Against Marcion 5.10

Let us return now to the resurrection, a subject on which we have given satisfaction elsewhere in a volume of its own, resisting all the heretics; but we do not fail here either, for the sake of those who do not know that little work. “What will they do,” he says, “who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise?” Let that practice see to itself: the Kalends of February, perhaps, will answer for it, praying for the dead. So do not at once brand the apostle as its new author or its supporter, He mentions it so as to uphold the resurrection of the flesh all the more firmly, inasmuch as those who were being baptized for the dead to no purpose did so out of faith in the resurrection. We have him elsewhere laying down one baptism. So to be dipped “for the dead” is to be dipped for bodies (for we have shown that it is the body that is dead) …: “What will they do who are baptized for bodies, if bodies do not rise?” And so we rightly fix our footing here, since the apostle introduced his second discussion also about the body: “But some will say, ‘How will the dead rise? And with what body will they come?’” For once the resurrection, which was being denied, had been defended, it followed to discuss the quality of the body, which could not be seen. But on that point one should engage with others. For Marcion, who does not admit the resurrection of the flesh at all and promises salvation to the soul alone, makes the question one not of quality but of substance. Moreover, he is most plainly refuted even by what the apostle discusses about the quality of the body for the sake of those who say, “How will the dead rise? And with what body will they come?” For he has already proclaimed that the body will rise, if he has discussed the quality of the body. Then, if he puts forward the examples of a grain of wheat or some such thing, to which God gives a body as he wills; if he says that each seed has its own body, so that there is one flesh of men and another of cattle and birds, and heavenly bodies and earthly ones, and one glory of the sun and another of the moon and another of the stars: does he not point to a fleshly and bodily resurrection, which he commends by fleshly and bodily examples? Does he not also pledge it from that God from whom the examples come? “So also is the resurrection,” he says. How? As a grain is sown a body, the body rises. In short, he called the dissolving of the body into the earth a sowing, because “it is sown in corruption, … in honour, in power.” That to which the one sequence belongs in the dissolving is that to which the other belongs in the resurrection: the body, that is. [As the grain too.] But if you take away from the resurrection the body that you gave to the dissolving, where will the difference in outcome lie? Likewise, if it is sown an animal body and rises a spiritual one: even if the soul or the spirit has some body of its own, so that “animal body” might seem to mean the soul and “spiritual body” the spirit, he does not therefore say that the soul will be spirit in the resurrection, but that the body, which, by being born with the soul and living by the soul, can be called “animal,” will be spiritual, when it rises through the Spirit into eternity. In short, if it is not the soul but the flesh that is sown in corruption, when it is dissolved into the earth, then the animal body will not be the soul but the flesh, which was the animal body, since it is made spiritual from being animal, as he also says below: “It is not the spiritual that is first ….” For this is why he laid a foundation about Christ himself: “The first man Adam became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit”; although the most foolish heretic did not want it so. For he put “the last Lord” in place of “the last Adam,” afraid, of course, that if he kept “the last Adam” we should argue that Christ belongs to the same one, in the last Adam, as the first Adam does. But the forgery shines through. For why is there a first Adam, unless because there is also a last Adam? Things do not stand in order with one another unless they are alike and of the same name or substance or author. For even among different things there can be one that is first and another that is last, but of one author. But if the author is different too, then even though the other can indeed be called last, yet what he brought in is a first, and only “last” if it is like the first; and it is not like the first, because it is not of the same author. In the same way he will be refuted on the word “man.” “The first man,” he says, “was from the ground, earthly; the second, the Lord from heaven.” Why second, if not a man, as the first was? Or is the first a lord too, if the second is? But enough: if in the Gospel he admits Christ as the Son of Man, he will not be able to deny that he is both man and, as man, Adam. What follows also hems him in. For when the apostle says, “As was the one from the earth,” the man, of course, “so are those who are earthly,” men of course, then it follows, “As is the man from heaven, so are the men who are from heaven.” For he could not have set against earthly men anything but heavenly men, so as to distinguish more carefully their state and hope while keeping the name in common. For in state and hope he calls them earthly and heavenly, yet men alike, who according to their end are reckoned either in Adam or in Christ. And so now, to urge them to the heavenly hope, he says, “As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly,” referring not to that substance of the resurrection but to the rule of life of the present time. For he says “let us bear,” not “we shall bear”: by way of precept, not of promise, wanting us to walk as he himself walked, and to depart from the image of the earthly, that is, the old man, which is the working of the flesh. In short, what does he add? “For this I say, brothers, that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God”: that is, the works of flesh and blood, from which he also took away the kingdom of God when writing to the Galatians, since he is accustomed elsewhere too to put the substance for the works of the substance, as when he says that those who are in the flesh cannot please God. For when shall we be able to please God, except while we are in this flesh? There is no other time for working, I think. But if, though placed in the flesh, we flee the works of the flesh, then we shall not be “in the flesh”: not in the sense that we are outside the substance of the flesh, but that we are outside its guilt. And if under the name of flesh we are told to put off the works, not the substance, of the flesh, then under the name of flesh the kingdom of God is denied to the works of the flesh, not to the substance of the flesh. For what is condemned is not that in which evil is done, but what is done. To give poison is a crime; yet the cup in which it is given is not guilty. So too the body is the vessel of fleshly works; but it is the soul that mixes in it the poison of some evil deed. And what sort of thing is it, if the soul, the author of the works of the flesh, is to earn the kingdom of God through the expiation of what it committed in the body, while the body, merely its servant, remains under condemnation? Is the cup to be punished while the poisoner goes free? And yet we do not claim the kingdom of God for the flesh, but the resurrection of its substance, as the door of the kingdom through which it is entered. For resurrection is one thing and the kingdom another. First comes the resurrection, then the kingdom. So we say that the flesh rises, but obtains the kingdom when changed. “For the dead will rise incorrupt” (those, namely, who had been corrupted when their bodies fell into ruin) “and we shall be changed in an atom of time, in the twinkling of an eye. For this corruptible” (the apostle was holding his own flesh, surely, when he said it) “must put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality” (so that the substance may be made fit for the kingdom of God; “for we shall be like the angels”). This will be the change of the flesh, but of flesh raised up. Or if there is to be none, how will it put on incorruption and immortality? So, made something else through the change, it will then obtain the kingdom of God, no longer flesh and blood, but whatever body God has given it. And so the apostle rightly says, “Flesh and blood will not obtain the kingdom of God,” ascribing this to the change that follows the resurrection. And if then will come to pass the word that is written with the Creator, “Where, O death, is your contention? Where, O death, is your sting?” (and this word is the Creator's, through the prophet Hosea), then the thing too, that is, the kingdom, will belong to him whose word comes to pass in the kingdom. Nor does he give thanks to any other God for having granted us to carry off the victory, over death of course, than to him from whom he received the word that mocks death and triumphs over it.