaying, helpless corpse will rise glorious and strong.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:44Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The present body lives by food; the risen spiritual body will need nothing and suffer no weakness or decay.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:45Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Adam became a living soul needing food; through resurrection humanity becomes life-giving spirit that cannot die.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:47–48Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Adam's earthly descendants are mortal; believers in the sinless, heavenly Christ will share his deathless life, while unbelievers rise dark.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:50Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · 'Flesh and blood' means unbelief and sensual living, which exclude from the kingdom; all rise immortal, but the corrupt to punishment.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:51Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · All will rise, but not all will be transformed into glory.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:55Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · All rise immortal; sinning believers suffer punishment until their debt is paid, the impious eternally; at Christ's coming the living are caught up, and death, the devil, is mocked as defeated.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 4:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Sharing the spirit of faith, Paul speaks and suffers in hope of the resurrection, which Christ's rising guarantees for all believers together.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers need not fear death, for an immortal body, already shown in the risen Lord, awaits them in heaven.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:2–3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers pray to be clothed with heavenly glory at the resurrection; those who keep their baptism, having put on Christ, will not be found naked.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers pray to persevere so that at the resurrection they may be clothed with immortality and glory, which is to be swallowed up by life.
Commentary on 2 Timothy 2:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Hymenaeus and Philetus denied the future resurrection, claiming, as another source says, that it occurs in one’s children.
Commentary on Romans 6:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · In baptism we die with Christ, our sins die, and we are reborn in mind with the hope of resurrection.
Commentary on Romans 8:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Those in whom the Spirit dwells will be given life in their whole person, as Christ was raised.
Question 105, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Those who leave everything for Christ receive sevenfold now and greater glory in the resurrection, shining like the sun and moon of Isaiah, with differences of glory among the saints remaining.
Letter 59.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains that believers alive at Christ's return will meet him in bodies transformed without death, and declines to read the Apocalypse literally.
Letter 61.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome rebukes Vigilantius for presumption, reminding him that he once praised Jerome's orthodoxy on the resurrection.
Letter 65.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains 'for those who will be changed' of the resurrection and of the Christian's continual renewal, and 'the beloved' and 'the victor' of Christ.
Letter 75.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Theodora to rejoice that Lucinius reigns with Christ, and teaches that in the resurrection people remain human, 'like' the angels.
Letter 84.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes how the Origenists speak of the resurrection of the 'body' or 'flesh' while mocking the idea that the same flesh, with its members, will rise.
Letter 84.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome mocks the Origenists' denial of the bodily resurrection and urges them, if they followed him into error, to follow him in correcting it.
Letter 92.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus lists doctrines ascribed to Origen (the Son inferior to the Father, the end of Christ's kingdom, the devil's restoration, prayer to the Father alone, a non-lasting resurrection body, angels fallen into their offices) for which his books were condemned.
Letter 96.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus rejects the idea that risen bodies will again be mortal, since Christ has conquered death.
Letter 96.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus argues from Romans 6 and 1 Corinthians 15 that risen bodies will be incorruptible and immortal, not dissolved into nothing.
Letter 98.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus rejects Origen's teaching that the material world and bodies came into being because of the fall of rational beings.
Letter 98.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus affirms that risen bodies will never die again, since Christ saved the whole human being.
Letter 100.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus urges faith in the one Godhead of Father, Son, and Spirit and in the incorruptible resurrection, prayer for the emperors, and fasting through which virtue governs the body and lifts the soul to heaven.
Letter 108.23Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells how an Origenist questioner tried to unsettle Paula about the resurrection body and the pre-existence of souls, and how Jerome confronted him, arguing that the same bodies, with their sex, will rise, though without marriage.
Letter 108.24Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome continues his argument from the risen Christ, who had a real male body that could be touched and could eat, explaining the closed doors and the walking on water as God's power, not a change of the body's nature.
Letter 108.25Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome ends his argument by appealing to God's unsearchable judgments and teaching that all will rise at the age of Christ's fullness; Paula thereafter publicly rejected the questioner and his fellow Origenists.
Letter 119.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome states the two readings of 1 Cor 15:51 and quotes Theodore of Heraclea, who held that the saints alive at the end will be changed without dying.
Letter 119.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Diodore of Tarsus suggests that incorruption is common to all but the change into glory belongs to the righteous.
Letter 119.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Apollinaris agrees with Theodore that some will pass into the future life without dying.
Letter 119.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome translates Didymus, who reads 'we shall all sleep, but not all be changed' and explains the moment, the last trumpet, and the difference between incorruption and immortality.
Letter 119.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome quotes Acacius of Caesarea on the reading 'we shall all sleep': all rise incorruptible, but only the saints are changed into glory.
Letter 124.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome reports Origen’s views that bodies will be dissolved or refined, that the stars are ensouled, and that fallen beings may even pass into animal bodies, which Origen offered only as speculation.
Letter 124.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome quotes book 2 of On First Principles on successive worlds, the possible dissolution of all bodies when all are subject to God, and three possible accounts of the end.
Letter 124.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome quotes Origen on the renewal of matter and worlds after intervals of time, on a future devil drawn from the most wicked, and on bodily nature being taken up into the divine substance.
Letter 131.23Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine rejects that suggestion from the resurrection of all to life or judgment, and cites Cyprian's ruling that infants may be baptized at once to save their souls.
Letter 140.18Jerome · ca. 370–419 · On Ps 90:14 Jerome notes that the Greek puts future petitions in the past, and reads the 'morning mercy' as the hope of resurrection.
On the Holy Spirit 19.49Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · The Spirit's workings in creation, in Christ's coming, in redemption and resurrection, and his commanding speech in Scripture show his greatness.
Ancoratus 39.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ cites God's words to Moses on the resurrection.
Ancoratus 61.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ showed that corruptible flesh can become incorruptible.
Ancoratus 61.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Our earthly bodies share the hope shown in Christ's body.
Ancoratus 65.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ will transform our bodies; in him dwells all the Godhead.
Ancoratus 82.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Some ascetics say another flesh, not this one, will rise.
Ancoratus 83.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Unbelievers deny the resurrection; misbelievers distort it.
Ancoratus 83.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The pagans deny the resurrection but will rise.
Ancoratus 83.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Day and night picture death and resurrection.
Ancoratus 83.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Harvest, seeds, and locusts picture resurrection.
Ancoratus 83.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Hair and nails that regrow are signs of resurrection.
Ancoratus 84.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The phoenix of Heliopolis.
Ancoratus 84.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The phoenix revives on the third day.
Ancoratus 85.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Pagan myths themselves speak of resurrection.
Ancoratus 86.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Manichaeans and pagans say only the soul rises.
Ancoratus 86.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · A soul cannot “rise” since it did not fall.
Ancoratus 86.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Resurrection belongs to what fell: the body.
Ancoratus 87.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Origenists say another flesh, not this one, is raised.
Ancoratus 88.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · God can raise bodies, as Ezekiel shows.
Ancoratus 88.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Ezekiel's dry bones moved with understanding.
Ancoratus 89.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · He turns to those who say another body rises.
Ancoratus 89.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The resurrection of the flesh grounds every good work.
Ancoratus 89.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Faith, love, and martyrdom rest on the resurrection of the flesh.
Ancoratus 89.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Two clear testimonies establish the resurrection.
Ancoratus 90.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “This corruptible” must put on incorruption.
Ancoratus 90.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The seed image speaks of the glory of the raised saints.
Ancoratus 92.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ as firstfruits implies our bodies rise like his.
Ancoratus 92.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Others were raised before Christ.
Ancoratus 94.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Scripture hints at resurrection; Christ fulfills it.
Ancoratus 94.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Abel, Enoch, and Noah point to resurrection.
