Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 43/82

And through Solomon, in the book entitled Wisdom, where it is written: 'the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.'

'In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was reckoned as affliction, and their journey away from us as ruin.'

But they are at peace, and their hope is full of immortality.

Hence the resurrection is of the body, and not of the soul.

For no one raises up the one who is standing, but the one who is lying down, just as they do not heal the one who is healthy, but the one who is suffering.

But if anyone forces himself to say that the resurrection will pertain to the soul and not to the flesh, this is great folly and irrationality.

For such a person must first show the corruption and dissolution of the soul, in order that he may also show its resurrection, so that he may appear not to be talking nonsense, but to be saying something clearly.

Nevertheless, one must at any rate grant him to define the soul as mortal.

For one of two things must here be posited: either it is true that the Lord declared, teaching that the soul is immortal, and false that it perishes -- as Christ says both in the account of the rich man and the poor man, and in the vision concerning Moses and Elijah -- or it perishes, and it is false to teach that it is imperishable and immortal.

But the Lord neither spoke amiss nor uttered a falsehood.

For it was not an image or a phantom that he showed the apostles on the mountain, wishing to deceive them -- Elijah and Moses -- but what they truly were, without any deceit.

So that, so to speak, even the slowest to learn may come to know and to affirm with certainty that the soul is immortal and imperishable.

You must consider this in the following way, most wise Aglaophon.

And you will certainly learn this most easily, if you attend to the image of sleeping and rising.

A meditation on the resurrection. For since sleep and death are twins, it is necessary that the flesh's return to life out of death also take place, just as its being roused up out of sleep takes place.

For just as waking comes about from sleeping, and the one who sleeps does not by any means remain always in the same state of sleeping, but rises up again, so also living will come about from having died, and the one who has died does not, once he has died, remain forever in that same state.

For if waking comes from sleeping, and being raised up comes from falling, and being rebuilt comes from being thrown down, what possible reason is there not to expect that resurrection will come from him who has been laid low, and that coming back to life will come from him who has died? Indeed, we confess these things without being deceived: that a coming-back-to-life results from bodies that have died.

And not only this -- if you wish, consider it from sleeping and rising -- but also from seeds and plants, how in all of them the resurrection is proclaimed.

For observe the seeds, how, he says, they are cast bare and fleshless into the earth, and, being brought to fruition, are given back again.

For if the seeds should indeed die and rot, and no coming-to-life and sprouting should any longer come from the seeds, what allotment would keep all things from being wholly consumed into death?

But indeed, most excellent Theophilus, we shall for now forgo saying more about these matters, and let the rest be judges of the arguments.

Let us also take up what follows next upon these things, how far it stands removed from what is fitting.

For according to him, expounding the prophecy concerning the sixty-fifth psalm in a forced and improper manner, God again places the souls themselves into the flesh as into a snare, to undergo punishment for their sins -- which is a matter of absurdity rather than orthodoxy.

For if, before the transgression, as we have already set forth above, the souls possessed a body, how are they later, after the transgression, placed into a body as into a snare, when there was no time in which they sinned before receiving the body? For it is not the mark of a sound mind to say at one time that the souls sinned on account of the body, and at another time that, since they had sinned, the body itself came to be a bond and a snare unto their condemnation.

For if they sinned on account of the body, then the body was with them from the beginning, even before the sin.

For how could they sin on account of that which did not yet exist at all? But if, on the other hand, the body itself is considered a snare, fetters, and a bond, then the cause is no longer the combination of both, but the soul alone.

For it is after sinning, for the one who has sinned, that bonds and snares and fetters are prepared for the one who has sinned.

But indeed we have already agreed that the body cannot be a bond for the soul, since the body cooperates in either direction, both toward justice and toward injustice, whereas a bond restrains one from doing wrong.

So that, as I say, one of two things must hold:

Either we sinned from the beginning together with the body, and there appears no time in which we existed apart from a body, and the body is a joint-cause with the soul both of good things and of evil things; or else, while living apart from the body, we sinned, and the body is wholly blameless of wickedness.

But apart from the body, the soul is not mastered by irrational pleasure; yet the first-created humans were mastered, having been enticed by irrational pleasure.

Therefore the soul existed together with the body even before the sin.

As for the fact that it is not admissible to suppose that the body came to be, on account of the transgression, a bond for the sake of punishment, so that the soul, according to them, might remain undefiled and yet bear an unceasing torment by carrying about a corpse -- I think I have already fully demonstrated these things with complete proof.

