What Falls Is Raised

When we assign authority to the soul and submission to the flesh, we have to watch that our opponents do not turn our own position against us by an argument of another kind. What they will do is press the flesh into the soul’s service in such a way that it is not the soul’s servant at all — because if it were a servant, they would be forced to admit that it is also the soul’s companion. Their argument runs like this. Servants and companions have a judgment of their own in carrying out the work that belongs to each of them, and a will of their own in both relations. They are men, after all, and so they expect to share the credit with the people they work for, since they lent their help willingly. The flesh, they say, is nothing like that: it has no judgment and no feeling in itself, and no power of its own either to consent or to refuse. In fact it stands to the soul in the place of a vessel — an instrument rather than a servant. So the soul alone will be judged, and judged above all for the way it has used the vessel of the flesh, while the vessel itself is of course liable to no sentence at all. Who condemns the cup, if a man has mixed poison in it? Who sentences the sword to the beasts, if a man has used it for a bandit’s butchery? [a]

Very well. Let us grant that the flesh is innocent, in the sense that no bad action will be charged against it. Then what is to stop it being saved on the strength of that very innocence? It may be clear of any credit for good works, just as it is clear of blame for evil ones; but it suits God’s goodness all the better to rescue the innocent. A generous man is bound to do that much, and it fits the character of the most generous of all to grant such a favor even where nothing whatever has been earned.

And yet let us look at that cup again. I will not take the poisoned one, with certain death poured into it. I will take one that has been fouled by the breath of a loose woman, or of a priest of Cybele, or of a gladiator, or of a public executioner. Now tell me: would you pass a milder sentence on that cup than you would on a kiss from any of those people? A cup dirtied with our own filth, or one that has not been mixed the way we like it, we are quick enough to smash — and then to work up our anger against the servant as well. As for a sword that is drunk with the blood of a bandit’s victims, who would not throw it out of the house altogether, and out of his bedroom above all, and from beside his pillow? He would take it for granted that he would dream of nothing but the ghosts of the men whose souls were hunting him and giving him no rest, because he had lain down with the blade that shed their blood.

But take the cup that has nothing held against it, the cup that has earned credit for faithful service: the master of the drinking will dress it with garlands, or honor it with a handful of flowers. And a sword that has taken honorable stains in war, employed in a better sort of killing, will win its own praise by being dedicated. So it is perfectly possible to pass real sentences even on vessels and tools, and to let them share in what their owners and users have deserved.

I say all this because I want to meet even this argument of theirs. The comparison itself breaks down, though, because the things compared are not of one kind. Every vessel and every tool comes to its usefulness from outside; it is made of material that has nothing at all to do with the substance of the man who owns it or uses it. The flesh is not like that. It is conceived, formed and brought to birth along with the soul from its first moment in the womb, and it is mixed up with the soul in everything the soul does.

The apostle does call the flesh “a vessel” — a vessel he tells us to keep “with honor.” But the same apostle also calls it “the outward man”: that clay, of course, which was stamped at the very beginning with the name of a man, not with the name of a cup or a sword or some cheap piece of crockery. It is called a “vessel” with an eye to its capacity, since it receives the soul and holds it; but it is called “man” because it shares one nature with the soul, and that is what makes it, in everything it does, a servant and not a tool. So at the judgment it will be treated as a servant — even though it has no independent judgment of its own — because it is an integral part of the thing that does have judgment, and not a piece of property.

The apostle knows perfectly well that the flesh does nothing on its own that is not also charged to the soul. All the same, he calls the flesh “sinful,” so that nobody will suppose it carries no responsibility simply because the soul appears to be the thing driving it. In the same way, when he credits the flesh with actions that deserve praise, he says, “So glorify and exalt God in your body.” He is quite sure that such efforts are set going by the soul; but he credits them to the flesh all the same, because the flesh is what he also promises the repayment to. Besides, there would be no point in rebuking it if it were free of blame, and no point in urging it on if it were incapable of glory. Rebuke and encouragement would both be wasted on the flesh, if the flesh were not a fit recipient of that repayment which is, beyond any question, received in the resurrection.

