Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Let us now come back to the resurrection, a subject we have already dealt with fully enough elsewhere, in a treatise of its own, standing against every heretic there; but we will not skip it here either, for the sake of those who don't know that little work. "What," he says, "will those who are baptized for the dead do, if the dead do not rise?" Let that practice answer for itself. The Kalends of February, if it comes to that, will answer for petitioning on behalf of the dead. So don't be quick to brand the apostle the inventor or endorser of some novelty here — the point is rather that he establishes the resurrection of the flesh all the more firmly, precisely because people who got themselves baptized for the dead in vain were doing it out of faith in the resurrection. [2] We have him elsewhere insisting there is only one baptism. So then, to be baptized "for the dead" is to be baptized for bodies — since it is a dead body we point to. What will those who are baptized for bodies do, if bodies do not rise? And indeed we are right to plant our foot on this step, since the apostle brings in his second line of argument likewise about the body. But, some will say, "How do the dead rise? With what body do they come?" [3] Having defended the resurrection itself, which was being denied, it followed naturally that he should go on to discuss the quality of the body, since that was not so obvious. But that is a matter to take up with others. Marcion, after all, rejects any resurrection of the flesh whatsoever and promises salvation to the soul alone — his quarrel is not with its quality but with its very substance. And yet from this very passage he stands most plainly convicted, since the apostle is discussing the quality of the body precisely for the sake of those who say, "How do the dead rise? With what body do they come?" He has already, after all, proclaimed that the body will rise, the moment he starts discussing what kind of body it will be. [4] Then again, when he sets out examples — a grain of wheat, or something of that sort, to which God gives a body as he wills; when he says that each of the seeds has its own proper body, so that the flesh of men is one thing, of cattle another, of birds another, that there are heavenly bodies and earthly ones, one glory for the sun, another for the moon, another for the stars — does he not thereby point to a resurrection that is fleshly and bodily, since he commends it through fleshly and bodily examples? Does he not also pledge it as coming from the very God from whom those examples come? "So too," he says, "is the resurrection." [5] How so? Just as with the grain: it is sown a body, it rises a body. He calls the dissolving of the body into the earth its "sowing," because it is sown in corruption, in dishonor, in weakness, and rises in incorruption, in honor, in power. Whatever order held for it in dissolution holds for it too in resurrection of the body — "just as with the grain," precisely. But if you strip from the resurrection the very body you granted to the dissolution, where is the difference between the two outcomes supposed to lie? Likewise, if it is sown a natural body and rises a spiritual body — even granting that soul or spirit has some body proper to it, so that a "natural body" might be taken to mean the soul, and a "spiritual body" the spirit — he is not thereby saying the soul will become spirit at the resurrection, but that the body, which by being born with the soul and living through the soul earns the name "natural," will become "spiritual" once it rises into eternity through the spirit. [6] Furthermore, since what is sown in corruption is the flesh, not the soul, as it dissolves into the earth, then the "natural body" was never the soul in the first place, but the flesh that was called a natural body — since it is precisely what was natural that becomes spiritual, exactly as he goes on to say below: "What is spiritual did not come first." Indeed he lays this same foundation from the case of Christ himself: [7] "The first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit" — though our thickest of heretics has refused to let it stand that way, and has put "the Lord" in place of "the last Adam," clearly out of fear that if Adam too had a "last" counterpart, we would go on to defend that this same Christ, as "the last Adam," belongs to Adam, whose "first" he also is. [8] But the falsification shows through plainly. Why, after all, call him "the first Adam," unless there is also "the last Adam"? Only things that match — sharing name, or substance, or maker — stand in sequence with one another. True, in different orders of things there can be one "first" and another "last" belonging to a single maker; but if the maker is different, then that thing too could, on its own account, be called "last." Yet whatever such a thing turns out to be, it is a first, not a last — a last only if it matches a first. And it does not match the first, precisely because it is not of the same maker. The same argument convicts him on the