Saving the Whole Man

No doubt, if the people had been complaining in a figure of speech that their bones were dried up and their hope had perished — grieving, that is, over what their scattering had brought on them — then God might fairly enough be said to have consoled a figurative despair with a figurative promise. But no harm had yet come to the people from being scattered, while the hope of the resurrection had failed among them again and again. So it is plain that what shook their faith in the resurrection was the perishing condition of their own bodies. God, then, was rebuilding the faith that the people were pulling down. [a]

And even if it were true that Israel was low at the time over some shock in their present circumstances, we still must not suppose that God’s purpose in speaking could have stopped at a parable. Its aim had to be to bear witness to a resurrection — to lift the nation’s hope as far as an eternal salvation and a restoration they could not do without, and so to turn their minds away from brooding over their present affairs. That is what the other prophets are after as well. “You will come out from your graves,” says Malachi, “like young calves let loose from their bonds, and you will tread down your enemies.” And Isaiah says, “Your heart will rejoice, and your bones will spring up like grass” — because grass too is renewed by the dissolving and rotting of the seed.

In short: if it is going to be argued that the figure of the rising bones properly means the state of Israel, why is the same hope announced to all the nations instead of being kept to Israel alone — the hope of clothing those bare bones again with bodily substance and living breath, and of raising their dead up out of the grave? The language is for everyone: “The dead will rise, and come out from their graves; for the dew that comes from you is medicine to their bones.” Somewhere else it is written, “All flesh will come to worship before me, says the Lord.” When? When the shape of this world begins to pass away. For he had said just before, “As the new heaven and the new earth that I make remain before me, says the Lord, so will your seed remain.” Then too will be fulfilled what is written after it: “And they will go out” — out of their graves, that is — “and will look at the corpses of those who rebelled; for their worm will never die, nor will their fire be put out; and they will be a spectacle to all flesh” — even to the flesh that, raised again from the dead and brought out of the grave, will worship the Lord for such great grace.

And so that you do not suppose it is only the bodies laid in tombs whose resurrection is foretold, you have it declared in Scripture: “And I will give orders to the fish of the sea, and they will throw up the bones they have swallowed; and I will bring joint to joint and bone to bone.” You will ask: “Will the fish be raised again too, then — and the other animals, and the birds that feed on flesh — so that they can vomit up what they have eaten? You read in the law of Moses, after all, that blood is required even of every beast.” Certainly not. The beasts and the fish are brought in because what is at stake is the restoring of flesh and blood, and they say more forcefully that even bodies which have been eaten will rise, since the reckoning is said to be demanded of the very creatures that ate them. [e]

In Jonah’s case, as I understand it, we have a fair proof of this power of God’s: he came out of the fish’s belly unharmed in both his natures, flesh and soul alike. Three days would surely have been ample time for the whale’s insides to consume and digest Jonah’s flesh, quite as thoroughly as a coffin, or a tomb, or the slow decay of some quiet and hidden grave. Except that God meant those beasts to stand in advance for something else: for the men who rage against the Christian name above all, or for the angels of wickedness, from whom blood will be required when avenging judgment exacts it in full.

Where, then, is the man who would rather learn than assume, who is more careful to believe than to argue, and more respectful of the wisdom of God than recklessly set on his own — where is the man who, hearing of a purpose of God’s about sinews and skin and nerves and bones, will straight away go looking for some other thing these words might mean, as though everything said about those substances were not naturally meant for a human being? Either there is no reference here to what is in store for man — not in the kindness of the kingdom, not in the severity of the day of judgment, not in anything that happens at the resurrection — or, if there is any reference to what is in store for him, then it must be assigned to the very substances that make up the man for whom it is in store.

I have another question for these very deft conjurers of bones and sinews and nerves and graves. When something is stated about the soul, why do they not take the soul to mean something else and shift it to another meaning? For whenever a plain statement is made about a bodily substance, they will stubbornly take it in any sense you like except the one the word names. If what belongs to the body is figurative, why is what belongs to the soul not figurative as well? And since there is nothing allegorical in the things that belong to the soul, there is nothing allegorical in the things that belong to the body either. A man is body just as much as he is soul — so it is impossible for one of these natures to admit a figurative sense and the other to shut it out.

That is evidence enough from the prophetic Scriptures. Now I turn to the Gospels. But here too I have to meet the same clever trick first, put forward by people who maintain that the Lord, like the prophets, said everything by way of allegory — because it is written, “All these things Jesus spoke in parables, and without a parable he did not speak to them,” that is, to the Jews. The disciples too asked him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And the Lord gave them this answer: “That is why I speak to them in parables: because seeing, they do not see, and hearing, they do not hear” — as Isaiah prophesied. [j]

But if it was to the Jews that he spoke in parables, then it was not to everyone; and if not to everyone, it follows that it was not always and in everything that he used parables, but only in certain matters and with a particular sort of audience. And it was a particular sort of audience he had when he spoke to the Jews. True, he sometimes spoke to the disciples in parables as well. But notice how Scripture reports such a thing: “And he spoke a parable to them.” Which means he did not ordinarily speak to them that way; because if he always had, no special mention would have been made of his turning to that way of speaking.

Besides, there is not a parable you will not find either explained by the Lord himself — like the sower, which he takes to be about the handling of the word of God; or cleared up by a note from the writer of the Gospel, like the parable of the arrogant judge and the persistent widow, which is expressly applied to being in earnest in prayer; or plain enough to be understood on its own, like the parable of the fig tree that was spared a while in hopes it would improve, a picture of Jewish barrenness.

