Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 42/82

For indeed I will not tolerate certain people who babble nonsense and shamelessly do violence to the Scripture, so that for them the resurrection of the flesh might not go forward, positing 'intelligible bones' and 'intelligible flesh,' and shifting things about now this way, now that, up and down, by allegories;

and these things ought to be received just as they are written, since Christ himself confirms the Scripture, where, to the Pharisees inquiring about the divorce of a wife, he answers, 'Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said:'

'For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother,' and so on.

For how could 'increase and fill the earth' be understood as referring to souls alone? Or how could 'God took dust from the earth and formed man,' which plainly appears to have been said properly of the body?

For the soul did not acquire its substance from dust and the heavier elements.

So it is established, altogether most truly, that man was embodied before the garments of skin.

For all these things were said before his fall, but the matters concerning the tunics were said after the fall.

Whence let us go on again to examine the matter at hand, having sufficiently demonstrated that the 'coats of skins' are not the bodies, but the deadness fashioned from the irrational animals.

Indeed, it is for this reason that he is banished beyond the bounds of paradise.

For it was not because God, unwilling that he should pluck from the tree of life and eat, cast him out — for he could have lived forever, having again eaten of life — but rather so that evil might not become immortal, as we have supposed.

Since why would he have sent Christ down from the heavens to the earth, if he had wished altogether that man, having never tasted of life, should die utterly? But if the objector should say that God did this out of a change of mind, his argument is weak, for it introduces a God who repents.

But God is neither ignorant of the future nor a doer of evil, but is both supremely good and foreknows the things to come.

Therefore it was not because he could not be preserved forever by eating from the tree of life that he was cast out, but so that sin might first be put to death, in order that thus, after death, once sin had wasted away, man, being raised, might taste of life in purity.

But let no one, being foolish, rashly venture to say that these things were spoken otherwise.

For whoever altogether determines that this flesh is not capable of receiving immortality is, being truly guilty of folly, blaspheming through his sickness.

For why is Adam cast out after the making of the coats of skins, being prevented from eating of the tree of life and living, if it were altogether impossible for man to live forever with a body? For the prevention occurs on the assumption that he was able not to die, if he should take and taste of life.

For it says: 'And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them.'

'Behold, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil.'

'And now, lest he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and eat, and live forever...'

Therefore the body could indeed have lived forever and become immortal, had it not been prevented from tasting of life.

But he was prevented, so that sin, being put to death together with the body, might die, and the body might rise once sin had perished.

So that man might not, as I have said, be an immortal evil, having within himself sin ever-living and prevailing — since it had sprouted in an immortal body and possessed an undying nourishment — God for this reason declared him mortal, clothing him about with deadness.

For this is what the coats of skins intended: that through the dissolution and division of the body, sin might be utterly destroyed root and all from below, so that not even the smallest part of the root should be left, from which new shoots of sins might again spring up.

For just as, whenever in the fine structures of temples a fig tree has sprung up and, growing well in extent and size, has spread its many-branched roots throughout all the joints of the stones, it does not cease sprouting until it is entirely torn out, the stones being loosened at the places where it took root — for it is possible for the stones to be fitted back again into the same places once the fig tree has been removed, so that the temple may be preserved, bearing within itself none of the evils that were destroying it, while the fig tree, torn out utterly by the roots, dies — even so God the craftsman, in dealing with man, his own temple, who had sprouted sin like a wild fig tree, dissolved him through the temporary assaults of death, killing according to what is written, and also making alive, so that the flesh, from those same parts, after sin has withered and died, might, like a temple made new again, be raised immortal and unharmed, sin having utterly perished from its foundations.

For while the body is still alive, before it is to die, sin must necessarily live together with it, hiding its roots within us, even if it is checked from without by the cuttings that come from discipline and admonitions — since otherwise, after being enlightened, we would no longer happen to do wrong, since sin would have been utterly and sincerely taken away from us altogether.

But now, even after believing and coming to the water of purification, we are often found to be in sins.

For no one will boast of being so free from sin as never even to have entertained a thought of wrongdoing at all.

So it has come about that sin is now restrained and lulled to rest by faith, so as not to bear harmful fruits, yet it has not been destroyed even down to its roots.

