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TOPIC: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 06 (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 26.02.21 Against John Part 2
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20. One of your company, when pressed by me to say what he thought concerning the soul, whether it had existed before the flesh, or not, replied that soul and body had existed together. I knew the man was a heretic, and was seeking to entangle me in my speech. At last I caught him saying that the soul gained that name from the time when it began to animate a body, whereas it was formerly called a demon, or angel of Satan, or spirit of fornication, or, on the other hand, dominion, power, agent of the spirit, or messenger. Well, but if the soul existed before Adam was made in Paradise (in any rank and condition), and lived and acted (for we cannot think that what is incorporeal and eternal is dull and torpid like a dormouse), there must have been some precedent cause to account for the soul, which at first had no body, being afterwards invested with a body. And if it is natural to the soul to be without a body, it must be contrary to nature for it to be in a body. If it is contrary to nature to be in a body, it follows that the resurrection of the body is contrary to nature. But the resurrection will not be contrary to nature; therefore, according to you, the body, which is contrary to nature, when it rises again will be without a soul.
21. You say that the soul is not of the essence of God. Well! This is what we might expect, for you condemn the impious Manichaeus, to make mention of whose name is pollution. You say that angels are not turned into souls. I agree to some extent, although I know what meaning you give to the words. But, now that we have learnt what you deny, we wish to know what you believe. "Having taken slime of the earth," you say, "God fashioned man, and through the grace of His own inbreathing bestowed upon him a rational soul, and through the grace of free will, not a portion of His own divine nature (as some impiously maintain), but His own handiwork." See how he goes out of his way to be eloquent about what we did not ask for. We know that God fashioned man out of the earth; we are aware that He breathed into his face, and man became a living soul; we are not ignorant that the soul is characterized by reason and free choice, and we know that it is the workmanship of God. No one doubts that Manichaeus errs in saying that the soul is the essence of God. I now ask: When was that soul made, which is the work of God, which is distinguished by free will and reason, and is not of the essence of the Creator? Was it made at the same time that man was made out of the slime, and the breath of life was breathed into his face? Or, having previously existed, and having associated with reasonable and incorporeal creatures as well as lived, was it afterwards gifted with the inbreathing of God? Here you are silent; here you feign a rustic simplicity, and make scriptural words a cloak for unscriptural tenets. Where you affirm what no one wants to know, that the soul is not a part of God's own nature (as some impiously maintain), you ought rather to have declared (and this is what we all want to know) that it is not that which previously existed, which He had before created, which had long dwelt among rational, incorporeal, and invisible creatures. You say none of these things; you bring forward Manichaeus, and keep Origen out of sight, and, just as when children ask for something to eat their nursemaids put them off with some little joke, so you direct the thoughts of us poor rustics to other matters, so that we may be taken up with the fresh character on the stage, and may not ask for what we want.
22. But suppose the fact to be that you merely omit this, and that your simplicity does not mean something you are shrewd enough to conceal. Having once begun to speak of the soul, and to deduce arguments on such an important topic from man's first creation, why do you leave the discussion in mid-air, and suddenly pass to the angels, and the conditions under which the body of our Lord existed? Why do you pass by such a vast slough of difficulty, and leave us to stick in the mire? If the inbreathing of God (a view for which you have no liking, and a point which you now leave unsettled) is the creating of the human soul; whence had Eve her soul, seeing that God did not breathe into her face? But I will not dwell upon Eve, since she, as a type of the Church, was made out of one of her husband's ribs, and ought not, after so many ages, to be subjected to the calumnies of her descendants. I ask whence Cain and Abel, who were the firstborn of our first parents, had their souls? And the whole human race downwards, what, are we to think, was the origin of their souls? Did they come by propagation, like brute beasts? So that, as body springs from body, so soul from soul. Or is it the case that rational creatures, longing for bodily