Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Now we come to flesh and blood, the true hinge of the whole question — under what conditions, and which substances, the apostle disinherited from the kingdom of God; this too is best learned from what precedes. 'The first man,' he says, 'comes from the ground and is earthen' — meaning fashioned of clay, meaning Adam; 'the second man comes from heaven' — meaning the Word of God, meaning Christ — and yet he is not 'a man,' heavenly origin notwithstanding, except because he too is flesh and soul, which is what 'man,' what 'Adam,' means. For above he was also called 'the last Adam' — he took the sharing of the name from the sharing of the substance, since not even Adam's flesh came from seed, and neither did Christ's. As is the earthy one, then, such also are the earthy; and as is the heavenly one, such also are the heavenly. Alike in substance? Or first in discipline, and then in the rank that discipline has won? And yet the earthy and the heavenly can in no way be separated in substance, once the apostle has called them both, alike, 'men.' For if Christ too — alone truly heavenly, indeed more than heavenly — is nonetheless 'man' insofar as he is flesh and soul, he is in no way set apart, on the score of that condition of substance, from the earthy quality; and so those who, following him, are called 'heavenly,' must be understood to be so named not from their present substance but from a future glory — because earlier too, whence this very distinction arose, it was shown, from a difference of rank, that there is one glory of the heavenly bodies and another of the earthly, one glory of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars — for star differs from star in glory, yet not in substance. Finally, having set out beforehand this difference of rank — within one and the same substance, to be pursued now and attained then — he adds an exhortation besides, that here we should follow Christ's pattern through discipline, and there attain the summit through glory: 'Just as we have carried the likeness of the earthen man, let us likewise carry the likeness of the heavenly one' — for we carried the earthen likeness by our share in the transgression, by our kinship with death, by our banishment from paradise. For if, even now, Adam's likeness is carried 'in the flesh,' we are not thereby told to strip off the flesh; if not the flesh, then our manner of life — so that we may likewise carry within us the image of the heavenly one, not now of God, nor now established in heaven, but walking according to the lines of Christ's likeness, in holiness and righteousness and truth. And indeed he directs the whole of this toward discipline, in that he says here that the image of Christ is to be borne in this very flesh and in this present time of discipline — for in saying 'let us bear it,' in the imperative mood, he is speaking to this present time, in which man is no other substance than flesh and soul, so that even if this faith looks toward some other substance, namely the heavenly one, it is nonetheless to this present substance that the promise is made, the substance which is commanded to labor toward that other. Since, then, he sets up the image both of the earthy and of the heavenly in terms of conduct — the one to be renounced, the other to be pursued — he then adds: 'Now this I say' (that is, 'on account of what I have said above' — 'for' is a connective, giving a sense that supplements what came before) 'that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God as an inheritance.' He means nothing else by 'flesh and blood' than the aforementioned image of the earthy one; and if that image is reckoned as belonging to the conduct of the old life, and the conduct of the old life does not take hold of the kingdom of God, then it follows that flesh and blood, in not taking hold of the kingdom of God, are being reduced to the conduct of the old life. Clearly, if the apostle never elsewhere put 'substance' for 'works,' he is not using it that way here either; and if, in denying that those still established in the flesh were 'in the flesh,' he was denying that they were in the works of the flesh, then you have no right to undermine its form by supposing it means not the works of the substance that alienates one from the kingdom of God, but the substance itself. And to the Galatians, in laying these very matters open, he professes that he foretells, and has foretold, that those who do such things will not obtain the kingdom of God as an inheritance — evidently not bearing the image of the heavenly one, as they had once borne that of the earthy, and therefore, out of their old manner of life, to be reckoned nothing else than flesh and blood. For even if the apostle had burst suddenly into this pronouncement excluding flesh and blood from the kingdom of God, without any prior groundwork of sense, would we not still interpret these two substances as meaning the old man given over to flesh and blood — that is, to eating and drinking — the very man whose motto, against the faith of the resurrection, is: 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die'? For this too the apostle, driving the point home, branded flesh and blood by their own fruits of eating and drinking.