Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
By the testimonies of Isaiah and Ezekiel he proves the resurrection, and that it is the same God who created us who will raise us up.
That he who shaped man in the beginning also pledged him a second beginning once he had dissolved back into earth — Isaiah declares it in these words: "The dead will be raised up, and the ones lying in the tombs will stand, and every one dwelling in the ground will exult. For the dew coming from you brings them healing." And again: "I will summon you, and you will be summoned in Jerusalem, and you will see, and your heart will exult, and your bones will sprout up like new grass, and the hand of the Lord will be shown to his worshippers." Ezekiel speaks likewise: "A hand of the Lord settled upon me, and the Lord brought me out by the Spirit, and set me down within a plain, and it was covered with bones; he took me around them on every side, and there they lay, exceedingly numerous across the plain's surface, utterly withered. And he asked me: Son of man, is there life still possible for these bones? And I answered... And he told me: Speak a prophecy to these bones, telling them: Withered bones, listen to what the Lord says. This is what the Lord tells these bones: Look, I am bringing breath of life into you; I will fasten sinews onto you, cause flesh to grow over you, stretch skin across you, and place my breath within you, and you will live, and you shall recognize that I am the Lord. So I prophesied exactly as commanded. And while I was prophesying, a rumbling arose, and the bones drew together, joint to joint; I watched as sinews and flesh grew over them and skin covered them, yet no breath was within them. He then said: Prophesy to the breath, son of man; tell the breath: This is what the Lord says: Come from the four directions, and breathe life into these slain, that they may live. I prophesied just as commanded, and breath came into them, and they came alive and stood upright, a vast multitude. And again he declares: This is what the Lord says: See, I will throw open your graves, and raise you up out of them, and lead you into the land of Israel; you shall recognize that I am the Lord, when I unseal your tombs to bring my people out from their graves, and place my breath in you, and you live, and I settle you upon your own soil, and you shall recognize that I am the Lord. I have declared it, and I will accomplish it, says the Lord." It is thus the Demiurge who once more restores life to our dead bodies, evidently promising them a rising and a lifting out of tombs and graves, and granting them incorruption. "For their days shall answer to the tree of life," so it says — he alone stands revealed as the God who does these things, the good Father, freely bestowing life on those who by themselves possess none.
This is exactly why the Lord disclosed both his own identity and the Father's with such clarity to his disciples — so they would look for no other divinity apart from the one who shaped man and breathed life into him, and would not lapse into the folly of inventing some additional father alongside the Demiurge. Accordingly he cured, by a mere word, everyone else whose ailments had befallen them on account of wrongdoing, telling them: "Look, you have recovered; sin no further, or something worse may come upon you" — showing plainly that these ailments had come upon men through the sin of rebellion. Yet to the man born sightless he restored vision not by word but through a deed, and this not casually or by chance, but to exhibit God's own hand, the very hand that had shaped man from the start. Which is why, when his disciples inquired what had caused this man's blindness from birth — his own fault, or that of his parents — he replied: "This man sinned not, nor did his parents; rather, it was so that God's works could be displayed openly in him." Now God's work consists in man's shaping. For he accomplished this through a deed, exactly as Scripture states: "And the Lord gathered clay out of the ground and shaped man." It is for this same reason that the Lord spat upon the ground, made clay from it, and spread it across the man's eyes, thereby displaying the ancient act of shaping and how it came about, revealing God's hand to those capable of grasping by which hand man had been shaped from clay. For what the Word, the Craftsman, had left incomplete in the womb, he now brought to open completion, so that God's works might be shown forth in him, and that we would no longer look elsewhere for the hand that shaped man, nor for another father — recognizing that the very hand which shaped us at the start, and continues shaping us in the womb, is that same hand of God which, in these final days, went searching for us in our lost state, lifting the strayed sheep onto its shoulders and bringing it joyfully back to the fold of life.
As proof that it is the Word of God who shapes us while still in the womb, consider what he told Jeremiah: "Before shaping you within the womb I already knew you, and before you emerged from the womb I set you apart, appointing you a prophet unto the nations." Paul says something similar: "But when it seemed good to the one who marked me out even from within my mother, so that I could proclaim him among the nations..." Given, therefore, that the Word shapes us within the womb, this very Word restored sight to the man blind since birth, thereby bringing into the open the one who secretly fashions us — since the Word had by now become visible among men — and displaying the ancient shaping of Adam, the manner and instrument of his making, revealing the whole by means of a single part. For the one who shaped this man's sight is none other than the one who shaped the entire man, acting in accordance with the Father's will. And because, in that shaping accomplished in Adam, man had lapsed into transgression and stood in need of the washing that brings rebirth, after spreading clay across his eyes he told him: "Go and wash in Siloam" — thereby restoring to him at once both his primal shaping and that rebirth granted through washing. This is why the man who had washed left seeing, able both to recognize his own maker and to discover who had granted him life.
Those who follow Valentinus, then, are mistaken when they say that man was formed not from this earth but from some fluid, diffused matter. For from whatever earth the Lord formed the man's eyes, it is clear that man was likewise formed from that same earth in the beginning. For it would be absurd that his eyes came into being from one origin while the remainder of his frame came from a different one, just as it would be absurd that one power shaped the rest of him while a separate power shaped his eyes alone. Rather, it is the very same one who from the beginning formed Adam — with whom the Father also spoke, saying, "Let us make man according to our image and likeness" — who, in these last times, revealing himself to men, formed sight for him who had been blind since Adam. And for this reason Scripture, signifying what was to come, says that when Adam had hidden himself because of disobedience, the Lord came to him in the evening, and called him, and said: "Where are you?" That is, in these last times this same Word of God came to summon man, reminding him of his own deeds, among which he had lived while hidden from the Lord. For just as then God came in the evening seeking out Adam, so in these last times, by that same voice, he visited and sought out Adam's race.