Chapter 13. The Dead Whom Christ Raised Demonstrate the Possibility of the Resurrection.
Chapter 13
1. Those who talk against us, rather who talk against their own salvation, should tell us in what bodies the following rose: the deceased daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, the son of the widow who, when dead, was being carried near the gate, and Lazarus, who had been in the tomb for four days? Undoubtedly, they did so in the same bodies in which they had died. In fact, if it was not in the same bodies, then certainly the same ones who had died did not rise again. But Scripture says: The Lord took the hand of the dead one and said to him, young man, I say to you, arise; and he who was dead sat up and he directed them to give him something to eat, and he gave him to his mother. Lazarus, too, He called with a loud voice, saying, “Lazarus, come out.” And the dead man came out, says the Scripture, his feet and hands bound with bandages. This is a symbol of man who had been bound by sins. That is why the Lord said, Unbind him, and let him go.
Those, therefore, who were healed, were healed in the very members in which they had previously suffered, and the dead rose in the same bodies, because it was their members and bodies that were healed, and they received the life which is given by the Lord. Through the temporal things he prefigured the eternal and manifested that he is the one who can bestow healing and life on his handiwork, in order that also his word about the resurrection might be believed. In the same way, in the end, when the Lord will cry out with the last trumpet, the dead will rise, as he says, The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God. And those who have done good will come forth to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.
2. Senseless, therefore, and truly wretched are they who refuse to see into things that are so manifest and clear; who, on the contrary, flee from the light of the Truth and, like the tragic Oedipus, blind themselves. To illustrate, the untrained, when wrestling with others, grasp with their whole hands any part of the [other’s] body but fall down by the very part they hold on to, and though they fall, they think they are winning, simply because they are holding on, with a fighting spirit, to the part they first grasped—really, such are laughed to scorn for falling down. In the same way, the heretics in regard to the famous passage, Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, take two passages from Paul, but they neither understand the Apostle’s mind, nor have they examined the meaning of the passages. Still they hold on to the bare statements, and so die because of them and, as far as in them lies, overthrow God’s entire economy.
3. They assert that this passage is of flesh proper and not of carnal deeds, as we shall demonstrate. And so they show that the Apostle contradicts himself. For in this same Letter immediately afterward he says as follows, with clear reference to the flesh: This perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. But when this mortal body puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is they sting? O death, where is they victory?” Now these things can rightly be said when this mortal and perishable flesh, about which [the talk of] death is, and which is oppressed by a certain dominion of death, ascends to life and puts on imperishability and immortality. For then death will truly have been overcome when flesh, which is held bound by death, has escaped from its dominion.
Again, he says to the Philippians: But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we eagerly await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body, conforming it to his glorious body, as he is able by the working of his power. What, then, is the lowly body that the Lord will change, having made it conformed to the glorious body? It is obvious that it is the body that is flesh, which is made lowly when it falls into the earth. Its transformation is this, that though it is mortal and perishable, it becomes immortal and imperishable, not by virtue of its own substance, but by virtue of the Lord’s working, by which he can clothe the mortal with immortality and the perishable with imperishability. And for this reason he says in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who made us perfect for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a pledge. He most obviously refers to the flesh, for neither the soul nor the spirit is mortal. But what is mortal will be swallowed up by life when the flesh will no longer be dead but will continue to live and be imperishable, hymning God who has perfected us for this very purpose. That, therefore, we are being perfected for this end, was well put by Paul to the Corinthians, Glorify God in your body. But God is the author of imperishability.
4. That he is speaking of the body of the flesh, and not of some other body, he states clearly and indubitably and unambiguously to the Corinthians: Always carrying in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in our body. For if while we live we are being given up to death for Jesus’s sake, it is so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. That the Spirit embraces the flesh, he tells us in the same letter: You are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshly tablets of the heart. So if at present the fleshly hearts become capable of receiving the Spirit, what is there surprising if in the resurrection they receive the life which is given by the Spirit? Of that resurrection the Apostle said this in the Letter to the Philippians: [I have] become likened to his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. So, in what other mortal flesh can one understand life to be manifested except in this substance which is put to death because of confessing God? Of this the Apostle wrote as follows: What do I gain, if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised neither has Christ been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life we who are in Christ have only hope, we are of all men most to be pitied. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by man came death, by man comes also the resurrection of the dead.
5. In all these passages, therefore, as we said, either they assert that the Apostle holds a contrary opinion with regard to this, Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; or, they will be forced to give a bad and distorted exposition of all the passages, in order to twist around and change the meaning of the passages. In fact, what sensible thing can they say, if they will try to interpret in a different way what Paul wrote, For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality: and, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh? And what of all the other passages in which the Apostle evidently and clearly preaches the resurrection and imperishability of the flesh? And so those who do not wish to understand one of these passages correctly will be forced to interpret all of them badly.