For now, in this life, we restrain its shoots — that is, the evil thoughts — lest some root of bitterness, growing up, cause trouble, not allowing the closed openings to reopen and unfold for new growths, while the word, like an axe, cuts at its roots growing below.

But then even the very capacity to entertain a thought about evil at all will be utterly done away with.

Nor indeed is this account without testimony from the Scriptures, for those willing to hear the truth sincerely, since the apostle knows that the root of sin has not yet been utterly removed from men — at one time saying: 'For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh';

'For to will is present with me, but to work out the good is not.'

'For the good that I want, I do not do; but the evil that I do not want, this I practice.'

'But if what I do not want, this I do, it is no longer I who work it out, but the sin dwelling in me.'

And at another time he says: 'For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.'

'But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.'

Thus it has come about that sin has not yet been utterly cut off root and stock, but continues to live — for it has not died completely.

Hiding its roots, as I have said, it preserved itself a place within us, but man, on the other hand, shall be raised up no longer having lurking within him a root of bitterness.

Just as, then, in the manner of an antidote, death was taken up by our true defender and physician, God, for the uprooting and destruction of sin, so that the evil might not remain everlasting within us — having sprung up immortal since it arose in immortal bodies — while we ourselves, crippled and having fallen away, might for a long time continue, like the sick, far from our own proper virtue, nourishing within our ever-abiding and immortal bodies the great sickness that comes from sin.

Therefore God has, indeed, wisely devised death as a means of purification, in the manner of a medicine, for the salvation of both soul and body together, so that we might thus be wrought into a state altogether blameless and unharmed.

Come then, since many examples concerning such matters are needed, let us especially consider them from this point, not departing until our argument first arrives at a clearer explanation and proof.

It appears, then, just as if some supreme craftsman had made a beautiful statue out of gold or some other material, with all its limbs proportionately adorned for beauty, and then, suddenly seeing it disfigured by some most wicked man — who, unable to bear the statue's comeliness out of envy, defaced it, reaping the vain pleasure of malice — he would melt it down again.

Now attend, O most wise Aglaophon, that if the craftsman wishes the work fashioned with such great effort and care not to be marred and blameworthy at all, he will again be moved, by melting it down together, to make it such as it was before.

But if he neither melts it down nor takes it apart, but allows it to remain as it is, merely tending to it and correcting it, then the statue, being heated in fire and hammered, must necessarily be no longer able to remain the same, but will be altered and diminished.

For this reason, if he wishes the whole work to be beautiful and unblemished, it must be broken up and melted down again, so that all the disfigurements and alterations that arose from the malicious plot and envy against it may be destroyed through this dismantling and remelting, and the statue may be restored, unharmed and unadulterated, to its own form, most closely resembling its former self.

For it is not possible for the statue to be destroyed, since it remains under the same craftsman, even if it is dissolved again into matter; but it is possible for it to be restored.

But for the disfigurements and blemishes it is possible to be destroyed — for they are melted away — but not possible to be restored, because in every art the best craftsman does not look to what is uglier or what will merely turn out somehow, but to what is symmetrical and right in the thing being made.

For it seems to me that God has administered the very same thing in our case as well.

For seeing man, his own most comely handiwork, marred by the envious plots of malice, being loving toward mankind, God could not endure to leave him in such a state, lest he should be blemished forever, bearing within himself an undying reproach; instead he dissolved him again into matter, so that through his re-formation all the blemishes within him might waste away and utterly vanish.

For what corresponds there to the melting down of the statue, is here the dying and dissolution of the body; and what corresponds there to the reshaping or re-adorning of the matter, is here the resurrection — just as the prophet Jeremiah, too, already enjoins the very same things here, saying: 'And I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he was doing a work at the wheel.'

'And the vessel that he was making with his hands fell apart, and he made it again into another vessel, as it pleased him to make.'

'And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:'

'Shall I not be able to do with you as this potter does, O house of Israel? Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hands.'

It was not pleased to leave it as debased matter, marred unjustly by the evil one's envious devices, but melted it down and steeped it again into clay, as a potter reshaping a vessel, so that through the reshaping all the disfigurements and fractures within it might vanish, and the whole might again from the start be made pleasing beyond reproach.

