Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] I will make one further reply to the earlier objection about the allegorical scriptures — that we too may claim the bodily resurrection on the strength of that same figurative prophetic speech. [2] For see: the divine sentence, in the very beginning, pronouncing man "earth" — "Earth you are, and to earth you shall go" — referring, of course, to the substance of the flesh, which was taken from the earth, and which the first man, as we have shown, was named after — gives me a rule for interpreting "flesh" wherever "earth" appears, whenever God decrees wrath or grace upon the earth; for the earth is not, strictly speaking, itself liable to his judgment, having done nothing good or bad — cursed, indeed, for having drunk blood, but even that as a figure of the murderer's flesh. [3] For if the earth is capable of being helped or harmed, that too is for man's sake, so that he may be helped or harmed through the outcome of his own court, and weigh all the more what the earth too will suffer on his account. [4] And so, when God threatens the earth, I would rather say he is threatening the flesh, and when he promises something to the earth, I understand him rather to be promising it to the flesh — as in David: "The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice" — that is, the flesh of the saints, to which belongs the fruit of the divine kingdom: [5] then he adds, "He looked, and the earth was shaken, the mountains melted like wax before the face of the Lord" — the flesh, that is, of the profane — "for they shall see him whom they pierced." [6] And indeed, if both sayings were to be reckoned simply of the element earth, how would it fit for it both to be shaken and to melt before the face of the Lord, under whose reign, just above, it was rejoicing? [7] So too in Isaiah: "You shall eat the good things of the earth" — meant as the good things of the flesh, which await it, reformed and made angelic in the kingdom of God, and destined to attain "what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man." [8] Otherwise it would be a rather hollow enticement for God to solicit compliance through crops from the ground and the provisions of this current life — things he shares in common, by the single ordinance of creation, even with the irreligious and the blasphemous, raining on the just and the unjust and making his sun rise on the good and the evil. [9] A fine faith, to be sure, if the thing to be won is something God's and Christ's very foes not merely relish but pervert — worshipping the very creation against its Creator! Will you count bulbs and truffles among the good things of the earth, when the Lord himself declares that man shall not live by bread alone? [10] So it is that the Jews, by hoping for earthly things only, lose the heavenly — not knowing the bread promised from heaven, and the oil of the divine anointing, and the water of the Spirit, and the wine that stirs the soul from the vine that is Christ: [11] just as they reckon that holy land itself to be, strictly, Jewish soil — when it ought rather to be understood as the flesh of the Lord, which, from him and in all who have put on Christ, is a holy land — truly holy through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, truly flowing with milk and honey through the sweetness of its own hope, truly Judaea through its intimacy with God: "For the true Jew is not the man who appears so on the surface, but rather the one who is such inwardly, unseen": [12] so that the temple of God is this same thing, and so is Jerusalem, hearing from Isaiah, "Awake, awake, Jerusalem, put on the strength of your arm, awake as at the beginning of the day" — that is, in that wholeness it had before the sin of transgression. [13] For to which Jerusalem could words of such exhortation and summons apply, but to one that killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her, and finally did away with her own Lord? But no, salvation is not promised to any earth at all, since every earth, along with the whole fabric of the world, is destined to pass away. [14] Even if someone should be bold enough to argue that the holy land is really paradise, since it is called that of the fathers — of Adam and Eve, that is — then a restoration to paradise would seem promised to the flesh as well, since it was the flesh that was allotted to dwell there and keep it, so that man might be called back to it just as he was when he was driven out of it.