Hence it is inconsistent and inadmissible to posit the body as a snare and bonds, and yet to bring in God as leading the souls into the snare to undergo punishment, casting them down from above out of the third heaven, in return for their having disobeyed the commandment.

For looking to what could one believe the things so rashly said by them, seeing that the psalm does not in fact mean this, even though they expound it in a forced manner?

-- at least for those who wish to understand the Scriptures rightly.

For the things that were said are, I think, something like this:

'You have tested us, O God; you have refined us by fire, as silver is refined.'

'You brought us into the snare; you laid afflictions upon our back.'

'You caused men to ride over our heads.'

'We went through fire and water, and you brought us out into a place of refreshment.'

These things, they say, were spoken by the souls that were brought down from the third heaven -- where paradise is -- into the body as into a snare, as though into an arena of contest.

For, he says, 'we passed through fire and water' signifies either the soul's passage through the womb into the world, since it comes to be amid such great heat and moisture, or its fall down from the heavens into this life, as it passes through the springs of fire and the waters above the back of the firmament.

Against these I thought it right to raise objections.

Come then, Aglaophon, make the reply on their behalf yourself -- what will they say?

First, that paradise, from which we were also cast out in the first-created man, is manifestly upon this earth, a special place set apart for the saints for untroubled rest and life; this is clear from the fact that the Tigris and the Euphrates and the other rivers flowing forth from there are seen here, their streams pouring out and flooding our own continent.

For they do not come rushing down, poured out from the heavens above.

since the earth could not have withstood receiving so great a mass of water suddenly borne down from on high.

Nor indeed does the apostle suggest that paradise is in the third heaven, at least to those who know how to listen to subtle arguments.

For he says, 'I know such a man, caught up even to the third heaven.'

'And I know that such a man -- whether in the body or apart from the body, God knows -- was caught up into paradise.'

He indicates that he has seen two great revelations, having been manifestly taken up twice -- once as far as the third heaven, and once into paradise.

For the statement, 'I know such a man caught up even to the third heaven,' establishes that a revelation appeared to him specifically when he was taken up as far as the third heaven.

And the statement added again, 'and I know that such a man, whether in the body or outside the body, was caught up into paradise,' shows that another revelation was again manifested to him, this time concerning paradise.

It is therefore mere warbling and tragic bombast to say that the souls are cast down from the heavens and pass through the springs of fire and the waters above the back of the firmament, being carried down into this our world.

since not even Adam was cast out from the heavens, but from the paradise planted in Eden toward the east.

For, as we have sufficiently shown, the transgression did not occur before embodiment, nor again is the body in this sense a snare; rather, the transgression occurs after the soul's union with the body, since man is the combination of both, and the fall from paradise happened here.

But he, Aglaophon, did not attend more carefully to the argument at all, but strained himself over matters whose consideration is not without danger, having attempted to interpret the psalm according to the opinions of worthless men -- about whom we shall forgo saying more.

For since we have once undertaken to set right their depravity, I wish to lay bare for them the pretext of this prophecy as well.

'You have refined us by fire, as silver is refined.'

The martyrs, having been steadfastly tested in the onslaughts of torments during their trials -- for many of the prophecies are fulfilled in our own faith -- and having contended gloriously and most vigorously, give thanks, saying to God, 'You have tested us,' as though he had tried them through many labors so that they might obtain a greater glory from him, setting before them to win the truly Olympic contest.

He tested them and found them worthy of himself.

'As gold in the furnace he tested them, and as a whole burnt offering of sweet fragrance he accepted them; and in the time of their visitation they will shine forth.'

having said before, 'For even if in the sight of men they be punished, their hope is full of immortality; and having been chastised a little, they will be greatly benefited.'

But also in the 123rd psalm it is said: 'If the Lord had not been with us, when men rose up against us, they would have swallowed us alive.'

'Then the water would have overwhelmed us.'

'Our soul has passed through the torrent; our soul would have passed through the water that none could withstand.'

'Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.'

'Our soul has been delivered like a sparrow from the snare of the fowlers.'

'The snare was broken, and we were delivered' -- it is the martyrs who sing these words.