word "man" as well. [9] "The first man," he says, "came from dust of the ground; the one who comes second is the Lord, out of heaven." Why call him "the one who comes second" unless he too is a man, as the first one was? Or is the first one "the Lord" too, if the second is? It is enough that in the Gospel Christ applies to himself the title "Son of Man" — he will not be able to deny that he is a man, and, in being man, that he is Adam. [10] What follows also pins him down. For when the apostle says, "As is he who is of the earth" — a man, of course — "so also are those who are earthy," that is, men; then likewise, "as is he who is of heaven," a man, "so also are those who are of heaven" — men. He could not have set heavenly men in contrast to earthly men without meaning men in both cases, precisely so as to distinguish their condition and their hope all the more sharply within their shared designation. It is by condition and by hope that he calls some earthy and some heavenly, while all alike remain men — reckoned, according to their outcome, either to Adam or to Christ. And so, going on now to exhort us to the heavenly hope, he says: "Just as we carried the likeness of the man of dust, so let us carry too the likeness of the man of heaven" — referring this not to any substance of the resurrection, but to the discipline proper to the present age. [11] For he says "let us bear," not "we shall bear" — a command, not a promise — wanting us to walk just as he himself walked, and to leave behind the image of the earthy, that is, the old man, which consists in the works of the flesh. And indeed, what does he add next? "This I say, brothers, that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God" — meaning, of course, the works of flesh and blood, the very phrase he also uses, writing to the Galatians, to strip people of God's kingdom, since it is his habit elsewhere too to put "substance" for "the works of that substance," as when he says that those existing "according to flesh" are unable to give God pleasure. When, after all, could we ever please God, except while we are in this flesh? [12] I know of no other time for acting. But if, though established in the flesh, we flee the works of the flesh, then in that sense we are no longer "according to flesh" — not because we stop existing in flesh's substance, but because we cease to be in its guilt. And if it is under the name "flesh" that we are told to renounce its works, not its substance, then what is barred from God's kingdom under that name "flesh" is flesh's deeds, not flesh's substance. [13] For what is condemned is not the thing in which wrong is done, but the wrong that is done. To administer poison is a crime, yet the vessel that holds the dose bears no blame for it. So too the body is the vessel of the flesh's works, while it is the soul that mixes the poison of some evil deed within it. What sense would it make for the soul, the instigator of the flesh's works, to earn the kingdom of God through atonement for what it committed in the body, while the body, its mere instrument, remains stuck forever in condemnation? Once the poisoner is acquitted, is the cup still to be punished? And yet in any case it is not the flesh's claim to God's kingdom that we are defending, but the resurrection of its substance, as the door of the kingdom, through which one enters. [14] For the resurrection is one thing, the kingdom another. Resurrection comes first, then the kingdom. So we say the flesh rises, but attains the kingdom only once changed. "The dead will rise incorruptible" — that is, those who had been corrupted, their bodies collapsed into ruin. "And we shall all be transformed, in a moment, quicker than an eye can blink." For "this decaying thing" — and by that the apostle plainly meant his own flesh, which he still held — "is bound to clothe itself with the imperishable, and this dying thing with deathlessness," so its substance may be rendered fit to enter God's reign. "For we shall be as the angels are." This will be the transformation of the flesh, but of flesh that has been raised. For if there were no flesh at all, how could it "put on" incorruption and immortality? [15] So it is one thing, made other through this transformation, that will then obtain the kingdom of God — no longer flesh and blood as such, but whatever body God gives to it. And so the apostle rightly says: "Flesh and blood shall not obtain the kingdom of God," ascribing that to the transformation which accompanies the resurrection. [16] And if it is then that the word written in the Creator's scripture will come true — "O death, where is your victory, or your struggle? O death, where is your sting?" (and this word is the Creator's own, spoken through the prophet) — then to him also belongs the reality, that is, the kingdom, whose word will likewise come true in that kingdom. Nor does he give thanks to some other god for granting us victory over death, than to the very one from whom he received that taunting, triumphant word against death.
11. ON THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS.