The Women Jerome Mocks

Since, then, in regard to our hope of the resurrection, Christ is set forth throughout as the original pattern, since he is the firstborn of those who rise and the head of every creature, as it is written, “Who is the head of all, the firstborn from the dead, so that in all things he might have the first place,” why do we stir up these empty quarrels about words and these clashes of evil suspicions? Does not the faith of the church consist in the confession I have set out above? And is it not plain that people are moved to accuse others not by a difference of belief but by a perverse disposition? At this point, however, in arguing about the resurrection of the flesh, our friend, as is his habit, mixes the ridiculous and the farcical with the serious. He says: “Some poor creatures of the female sex among us are fond of asking what good the resurrection will do them. They touch their breasts, stroke their beardless faces, slap their thighs and their bellies, and ask whether this poor weak body is to rise again. No, they say; if we are to be like angels, we will have the nature of angels.” Who the poor women are whom he takes to task like this, and whether they deserve his attacks, he knows best. Perhaps he counts himself one of those who are bound to preach that it is not our part to attack another out of revenge, and yet thinks that in this case he is right to attack people who have given him no cause for revenge. Or perhaps he thinks it no business of his to make sure that weak women of his own company are attacked only for real causes, and not for false and invented reasons like these. Of all this, I say, he himself is the best judge. For us it is enough to act as he said he would act: we will not return evil for evil. But it is plain that a man who is angry with a woman because she says she hopes not to have a frail body in the resurrection is of the opinion that the frailties of the body will remain. Only, what then, we ask, are we to make of the words of the apostle: “It is sown in weakness, it will be raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it will be raised a spiritual body”? What frailty can you suppose to exist in a spiritual body? It is to rise in power; how then is it to be frail again? If it is frail, how can it be in power? Are not those poor women more right than you after all, when they say that their bodily frailty cannot have dominion over them in the world beyond? Why should you mock them, when they are only following the apostle’s words: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality”? The apostles never taught that the body that would rise from the dead would be frail, but on the contrary that it would rise in power and in glory. Where does this opinion you now bring forward come from? Perhaps you got it from some of your Jews, and it is now to be published as a new law for the church, so that we may learn their ways. For the Jews do in fact hold an opinion like this about the resurrection: they believe that they will rise, but in such a way that they will enjoy all the delights of the flesh, its luxuries, and the other pleasures of the body. And what else can this “bodily frailty” of yours mean, but members given over to corruption, appetites stirred up and lusts set on fire? [a]