Ancoratus 94.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Isaac's birth from the “dead” is a sign of resurrection.
Ancoratus 94.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Isaac's return from the altar proclaimed resurrection.
Ancoratus 94.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Jacob's care for his bones shows hope of resurrection.
Ancoratus 94.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Joseph's command about his bones implies resurrection.
Ancoratus 94.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · God is the God of the living patriarchs.
Ancoratus 95.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · In one night the rod budded: a likeness of resurrection.
Ancoratus 95.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The resurrection happens in a moment.
Ancoratus 96.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The whole rod was changed, a pledge of resurrection.
Ancoratus 97.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Moses' blessing of Reuben shows hope of resurrection and escape from the second death.
Ancoratus 98.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Testimonies to the resurrection are abundant.
Ancoratus 98.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · A partial resurrection would make God partial.
Ancoratus 98.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Enoch and Elijah, taken up bodily, show a complete resurrection.
Ancoratus 99.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Job, the Psalms, and Isaiah speak of resurrection.
Ancoratus 99.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Job means the resurrection waits for the end of the world.
Ancoratus 99.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · At the end the dead will be raised.
Ancoratus 99.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Ezekiel spoke because those bones would die again; God's own word is final.
Ancoratus 100.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ's miracles foreshadow the universal resurrection.
Ancoratus 101.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · A prayer for those who reject the resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.2.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Pentateuch hints at resurrection and the Trinity within monotheism.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.2.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Samaritans deny the resurrection and the Holy Spirit.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Abel's blood crying out shows the hope of bodily resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Enoch and Sarah point to resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.3.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Jacob's and Joseph's care for their bones points to resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.3.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Aaron's budding rod and Moses' rod signify resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 13.1.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Dositheans affirm the resurrection and practice abstinence and virginity.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 14.2.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Sadducees deny resurrection, angels, and the Spirit.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 14.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Sadducees' question to Jesus about the woman with seven husbands.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 14.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Jesus refutes the Sadducees from Exodus.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 21.4.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Simon denied the resurrection of the flesh; the Gnostics begin with him.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.9.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They deny the resurrection of the flesh.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.15.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They deny the law, judgment, and resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 28.6.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul answered those who denied the resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 28.6.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul's argument that Christ's resurrection guarantees the resurrection of the dead.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.7.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Valentinians deny the resurrection of the body and say only spiritual and righteous psychic people are saved.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.31.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · It proclaims the resurrection and God's call of those who were not his people.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God, like a potter, remakes the cracked vessel.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.12Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The repentant rise in bodies remade from the earth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 40.8.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Hymenaeus and Philetus held similar views.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 41.1.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Cerdo denied Christ's flesh, the resurrection, and the Old Testament.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.5.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius argues that resurrection applies to what has fallen, not to the soul.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.5.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The body, called a 'fallen thing', is what falls and rises.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.5.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Bodies, not souls, are buried with the hope of resurrection, like seed.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.5.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul and Jesus both use the grain of wheat as an image of resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.5.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul calls the doubter of the resurrection a fool, since a seed must die to live.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.5.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Scripture shows that resurrection is of the buried body.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.5.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Since soul and body act together, justice requires that both be judged and raised.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.9.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They also show the resurrection of the flesh and the salvation of the patriarchs.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.6.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul teaches that the mortal body will put on immortality.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.6.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ's death and resurrection in the body are our pledge of resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 46.5.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The saints' bodies, not only souls, rose at Christ's death.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 56.2.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Bardesanes adopted Valentinian emanations and denied the resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 56.2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · A brief defense of the resurrection begins.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 56.2.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul, Isaiah, and the Lord teach bodily resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 56.2.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Abel’s blood crying out shows the body matters.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 56.2.12Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Bardesanes’ denial is refuted.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.2.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · In the resurrection all members rise.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.2.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If the offending member stayed behind, none would rise.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.2.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Maimed bodies would be unfit for the kingdom’s glory.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.4.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Origen is charged with wavering on the resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.10.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Origen criticizes simple believers’ view of resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.10.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Believers say the present bodies rise.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.10.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Origen presses questions about blood, flesh, and hair.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.11.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Origen mocks those who hold a firm resurrection hope.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.11.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · He argued from nature against the resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.12.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Believers say the whole present body rises.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.12.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Origen: whose body will a shared body be?
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.13.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They cite Ezekiel’s valley of bones.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.13.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God promises to reclothe the bones.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.13.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They also cite gospel texts and Rom 8:11.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.14.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Origen proposes a better account of the resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.14.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The bodily form, not its matter, rises.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.14.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Souls need bodies fit for their places.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.14.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Heirs of heaven need spiritual bodies.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.14.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The transfiguration shows form preserved in glory.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.15.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · What is sown differs from what is raised.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.15.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul contrasts natural and spiritual bodies.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.15.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The saint’s risen body is spiritual, not flesh.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.16.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The mortal form is made spiritual by the Spirit.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.16.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · 1 Cor 15:35 shows the matter itself will not rise.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.16.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The seed’s principle transforms matter into a greater ear.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.17.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Proclus summarizes Origen’s view.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.17.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Proclus: the resurrection is of a spiritual body keeping the same form.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.17.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Only the form will be preserved.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.17.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Identity lies in the form, not the flesh.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.17.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The form will be glorified as at the transfiguration.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.18.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Sirach and the Psalm are cited against bodily resurrection.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.19.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Aglaophon, Proclus, and Origen are the opponents.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · God will raise all the dead through Christ in their present form, but incorruptible.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · However the body perishes, God's power will raise it.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Gabriel's prophecy to Daniel of the resurrection is quoted.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · All, righteous and unrighteous, will rise to be judged according to their deeds.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · God answered Israel's unbelief in the resurrection through Ezekiel's vision of the bones.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Isaiah's prophecy of the resurrection is quoted.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Scripture says much about the resurrection, the glory of the righteous and the punishment of the ungodly.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · Enoch and Elijah, and the dead raised by Elijah and Elisha, show God's power to give life.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.10Anonymous · ca. 380 · God allows death for a short time so that at the resurrection he may reject or crown each person.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.11Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Creator who formed Adam's body from earth will raise the bodies of all.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.12Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ, who raised others and himself and delivered Jonah, the three youths and Daniel, can raise us.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.13Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Sibyl too foretells the resurrection and the judgment.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.14Anonymous · ca. 380 · Even pagan stories of the phoenix and the Scriptures' witness to God as Creator show that God can and will raise the dead, as the apostles who saw Christ risen testify.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.32.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · The sign of the Son of Man and the trumpet will precede the resurrection.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 75Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · The soul, like the painter who knows each separated colour, remains with each of its body’s elements until they come together again in the resurrection; Macrina states the objection that a body made of other matter would be a new man, not the same one.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 77Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory concludes that the soul guards its elements and at God’s signal will draw them together again like ropes tied to one point; Macrina adds the example of a potter’s vessels owned by different masters.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 107Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina promises that the body will be rewoven finer and more beautiful; Gregory asks for reasoned support for the resurrection; Macrina reviews pagan views of transmigration, accepting only what agrees with the resurrection, that the soul is again joined to a body made of the world’s elements.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 109Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Pagans and Christians agree the soul returns to a body of the world’s elements, but transmigration into animals and plants confuses all natures into one, which is absurd.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 129Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory, fearing Macrina will soon die, asks her to address the doctrine of the resurrection itself, which Scripture teaches will follow when humanity is complete.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 131Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina finds the resurrection in Ps 104:29–30 (the Spirit’s return renews the dead) and in Ps 118:27, where the feast of Tabernacles “with thick branches” prefigures the rebuilding of the body’s tent; the temple’s graded courts introduce her next point.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 135Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Phil 2:10–11 states the same universal harmony plainly; Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones and Paul’s teaching on the last trumpet show the resurrection, which Christ also performed in deed.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 137Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina recalls Christ’s miracles of raising the dead and his own resurrection. Gregory grants that the resurrection is believed but asks whether bodies will rise as they died, old, wasted, or diseased, which would make resurrection a misfortune.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 139Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory presses the dilemma: if bodies rise as they were (mutilated, diseased, infant), the resurrection is a misfortune; if they rise different, it is not the same person who rises.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 141Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory adds a stronger objection: the body is always in flux like a flame, never the same from day to day, so a resurrected body containing all its states would make one man a crowd.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 143Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory continues the objections: which body will be judged, since the body of the sinner and the penitent keep changing? And what use will the organs of eating and procreation have in a life without marriage or food?
