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| The Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body Brought to Light by the Gospel. The Faintest Glimpses of Something Like It Occasionally Met with in Heathenism. Inconsistencies of Pagan Teaching. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
VI.
On the Resurrection of the
Flesh.
The heretics against whom this work is
directed, were the same who maintained that the demiurge, or the god
who created this world and gave the Mosaic dispensation, was opposed to
the supreme God. Hence they attached an idea of inherent corruption and
worthlessness to all his works—amongst the rest, to the flesh or
body of man; affirming that it could not rise again, and that the soul
alone was capable of inheriting immortality.7284
7284 See Bp. Kaye,
On Tertullian, p. 256. A full examination of the tenets of these
Gnostic heretics occurs in our author’s Treatise against
Marcion. An able review of Tertullian’s line of thought in
this work on the resurrection occurs in Neander’s
Antignostikus, Bohn’s
translation, ii. 478–486. [There is a decisive ebullition
of Montanistic fanaticism in cap. xi., and in the second chapter there
is a reference to the De Carne Christi. Date this treatise
circa a.d. 208.] |
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
————————————
Chapter I.—The Doctrine of the
Resurrection of the Body Brought to Light by the Gospel. The Faintest
Glimpses of Something Like It Occasionally Met with in
Heathenism. Inconsistencies of Pagan Teaching.
The resurrection of the
dead is the Christian’s trust.7285 By it we are
believers. To the belief of this (article of the faith) truth compels
us—that truth which God reveals, but the crowd derides, which
supposes that nothing will survive after death. And yet they do
honour7286 to their dead, and
that too in the most expensive way according to their bequest,
and with the daintiest banquets which the seasons can produce,7287
7287 Pro temporibus
esculentorum. | on the presumption that those whom they
declare to be incapable of all perception still retain an
appetite.7288 But (let the crowd
deride): I on my side must deride it still more, especially when it
burns up its dead with harshest inhumanity, only to pamper them
immediately afterwards with gluttonous satiety, using the selfsame
fires to honour them and to insult them. What piety is that which mocks
its victims with cruelty? Is it sacrifice or insult (which the
crowd offers), when it burns its offerings to those it has already
burnt?7289
7289 Cum crematis
cremat. | But the wise, too,
join with the vulgar crowd in their opinion sometimes. There is nothing
after death, according to the school of Epicurus. After death all
things come to an end, even death itself, says Seneca to like
effect. It is satisfactory, however, that the no less important
philosophy of Pythagoras and Empedocles, and the Plantonists, take the
contrary view, and declare the soul to be immortal; affirming,
moreover, in a way which most nearly approaches (to our own
doctrine),7290
7290 Adhuc proxime:
“Christianæ scilicet doctrinæ.” Oehler. | that the soul
actually returns into bodies, although not the same bodies, and not
even those of human beings invariably: thus Euphorbus is supposed
to have passed into Phythagoras, and Homer into a peacock. They firmly
pronounced the soul’s renewal7291 to be in a
body,7292 (deeming it) more tolerable to change the
quality (of the corporeal state) than to deny it wholly: they at least
knocked at the door of truth, although they entered not. Thus the
world, with all its errors, does not ignore the resurrection of the
dead.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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