There are two choirs of victorious martyrs, one of the New Testament and the other of the Old, who send up in harmony an answering hymn to the God who fights on their behalf, the King of all things:

'You have tested us, O God; you have refined us by fire, as silver is refined; you have brought us into the snare; you have laid afflictions upon our back' -- meaning the tribunal of the nations, or the trials, under which, having been sorely pressed and refined by fire, they were mightily tested.

'Prove me, O Lord,' he says, 'and try me; burn my inmost parts and my heart.'

Let Abraham also speak, who was set on fire in his inmost being over his only-begotten son, and who preferred God's command to the sparing of the child; after Abraham heard, 'Spare your child,' he cast away the sword.

'You have proved us, O God, you have tried us by fire, as silver is tried.'

Let Job also speak, who, after the corruption had flowed away from his sores, and after he was reproached by his friends and his body was in pain, heard God speaking to him out of the whirlwind: 'Or do you think I have dealt with you for any other reason than that you might be shown to be righteous?'

'You have laid afflictions upon us, O Lord, that you might prove us as gold in the furnace.'

Let the three children in the furnace also speak, who were bedewed with dew so that they might not be consumed by the fire:

'You have proved us, O God, you have tried us by fire, as silver is tried.'

'We went through fire and through water, and you brought us out into a place of refreshment.'

Grant that I too, Methodius, may say: O God almighty, great, eternal, Father of Christ — grant that on your day, having passed through the fire without harm, and the waters having been changed into a burning nature, I might escape their onslaughts.

'I went through fire and through water, and you brought me out into a place of refreshment.'

For this is your promise to those who love you: 'If you pass through the water, I am with you, and the rivers shall not overwhelm you;'

'and if you pass through the fire, you shall not be burned;'

But this is enough concerning the exposition of the psalm.

There is yet another point that must be examined, in which — appearing under manifold delusions, after the fashion of men asleep — they declare that the apostle said, 'But I was alive apart from the law once,' and they cry out that by 'the life before the commandment' he meant the manner of life of the first-formed man in paradise before the body, as what follows confirms: 'But I am carnal, sold under sin.'

For man, they say, could not otherwise have come to be ruled and dominated by evil, sold to it because of the transgression, unless he had become carnal.

'For the soul by itself,' he says, 'cannot be laid hold of by sin.'

Therefore he sharply added, 'But I am carnal, sold under sin.'

having said before, 'But I was alive apart from the law once.'

Now when they were saying these things, wonder and amazement crept in among the many; but now, since the truth has already peeped forth into the clearest light, they are shown to be not only wandering far astray, but even climbing up to the very height of blasphemy.

For having granted that souls lived incorporeally before the commandment, and having supposed that they were by themselves wholly incapable of being seized by sin, they again overturned their own argument — and much more themselves.

For indeed they hold that bodies were afterward fashioned and given to souls for punishment, because they had sinned before having a body.

And indeed they went on to heap reproaches, comparing the body to bonds and fetters, and saying other foolish things.

But now, as has been said, the matter stands wholly the opposite.

For the soul must exist together with the body before sin.

Since if the soul by itself is not liable to sin, it would not have sinned at all before the body.

But if it did sin, then it is no longer, by itself, unassailable by sin, but rather easily overcome and easily taken.

Therefore, again, even if it does not take this body, it will sin, just as indeed it sinned even before taking it.

But why then did it take a body at all afterward, once it had sinned? Or what need did it have of a body? If indeed it was so that it might be tormented and suffer pain, how is it that it rather indulges in luxury and licentiousness with the body? And how does it appear to have free will in this world? For it lies in our power to believe or not to believe here, in our power to act rightly or to sin, in our power to do good or to do evil.

But how, moreover, can the judgment still be regarded as something to come — the judgment according to which God renders to each according to his works and according to his practices — and not be thought of as already present, if indeed for the soul to be born and to come into a body is already to be judged and to receive its recompense, while to die and be separated from the body is to be set free and to come into refreshment, since, according to you, it is because the soul sinned before the body that it is put into the body unto condemnation and sentence? The argument has shown abundantly and at length that it is inadmissible to suppose the body to be a place of torment and fetters for the soul.

It would indeed have been enough, having demonstrated from Scripture itself that even before the transgression the first-formed man consisted of soul and body, to bring the argument on these matters to a close here.

But I too am now going through these matters summarily, striving as far as possible to set straight the grounds of their arguments, so that I may not overstep the due proportion of my discourse.