The plainer sort of person who agrees with our position will probably suppose that the flesh has to be present at the last judgment for this reason as well: that otherwise the soul would have no way of feeling either pain or pleasure, since it has no body. That is the common opinion. Our own position — which we hold here and prove at length in a book devoted to the subject — is that the soul is a body: it has a solidity peculiar to its own nature, and that is what enables it both to perceive and to suffer. The case of Lazarus shows that souls are capable even now of torment and of blessing in Hades, though they are stripped of their bodies and shut out from the flesh. [h]

No doubt I have given my opponent an opening here. He will say: since the soul has a bodily substance of its own, then, it is equipped well enough to suffer and to feel, and does not need the flesh present at all. No. It will still need the flesh — not because it can feel nothing without the flesh’s help, but because it must have that capacity together with the flesh. Just so far as the soul is sufficient of itself to act, just so far is it also capable of suffering. But in fact, when it comes to acting, it labors under a certain disability. By its own nature it can only think, will, desire and decide; to carry the purpose right through, it looks to the flesh for help. In the same way it needs to be joined to the flesh in order to endure suffering, so that with the flesh’s help it may be as fully able to suffer as, without that help, it was not fully able to act.

There are sins the soul is quite sufficient to commit by itself — craving, and thought, and wish — and for the present it pays the penalty for them by itself. Now if those alone were enough to make up the whole of what a person deserves, with no need for anything actually done, then the soul on its own would be enough to face the full weight of the judgment; it would be judged for the very things it had been sufficient by itself to do. But deeds are tied to deserts and cannot be pulled apart from them, and deeds are carried out by the ministry of the flesh. So it is not enough after all that the soul apart from the flesh should be repaid with pleasure or pain for what are in fact the works of the flesh — even though the soul has a body of its own, and limbs of its own, which fall just as far short of its full feeling as they fall short of its full action.

So the soul suffers in Hades in proportion to what it has done in each case. It is the first to taste judgment, as it was the first to lead the way into sin. But it is still waiting for the flesh, so that through the flesh as well it may pay for its deeds, since it laid the carrying out of its own thoughts on the flesh. That, in short, is how the judgment works which has been put off to the last great day: the flesh has to be produced, so that the whole course of God’s vengeance may be run out. Besides, there would be no reason to hold back to the end a doom that souls are already tasting in Hades, if it were meant for souls alone.

So far my aim has been to lay a foundation, by way of preface, for the defense of all those Scriptures that promise a resurrection of the flesh. This truth is supported by any number of sound and reasonable considerations — the dignity of the flesh itself, the power and might of God, the parallel cases in which that power is on display, and the good reasons for a judgment along with the need of one. It is therefore only right and proper that the Scriptures should be understood in the sense those weighty considerations suggest, and not according to the fancies of the heretics, which come from nothing but unbelief. They find it incredible that the flesh should be recovered out of death and restored to life — not because such a restoration is beyond the flesh itself, nor because God could not bring it about, nor because it would not suit the final judgment. [m]

Incredible it might well have been, if God had not declared it. And yet, even if he had not announced it first, one might fairly have assumed that the announcement was held back precisely because so many strong indications in its favor had already been supplied. As it is, the thing is proclaimed in so many inspired passages, and that is one more argument against taking it in any sense other than the one those considerations attest — considerations that persuade us to accept it even apart from the testimony of revelation.

Let us see, then, first of all, under what title this hope of ours is posted up for us. There is, I take it, one divine edict set out in public where every man can see it: “The Resurrection of the Dead.” The words are ready, decisive, clear. I mean to take these very terms, work them over, and find out what substance they apply to.

