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| Chapter XXXI.—The preservation of our bodies is confirmed by the resurrection and ascension of Christ: the souls of the saints during the intermediate period are in a state of expectation of that time when they shall receive their perfect and consummated glory.
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Chapter XXXI.—The preservation of our
bodies is confirmed by the resurrection and ascension of Christ: the souls of
the saints during the intermediate period are in a state of expectation of that
time when they shall receive their perfect and consummated glory.
1. Since,
again, some who are reckoned among the orthodox go beyond the
pre-arranged plan for the exaltation of the just, and are ignorant of the
methods by which they are disciplined beforehand for incorruption, they
thus entertain heretical opinions. For the heretics, despising the
handiwork of God, and not admitting the salvation of their flesh, while
they also treat the promise of God contemptuously, and pass beyond God
altogether in the sentiments they form, affirm that immediately upon
their death they shall pass above the heavens and the Demiurge, and go to
the Mother (Achamoth) or to that Father whom they have feigned. Those
persons, therefore, who disallow a resurrection affecting the whole man
(universam reprobant resurrectionem), and as far as in them lies
remove it from the midst [of the Christian scheme], how can they be
wondered at, if again they know nothing as to the plan of the
resurrection? For they do not choose to understand, that if these things
are as they say, the Lord Himself, in whom they profess to believe, did
not rise again upon the third day; but immediately upon His expiring on
the cross, undoubtedly departed on high, leaving His body to the earth.
But the case was, that for three days He dwelt in the place where the
dead were, as the prophet says concerning Him: “And the Lord
remembered His dead saints who slept formerly in the land of sepulture;
and He descended to them, to rescue and save them.”4710
| 4710 See the note, book iii. xx.
4. | And the Lord Himself says, “As Jonas remained three
days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man
be in the heart of the earth.”4711
Then also
the apostle says, “But when He ascended, what is it but that He
also descended into the lower parts of the earth?”4712
This, too, David says when prophesying of Him, “And thou
hast delivered my soul from the nethermost hell;”4713
and on His rising again the third day, He said to Mary, who was
the first to see and to worship Him, “Touch Me not, for I have not
yet ascended to the Father; but go to the disciples, and say unto them, I
ascend unto My Father, and unto your Father.”4714
2. If, then, the Lord observed the law of
the dead, that He might become the first-begotten from the dead, and
tarried until the third day “in the lower parts of the
earth;”4715
then afterwards rising in
the flesh, so that He even showed the print of the nails to His
disciples,4716
He thus ascended to the
Father;—[if all these things occurred, I say], how must these men
not be put to confusion, who allege that “the lower parts”
refer to this world of ours, but that their inner man, leaving the body
here, ascends into the super-celestial place? For as the Lord “went
away in the midst of the shadow of death,”4717
where the souls of the dead were, yet afterwards arose in the
body, and after the resurrection was taken up [into heaven], it is
manifest that the souls of His disciples also, upon whose account the
Lord underwent these things, shall go away into the invisible place
allotted to them by God, and there remain until the resurrection,
awaiting that event; then receiving their bodies, and rising in their
entirety, that is bodily, just as the Lord arose, they shall come thus
into the presence of God. “For no disciple is above the Master, but
every one that is perfect shall be as his Master.”4718
As our Master, therefore, did not at once depart, taking flight
[to heaven], but awaited the time of His resurrection prescribed by the
Father, which had been also shown forth through Jonas, and rising again
after three days was taken up [to heaven];
so ought we also
to await the time of our resurrection prescribed by God and foretold by
the prophets, and so, rising, be taken up, as many as the Lord shall
account worthy of this [privilege].4719
| 4719 The five following chapters were omitted in the earlier
editions, but added by Feuardentius. Most mss., too, did not contain them.
It is probable that the scribes of the middle ages rejected them on
account of their inculcating millenarian notions, which had been long
extinct in the Church. Quotations from these five chapters have been
collected by Harvey from Syriac and Armenian mss. lately come to light.
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