The Middle Path of the Church’s Faith

But I beg you, as lovers of Christ, allow that the body is to be incorruptible and free of these conditions when it rises from the dead; and then let such things no longer be mentioned. Let us believe that in the resurrection even lawful intercourse between the sexes will no longer exist, since there would be a danger of unlawful intercourse creeping in if such things remained present and unforgotten. What is the use of carefully and minutely going over and discussing “the belly and what is below it”? You tell us that we live amid the delights of the flesh; but I see that it is your belief that we are not to give up such things even in the resurrection. Let us not deny that this very flesh in which we now live is to rise again; but neither let us make people think that the imperfections of the flesh are wrapped up in it and will come back with it. The flesh will indeed rise, this very flesh and not another. It will not change its nature, but it will lose its frailties and imperfections. Otherwise, if its frailties remain, it cannot even be immortal. And so, as I said, we keep clear of heresy, whether with you or without you. For the faith of the church, whose disciples we are, takes a middle path between two dangers. It does not deny the reality of the natural flesh and body when it rises from the dead; but neither does it claim, against the apostle’s words, that in the kingdom to come corruption will inherit incorruption. We therefore do not say that the flesh or body will rise, as you put it, with some of its members lost or cut off, but that the body will be whole and complete. It will have laid aside nothing but its corruption, its dishonor and its frailty, and will have cut away all the imperfections of mortality. Nothing of its own nature will be missing from that spiritual body which rises from the dead, except this corruption. [a]