'Or does the potter not have authority over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?' — which is indeed exactly what the apostle appears to me to be showing altogether.

Does God not have authority, having reshaped and re-adorned each of us individually from our own same matter, to raise us up either to honor and glory, or to dishonor and condemnation — to dishonor for those who lived basely in sins, but to honor for those who lived in righteousness?

For it does not lie within our power to destroy the root of wickedness completely, but rather to keep it from being allowed to grow to full extent and bear fruit.

For its complete and total destruction and removal, roots and all, comes about through God, at the dissolution of the body as has been said, whereas the partial restraint of it, preventing it from bearing shoots, comes about through us.

And for this reason, whoever nourishes it rather toward growth and increase, instead of, as far as it lay within him, rendering it barren and suppressing it, must of necessity pay the penalty, because, though able and having the authority to do this, he chose rather to prize the harmful thing over the profitable.

Therefore let no one, being himself the cause, with an unbridled tongue find fault with the divine nature, as though it did not justly apportion to each the recompense of wickedness or of virtue.

'But who are you, O man, who answers back to God?' Shall the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'Why have you made me thus?' For how could it, seeing that it chose wickedness by its own self-governing will?

Therefore he will not say to God, who judges by the unvarying decrees of righteousness, 'Why have you made me thus, condemned to suffer pain?' Observe, then, how the apostle, like a javelin-thrower, casting forth into the midst words tightly wound together with great skill, produces a treatment that is obscure and veiled as regards the depth of the readings, yet most true and orthodox and containing nothing careless or ill-spoken.

For to those who study his words not with earnestness but ignobly, he sometimes appears to speak incoherently and inconsistently; but to those, on the other hand, who examine them earnestly and with sober reasoning, it becomes clear how full of order and truth they are.

For indeed it would be ridiculous, having abandoned your inquiry, for the sake of which we undertook this discourse, to move on to other matters.

For these things have been said by us on account of the punitive justice that awaits those who willfully do evil.

Since, then, it has been most clearly demonstrated that death was contrived for man not for any evil purpose but for a good one, it remains henceforth for one who applies himself to these matters not carelessly to understand rightly concerning the resurrection of the body.

For how is death not beneficial, destroying the things that plunder our nature? Even though at the time it is administered it may seem burdensome, like a most bitter medicine to the one who is sick.

For the statement spoken by God, 'I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal; and there is none who shall deliver out of my hands,' what else does it wish to teach than that for this reason the body is first killed and dies, so that it may again be raised and live? It is struck first and shattered, so that it may again be fashioned sound and healthy.

And absolutely nothing at all has the strength to deliver anything from his great and mighty hand unto perdition and destruction — not fire, not death, not darkness, not chaos, not corruption.

For, as it says, 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ' — who is interpreted as the hand of the Father, and Word? 'Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?' As it is written:

'For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.'

'But in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.'

So that, as I have said, the word might be fulfilled: 'I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal'; and there is none who shall deliver us from the love of God that is in Christ, unto destruction.

Therefore we too are accounted as sheep for the slaughter, so that, having died to sin, we might live to God.

And let these matters, then, have been examined thus far.

But the matters that follow next upon these must again be taken up here.

If everything that is begotten is diseased — for the opponent argues thus, both as regards birth and as regards nourishment: for, he says, it grows from what accedes to it and diminishes from what departs from it — while things not begotten are healthy, because they are not diseased, nor do they need or desire anything (but things begotten desire both intercourse and food, and to desire is to be diseased, while not to need nor to desire is to be healthy); and things begotten are diseased because they desire, while things not begotten are not diseased; and diseased things suffer either from excess or want of what accrues to them and departs from them; and what suffers both wastes away and perishes, for which reason it is also begotten; and man is begotten — therefore man cannot be impassible and immortal.

Now this argument collapses on these very points.

For if everything that comes to be or is begotten perishes — for it makes no difference to put it this way — since even the first-formed were not begotten but came to be, and the angels and souls too are things that came to be (for, it says, 'he who makes his angels spirits'), then according to them the angels and the souls also perish.

But neither the angels nor the souls perish.

For these are immortal and indestructible, just as he who made them willed them to be.

Therefore man too is immortal.