For it is now possible for you, O judges, to observe that the statement 'But I was alive apart from the law once,' spoken in the Epistle to the Romans, cannot refer, as they claim, to the pre-bodily manner of life of the soul, as what follows these words indicates.

even though this noble physician of the sayings, having stealthily removed what follows, has forced the apostle's meaning to be reshaped according to his own opinion, suffering from something utterly incurable and childish.

For instead of keeping the members of the bodies according to their proper joints and connections, so that the whole shape of the body might be complete according to nature, he mutilated it, passing over the sequence of Scripture, cutting up its members without mercy for its destruction, like some Scythian pitilessly hacking apart an enemy's limbs.

'How then,' they will say, 'did the apostle declare these things, if you have not shown them to be so?' Because, I would say, he set down the commandment as being a law — for let it first be granted, according to your own hypothesis, that he called the commandment a law.

Yet he did not on that account suppose that the first-formed pair had lived incorporeally before the commandment, but rather that they had lived without sin.

For indeed the time from their creation until the commandment was brief, during which they lived without sin — not outside the body, but together with the body.

For indeed, immediately after the commandment they were cast out, having enjoyed their prime for only the briefest time in paradise.

But if someone, seizing upon the saying, 'For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were through the law were at work in our members,' should suppose that he is thereby disparaging and rejecting the flesh itself, and should adduce other such sayings as, 'that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit,' or, 'for those who are according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit' —

'for the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace, because the mind of the flesh is enmity toward God;'

'and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.'

'But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit' — one must say to him:

Was the apostle, then, already departed from this life — and those to whom he wrote these things as well — if he was not now rejecting the manner of life according to the flesh, but the flesh itself; or was he still in the flesh? But it must not be said that he wrote these things while not being in the flesh.

For it is clear that both he himself and those to whom he wrote these things were in the flesh.

How then does he say, 'For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were through the law were at work in our members,' as though neither he himself nor those to whom he wrote were still in the flesh? Therefore he is speaking about the manner of life characterized by lack of self-control, and not about the flesh itself.

For it is his custom to call the man who lives in this way 'carnal,' just as also he calls 'soulish' the man who has become insensible to gazing upon the truth and the illumination of the mystery.

Otherwise, let them say that not even the soul can be saved at all.

'For it is written, \"The soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God;\"'

'but the spiritual man judges all things.'

Just as, then, in that passage a 'soulish' man and a 'spiritual' man are introduced, and the spiritual man is among those being saved while the soulish man is among those perishing, and it is not on that account that the soul perishes while something other than the soul is saved — so also here, when he says that those who are carnal and exist in the flesh perish and cannot please God, he is contending to abolish not the flesh, but the manner of life according to the flesh.

And having gone on a little and said, 'And those who are in the flesh cannot please God,' he immediately adds, 'But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of Christ dwells in you,' and a little later, 'but if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwells in you.'

'So then, brothers, we are debtors — not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh;'

'for if you live according to the flesh, you are about to die;'

'but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.'

For it must be noted that he affirmed that it is the body's impulse toward pleasures that is to be put to death, and not the body itself.

But if, again, they raise the objection, saying:

'How then is it said that the mind of the flesh is enmity toward God? For it is not subject to the law of God;'

'for indeed it cannot' be subject — it must be said that here too they go astray.

For he did not suppose that the flesh itself, but the mind of the flesh, is unable to be subject to the law of God — the mind of the flesh being something other than the flesh.

The dross of silver that has not been well purified is not amenable to the craftsman with regard to becoming a suitable vessel.

For it must first be cast out and melted away.

And it was not on that account declared that the silver could not be worked into a useful vessel, but rather the copper-like alloy in the silver, and its other hardness.

Thus also, in speaking of 'the mind of the flesh,' he did not say that the flesh was unable to be subject to the law of God, but the mind that is in the flesh — meaning, that is to say, the impulse toward its intemperances.

This is what elsewhere he at one time called 'the old leaven of malice and wickedness,' urging that it be utterly annihilated from us, and at another time called 'a law warring against the law of the mind and taking it captive.'

Since, if he meant that the flesh itself was unable to be subject to the law of God, then, in the first place, we who act licentiously, or commit robbery, or do or perform whatever other such things through the body, could not be liable to blame before a just judge, since the flesh would be incapable of being subject to the law of God.