Take the word resurrectio. Whenever I hear that it is hanging over a human being, I am bound to ask what part of him has been marked out to fall — since nothing can be expected to stand up again unless it has first been laid flat. Only a man who does not know that the flesh falls by death can fail to see that it stands upright by life. Nature pronounces God’s own sentence: “Dust you are, and to dust you will return.” Even the man who never heard the sentence read can see the fact of it. There is no death that is not the ruin of our limbs. The Lord described this fate of the body too, when, dressed in that very substance, he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.” He was showing what it is that gets destroyed, thrown down and kept down — namely the same thing to which it also belongs to be lifted and raised up again. And this while he was carrying about with him “a soul trembling even to death” — a soul which did not fall by death, since Scripture itself tells us that “he was speaking of his body.”

So it is the flesh that falls by death; and that is where its name comes from: cadaver, from cadendo. The soul has no trace of a fall in its name, just as there is no dying in its condition. On the contrary, it is the soul that hands its ruin on to the body when it is breathed out of it — as it is also the soul that is one day to raise the body up again out of the earth, when it comes back into it. A thing that raises by entering cannot itself fall; a thing that ruins by leaving cannot itself sink. I will go further. The soul does not so much as fall asleep along with the body, and it does not even lie down to rest beside its companion. It is stirred and troubled in dreams. It could rest, if it lay down; and it certainly would lie down, if it fell. So a thing that does not fall even into the likeness of death does not give way to the reality of it either.

Now to the other word, mortuorum. I want you to look closely and see what substance it applies to. Suppose we allowed, at this point, what the heretics sometimes maintain — that the soul is mortal, and that, being mortal, it will attain to a resurrection. That would carry with it the presumption that the flesh too, being no less mortal, would share in the same resurrection. But what I am after just now is to get from the proper meaning of the word an idea of the fate it points to. Just as “resurrection” is said of what falls — that is, of the flesh — so the word “dead” will be applied to the same thing, because “the resurrection of the dead” means the standing up again of what has fallen down.

We learn this from Abraham, the father of those who believe, a man on close terms with God. When he asked the sons of Heth for a piece of ground to bury Sarah in, he said to them, “Give me the possession of a burying place among you, so that I may bury my dead” — meaning her flesh, obviously. He could not have wanted a place to bury her soul in, not even if the soul is to be reckoned mortal, and not even if it could put up with being described by the word “dead.” Since, then, the word points to the body, it follows that when “the resurrection of the dead” is spoken of, it is men’s bodies that are meant to rise.

Working out the phrase and its meaning in this way does more than establish what those important words really say. It must have a further result as well: whatever fog our opponents throw over the subject on the pretext of figures and allegories, the truth will stand out in a clearer light, and out of the uncertainties fixed and definite rules will be laid down. [u]

For some of them light on a form of speech very common in the prophets, who often — though not always — speak in figure and allegory; and with it they twist even the plainest statement of the resurrection of the dead into some meaning of their own invention. They allege that death itself has to be understood spiritually. What is ordinarily supposed to be death is not really death at all, they say — that is, the parting of body and soul. Real death is ignorance of God: a man is dead to God because of it, and is buried in error just as surely as he would be in a grave. And so, they say, this must be the resurrection: a man comes alive again when he gains access to the truth, and, having scattered the death of ignorance and been given new life by God, has broken out of the tomb of the old man — just as the Lord compared the scribes and Pharisees to “whitewashed tombs.” It follows, on their account, that those who have reached the resurrection by faith are with the Lord as soon as they have put him on in their baptism.

With that piece of subtlety they have often misled our brothers in ordinary conversation, as though they held a resurrection of the dead just as we do. They say: “Woe to the man who has not risen in this present body!” They are afraid of alarming their hearers if they deny the resurrection outright. But privately, in their own minds, what they mean is this: woe to the simpleton who fails, while this present life lasts, to find out the secrets of the heresy — because on their view that is the resurrection.

There are a great many others as well who claim to hold a resurrection after the soul has left the body. Coming out of the tomb, they say, means getting out of the world, since on their view the world is where the dead live — the people who do not know God. Or they will go so far as to say that it actually means getting out of the body itself, since they imagine that the body holds the soul prisoner, shut up in the death of a worldly life as in a grave.