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 145Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory ends his objections; Macrina praises their rhetorical skill but says the truth will be shown by the event itself, like sunrise ending talk of the sun; she begins by defining the aim of the resurrection.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 147Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina defines the resurrection as the restoration of human nature to its first state, which had no age, disease, or misery; these came with sin, symbolized by the “garments of skin,” and will be cast off with it.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 149Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · The resurrection requires only that a man was born; how long he lived or how he died bears on judgment, not on resurrection; when God restores nature to its first state, the objections about age and disease fall away.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 151Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · God’s single aim is to bring all humanity, once complete, into the good beyond sight and hearing: some purified in this life, others healed afterward by fire, the length of healing matching each one’s vice. Paul’s answer to the Corinthians silences those who measure God by their own power.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 153Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina explains Paul’s seed analogy: the grain dies and is dissolved, yet God brings from it an ear both the same and more glorious; so the risen body will be restored and enriched, raised in incorruption, power, glory, and spirit.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 155Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · As the grain becomes an ear, human nature will shed the marks of passion and rise incorruptible and spiritual; and since in Genesis the plant came before the seed, the resurrection is a return to the first state of grace.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 157Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Adam was the first ear; through sin humanity was scattered like grain, and at the resurrection all will rise; the virtuous at once in full form, the vicious only after the tares within them are burned away by fire, when, after long ages, they too will regain the original form.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 159Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · The difference between the good and the wicked at the resurrection is not bodily but in joy or deprivation of good; once the passions of vice have been cleansed by fire, incorruption, life, honour, and glory will take their place in human nature, God’s image.
Homily 1Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · Gregory introduces Ecclesiastes as the book for the church’s way of life, reads its title of Christ the true Ecclesiast, defines “vanity of vanities”, and expounds Eccl 1:1–11 as a lesson to look beyond sense-perceived life to the original state restored in the resurrection.
On the Making of Man 17Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Had man not sinned, humanity would have multiplied in some angelic way without marriage, as the resurrection life shows; God, foreseeing the fall, added the animal mode of reproduction.
On the Making of Man 18Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The passions came to man through his kinship with the animals; reason can turn them into vices or virtues, and the divine image shows in the virtuous; in the resurrection man will be freed from the need to eat.
On the Making of Man 21Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Because evil has a limit while the good is infinite, the ever-moving human nature, having run through evil, must turn back to the good; so the restoration of paradise and the image is to be expected.
On the Making of Man 22Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The resurrection waits until the full number of humanity, foreseen by God, has been born; then time will end and all will be changed at once; meanwhile we should prepare by good living, not calculate times.
On the Making of Man 25Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The fulfilment of Christ’s predictions (such as the fall of Jerusalem) makes his promise of resurrection credible, and his graded miracles of raising the dead, culminating in Lazarus and his own risen body, demonstrate it.
On the Making of Man 26Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Objections from bodies burned or eaten fail, because every element of the dissolved body remains within the world, which God holds in his hand and knows exactly.
On the Making of Man 27Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The soul keeps the stamp of its body’s form and recognizes its own elements, so at the resurrection God can easily restore to each his own, as owners sort a mixed herd or scattered quicksilver flows together.
Chapter 11Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Against heretics who deny bodily resurrection, Nicetas cites Isaiah, Christ and Paul; the soul awaits judgment in light or darkness until the resurrection, when the righteous will shine and the wicked go into darkness.
Chapter 12Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas illustrates the resurrection by the seed that dies and rises (1 Cor 15:36) and says eternal life is for the faithful who live chastely, not for pagans, unbelievers or vicious Christians.
Book of Heresies 4.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Dositheus taught living by the flesh and denied the resurrection.
Book of Heresies 47.5Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Apelles denied the resurrection of the flesh.
Book of Heresies 80.5Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · As in the resurrection of the body, what God made comes to greater glory.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 82Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · At the resurrection the saints' bodies will shine with differing glory; flesh and blood will not reign.
Eleven Tractates 2.45Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · The creed continues with forgiveness and the resurrection of the flesh; baptism in the one name of Father, Son, and Spirit shows the one God in threefold power.
On the Complaints of Job and David 1.15Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Christ walking on the sea and the ships of Tarshish show that the flesh is the soul’s ship, shattered unto judgment or to good contrition.
On the Complaints of Job and David 1.24Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The dead will not rise until the heavens are no longer “sewn,” that is, until they are renewed in the new creation.
On the Complaints of Job and David 1.25Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The Spirit revealed to Job that the dead would rise only when Christ came to make all things new.
On the Complaints of Job and David 1.26Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Job, foreseeing Christ’s descent to the dead, asks to be hidden until God’s wrath passes and to be called back to life.
On the Complaints of Job and David 1.27Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Job foresees his resurrection at Christ’s passion and prays that the earth not cover his blood, so his prayer may rise to God.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.7Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The wicked find no “reclining” or rest in death, but those who die with Christ, especially martyrs, rise with him.
Expositio fidei 4Eunomius of Cyzicus · 383 · Eunomius confesses the bodily resurrection and the final judgment, and ends by declaring that he has added nothing and omitted nothing from what he learned.
Catechetical Oration 8Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Death is a mercy: like a potter breaking and remoulding a vessel, God dissolves the body to refashion it free of evil in the resurrection, and the judgment heals the soul; only the Creator could restore fallen man.
Catechetical Oration 16Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Birth and death are natural movements, not the passion of vice; Christ shared them, and by reuniting his own soul and body in the resurrection he began the resurrection of all humanity.
Catechetical Oration 35Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Triple immersion imitates Christ's three days in the tomb and begins the destruction of evil; the baptized pass to blessedness in the resurrection, while the unpurified must be purified by fire over long ages until their nature is restored pure to God.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.19.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Knowing the glory of the resurrection, Moses rightly longed to see God, whom he would see after death.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.17.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Both soul and flesh are saved: the soul by knowing God, the flesh by resurrection.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.18.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Man is twofold: the body from clay, which will rise, and the soul from God’s Spirit, which rules creation.
Exposition of Psalm 118 11.13.5Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ’s snow-white garments signify the resurrection life, in which there is no marrying.
Exposition of Psalm 118 12.46.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · According to Paul the end follows the consummation of the age and the resurrection.
Exposition of Psalm 118 14.42.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The resurrection, Christ’s inheritance, is the remaking of the whole human race.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.19.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ makes the risen like angels and seats humanity at God’s right hand.
Letter 30.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paulinus longs to see Augustine in the flesh and commends to him the bearers Romanus and Agilis.
Letter 55.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that our passage from death to life begins now in faith and baptism and will be completed in the resurrection of the body.
Letter 55.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains against those who said the resurrection had already happened that our rising with Christ is now in hope, with the body's redemption still to come.
Letter 55.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that the Lord's day, the eighth and first, was revealed by Christ's resurrection and signifies the glorified activity of the risen body.
Letter 55.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine warns against expecting full blessedness in this life: the new life is begun in faith and hope and will be completed at the resurrection.
Letter 94.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paulinus suggests that the risen saints will praise God with real tongues and voices, perhaps in the unutterable angelic speech Paul heard in paradise.