For how could the body be blameworthy for living according to the nature inherent in it? But neither, on the other hand, could the body ever be brought to purity or virtue, if it were by nature unable to be subject to the good.

...temperance — it would have been necessary that neither virginity nor self-control could be practiced at all, in any way whatsoever.

But if they do remain virgins and do practice self-control — and they practice self-control precisely when they subject the body, for otherwise it is impossible to practice self-control against sin — then it is not the case that the body cannot be subject to the law of God.

For otherwise, how could John have subjected his own body to purity? Or how could Peter subject his to holiness? Or those who came after them, to righteousness? And how, too, could Paul say, 'Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts; and do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God'; and again, 'For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification'?

Therefore he knew that this tabernacle could be set aright and inclined toward the good, so that sins might be put to death in it.

For how else can a person, even in our case, be enslaved to righteousness, unless he first subjects the members of his flesh so that they do not obey sin but righteousness, and thus conduct himself in a manner worthy of Christ? Since sinning and not sinning come about through the body, the soul using it as an instrument either toward virtue or toward vice.

For if neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners can inherit the kingdom of God, and these things are fulfilled and carried out through the body, and no one is justified unless he first masters these, and he masters them who turns aside toward self-control and faith — then the body is indeed subject to the law of God.

For the law of God is self-control.

So the apostle did not say that the flesh does not submit to the good, but the mind of the flesh — thereby doing away with its impulse toward the vices of intemperance, just as also the soul's inclination toward injustice.

Contending, then, that one must be cleansed even from the intemperance of gluttony, and teaching that such appetites and pleasures are to be utterly destroyed, and putting to shame those who suppose that this luxury and extravagance is what it means to live — those who make their belly their god, saying, 'Let us eat and drink,'

'for tomorrow we die' — like gluttonous cattle occupied below only with fodder and their tables, saying, 'Foods are for the belly, and the belly for foods,'

but he added, 'God will destroy both it and them'; 'and the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.'

'And God both raised the Lord, and will raise us up also through his power.'

'Do you not know that your members are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Certainly not!'

'Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For, it says, "the two shall become one flesh."'

'But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.'

'Every sin that a man commits is outside the body,'

'but he who commits fornication sins against his own body.'

'Or do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? And you are not your own,'

'therefore glorify God in your body.'

Now observe that the apostle uttered these words precisely because this body is able to submit to the law of God and to receive immortality, if it is cleansed from the intemperance that kindles the passions, not being defiled at all by the lawless frictions of frenzied lust.

'...that a man commits is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body' — for pride, and unbelief, and wrath, and hypocrisy are sins of the soul, whereas fornication, and frenzied lust, and luxury are sins of the body.

With these, neither will the soul fly up toward truth, nor will the body be subjected to the teachings of self-control, but both will slip away from the kingdom of Christ.

And so, therefore, if our bodies, kept in a state of sanctification, are a temple of the Spirit dwelling in us, and the Lord is in the body, and the members of the body are members of Christ, then the body is indeed subject to the divine law and is able to inherit the kingdom of God.

For, it says, 'He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you,' so that this mortal thing may put on immortality, and this corruptible thing incorruption, and death be swallowed up in victory.

For here the apostle was not speaking of some other body pertaining to us, but of this one that dies and is put to death, through which it is possible both to commit fornication and to sin in other ways.

But if they suppose that there is a difference between 'body' and 'flesh' — so that we may even grant them the liberty to reason this way as well — and suppose that 'body' is one thing, namely, something proper to the soul itself which is not seen, while 'flesh' is this outward, visible thing, it must be said that not only do Paul and the prophets know this flesh to be called 'body,' but also other philosophers from outside, among whom precisely the precision of terminology has been most carefully observed.

For, if they wish to examine these matters scientifically as well, 'flesh' is not properly speaking used at all for this entire mass of our tabernacle, but rather for a part of the whole — such as bones, or sinews, or veins — while 'body' denotes the whole.

Hence physicians too, who have precisely distinguished the nature of bodies, know this visible thing as 'body.'

But Plato too himself knows this very thing to be called 'body.'

In the Phaedo, at any rate, Socrates said, 'Do we then suppose death to be anything other than the separation of the soul from the body? And that this is what it means to be dead — the body having become separated from the soul, apart by itself, and the soul apart from the body?' For indeed the blessed Moses (for we have now come also to the Scriptures of the Lord) also knows to call this visible thing 'body,'