Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Enough on the prophetic instrument. Now I turn to the evangelical, and here too I must first meet the same cleverness of those who likewise contend that the Lord spoke everything in parables, on the ground that it stands written, "All these matters Jesus uttered in parables, and apart from a parable he addressed them not at all" -- meaning the Jews. [2] For the disciples likewise inquire, "Why do you address them by way of parables?" and the Lord replies, "For this cause I use parables toward them, so that looking they should fail to perceive, and listening they should fail to grasp, just as Isaiah foretold." [3] But if parables were the mode he used toward the Jewish nation, then it was not toward every hearer; and if not toward every hearer through parables, then not on every occasion, nor is every utterance a parable -- rather, certain matters at certain moments, addressed to certain people, and above all to the Jewish nation; whereas on other occasions, evidently, he spoke so also to his own disciples. [4] But consider how Scripture reports it: "And he told them also a parable." So he also spoke without a parable -- for it would not have been noted that he was speaking a parable, if he always spoke that way. [5] Indeed you will find not a single parable that is not either expounded by the Lord himself, as with the sower in the administration of the word, or illuminated beforehand by the evangelist's comment, as with the proud judge and the widow who persists in prayer, or reasoned out further, as with the fig tree given a reprieve in the hope of a harvest, on the pattern of Jewish barrenness. [6] But if not even the parables cloud the light of the gospel, how much less do the plain statements and definitions -- whose nature is open -- mean something other than what they say. And it is by definitions and plain statements that the Lord pronounces on judgment, or the kingdom of God, or the resurrection. [7] "More endurable will it go," he declares, "for Tyre and for Sidon at the judgment-day"; and, "Announce to them that God's reign has come near"; and, "Recompense shall be yours when the righteous rise again." [8] If the very names of these matters -- judgment, that is, God's reign, and rising again -- stand as fixed realities, so that none of them can be squeezed into a parable, then neither will those things be forced into parables which are proclaimed concerning the arrangement, the transaction, and the passing-away of the Jewish kingdom, and the resurrection; and so bodily things will be defended as meant for bodies -- that is, not spiritual, because not figured. [9] For this very reason we established beforehand that the body is as much bound to rewards for their common labor as the soul is, lest the soul's bodily quality, by supplying an occasion for figures, exclude the bodily quality of the flesh, since both must be believed to share in the kingdom, the judgment, and the resurrection alike. [10] And now we proceed to this end: to show properly that fleshly corporeality is what the Lord means in every mention of resurrection, while granting the soul's own resurrection too, though few have accepted even that.