6.5 The Narrative of Resurrection: Haer. 5.7.1–2 (Gen 2:7, Gen 3:19)
CHAPTER 6
6.5
The Narrative of Resurrection: Haer. 5.7.1–2 (Gen 2:7, Gen 3:19) In Haer. 5.7.1–2 Irenaeus continues his discussion of Pauline resurrection texts with a discussion of 1 Cor 6:14 and Rom 8:11 in conversation with a number of other texts including Gen 2:7 and Gen 3:19.67 Irenaeus announces and cites
1 Cor 6:14 and then discusses this passage through a series of interrelated texts including: Gen 2:7, Gen 3:19, John 20:20, Rom 8:11, Psalm 21:30(22:29), and 1 Cor
15:36, 42–44.68 These passages are, once again, coordinated through intense reflection on anthropological terminology in Gen 2–3. In doing so, Irenaeus interprets a Pauline theology of the body as a logical economic conclusion to the anthropology of Gen 2:7 and Gen 3:19. Irenaeus argued previously that the incarnate Christ is the true image of God (Rom 8:29), but in this section he develops this thesis by suggesting Christ's resurrected and glorified body is paradigmatic for the resurrection of the faithful.
Irenaeus begins with an allusion to Christ's resurrection appearance in John 20:20 linked with 1 Cor 6:14 and Rom 8:11. Referring to the corruptible nature of the human form in Rom 8:11, he asks the fundamental exegetical question, "What, then, are mortal bodies?" (Quae sunt ergo mortalia corpora).69
Paul's language of "mortal bodies," Irenaeus reasons, cannot refer to the soul or the Spirit, because these are naturally immortal. Neither is this a type of Gnosticized "spiritual" body. Instead, turning to Gen 2:7 he argues souls are incorporeal and bodies are corporeal. The flatum vitae that enlivens the man in Gen 2:7 must be, contrary to the mortal body fashioned from the earth, immortal. Logically it also follows that if the flatum vitae is immortal then the soul is immortal also, since Adam became a "living soul" (animam viventem,
Gen 2:7).70 Irenaeus also finds the incorporeal nature of the soul in the parallel terminology of Psalm 21:30(22:29), "my soul shall live to Him" (anima mea illi vivet), arguing that David speaks as if the soul is immortal and not subject to corruption. For Irenaeus, then, Paul's term "mortal bodies" must refer to the corporal substance fashioned from the dust in Gen 2:7 that receives the flatum vitae from God. All of these are bound by catchwords, "soul" (anima),
"body" (corpus), and "living" (vivientim). The creation from the dust delimits the meaning of the term "mortal bodies" in Rom 8:11. Death does not apply
67 Rousseau's reordering of the chapter divisions to include the last lines of Haer. 5.6.2 as the opening lines of Haer. 5.7.1 is appropriate, as it corresponds both in content and structure to the rest of Haer. 5.7.1–2.
68 SC 153:84.78ff. See also: SC 152, 173.
69 Haer. 5.7.1. Wingren, Man and the incarnation, 206 n. 69.
70 Cf. Haer. 2.34.4.
From Creation to the Resurrection of the Body to the soul, because the soul is the breath of life. In death the body becomes
"without breath" (sine spiratione) or "inanimate" (inanimalis) and, according to Gen 3:19, dissolves back into its original substance.
Having established the meaning of mortal bodies through correspondence between Gen 2:7 and Rom 8:29, in Haer. 5.7.2 Irenaeus describes how the "power of God" (virtute . . . Dei) is able to resurrect the mortal flesh referring back to 1 Cor 6:14. In the previous discussion, Irenaeus concluded that the mortal body of Rom 8:11 is the same body that decomposed back into the earth (Gen 3:19), but now he must complement this discussion with the eschatological vision of the resurrection of the same mortal body. The allusion to the power of God incites an allusion to 1 Cor 15:43b, which also connects back to the dissolution of the flesh in Gen 3:19. The use of 1 Cor 15:42–44 sets up the eschatological dialectic between the natural body and the spiritual body. The Valentinians, on the other hand, identify the "mortal body" of Rom
8:11 and the "animal body" of 1 Cor 15:44 with the soul, or the psychic element, that is by nature corruptible, mortal, and resuscitable.71 The pneumatics, or the spiritual bodies, are altogether of a different quality and nature. For Irenaeus, however, the "natural body" (corpus animale) suffers from "corruption" (corrtpuione), "dishonor" (ignobilitate), and "weakness" (infirmitate). This is the body that is "sown" (seminas) in 1 Cor 15:36, which links with the "earth" (terra) as the substances from which the body was cast (Gen 2:7).72 Just as the "moral bodies" of Rom 8:11 are identified as the corporeal body, so also is the seed sown in 1 Cor
15:36 identified with the flesh, not the soul. All of these terms are catchwords that unite these texts and characterize the contrast between the natural body and the spiritual body.
Finally, the language of "sowing" (semino) and the imagery of the decaying body mentioned in 1 Cor 15:36 and 1 Cor 15:42 are drawn together with several characteristics of the body mentioned in 1 Cor 15:43–44. While Gen 3:19 is set as a backdrop to all these descriptions of the flesh, Irenaeus makes the passage explicit when he remarks the flesh is weak because it is composed of "earth" (terra). The ignoble images of dust and seeds communicate, for Irenaeus, the humility and fragility of the human form. In itself, the flesh does not have the power to overcome its own inherent weakness.73 That power must be supplied by the power of God that resurrects the same natural body that is sown in weakness as a glorified spiritual body (Gen 3:19, 1Cor 15:43–44).74
71 Orbe, Teología V.1, 349–50.
72 Cf. John 12:24.
73 Haer. 5.7.2.
74 Haer. 5.7.2.