Letter 95.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine holds that risen bodies will be spiritual and incorruptible, able to eat by power and not necessity, as Christ did after his resurrection.
Letter 102.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The first pagan question asks whether the promised resurrection resembles Christ's or Lazarus's, and why the risen Christ ate and showed wounds.
Letter 102.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ's resurrection, not Lazarus's, is the pattern, since he dies no more; a different birth makes no difference to death or resurrection.
Letter 102.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Raising long-dissolved bodies is as easy to God as raising Christ's on the third day; nature, like the seed holding the tree, is full of greater wonders.
Letter 120.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the divinity cannot be something other than the Trinity, since the three are one God by being of one and the same substance or essence.
Letter 121.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paulinus asks Augustine to send again, or rewrite, an earlier letter on the form of the resurrection body.
Letter 140.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · James contrasts Job's endurance, rewarded with temporal goods, with 'the end of the Lord', teaching Christians to hope for eternal goods; the veil of the Old Testament is removed in Christ.
Letter 147.49Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine is open to discussion of the resurrection body but rejects those who think God a body; the view that the risen body becomes spirit is more tolerable and still leaves bodily eyes unable to see God.
Letter 147.50Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The question of the spiritual body remains, but vision cannot belong only to bodies, since the Father sees the Son, God saw creation before the incarnation, and prophets are called seers.
Letter 147.51Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine leaves open the nature of the spiritual body but holds that 'face to face' refers to the inner face of the heart, unveiled in Christ, not a bodily face.
Letter 148.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Either the risen body remains essentially the same and cannot see God, or it is so transformed that its eyes are no longer 'the eyes of this body'; either way Augustine's statement holds.
Letter 148.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The inner man, who now sees love and peace, will see God; the resurrection of the body is certain, its qualities still open; Augustine again asks Fortunatianus to win him pardon.
Letter 164.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine questions the view that the saints raised at Christ's death already received the final resurrection, citing Christ as firstborn from the dead, Peter on David's tomb, and Hebrews 11.
Letter 166.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects the hypothesis, since Scripture knows only the resurrection of life and of judgment, and the church baptizes infants for their souls, as Cyprian taught.
Letter 193.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paul seems to say that some found alive at Christ's coming will not die but be changed and caught up, though this does not help the Pelagians.
Letter 193.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine would welcome correction from more learned interpreters, since other texts suggest all must die before resurrection, and his own writings have no canonical authority.
Letter 205.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers Consentius that Christ's risen body is in heaven as it was when he ascended, with flesh and bones, preserved from corruption by God's power.
Letter 205.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues from the three young men in the furnace that God can preserve the features of a body while removing all corruption from it.
Letter 205.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that in 1 Corinthians 15:50 "flesh and blood" means the corruption of flesh, not its substance, since Christ's risen flesh cannot wither.
Letter 205.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine interprets Paul's comparisons of flesh and heavenly bodies as showing that the risen will differ in glory according to their merits.
Letter 205.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that since believers will rise incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and spiritual, Christ's own risen body cannot be less.
Letter 205.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects the view that the spiritual body becomes spirit, holding that Christ's risen flesh is a true body, and that Adam would have passed to a spiritual body without death had he not sinned.
Letter 205.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine shows that Paul's added phrase "nor will corruption possess incorruption" explains "flesh and blood" as mortal corruption.
Letter 205.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that all will rise, but only the righteous will be changed into incorruption, while the wicked rise to everlasting torment.
Letter 205.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that all will rise with whole bodies, but only the righteous will put on incorruption and immortality, while the wicked remain subject to the pain of punishment.
Letter 205.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine illustrates by the two senses of "temptation" how flesh in substance will inherit the kingdom while flesh as corruption will not.
Letter 263.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine assures Sapida that her brother's body will rise, not a hair perishing, and that he is now clothed with immortality, a better garment than the tunic she made.
Homilies on Matthew 31.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ raises the girl with her parents as witnesses and has her fed, proving both death and resurrection; Christians must therefore not mourn their dead like pagans, still less hire pagan mourners, for death is sleep and a calm harbor.
Homilies on Matthew 70.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ answers the tax question from the coin itself, rendering to Caesar what does not harm godliness and to God what is God’s; he then refutes the Sadducees’ story of the seven brothers from Scripture and God’s power, and Chrysostom turns to the monks who already live like the angels, having slain the desires of the belly.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.78Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Natural transformations point to the resurrection change Paul describes, not to speculative theories of change.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.79Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The phoenix, reborn from its own remains, is an example teaching belief in the resurrection.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.40.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ gives fruit wisely, in due season: its fullness in the resurrection.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.40.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The fruit is given in the resurrection, when we are incorruptible.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.43.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The leaves of Adam and Eve foretold the resurrection: the leaf that does not fall.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.51.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Daniel foretells the judgment and resurrection.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.53.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Daniel and Christ both teach a resurrection to life and to judgment.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.54.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · There are two resurrections; those not in the first are burned until the second.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.20.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The “adding” is the grace given to man to live again after death, as years were added to Hezekiah.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.15.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The fire that did not consume the bush signifies the glory of the risen body.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.47.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · No possessions can buy back the soul, and the ungodly have no share in the change of the resurrection.
On the Greatness of the Soul 33Augustine of Hippo · 387–388 · Augustine describes the soul's power in seven steps: animating the body, sensation, the human arts, virtue, tranquillity, the approach to God, and the contemplation of truth, in which the soul knows God, the truth of the Church's teaching, and the certainty of the resurrection.
On True Religion 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that the soul that loves bodies becomes carnal and suffers pain, but the soul that conquers its desires by God's grace is restored, loves God and neighbor, and will receive back its body made pure in the resurrection.
On True Religion 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine applies the old and new man to the whole human race, divided into the impious and the people of God, whose history in the Old Testament prefigures the New, until the resurrection and judgment.
On True Religion 44Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that the rational soul, made toward God, will have all lower things serve it if it serves its Creator, and will rule a sanctified body in the resurrection.
Sermon 37.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · After the Church’s labors in this life of poverty, her children will rise and be made truly rich in the resurrection, beside which earthly riches are only props for weakness.
Sermon 45.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our flesh, though it is grass, will be changed into gold, made like the angels; then there will be no more labor or groaning, only praise, which we now possess in hope.
Sermon 57.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God’s kingdom has no beginning or end; in praying “Your kingdom come” we ask to be among his kingdom, the redeemed, when he comes to raise the dead and set the blessed on his right.
Sermon 65.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A persecutor is a mortal man threatening a mortal man, and can touch only the body; the martyr, fearing God, does not fear, for the soul is untouched and the body will rise immortal.
Sermon 78.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Seeing Jesus alone after rising from the ground signifies the resurrection, when the law and prophecy will cease and God himself will be our reward.
Sermon 84.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The days of this life are evil and shrinking, yet loved; true life is the eternal, blessed day of the resurrection, the reward of good work.
Sermon 87.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All the righteous, from Abel to the Christians at the end of the age, receive the resurrection together, but the last receive it after a shorter wait.
Sermon 127.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The hour that “now is” is the resurrection of souls: unbelievers, dead though they walk about, are raised by the word to live by faith.
Sermon 127.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All will rise in the body, but only those who have first risen in the soul by faith will rise to life; the others rise to punishment.
Sermon 127.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The hour of the bodily resurrection lies at the end of the world, when all in the tombs, good and bad, will hear Christ’s voice and come forth.
Sermon 127.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The God who made us from nothing can surely raise our dust and bones; whoever believes this rises now in soul and will rise in the flesh to life.
Sermon 130.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God becoming man and dying is more incredible than man living forever; since the greater has been done, we must believe the lesser, and rejoice that we are Christians, belonging to Christ.