Nor is that other view acceptable either — that the universe will perish utterly, root and branch, and that earth and air and heaven will cease to exist.

For the whole world will indeed be set ablaze for purification and renewal, being deluged with a descending fire, yet it will not come to utter destruction and corruption.

For if it were better for the world not to exist than to exist, why did God choose the worse course in making the world? But God made nothing in vain or for the worse.

Therefore God ordered creation so that it might exist and endure, just as Wisdom also affirms, saying: 'God created all things that they might exist, and the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them.'

And Paul too clearly bears witness, saying: 'For the earnest expectation of creation eagerly awaits the revealing of the sons of God.'

'For creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that creation itself also will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.'

'Creation was subjected to futility,' he says, and it awaits being set free from such bondage — meaning by 'creation' here this present world.

For it is not the things unseen that are enslaved to corruption, but rather these visible things.

Creation therefore remains, renewed into something better and more comely, exulting and rejoicing over the children of God at the resurrection, for whose sake it now groans and travails together, itself also awaiting our redemption from corruption, that of the body — so that, when we are raised and have shaken off the deadness of the flesh, according to what is written, 'Shake off the dust, and arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem,' and when we have been set free from sin, creation itself too will be set free from corruption, no longer enslaved to futility but to righteousness.

'For we know,' he says, 'that the whole creation groans together and travails together until now.'

'We ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly awaiting our adoption, the redemption of our body.'

'For as the new heaven and the new earth which I make,' he says, 'remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.'

And again the Lord speaks thus: 'He who made heaven, this is God who fashioned the earth and made it — he himself marked out its bounds; he did not make it in vain, but to be inhabited.'

For indeed God did not create the universe in vain or futilely unto destruction, as those who think vain things suppose, but that it might exist and be inhabited and endure.

Wherefore it is necessary that, after the conflagration and upheaval of all things, earth and heaven should exist again.

But as to why this is necessary, the argument would require yet more than has been said.

For the universe, when dissolved, will not be reconstituted into inert matter, into such a state as it was before its ordering, nor again into utter destruction and corruption.

How then, if the universe does not perish, might our opponents object, saying that the Lord declared that heaven and earth would pass away, while the prophet said that heaven would perish like smoke and the earth would grow old like a garment? We shall answer that it is the custom of the Scriptures to call 'destruction' the change from this present condition of the world into a better and more glorious one — the former form, so to speak, 'perishing' in the transformation of all things into something more radiant.

For there is no contradiction or absurdity in the divine words.

For it is said that 'the fashion of this world passes away,' and not the world itself.

Thus it is the Scriptures' custom to call 'destruction' the change of the former shape into something at times better and more beautiful — just as one might call it 'the destruction' of the infant's form, when the infant's age is transformed into stature and beauty in the change into the full-grown man.

'For when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child; but when I became a man, I did away with the things of a child.'

For creation will be thrown into turmoil, as though about to die, at the conflagration, so that it might also be re-created — yet we must not expect that it will perish, so that we, having been renewed, may dwell in a renewed world untasting of grief, according to what is said in the hundred and third psalm: 'You will send forth your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth' — God himself thenceforth presiding over the temperance of the surrounding air.

For since there will be an earth even after this age, it is altogether necessary that there also be those who will inhabit it — no longer destined to die or to marry and beget, but, like angels, unchangeably doing what is best in incorruption.

Wherefore it is nonsense to say that at that time bodies will exist in what manner of life, since neither air nor earth nor the other elements will exist.

It is worth considering, in addition to what has been said, how much error this involves — if I may speak frankly, O Aglaophon, about matters of such magnitude as we are discussing.

For having stated that the Lord declared that those who attain the resurrection will then be like angels — where the Sadducees put him to the test — you went on to add: 'The angels, being without flesh, are in the very summit of blessedness, and for this reason are also full of glory; and we too, since we are to be made equal to the angels, must likewise be stripped of flesh like them' — not observing, my excellent friend, that he who made and ordered the universe out of things that did not exist arranged the nature of the immortals not only into angels and ministering spirits, but also into principalities and powers and thrones.

For the race of angels is one thing, and that of principalities and powers another, since the immortals do not form a single order, a single constitution, a single tribe and clan, but rather races, tribes, and distinctions.

