Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Up to this point I have been laying groundwork to fortify the sense of all the scriptures that promise the flesh its return. And since so many authorities of just support attend it — I mean the honor of the substance itself, the power of God, the precedents that back it, and the reasoning and requirements of judgment — it will certainly be necessary to understand the scriptures according to the precedent set by so many authorities, not according to the cleverness of heretics that comes from sheer unbelief, because it is held incredible that a substance carried off by destruction should be restored — not because that is either inconceivable for the substance itself, or impossible for God, or beyond the reach of judgment. [2] It would indeed be incredible if it had not also been proclaimed by God. Though even if God had not proclaimed it, it ought still to have been presumed on its own account — so that it is not "not proclaimed" simply because it has already been prejudged by so many authorities. [3] But since it also resounds in divine utterances, there is all the less room to understand it otherwise than those very authorities desire, which persuade even without divine utterances. [4] Let us look, then, first at this: under what heading is this hope posted? There hangs, I think, one edict of God for all: THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD — two words, plain, decisive, unambiguous. Let me examine them, discuss them, and see to which substance they commit themselves. [5] When I hear that resurrection threatens man, I must necessarily ask what has fallen to its lot, since nothing will expect to rise again except what has first fallen. Whoever does not know that flesh falls through death cannot even know it as it stands in life. [6] Nature pronounces God's sentence: "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return." And whoever does not hear it, sees it: no death occurs without the ruin of the members. This lot of the body the Lord too expressed when he himself put on that very substance: "Destroy this temple," he said, "and I will raise it up again in three days." [7] For he shows whose it is to be destroyed, whose to be struck down, and whose also to be raised up and revived again — though he also carried about a soul that trembled unto death but did not fall through death — for scripture too says, "He had spoken of his own body." [8] And indeed it is the flesh that is undermined by death, so much so that from its falling it is thereafter called a corpse. The soul, on the other hand, does not fall even in name, because it does not collapse in condition; rather it is the soul itself that brings ruin upon the body when it is breathed out, just as it is the soul itself that raised that body up from the earth when it was breathed in. What raised it by entering cannot itself fall; what strikes it down by departing cannot itself collapse. [9] Let me put it more precisely: not even in sleep does the soul fall along with the body, not even then is it laid low with the flesh; rather it is stirred and tossed about in dreams — whereas it would be at rest if it lay prone, and it would lie prone if it fell. So the soul, which does not even collapse in the mere image of death, does not fall in the reality of death either. [10] Now consider likewise the following word, "of the dead," and to which substance it belongs. Though in this matter we sometimes grant, for argument's sake, that heretics assign mortality to the soul, so that if the soul, being mortal, is to obtain resurrection, this becomes a precedent for the flesh, no less mortal, also sharing in resurrection — still, for now the proper meaning of the word must be claimed for its rightful lot. [11] Indeed, by the very fact that resurrection belongs to a thing that has fallen — that is, to the flesh — the same will hold also in the word "of the dead": for resurrection, which is called "of the dead," belongs to a thing that has fallen. [12] So too we learn through Abraham, father of faith, man of God's own intimacy: when asking of the sons of Heth a place to bury Sarah, he said, "Give me, then, a possession for a burial-place among you, and I will bury my dead" — meaning, of course, the flesh; for he would not have needed room to bury a soul, even if the soul were believed mortal, even if it deserved to be called "dead." But if "dead" means the body, then the resurrection, properly speaking, when it is called "of the dead," will belong to bodies.