Sermon 144.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Believers share Christ’s righteousness in going to the Father, now by faith and hope and fully at the resurrection; as Christ and his members are one, so the devil and the ungodly are one body under judgment.
Sermon 154.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Deliverance by grace is not mere bodily death, which pagans also undergo, but the resurrection to life, while the wicked rise again to the body of death forever.
Sermon 154.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Christian is delivered from the body of this death not by losing the body but by receiving it raised and immortal, through Christ, the second man who undoes Adam's death.
Sermon 155.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Spirit who raised Jesus will give life to our mortal bodies; deliverance is from the body of death, not from the body, which the spirit loves as a husband his wife.
Sermon 157.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, who raised Lazarus, rose himself, and told of Lazarus and the rich man, answers those who ask who has returned from the dead; the fulfilled promise to Abraham guarantees the rest.
Sermon 169.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul, conformed to Christ's death by baptism, confessed that he was not yet perfect: the one thing he lacked was to dwell in the Lord's house and contemplate his delight.
Sermon 172.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Grief at the death of loved ones is natural, since death is a punishment from which nature recoils, but Christians grieve with the hope of resurrection, not as those without hope.
Sermon 173.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith in the resurrection distinguishes Christians from pagans; grief is human and Christ himself wept, not for Lazarus but for death, the penalty of the soul's desertion of God; death is so bitter that martyrs' courage is great.
Sermon 212.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · At the handing over of the Creed, Augustine explains its name and summarizes its articles: the almighty Father, the Son equal to him who in the form of a slave was born, suffered, rose, and will judge, the Spirit from both, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection.
Sermon 213.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The resurrection of the flesh will bring an end without end, free of every bodily ill; God will possess us as his field, which only he, the almighty farmer, can make grow.
Sermon 214.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our mortal flesh will rise incorruptible; Christ, who took and laid down and took back soul and flesh, will give eternal life to both.
Sermon 233.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Death has died in Christ the head and will die in his members at the resurrection, when believers will taunt death; but it will live on in the damned.
Sermon 235.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ withdrew his bodily presence so that faith might grow; what we do not see will come, to the joy of believers and the confusion of unbelievers.
Sermon 240.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even pagans admit that God is almighty; to deny that he can raise the dead is to detract from his almightiness.
Sermon 240.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our bodily miseries come from sin; Christ shared the punishment without the sin and will raise the flesh incorruptible and free of every defect.
Sermon 241.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against Porphyry's maxim that all body is to be fled, Augustine points to the philosophers' own teaching that the world is an eternal living being with a soul forever joined to its body.
Sermon 241.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Plato's Timaeus has God promise the star-gods that they will never leave their bodies, which refutes the Platonists' claim that all body must be fled.
Sermon 242.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The risen Christ let his disciples see and handle his body; men argue against this because they believe only what they are used to seeing, but God, the author, did it.
Sermon 242.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Scripture does not settle whether dead infants rise as infants; it is more reasonable to hold that all rise at full age, without the weakness of childhood or old age.
Sermon 242.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Philosophers argue from the order of the elements that an earthly body cannot be in heaven; but the answer cannot be that we shall stay on earth, since the Lord ascended with his body.
Sermon 242.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The risen body is called spiritual not because it becomes spirit but because it will obey the spirit perfectly, with no more war between flesh and spirit.
Sermon 243.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ showed his risen body to confirm the resurrection; opponents then ask what use teeth, stomach, and sexual organs will be where there is no eating or begetting.
Sermon 256.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against those who say the flesh is no part of a man, Paul shows that he is delivered not from his body but from its mortality: the same body will rise incorruptible, and death will be swallowed up in victory.
Sermon 264.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “The Father is greater than I” rebuked and consoled disciples fixed on Christ’s flesh: he is less as man, equal as God, unchanged by taking flesh as a senator by prison clothes; he withdrew outwardly to fill them inwardly.
Sermon 264.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The same flesh will rise, the wicked to punishment and the good to be changed into a heavenly body; Christ, true flesh, rose first as the firstfruits, and those who would believe a risen grandfather refuse to believe the risen Lord.
Sermon 277.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Had Vincent denied Christ to spare his body, he would only have postponed eternal punishment for that body; all will rise, but those who denied Christ to the resurrection of judgment, that is, eternal punishment.
Sermon 277.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Martyrs did not despise their bodies, as the philosophers who call the body a prison do, but secured them eternal glory; even present health, the concord of the body’s elements, is a great good, though nothing to the angelic health promised in the resurrection.
Sermon 277.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No present body, not even a bird’s, is as swift as desire; the spiritual body of the resurrection will obey the will with perfect ease and speed.
Sermon 277.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Taking Vincent’s passion as occasion to speak of the spiritual body, Augustine notes that health is not feeling one’s organs, and that the sun’s and the angels’ swiftness, though beyond our experience, hints at the ease of the risen body.
Sermon 277.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · If the resurrection itself will be instantaneous, the spiritual body will move with wonderful ease; the risen Christ even passed through shut doors, and he will conform our bodies to his glorious body.
Sermon 277.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Until the question is settled we must hold firmly that the body will rise spiritual and that the Trinity is invisible as it is immortal and incorruptible; meanwhile we should cleanse our hearts to see God.
Sermon 277.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine does not deny that the risen flesh may see God, but finds no clear testimony; what must be held firmly is that God is not a body or in a place, and that the body will rise spiritual and immortal.
Sermon 280.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The martyrs’ present happiness is only a foretaste; at the resurrection the whole person, body included, receives reward or punishment, as the parable of the rich man and Lazarus shows.
Sermon 299.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul too shrank from death: groaning under the burden of the body, he wished not to be stripped but clothed over, so that the mortal might be swallowed up by life at the resurrection, when death’s contention and sting are no more.
Sermon 306.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Scripture calls only the blessed life ‘life’: the wicked will exist in torment but that is the ‘second death’, not life, so ‘the resurrection of life’ and ‘the fountain of life’ mean happy life.
Sermon 313.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Cyprian's soul was God's great sword, winning enemies over and conquering at his death with God present to him; his body, the sword's sheath, lies here beneath the altar until it is restored to his soul in the resurrection.
On Illustrious Men 50Jerome · 392–393 · Sextus wrote on the resurrection.
On Faith and the Creed 23Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Spirit, soul, and body are restored in order; the resurrection of the flesh means that this visible flesh itself will rise.
On Faith and the Creed 24Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The risen flesh will become a heavenly body; since even the philosophers grant that every body can change into every other, God can transform it in an instant.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine reconciles Christ’s ban on putting away a wife with the command to hate one’s wife: the Christian loves the spouse as a human being and fellow heir, while hating the temporal and mortal bond that will not exist in the resurrection.
Against Jovinianus 1.36Jerome · 393 · Jerome answers the objections that universal virginity would end the human race and that the genital organs show we are made for intercourse.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine answers Adimantus's attack on the law's “the blood is the soul”: it concerns beasts, not human souls, and is a sign like “the rock was Christ,” while 1 Cor 15:50 refers to the transformation of the body at the resurrection.
On Continence 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The flesh is part of ourselves, not an enemy; only its fault is to be resisted, and at the resurrection it will become spiritual and wholly subject to the spirit.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 40Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Against the Manichaean denial of the resurrection of the flesh, Evodius cites Paul: the body will be changed, not discarded.
On the Christian Struggle 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The resurrection of the flesh is not denied by 1 Cor 15:50, because the risen flesh will be changed into a heavenly body.
On Christian Doctrine 1.19Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · As repentance is a death of the soul leading to renewal, so bodily death will be followed by a better, incorruptible resurrection body.
On Christian Doctrine 1.21Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Faith holds that neither soul nor body is wholly destroyed, but the wicked rise to punishment and the godly to eternal life.