existence, sink by degrees to earth, and at last are tied even to human bodies? Surely (as the Church teaches in accordance with the Saviour's words,hyperlink "My Father worketh hitherto and I work"; and the passage in Isaiah,hyperlink "Who maketh the spirit of man in him"; and in the Psalms,hyperlink "Who fashioneth one by one the hearts of them") God is daily making souls-He, with whom to will is to do, and who never ceases to be a Creator. I know what you are accustomed to say in opposition to this, and how you confront us with adultery and incest. But the dispute about these is a tedious one, and would exceed the narrow limits of the time at our disposal. The same argument may be retorted upon you, and whatever seems unworthy in the Creator of the present dispensation is again not unworthy, since it is His gift. Birth from adultery imputes no blame to the child, but to the father. As in the case of seeds, the earth which cherishes does not sin, nor the seed which is thrown into the furrows, nor the heat and moisture, under whose influence the grain bursts into bud, but some man, as for example, the thief and robber, who, by fraud and violence, plucks up the seed: so in the begetting of men, the womb, which corresponds to the earth, receives its own, and nourishes what it has received, and then gives a body to that which it nourishes, and divides into the several members the body it has formed. And among those secret recesses of the belly the hand of God is always working, and there is the same Creator of body and soul. Do not despise the goodness of your Maker, who fashioned you and made you as He chose. He Himself is the virtue of God and the wisdom of God, who, in the womb of the Virgin, built a house for Himself. Jephthah, who is reckoned by the Apostle among the saints, is the son of a harlot. But listen: Esau, born of Rebecca had Isaac, a "hairy man," both in mind and body, like good wheat, degenerates into darnel and wild oats; because the cause of vice and virtue does not lie in the seed, but in the will of him who is born. If it is an offence to be born with a human body, how is it that Isaac, Samson, John Baptist, are the children of promise? You see, I trust, what it is to have the courage of one's convictions. Suppose I am wrong, I openly say what I think. Do you, then, likewise either freely profess our opinions, or firmly maintain your own. Do not set yourself in my line of battle, so that, by feigning simplicity, you may be safe, and may be able, when you choose, to stab your opponent in the back. It is impossible for me, at the present moment, to write a book against the opinions of Origen. If Christ gives us life, we will devote another work to them. The point now is, whether theaccused has answered the questions put to him, and whether his reply be clear and open.
23. Let us pass from this to the most notorious point, that relating to the resurrection of the flesh and of the body; and here, my reader, I would admonish you that you may know I speak under a sense of fear and of the judgment of God, and that you ought so to hear. For, if the pure faith is to be found in his exposition, and there is no suspicion of unfaithfulness, I am not so foolish as to seek an occasion of accusing him, and while I wish to censure another for his fault be myself censured as a slanderer. I will ask you, therefore, to read what follows on the resurrection of the flesh; and, having read it, if it satisfies you (I know it is well calculated to please the ignorant), suspend your judgment, wait a while, refrain from expressing an opinion until I have finished my reply; and if after that it satisfies you, then you shall fix on us the brand of slander. "His passion also on the cross, His death and burial, which was the saving of the world, and His resurrection in a true and not an imaginary sense, we confess; and thathyperlink being the firstborn from the dead, He conveyed to heaven the firstfruits of our bodily substance which, after being laid in the tomb, He raised to life, thus giving us the hope of resurrection in the resurrection of His own body; wherefore we all hope so to rise from the dead, as He rose again; not in any foreign and strange bodies, which are but phantom shapes assumed for the moment; but as He Himself rose again in that body which was laid in the holy sepulchre at our very doors, so we, in the very bodies with which we are now clothed, and in which we are now buried, hope to rise again for the same reason and by the samehyperlink command. For the bodies which, as the Apostle says, are sown in corruption, shall rise in incorruption; being sown in dishonour, they shall rise in glory.hyperlink `It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body'; and of them the Saviour said in his teaching:hyperlink `For they who shall be worthy of that world, and of the resurrection from the dead, shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, for they can die no more, but shall be as the angels of God, since they are the sons of the resurrection.'"
24. Again, in another part of his letter, that is, towards the end of his own homilies, that he might cheat the ear of the ignorant, he makes a grand parade and noise about the Resurrection, but in ambiguous and balanced language. He says: "We have not omitted the second glorious advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall come in His own glory to judge the quick and the dead; for He shall awake all the dead, and cause them to stand before His own judgment-seat; and shall render to every one according to what he has done in the body, whether it be good or bad; for every one shall either be crowned in the body because he lived a pure and righteous life, orbe condemned, because he was the slave alike of pleasure and iniquity." What we read in the Gospel, that at the end of the world,hyperlink if it were possible, even the elect are to be seduced, we see verified in this passage. The ignorant crowd hears of the dead and buried, hears of the resurrection of the dead in a true and not an imaginary sense, hears that the firstfruits of our bodily substance in our Lord's body have reached the heavenly regions, hears that we shall rise again not in foreign and strange bodies, which are mere phantom shapes, but, as our Lord rose in the body which lay amongst us in the holy sepulchre, so we also in the very bodies with which we are now clothed and buried shallrise again in the day of judgment. And that no one might think this too little, he adds in the last section: "And He shall render to every one according to what he did in the body, whether it were good or bad: for every one shall either be crowned in the body for his pure and righteous life, or shall be condemned, because he was the slave of pleasure and iniquity." Hearing these things the ignorant crowd suspects no artifice, no snares in all this noise about the dead, the burial of the body, and the resurrection. It believes things are as they are said to be. For there is more devotion in the ears of the people than in the priest's heart.
25. Again and again, my reader, I admonish you to be patient, and to learn what I also have learnt through patience; and yet, before I take the veil off the dragon's face, and briefly explain Origen's views respecting the resurrection (for you cannot know the efficacy of the antidote unless you see clearly what the poison is), I beg you to read his statements with caution, and to go over them again and again. Mark well that, though he nine times speaks of the resurrection of the body, he has not once introduced the resurrection of the flesh, and you may fairly suspect that he left it out on purpose. Well, Origen says in several places, and especially in his fourth book "Of the Resurrection," and in the "Exposition of the First Psalm," and inthe "Miscellanies," that there is a double error common in the Church, in which both we and the heretics are implicated: "We, in our simplicity and fondness for the flesh, say that the same bones, and blood, and flesh, in a word, limbs and features, and the whole bodily structure, rise again at the last day: so that, forsooth, we shall walk with our feet, work with our hands, see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and carry about with us a belly never satisfied, and a stomach which digests our food. Consequently, believing this, we say that we must eat, drink, perform the offices of nature, marry wives, beget children. For what is the use of organs of generation, if there is to be no marriage? For what purpose are teeth, if the food is not to be masticated? What is the good of a belly and of meats, if, according to the Apostle, both it and they are to be destroyed? And the same Apostle again exclaims,hyperlink `Flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God, nor shall corruption inherit incorruption.'" This, according to him, is what we in our rustic innocence maintain. But as for the heretics, amongst whom are Marcion, Apelles, Valentinus, Manes (a synomym for Mania), he says that they utterly deny the resurrection of the flesh and of the body, and allow salvation only to the soul, and hold that it is futile for us to say that we shall rise after the pattern of our Lord, since our Lord also Himself rose again in a phantom body, and not only His resurrection, but His very nativity was docetic or imaginary; that is, more apparent than real. Origen himself is dissatisfied with both opinions. He says that he shuns both errors, that of the flesh, which our party maintain, and that of the phantoms, maintained by the heretics, because both sides go to the opposite extremes, some wishing to be the same that they have been, others denying altogether the resurrection of the body. "There are four elements," he says, "known to philosophers and physicians: earth, water, air, and fire, and out of these all things and human bodies are compacted. We find earth in flesh, air in the breath, water in the moisture of the body, fire in its heat. When, then, the soul, at the command of God, lets go this perishing and feeble body, little by little all things return to their parent substances: flesh is again absorbed into the earth, the breath is mingled with the air, the moisture returns to the depths, the heat escapes to the ether. And as if you throw into the sea a pint of milk and wine, and wish again to separate what is mixed together, although the wine and milk which you threw in is not lost, and yet it is impossible to keep separate what was poured out; so the substance of flesh and blood does not perish, indeed, so far as concerns the original matter, yet they cannot again become the former structure, nor can they be altogether the same that they were." Observe that when such things are said, the firmness of the flesh, the fluidity of the blood, the density of the sinews, the interlacing of the veins, and the hardness of the bones is denied.
26. "For another reason," he says, "we confess the resurrection of our bodies, those which have been laid in the grave and have turned to dust; Paul's body will be that of Paul, Peter's that of Peter, and each will have his own; for it is not right that souls should sin in one body and be tormented in another, nor is it worthy of the Righteous Judge that one body should shed its blood for Christ and another be crowned." Who, hearing this, would think he denied the resurrection of the flesh? "And," he says. "every seed has its own law of being inherent in it by the gift of God, the Creator, which law contains in embryonic form the future growth. The bulky tree, with its trunk, boughs, fruit, leaves, is not seen in the seed, but nevertheless exists in the seed by implication or, according to the Greek expression, by the spermatikos logos.hyperlink There is within the grain of corn a marrow, or vein, which, when it has been dissolved in the earth, attracts to itself the surrounding materials, and rises again in the shape of stalk, leaves, and ear; and thus, while it is one thing when it dies, it is another thing when it rises from the dead; for in the grain of wheat, roots, stalk, leaves, ears, trunk are as yet unseparated. In the same manner, in human bodies, according to the law of their being, certain original principles remain which ensure their resurrection, and a sort of marrow, that is a seed-plot of the dead, is fostered in the bosom of the earth. But when the day of judgment shall have come, and at the voice of the archangel, and the sound of the last trumpet, the earth shall totter, immediately the seeds will be instinct with life, and in a moment of time will cause the dead to burst into life; yet the flesh which they will reconstitute will not be the same flesh, nor will it be in the old forms. To give you the assurance that we speak the truth, let me quote the words of the Apostle:hyperlink `But some one says, How shall the dead rise? and with what body will they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but a bare grain, it may be of wheat, or the seed of a vine and a tree.' And as we have already made the grain of wheat, and to some extent the planting of trees, the subject of our reasoning, let us now take the grape-stone as an example. It is a mere granule, so small that you can scarcely hold it between your two fingers. Where are the roots? where the tortuous interlacing of roots, of trunk and off-shoots? where the shade of the leaves, and the lovely clusters teeming with coming wine? What you have in your fingers is parched and scarcely discernible; nevertheless, in that dry granule, by the power of God and the secret law of propagation, the foaming new wine must have its origin. You will allow all this in the case of a tree; will you not admit such things to be possible in the case of a man? The plant which perishes is thus decked with beauty; why should we think that man, who abides, will receive back his former meanness? Do you demand that there should be flesh, bones, blood, limbs, so that you must have the barber to cut your hair, that your nose may run, your nails must be trimmed, your lower parts may gender filth or minister to lust? If you introduce these foolish and gross notions, you forget what is told us of the flesh, namely, that in it we cannot please God, and that it is an enemy; you forget, also, what is told us of the resurrection of the dead:hyperlink `It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory. It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power. It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.' Now we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, act with our hands, walk with our feet. But in that spiritual body we shall be all sight, all hearing, all action, all movement. The Lord shall transfigurehyperlink the body of our humiliation and fashion it according to His own glorious body. In saying transfigure he affirms identity with the members which we now have. But a different body, spiritual and ethereal, is promised to us, which is neither tangible, nor perceptible to the eye, nor ponderable; and the change it undergoes will be suitable to the difference in its future abode. Otherwise, if there is to be the same flesh and if our bodies are to be the same, there will again be males and females, there will again be marriage; men will have the shaggy eyebrow and the flowing beard; women will have their smooth cheeks and narrow chests, and their bodies must adapt themselves to conception and parturition. Even tiny infants will rise again; old men will also rise; the former to be nursed, the latter to be supported by the staff. And, simple ones, be not deceived by the resurrection of our Lord, because He showed His side and His hands, stood on the shore, went for a walk with Cleophas, and said that He had flesh and bones. That body, because it was not born of the seed of man and the pleasure of the flesh, has its peculiar prerogatives. He ate and drank after His resurrection, and appeared in clothing, and allowed Himself to be touched, that He might make His doubting Apostles believe in His resurrection. But still He does not fail to manifest the nature of an aërial and spiritual body. For He enters when the doors are shut, and in the breaking of bread vanishes out of sight. Does it follow then that after our resurrection we shall eat and drink, and perform the offices of nature? If so, what becomes of the promise,hyperlink `The mortal must put on immortality.'"
27. Here we have the complete explanation, of the fact that in your exposition of the faith, to deceive the ears of the ignorant, you nine times make mention of the body, and not even once of the flesh, and all the while men think that you confess the body of flesh, and that the flesh is identical with the body. If it is the same as the body, it means nothing different. I say this, for I know your answer: "I thought the body was the same as the flesh; I spoke with all simplicity." Why do you not rather call it flesh to signify the body, and speak indifferently at one time of the flesh, at another of the body, that the body may be shown to consist of flesh, and the flesh to be the body. But believe me, your silence is not the silence of simplicity. For flesh is defined one way, the body another; all flesh is body, but not every body is flesh. Flesh is properly what is comprised in blood, veins, bones, and sinews. Although the body is also called flesh, yet sometimes it is designated ethereal or aërial, because it is not subject to touch and sight; and yet it is frequently both visible and tangible. A wall is a body, but is not flesh; a stone is a body, but it is not said to be flesh. Wherefore the Apostle calls some bodies celestial, some terrestrial. A celestial body is that of the sun, moon, stars; a terrestrial body is that of fire, air, water, and the rest, which bodies being inanimate are known as consisting of material elements. You see we understand your subtleties, and publish abroad the mysteries which you utter in the bedchamber and amongst the perfect, mysteries which may not reach the ears of outsiders. You smile, and with hand uplifted and a snap of the fingers retort,hyperlink "All the glory of the king's daughter is within." And,hyperlink "The king led me into his bedchamber." It is clear why you spoke of the resurrection of the body and not of that of the flesh; of course it was that we in our ignorance might think that when body was spoken of flesh was meant; while yet the perfect would understand that, when body was spoken of, flesh was denied. Lastly, the Apostle, in his Epistle to the Colossians, wishing to show that the body of Christ was made of flesh, and was not spiritual, aërial, attenuated, said significantly,hyperlink "And you, when you were some time alienated from Christ and enemies of His spirit in evil works, He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death." And again in the same Epistle:hyperlink "In whom ye were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the putting off of the body of the flesh." If by body is meant flesh only, and the word is not ambiguous, nor capable of diverse significations, it was quite superfluous to use both expressions-bodily and of flesh-as though body did not imply flesh.
28. In the symbol of our faith and hope, which was delivered by the Apostles, and is not written with paper and ink, but on fleshy tables of the heart, after the confession of the Trinity and the unity of the Church, the whole symbol of Christian dogma concludes with the resurrection of the flesh. You dwell so exclusively upon the subject of the body, harping upon it in your discourse, repeating first the body, and secondly the body, and again the body, and nine times over the body, that you do not even once name the flesh; whereas they always speak of the flesh, but say nothing of the body. I would have you know that we see through what you craftily add, and with wise precaution seek to conceal. For you make use of the same passages to prove the reality of the resurrection by means of which Origen denies it; you support questionable positions with doubtful arguments, and thus raise a storm which in a moment overthrows the settled fabric of faith. You quote the words,hyperlink "It is sown an animal body: it shall rise a spiritual body." "For they shall neither marry, nor be given in marriage, but shall be as the angels in heaven." What other instances would you take if you were denying the resurrection? You intend to confess the resurrection of the flesh, you say, in a real and not an imaginary sense. After the remarks with which you smooth things over to the ears of the ignorant, to the effect that we rise again with the very bodies with which we died and were buried, why do you not go on and speak thus: "The Lord after His resurrection showed the prints of the nails in His hands, pointed to the wound of the spear in His side, and when the Apostles doubted because they thought they saw a phantom, gave them reply,hyperlink `Handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and blood as ye see Me have'; and specially to Thomas,hyperlink `Put thy finger into My hands, and thy hand into My side, and be not faithless, but believing.' Similarly after the resurrection we shall have the same members which we now use, the same flesh and blood and bones, for it is not the nature of these which is condemned in Holy Scripture, but their works. Then again, it is written in Genesis:hyperlink `My Spirit shall not abide in those men, because they are flesh.' And the Apostle Paul, speaking of the corrupt doctrine and works of the Jews, says:hyperlink `I rested not in flesh and blood.' And to the Saints, who, of course, were in the flesh, he says:hyperlink `But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you.' For by denying that they were in the flesh who clearly were in the flesh, he condemned not the substance of the flesh but its sins."
29. The true confession of the resurrection declares that the flesh will be glorious, but without destroying its reality. And when the Apostle says,hyperlink "This is corruptible and mortal," his words denote this very body, that is to say, the flesh which was then seen. But when he adds that it puts on incorruption and immortality, he does not say that that which is put on, that is the clothing, does away with the body which it adorns in glory, but that it makes that body glorious, which before lacked glory; so that the more worthless robe of mortality and weakness being laid aside, we may be clothed with the gold of immortality, and, so to speak, with the blessedness of strength as well as virtue; since we wish not to be stripped of the flesh, but to put on over it the vesture of glory, and desire to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Certainly, no one is clothed upon who was not previously clothed. Accordingly, our Lord was not so transfigured on the mountain that He lost His hands and feet and other members, and suddenly began to roll along in a round shape like that of the sun or a ball; but the same members glowed with the brightness of the sun and blinded the eyes of the Apostles. Hence, also, His garments were changed, but so as to become white and glistening, not aërial, for I suppose you do not intend to maintain that His clothes also were spiritual.hyperlink The Evangelist adds that His face shone like the sun; but when mention is made of His face, I reckon that His other members were beheld as well. Enoch was translated in the flesh; Elias was carried up to heaven in the flesh. They are not dead, they are inhabitants of Paradise, and even there retain the members with which they were rapt away and translated. What we aim at in fasting, they have through fellowship with God. They feed on heavenly bread, and are satisfied with every word of God, having Him as their food who is also their Lord. Listen to the Saviour saying:hyperlink "And my flesh rests in hope." And elsewhere,hyperlink "His flesh saw not corruption." And again,hyperlink "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." And must you be for ever making the body a twofold thing? Rather quote the vision ofhyperlink Ezekiel, who joins bones to bones and brings them forth from their sepulchres, and then, making them to stand on their feet, binds them together with flesh and sinews, and clothes them with skin.
30. Listen to those words of thunder which fall from Job, the vanquisher of torments, who, as he scrapes away the filth of his decaying flesh with a potsherd, solaces his miseries with the hope and the reality of the resurrection:hyperlink "Oh, that," he says, "my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book with an iron pen, and on a sheet of lead, that they were graven in the rock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that in the last day I shall rise from the earth, and again be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. This my hope is laid up in my bosom." What can be clearer than this prophecy? No one since the days of Christ speaks so openly concerning the resurrection as he did before Christ. He wishes his words to last for ever; and that they might never be obliterated by age, he would have them inscribed on a sheet of lead, and graven on the rock. He hopes for a resurrection; nay, rather he knew and saw that Christ, his Redeemer, was alive, and at the last day would rise again from the earth. The Lord had not yet died, and the athlete of the Church saw his Redeemer rising from thegrave. When he says, "And I shall again be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh see God," I suppose he does not speak as if he loved his flesh, for it was decaying and putrifying before his eyes; but in the confidence of rising again, and through the consolation of the future, he makes light of his present misery. Again he says: "I shall be clothed with my skin." What mention do we find here of an ethereal body? What of an aërial body, like to breath and wind? Where there is skin and flesh, where there are bones and sinews, and blood and veins, there assuredly is fleshy tissue and distinction of sex. "And in my flesh," he says, "I shall see God." When all flesh shall see the salvation of God, and Jesus as God, then I, also, shall see the Redeemer and Saviour, and my God. But I shall see him in that flesh which now tortures me, which now melts away for pain. Therefore, in my flesh shall I behold God, because by His own resurrection He has healed all my infirmities" Does it not seem to you that Job was then writing against Origen, and was holding a controversy similar to ours against the heretics, for the reality of the flesh in which he underwent tortures? For he could not bear to think that all his sufferings would be in vain; while the flesh he actually bore was tortured as flesh indeed, it would be some other and spiritual kind of flesh that would rise again. Wherefore he presses home and emphasizes the truth, and puts a stop to all that might lie hid in an artful confession, by speaking out plainly: "Whom I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold and not another." If he is not to rise again in his own sex, if he is not to have the same members which were then lying on the dunghill, if he does not open the same eyes to see God with which he was then looking at the worms, where will Job then be? You do away with what constituted Job, and give me the hollow phrase, Job shall rise again; it is as if you were to order a ship to be restored after shipwreck, and then were to refuse each particular thing of which a ship is made.
31. I will speak freely, and although you screw your mouths, pull your hair, stamp your feet, and take up stones like the Jews, I will openly confess the faith of the Church. The reality of a resurrection without flesh and bones, without blood and members, is unintelligible. Where there are flesh and bones where there are blood and members, there must of necessity be diversity of sex. Where there is diversity of sex, there John is John, Mary is Mary. You need not fear the marriage of those who, even before death, lived in their own sex without discharging the functions of sex. When it is said, "In that day they shall neither marry, nor be given in marriage," the words refer to those who can marry, and yet will not do so. For no one says of the angels, "They shall not marry, nor be given in marriage." I never heard of a marriage being celebrated among the spiritual virtues in heaven: but where there is sex, there you have man and woman. Hence it is that, although you were reluctant, you were compelled by the truth to confess that, "A man must either be crowned in the body because he lived a pure and upright life, or be condemned in the body, because he was the slave of pleasure and iniquity." Substitute flesh for body, and you have not denied the existence of male and female. Who can have any glory from a life of chastity if we have no sex which would make unchastity possible? Who ever crowned a stone for continuing a virgin? Likeness to the angels is promised us, that is, the blessedness of their angelic existence without flesh and sex will be bestowed on us in our flesh and with our sex. I am simple enough so to believe, and so know how to confess that sex can exist without the functions of the senses; that it is thus that men rise, and that it is thus that they are made equal to the angels. Nor will the resurrection of the members all at once seem superfluous, because they are to have no office, since, while we are still in this life, we strive not to perform the works of the members. Moreover, likeness to the angels does not imply a changing of men into angels, but their growth in immortality and glory.
Footnotes
48 John v. 17.
49 That is, Zechariah xii. i.
50 Ps. xxxiii. 15.
51 Col. i. 18.
52 Jussione. Another reading, "Eâdem ratione et visione," might be rendered, "In the same condition and the same appearance."
53 1 Cor. xv. 44.
54 Luke xx. 35, Luke xx. 36.
55 Matt. xxiv. 24.
56 1 Cor. xv. 58.
57 That is, the reason of the seed.
58 1 Cor. xv. 35, 1 Cor. xv. 37.
59 1 Cor. xv. 42, 1 Cor. xv. 44.
60 Phil. iii. 21.
61 1 Cor. xv. 53.
62 Ps. xlv. 13.
63 Cant. i. 4.
64 Col i. 21, Col. i. 22.
65 Col. ii. 11.
66 1 Cor. xv. 44; Matt. xxii. 30; Luke xx. 35.
67 Luke xxiv. 39.
68 John xx. 27.
69 Gen. vi. 3.
70 Gal. i. 16.
71 Rom. viii. 9.
72 1 Cor. xv. 53.
73 Matt. xvii. 2.
74 Ps. x. 9.
75 Acts ii. 31.
76 Is. xl. 5.
77 xxxvii. 1 sqq.
78 Job xix. 23 sqq.