For it is necessary that they be both what they are and what they came to be.

Moreover, man too, appointed from the original ordering to inhabit the world and to rule over all things in it, being immortal, will never be changed from being man, either into the form of angels or into that of others, since not even the angels, being reordered from their original form, are changed into that of others.

For Christ came proclaiming not that man's nature should be transformed or refashioned into another, but into what it was from the beginning, before the fall, when it was immortal.

For each of the created beings must remain in its own proper place of order, so that all things may be filled with all — the heavens with angels, the thrones with powers, the lights with ministering spirits, and the more divine places with the unmixed and pure lights of the Seraphim, who stand beside the great Counsel that holds the universe together; and the world belongs to men.

But if we grant that men are changed into angels, it is time also to say that angels are changed into powers, and these into yet other and other kinds, until the argument, having climbed so high, falls into peril.

But God neither, having fashioned man badly or having erred concerning his formation, later changed his mind and devised to make him an angel instead, as the most inferior of craftsmen might do; nor, having wished from the beginning to make an angel and being unable to, did he fashion man.

Why then, indeed, did he make man man and not an angel, if he had actually wished man to become an angel rather than man? As though unable? This is blasphemous.

But did he defer the better, making the worse instead? This too is absurd.

For he neither fails in making what is good, nor defers it, nor is unable, but has the power to do so both as he wills and when he wills, being power itself.

Therefore, willing man to be man, he created him so from the beginning.

And if he willed it, and he wills what is good, and man is good, and man is said to be that which is composed of soul and body, then man will not exist apart from body, but with body — lest man become something other than man.

For it is necessary, for God's sake, that all the immortal races be preserved.

And man too is immortal.

For Wisdom says: 'God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own eternity.'

Therefore the body does not perish.

For man consists of soul and body.

Hence, having contrived the parable concerning the woman and the seven brothers, in order to discredit the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh, they came to him.

Indeed, the evangelist himself noted this, saying: 'And the Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection' — now if there were no resurrection of the flesh, but only the soul were saved, Christ would have agreed with them as thinking rightly and correctly.

But now he rebuffs them, saying that in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven — not by not having flesh, but by not marrying and being married, but by henceforth existing in incorruption and in light, made similar to the angels in this respect, so that just as the angels are in heaven, so too we might be in paradise, no longer occupied with marriages or banquets, but with beholding God and cultivating life, with Christ presiding over us.

For he did not say 'they will be angels,' but 'like angels' — crowned, as it is written, with glory and honor, yet differing a little from the angels, and being close to being angels.

Just as if one were to say, when there is good order in the air and calm at night, and all things are adorned with the ethereal light of the moon:

'The moon shines like the sun.'

Just as also that which is not actually gold, but is by nature close to being gold, is called 'like gold' and not 'gold.'

For if it were gold, it would not be called 'like gold,' but 'gold.'

But since it is not gold, but is close to being gold and to resembling gold in appearance, it is called not 'gold' but 'like gold.'

So too, when he says that the saints will be like angels in the resurrection, we do not understand him to be declaring that the saints will actually be angels in the resurrection, but that they will be close to being angels.

So it is most unreasonable to say that, because Christ declared that the saints will appear like angels in the resurrection, these bodies will not therefore rise — even though the very wording clearly indicates the actual event that takes place.

For 'resurrection' is said not of that which has not fallen, but of that which has fallen and is being raised up.

And the beloved tabernacle of the soul, having sunk down, fell into the earth of dust.

For it is not that which does not die, but that which dies, that is laid low.

Now it is the flesh that dies, for the soul is immortal.

And so, if the soul is immortal, and it is the body that is the corpse, then those who say there is a resurrection but that it is not of the flesh, in effect deny that there is a resurrection at all — for it is not that which stands, but that which has fallen and lain down, that rises again, according to what is written: 'Shall not he who falls arise? Or he who turns away, shall he not return?'

That the soul is immortal, the Lord taught openly, both in his own person and through Solomon, saying:

In his own person, in the account of the rich man and the poor man Lazarus, showing the one resting in the bosom of Abraham after the laying aside of the body, and the other in torments, in the midst of which he introduced Abraham conversing with him.