Confessions 9.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Monica no longer cared to be buried beside her husband, trusting God to raise her from anywhere; she died aged fifty-six.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 4.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the Old Testament’s temporal promises were figures of the New, that the patriarchs and prophets looked to the New Testament, and that the Manichaeans deny the bodily resurrection and imagine a land of light of their own.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 11.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows that Faustus rejects Paul’s teaching on Adam and Christ, on Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection, and on the resurrection of the body, despite claiming to accept the apostle.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 11.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that “flesh” in 2 Cor 5:16 means mortality and corruption, which Christ has put off in his resurrection and believers have put off in hope, not the substance of the body.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine reads the dates and numbers of the flood (27, 7, 15, 150) as figures of the Trinity in the soul, of the saints’ rest and resurrection, and of baptism.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 14.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers Faustus's dilemma: a Christian forced to worship the sun should accept the curse of bodily death, from which the resurrection frees, rather than the soul's death by idolatry.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ did not turn Israel from its God, since he proclaimed the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, nor did he break Moses' commandments, but rebuked those who made them void.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine sums up that Christ fulfilled the law by grace and truth, and notes that the Old Testament teaches eternal life and resurrection but never names the “kingdom of heaven,” which belongs to the New Testament.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 24.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Paul’s inner and outer man are one man wholly made by God, whose whole nature, grown old through sin, is renewed now inwardly and at the resurrection outwardly.
Canon 21.10Anonymous · ca. 397–400 · Anathema on those who deny the resurrection of the body.
On Catechizing the Uninstructed 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · After the narration the catechist should present the resurrection, the last judgment, and the heavenly city, and prepare the hearer for temptations, for scandal from bad Christians, and against placing his hope in any human being.
On Catechizing the Uninstructed 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · The model address ends with the resurrection of the body, eternal punishment and the eternal vision of the Trinity, and warnings against temptations from pagans, heretics, Jews, and especially bad Christians within the Church, urging the candidate to join the good and hope in God alone.
On Catechizing the Uninstructed 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · The short model address recounts the fulfilment of prophecy from the flood and Abraham to Christ, the Church, its persecutions and heresies, then the coming judgment and resurrection, and urges the candidate to love God freely, join the good, bear with the bad, and hope in God alone.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine explains the spiritual struggle of Eph 6:12 without Manichaean dualism: the evil powers are fallen creatures, God permits them power to test the faithful, and the body will be changed in the resurrection, not absorbed into a Manichaean “globe”.
On the Trinity 4.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains how Christ's single death and resurrection, in his body alone, answer our double death of soul and body: they are a sacrament of the inner man's death to sin and renewal, and an example of the outer man's bodily death and future resurrection.
On the Trinity 4.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine argues that philosophers who know God's eternal reasons are not therefore authorities on the resurrection or the course of history, since they learn natural and historical facts from experience and cannot foresee the future as prophets do.
On the Trinity 13.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Philosophers barely reached the soul's immortality, but faith promises immortality to the whole man, made credible by the Word becoming flesh.
On the Trinity 14.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · John's “we shall be like him” may refer to the full sight of God or to the immortal body, in which we are conformed to the incarnate Son alone.
On the Trinity 15.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Those who belong to Christ, freed by his blood from the devil's power, rest in peace until the resurrection and will then see clearly why the Holy Spirit is not a Son, a question Augustine admits he could not illustrate adequately.
Commentary on Daniel 12, scholion 5Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Polychronius reads the awakening of the dead as the restoration of the captives, not the bodily resurrection.
Commentary on Daniel 12, scholion 30Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Daniel will share in the general resurrection and receive his reward.
Greek Questions to the Christians 1.0Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Greek questions: whether there is an incorporeal being, what God is and how he makes, whether what is made can be imperishable, and how the dead can rise if their flesh has been eaten by others.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.1Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Bodies eaten by fish or by other bodies are dissolved into their elements, from which God, who has already raised Christ, can re-create them as he created them in the beginning.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.3Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Disbelief in the resurrection rests either on the impious denial of God's power or on the ridiculous claim that imperishability would not benefit the risen.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.7Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The resurrection is impossible only in the relative sense in which all things are possible for God; and without the hope of the future, piety and impiety would not differ.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.11Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Imperishable life is the divine goal for which humanity was made, and the martyrs' willingness to die confirms the truth of the resurrection.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.15Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Those who wrongly hold the sun to be eternal, though its positions change, are no reliable judges of the resurrection.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.17Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · If God can raise any dead person he can raise all, even one eaten by fish; his works are not to be measured by human reasoning.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.20Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · It is absurd to reject the attested resurrection while believing in the transmigration of souls into ants.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.26Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Twenty-three short arguments for the resurrection: God's irrevocable gifts, his power to remake as he made, the dead lying in potency in the elements, the justice owed to martyrs, and the failure of all Greek opposition to the teaching.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 13Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Infants and the unborn will rise too: God who gives them incorruption can give them perception of the goods prepared, he made nothing in vain, and Scripture speaks of the vengeance for the infants slain by Herod.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 43–45Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Three questions: the animals entered the ark in pairs and sevens of each sex; Isaiah's vision shows Christ and the cleansing power of his flesh in the Eucharist, while Ezekiel's living creatures foretold Nebuchadnezzar's fate and the end of Israel's captivity; and Ezekiel is called “son of man” because his vision of dry bones prefigures the resurrection by the Son of man.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 53–54Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The risen keep their sexual organs as a reminder of how God's wisdom preserved the race through birth; and Moses' warnings were set to song because melody shapes the soul's disposition to the words.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 60–61Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The dead will rise in their own recognizable forms, to show God's knowledge, to prove that the same persons rise, and so that judgment may be just; the story of Lazarus and the rich man teaches that no benefit can be gained after death; and God alone has immortality by his own essence.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 82–88Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Seven questions: demons' names (Beelzebul, Belial) were learned from the demons through magic; sacrifices before the law were accepted but not commanded, and Abraham's served as prophecy; Elisha's double portion meant greater power, shown in raising two dead; the saints raised at the crucifixion rose complete and remain immortal; Origen's work explains Hebrew words and measures; Herod heard of Jesus' miracles late; and infants, unable to choose, do not sin, so Scripture's “no one is sinless” does not touch them or Christ.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 110–111Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The hundredfold reward is fulfilled in spiritual kin and in the Church's abundance, as when the wealthy supported desert monks; and God, whose power is not measured like nature's, can raise even bodies that have been cut up or burned.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 112Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Christ did not confirm the apostles' hope of an earthly kingdom; the Spirit later taught them that the risen life has no food, drink, or marriage, and that God's kingdom is righteousness, peace, and joy.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 118–124Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Seven questions run together: why Christians pray facing east (as the more honored direction, received from the apostles); why Cain's offering was rejected (he kept the better for himself); why sinners who rise do not inherit God's kingdom (the kingdom belongs to the just only); anathema and katathema (fragmentary); Christ's “hour” (God's providence, not fate); why man, who can become evil, is still the best of creatures; and why the pious receive no earthly reward (their reward is future, though God has shown his providence in history).
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine says it does not matter if animals devour the dead, since God will re-form the body, and Christians should not fear any manner of death.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Was Adam's first body animal or spiritual? Paul (1 Cor 15:44–49) cites Genesis 2:7 to show the first body was animal; the spiritual body comes at the resurrection.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine names the three kinds of vision bodily, spiritual, and intellectual, and surveys the senses in which Scripture uses “bodily” and “spirit.”
Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Souls need their bodies at the resurrection because a natural appetite to govern a body holds them back from the full vision of God; the spiritual body will be no burden but a glory.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · In the resurrection all three kinds of vision will remain, free of error; even Paul lacked the angels' full knowledge, which the saints will have when the mortal puts on immortality.
Apology against Rufinus 1.29Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome explains that his words about wives becoming men meant beginning now the chastity of the angelic life, not abolishing the sexes or bodies in the resurrection.
Apology against Rufinus 2.5Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome demands that Rufinus say plainly whether the risen will keep their sex and their flesh and blood forever, instead of using Origen's ambiguous formula.
Apology against Rufinus 2.12Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome lists the doctrines in Origen's works that he holds heretical and challenges Rufinus to show where Origen contradicts them.
Apology against Jerome 1.4Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus recalls his baptism at Aquileia about thirty years earlier and sets out his faith in the Trinity, the incarnation, and the resurrection of this same flesh.
Apology against Jerome 1.5Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus appeals to the Creed of Aquileia, which confesses "the resurrection of this flesh," and complains that his accuser still demands every limb be named.
Apology against Jerome 1.6Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Christ's risen body, which the disciples could touch, is the pattern: we shall rise in this same flesh, freed from corruption and made spiritual.
Apology against Jerome 1.7Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus mocks Jerome's caricature of Origenist women who reject a frail resurrection body and argues from Paul that the risen body is not frail.
Apology against Jerome 1.8Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · The risen flesh is this same flesh with all its members but without corruption, frailty, or sexual use; the church's faith walks between two errors.
Apology against Jerome 1.9Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus sums up his statement of faith, especially on the resurrection, as complete and unambiguous.
Apology against Jerome 1.13Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus quotes his preface to Pamphilus's Apology, with its confession of the Trinity and of the resurrection of this flesh, as taught by Bishop John of Jerusalem.
Apology against Jerome 1.23Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus turns to Jerome's Commentary on Ephesians and quotes its statement that wives will be turned into men and bodies into souls.
Apology against Jerome 1.24Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus argues that Jerome's own words on the sexes and on bodies becoming souls are more open to suspicion than anything the women he mocks ever said.
Apology against Jerome 2.41Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus begins his summary: his faith, Jerome's errors on the resurrection, the reasons for his translation, and the forged passage.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 41Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · The resurrection of the flesh, denied by Valentinus and the Manichees, is taught by Isaiah, Daniel, and Christ, and brings the pure into the angels' fellowship.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 42Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · Against unbelievers, the resurrection of scattered flesh is shown by Paul's seed and by the craftsman who finds hidden metals in the earth.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 43Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · Each body will be restored as its own, like seeds sown together; hence Aquileia's Creed says 'this flesh', and Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians confirms it.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 44Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · Ezekiel and Job also foretold the resurrection, Job by contrasting the tree that sprouts again with man.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 45Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · 'This flesh' is confirmed by Job and by Paul's 'this corruptible': the same body will rise, changed in quality, for the righteous to glory and for sinners to punishment.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 46Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · The glorified bodies of the righteous will be caught up to meet Christ, conformed to his glorious body, shining like the sun, spiritual bodies fit for the angels' company.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 47Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · As earth became a natural body, the natural body can become spiritual; sinners too will rise incorruptible, but to lasting shame.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Father and Son give life to the same people with one power and will, which raises the question how the Father “judges no one.”
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ speaks of a resurrection to eternal life that happens now, before the final resurrection at the end of the world.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The same believers rise twice, now in the mind by obedient faith and at the end in the flesh; “hearing” Christ's voice means obeying it.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The present resurrection of minds, which even false religions admit, must not be made the only resurrection, as Hymenaeus and Philetus did.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Son of God raises souls; as son of man he received power to judge and will raise bodies; the Word having man is one Christ, as soul and body are one man.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ will judge in the form of a servant, visible to just and unjust alike, which is why “the Father judges no one.”
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · “All who are in the tombs” shows that Christ now speaks of the bodily resurrection of just and unjust, not of the present rising of minds.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 21.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The raising of Lazarus was the work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together; “to whom he will” shows that the Son has equal power and one will with the Father.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 21.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The dead whom Father and Son give life are not those raised as miracles, but all who will rise to eternal life at the final judgment.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 22.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against those who say the resurrection is past, Augustine notes that the bodily resurrection is spoken of without “and now is,” because it comes at the end of the world.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 22.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · “All who are in the tombs … will come forth” describes the bodily resurrection of good and evil, unlike the present rising of believers, which makes no such division.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ is Word, rational soul, and flesh; souls rise from sin through Christ as God, and bodies rise from corruption through Christ as man.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The “greater works” the Father will show the Son, as man made in time, are the resurrection of bodies.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The resurrection of souls is the joint work of the Father and the Son in their one substance; the resurrection of bodies is the Son's work as man, in whom he is honored but not “as” the Father.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Father raises souls through the Son's divine substance, but raises bodies and judges through the son of man, who judges “as he hears,” seeking the Father's will.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · None of the humble whom the Father gave to Christ will be lost; they rise now by faith and will be raised in the flesh on the last day.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 26.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Here we hunger for righteousness; we will be filled at the resurrection on the last day.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 41.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Perfect freedom will come when death is swallowed up in victory; meanwhile the Church is the inn where Christ, the Good Samaritan, has us cared for.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The raising of Lazarus is no wonder for the Creator; it is a sign given so that we may believe and prepare for the final resurrection to life.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, the resurrection and the life, can raise now as well as at the last day, including those buried in habits of sin.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 75.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · "I live" points to Christ's resurrection soon to come, "you will live" to ours at the end of the age; as death came through Adam, life comes only through Christ.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 75.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · What we now believe, that Christ is in the Father, we in him, and he in us, we shall know by sight in the day of the resurrection.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.6Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Augustine refutes the reading of Romans 8:10 as “dead in order not to sin,” showing that Paul assigns bodily death to the merit of sin and life to the merit of righteousness.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.7Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Romans 8:10–13 teaches that the believer's spirit already lives by grace while the body, still bearing sin's penalty, will later be raised to life.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 3.20Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · 1 Corinthians 15:53–57 shows that sin is the sting by which bodily death came; at the resurrection death will be swallowed up and sin, its sting, overcome through Christ.
City of God 1.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that lack of burial does no harm to Christians, since funerals comfort the living and God will raise every body wherever its remains have gone.
City of God 10.30Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine commends Porphyry for correcting Plato by rejecting transmigration into beasts and the endless cycle of souls, and holds that souls return once to their own bodies in the resurrection.
City of God 13.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Platonists who hold the world-soul and the star-gods happy in eternal bodies cannot consistently deny that God can make human bodies immortal; only corruptible bodies, the result of sin, burden the soul.
City of God 13.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The weight of earthly bodies is no objection to their being in heaven: God can make them light and incorruptible, as even art makes metal float and Plato's gods kept fire's light without its heat.
City of God 13.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Had the first humans not sinned, they would never have died; the Platonists, who give their gods everlasting bodies and even let the wise return to bodies, cannot reasonably scorn Christian faith in the resurrection of incorruptible bodies.
City of God 13.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The saints' bodies will rise spiritual, better even than Adam's before sin, which needed food and was kept from aging by the tree of life, a sacrament of God's wisdom; the forbidden tree was not evil but a test of obedience.
City of God 13.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Risen bodies will need no food but may eat, as the angels did with Abraham and Tobit and as the risen Christ did; they will be spiritual yet remain true bodies.
City of God 13.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Adam was created with an animal body, mortal only through sin, not a spiritual one; the spiritual body is Christ's risen body, which believers receive now in sacrament and hope and fully at the resurrection.
City of God 20.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine gathers Christ's sayings in the Gospels that foretell a judgment at the end of the age, with the resurrection of the dead and the separation of good and bad.
City of God 20.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The first resurrection is the present raising of souls from sin through faith; the second is the raising of bodies at the end, to life or to condemnation.
City of God 20.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Resurrection can be spoken of souls as well as bodies, since souls also fall; and all believers, not only clergy, are the priests who reign with Christ.