Now if even parables do not put out the light of the good news, how unlikely it is that plain sentences and statements, whose meaning cannot be mistaken, should mean anything other than what they say! And it is by such statements and sentences that the Lord sets out the last judgment, or the kingdom, or the resurrection. “It will be more tolerable,” he says, “for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.” And, “Tell them that the kingdom of God has come near.” And again, “It will be repaid to you at the resurrection of the just.”

Now if the mention of these events — the day of judgment, I mean, and the kingdom of God, and the resurrection — has a plain and absolute sense, so that nothing about them can be pressed into an allegory, then neither should those statements be forced into parables which describe how the kingdom of God and the judgment and the resurrection are arranged, how they proceed, and what is undergone in them. On the contrary, things that are meant for the body should be carefully understood in a bodily sense, not a spiritual one, since there is nothing figurative about them by nature. This is why we set it down beforehand as a first consideration, that the bodily substance of the soul as well as of the flesh is liable to the repayment which will have to be awarded for the two natures working together — so that the soul’s being a body of its own kind should not push out the bodily nature of the flesh by suggesting a retreat into figurative language, since both of them must be regarded as destined to take their part in the kingdom, and the judgment, and the resurrection. And now we go on to the particular proof of this point: that the bodily character of the flesh is what our Lord indicates whenever he mentions the resurrection, and that without taking anything away from the bodily nature of the soul — a point only a few have actually granted.

Let me begin with the passage where he says he has come “to seek and to save what was lost.” What do you suppose that lost thing is? Man, undoubtedly. The whole man, or only a part of him? The whole, of course. In fact, since the offense that ruined man was committed just as much by the soul’s prompting, out of craving, as by the flesh’s act, in the actual enjoyment, it has marked the whole man with the sentence passed on that offense, and so has fairly laid him open to destruction. He will therefore be saved whole, since it was whole that he was lost by sinning. [o]

Unless it is true that the sheep in the parable is “lost” apart from its body — in which case its recovery could be managed without the body. But since it was bodily substance as well as soul, making up the whole animal, that was carried home on the good shepherd’s shoulders, we have here beyond question an example of how a man is restored in both his natures. Otherwise how unworthy of God it would be to bring only half a man to salvation — and hardly that much! — when the open-handedness of princes in this world always claims for itself the credit of a pardon granted in full. Are we then to understand that the devil is the stronger at harming a man, since he ruins the whole of him, and that God is to be reckoned comparatively weak, since he does not relieve and help the man in his entire state? The apostle, though, suggests that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”

How, in fact, can a man count as saved when he can at the same time be called lost — lost, that is, in the flesh, but saved as to his soul? Unless their argument now requires that the soul be put in a “lost” condition so that it can be capable of salvation, on the ground that what is properly saved is what has been lost. We, however, understand the soul’s immortality in such a way that we believe it can be “lost” — not in the sense of being destroyed, but in the sense of being punished, that is, in hell. And if that is so, then it is not the soul that salvation will affect, since by its own nature it is already “safe” by reason of its immortality, but rather the flesh, which everyone readily agrees is liable to destruction. Or else, if the soul too can perish in that sense — that is, if it is not immortal, which is the flesh’s condition — then in all fairness that same condition ought to work in the flesh’s favor as well, since the flesh is equally mortal and equally liable to perish, and it is what perishes that the Lord means to save.

I do not care to follow the thread of this discussion out so far as to consider which of a man’s two natures it is that destruction lays claim to, provided that salvation is spread equally over the two substances and aims at him in respect of both. For notice: whichever substance you take a man to have perished in, in the other he does not perish. He will therefore be saved in the substance in which he does not perish, and will still obtain salvation in the one in which he does. There you have the restoring of the whole man: the Lord means to save the part of him that perishes, and of course he will not lose the part that cannot be lost. Who can go on doubting that both natures are safe, when one of them is to obtain salvation and the other is not to lose it?

And the Lord explains further what he means when he says, “I came not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.” What, I ask, is that will? “That of all he has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” Now, what had Christ received from the Father except what he had himself put on? Man, of course, in his weave of flesh and soul. So he will let neither of the parts he received perish — no, not any considerable portion of them, not the smallest fraction of either. If the flesh is only a poor fraction, as our opponents slightingly think, then the flesh is safe, because not a fraction of man is to perish; and no larger portion is in danger either, because every portion of man is equally safe in his keeping. But if he will not raise the flesh up too at the last day, then he will let more than a fraction of man perish — I will go so far as to say, in view of how important a part it is, almost the whole of him.

But when he repeats his words with still greater force — “And this is the Father’s will, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” — he is asserting the resurrection in its full extent. For he assigns to each of the two natures the reward suited to its services: to the flesh, because it was by the flesh that the Son was “seen”; and to the soul, because it was by the soul that he was “believed in.” Then you will say: “So the promise was given to those by whom Christ was ‘seen.’” Well, let that be so — only let the same hope run on from them to us. For if such fruit accrued then to the workings of the flesh and the soul in people who saw and therefore believed, how much more to us! For “more blessed,” Christ says, “are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” So even if the resurrection of the flesh had to be denied to them, it must at any rate be a fitting gift to us, who are the more blessed. For how could we be blessed if we were to perish in any part of us?