Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Let us see now whether, in demolishing the cunning of the Sadducees, he did not rather raise up our own position all the more firmly. The occasion for the question, I think, was an attempt to destroy the resurrection, since the Sadducees admit no salvation either for the soul or for the flesh; and so, from the very point at which faith in the resurrection is most shaken, they framed their argument to fit their problem — that is, from the pretext of the flesh, whether it marries or not after the resurrection, under the guise of that woman who, having been married to seven brothers, was left in doubt as to which of them she would be restored. [2] Now let the meaning of both the question and the answer be kept intact, and the controversy is met head-on. For if the Sadducees indeed rejected the resurrection, while the Lord affirmed it — rebuking them as ignorant of the scriptures, namely those that had proclaimed the resurrection, and as unbelievers in the power of God, which is certainly equal to raising the dead — [3] and then, adding at the end, But that the dead rise, without doubt both confirming that what was denied does exist, that is, the resurrection of the dead before the God of the living, and affirming it to be of the very kind that was denied — that is, of both human substances together. [4] For it does not follow that, because he denied they would then marry, he thereby showed they would not rise: quite the contrary, he called them children of the resurrection, as being in a manner born through it, after which they will not marry but, being raised, [5] will be like the angels — not in the sense that they will not marry because they will not die, but in the sense that they will pass over into the angelic state, through that garment of incorruptibility, by a transformation of substance, though the substance itself has been raised. [6] Besides, the question of marrying or dying would never have been raised at all, were it not that the restoration of that very substance was being called into doubt which is properly subject to both death and marriage — that is, the flesh. [7] So there you have the Lord, against the heretics of the Jews, confirming the very thing that is now denied among the Sadducees of the Christians: the resurrection whole and solid.