City of God 20.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains Revelation 20:10–13: the devil's condemnation, the passing of the world's form, the books opened at judgment, and the book of life as God's power recalling each person's deeds.
City of God 20.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Commenting on 1 Thessalonians 4, Augustine suggests that those alive at Christ's coming will die and rise in an instant as they are caught up, so that all die and rise; how it will happen is known only then.
City of God 20.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reads Isaiah 26 and 65–66 as foretelling the resurrection of good and wicked, the comfort of the heavenly Jerusalem, the gathering of the nations into the church, and eternal punishment.
City of God 20.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Daniel foretells Antichrist's short and savage reign of three and a half years before the judgment and the saints' everlasting kingdom, and the resurrection of many to life or to shame.
City of God 22.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · As God's promise to Abraham is now seen fulfilled in Christ, so his prophetic promises of resurrection, a new heaven and earth, and the everlasting kingdom will also be fulfilled.
City of God 22.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Against Cicero's claim that earthly bodies cannot be in heaven, Augustine argues that the union of incorporeal souls with earthly bodies is a greater wonder than the raising of earthly bodies to heaven.
City of God 22.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues from three “incredible” facts, Christ's bodily resurrection and ascension, the world's belief in it, and its persuasion by a few unlearned fishermen, backed by the apostles' miracles, that the promised resurrection of the flesh is credible.
City of God 22.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The miracles done through the martyrs, however God works them, bear witness to the faith for which they died, the faith in Christ's bodily resurrection and ours.
City of God 22.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine answers the Platonist argument from the natural order and weights of the elements, showing from birds, the soul's union with the body, Varro's story of the Vestal's sieve, and fire on earth that God can make risen bodies fit to dwell in heaven.
City of God 22.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine sets out the pagans' mocking questions about the resurrection of the flesh: aborted fetuses, infants, stature, hair and nails, fatness, dissolved bodies, deformities, and flesh eaten by others.
City of God 22.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine neither affirms nor denies that fetuses who died in the womb will rise, though he cannot see why they would be excluded from the resurrection of the dead.
City of God 22.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Infants will rise with the full stature they would have reached, since the measure of each body is present in principle from conception and God can supply whatever is lacking.
City of God 22.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The dead will not all rise to the size of Christ's body; each will receive the stature of his own youth, and Paul's “measure of the age of Christ's fullness” refers either to the whole church or to the age of about thirty.
City of God 22.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Being “conformed to the image of the Son” refers to inner renewal or to immortality, and if to the risen body, to the age of youth, though Augustine will not contend with those who think each rises at the age of death.
City of God 22.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Against the view that all will rise male, Augustine holds that both sexes will rise, without lust, marriage, or childbearing, since woman is God's creature and Christ denied marriage, not women, in the resurrection.
City of God 22.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · In the resurrection deformities will be removed without loss of substance, all bodies will have beauty of proportion and radiance, and the martyrs may bear their scars as marks of honour, with lost members restored.
City of God 22.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God can recall all scattered matter of dead bodies; flesh eaten by another will be restored to its first owner, and all will rise with the proportions of youth, free of every deformity and corruption.
City of God 22.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The risen flesh will be spiritual, wholly subject to the spirit yet still flesh; to glimpse its glory Augustine proposes to consider God's gifts even in this troubled life.
City of God 22.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The world has believed the resurrection of the flesh as God foretold; since God cannot lie, what he promised will happen, and nothing in it is evil or unworthy of him.
City of God 22.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Against Porphyry's demand that the blessed soul flee all bodies, Augustine cites Plato's Timaeus, where the supreme God promises the created gods an impossible immortality in their bodies, so God can likewise raise incorruptible flesh.
City of God 22.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes Plato's myth of a man returned to life, Labeo's tale of two revived men, and Varro's report of a rebirth of the same body and soul after 440 years, and argues that combining these pagan views yields the Christian resurrection.
City of God 22.29Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine discusses how the saints will see God: certainly with the spirit, and perhaps also through their spiritual bodies, which may see God present in all things as we now see life in living bodies.
On the Good of Widowhood 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 414 · Augustine will not condemn third or later marriages after a spouse's death, since neither Paul nor Christ did, though their number is a matter of shame; every widow is more blessed if she remains so.
Commentary on Jeremiah 4.57Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God did not send the false prophets, who flatter the people with claims of sinlessness; heretics show their unbelief in the resurrection by self-indulgence. God is both near and far and fills heaven and earth (Jer 23:21–24).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.17Jerome · ca. 414-419 · The nations are told that God, who scattered Israel, will gather and redeem it by his blood from the stronger hostile powers; the grain, wine, and oil, the watered garden, the rejoicing virgins, young and old, and the priests drunk with fatness are spiritual gifts in the church, given now in part and in full at the resurrection (Jer 31:10–14).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.19Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Rachel is told to cease weeping because her sons will return; spiritually this is Israel's salvation from all the world, and better, the martyred infants' reward in the kingdom and their resurrection to the perfect man (Jer 31:16–17).
On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · The church will be without spot or wrinkle only when she is glorious at the resurrection; now Christ cleanses and heals her step by step.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 2.31Augustine of Hippo · 418 · The righteous of old belong to Christ's body and will rise in him, because they believed in his future incarnation, just as we believe in his future judgment.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine argues that 'I am carnal, sold under sin' can be said by Paul himself, with respect to his still mortal body.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine interprets 'the body of this death' and Paul's 'I do not know' as the believer's groaning and refusal of consent.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine explains that baptism forgives all sins but does not remove the weakness that remains, which will be removed only in the final regeneration at the resurrection.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine argues that righteousness and love of God will be perfected only when God is seen, and that Paul in Philippians 3 confesses he has not yet attained it.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine distinguishes the small righteousness of faith in this life, which merits, from the full righteousness of the resurrection, which is its reward.
Commonitorium 1.271–300Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · At the Lord's trumpet the same bodies will rise to receive punishment or glory, as the seasons' renewal of woods, vines and grain shows; every man will live forever.
On Care for the Dead 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · In a passage quoted from The City of God, Augustine argues that lack of burial cannot harm Christians, since funeral rites comfort the living rather than help the dead and God will raise every body.
On Care for the Dead 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · God allowed the martyrs' bodies to be destroyed so that fear for the tomb or for the resurrection would not shake their confession, though the brethren grieved that they could not bury them.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 84Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Every Christian must believe that the flesh of all people will rise to eternal life, though the questions raised are many.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 87Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Malformed births will rise with nature corrected, conjoined twins as two separate persons, each soul with its own complete body.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 89Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · In the resurrection God, like a sculptor recasting a statue, will restore the body from its whole matter without each particle returning to its former place.
Retractations 1.10Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing On Music, Augustine clarifies statements on bodily numbers, the resurrection body, and beauty, and says he cannot affirm, as Plato did, that the world is a living being with a soul.
Retractations 1.16Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing On Faith and the Creed, given before the African bishops at Hippo, Augustine corrects his statement that the risen body will no longer be flesh and blood.
Verses on the Birthday of the Maccabees 241–270Hilary of Arles · ca. 430-449 · The fifth son is brought forward; his mother, unable to embrace him, urges him to keep God's law given through Moses and promises him the resurrection.
Part 2, chapter 36Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones shows the resurrection, and his shut eastern gate Mary’s perpetual virginity; Ezra’s return and the sending away of foreign wives figure Christians who leave all, even wife and children, for Christ.
Part 4, chapter 18Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Ezekiel’s dry bones, Isaiah, Christ, Paul, and the Apocalypse foretell the resurrection of the flesh; even bodies eaten by beasts will be restored by the Creator, and the impious rise not to judgment but to punishment.
Part 5, chapter 2Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The saints of every age and both sexes will be changed into the perfect man, the age of Christ’s fullness, which the author takes as about thirty.