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| The Jewish Sadducees a Link Between the Pagan Philosophers and the Heretics on This Doctrine. Its Fundamental Importance Asserted. The Soul Fares Better Than the Body, in Heretical Estimation, as to Its Future State. Its Extinction, However, Was Held by One Lucan. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter II.—The Jewish Sadducees a Link Between the Pagan
Philosophers and the Heretics on This Doctrine. Its Fundamental
Importance Asserted. The Soul Fares Better Than the Body, in Heretical
Estimation, as to Its Future State. Its Extinction, However, Was
Held by One Lucan.
Since there is even within the confines of
God’s Church7293 a sect which is
more nearly allied to the Epicureans than to the prophets, an
opportunity is afforded us of knowing7294
what estimate Christ forms of the (said sect, even the) Sadducees. For
to Christ was it reserved to lay bare everything which before was
concealed: to impart certainty to doubtful points; to accomplish
those of which men had had but a foretaste; to give present reality to
the objects of prophecy; and to furnish not only by Himself, but
actually in Himself, certain proofs of the resurrection of the dead. It
is, however, against other Sadducees that we have now to prepare
ourselves, but still partakers of their doctrine. For instance, they
allow a moiety of the resurrection; that is, simply of the soul,
despising the flesh, just as they also do the Lord of the flesh
Himself. No other persons, indeed, refuse to concede to the
substance of the body its recovery from death,7295
heretical inventors of a second deity. Driven then, as they are,
to give a different dispensation to Christ, so that He may not be
accounted as belonging to the Creator, they have achieved their first
error in the article of His very flesh; contending with Marcion
and Basilides that it possessed no reality; or else holding, after the
heretical tenets of Valentinus, and according to Apelles, that it had
qualities peculiar to itself. And so it follows that they shut out from
all recovery from death that substance of which they say that Christ
did not partake, confidently assuming that it furnishes the strongest
presumption against the resurrection, since the flesh is already risen
in Christ. Hence it is that we have ourselves previously issued our
volume On the flesh of Christ; in which we both furnish proofs
of its reality,7296 in opposition to
the idea of its being a vain phantom; and claim for it a human nature
without any peculiarity of condition—such a nature as has marked
out Christ to be both man and the Son of man. For when we prove
Him to be invested with the flesh and in a bodily condition, we at the
same time refute heresy, by establishing the rule that no other being
than the Creator must be believed to be God, since we show that Christ,
in whom God is plainly discerned, is precisely of such a nature as the
Creator promised that He should be. Being thus refuted touching
God as the Creator, and Christ as the Redeemer of the flesh, they will
at once be defeated also on the resurrection of the flesh. No
procedure, indeed, can be more reasonable. And we affirm that
controversy with heretics should in most cases be conducted in this
way. For due method requires that conclusions should always be drawn
from the most important premises, in order that there be a prior
agreement on the essential point, by means of which the particular
question under review may be said to have been determined. Hence it is
that the heretics, from their conscious weakness, never conduct
discussion in an orderly manner. They are well aware how hard is their
task in insinuating the existence of a second god, to the disparagement
of the Creator of the world, who is known to all men naturally by the
testimony of His works, who is before all others in the
mysteries7297 of His
being, and is especially manifested in the prophets;7298
7298 In
prædicationibus: “in the declarations of the
prophets.” | then, under the pretence of considering a
more urgent inquiry, namely man’s own salvation—a question
which transcends all others in its importance—they begin with
doubts about the resurrection; for there is greater difficulty in
believing the resurrection of the flesh than the oneness of the Deity.
In this way, after they have deprived the discussion of the advantages
of its logical order, and have embarrassed it with doubtful
insinuations7299 in disparagement of
the flesh, they gradually draw their argument to the reception of a
second god after destroying and changing the very ground of our hopes.
For when once a man is fallen or removed from the sure hope which he
had placed in the Creator, he is easily led away to the object of a
different hope, whom however of his own accord he can hardly help
suspecting. Now it is by a discrepancy in the promises that a
difference of gods is insinuated. How many do we thus see drawn into
the net vanquished on the resurrection of the flesh, before they could
carry their point on the oneness of the Deity! In respect, then, of the
heretics, we have shown with what weapons we ought to meet them. And
indeed we have already encountered them in treatises severally directed
against them: on the one only God and His Christ, in our work against
Marcion,7300
7300 See books ii.
and iii. of our Anti-Marcion. | on the Lord’s
flesh, in our book against the four heresies,7301
7301 He means the De
Carne Christi. |
for the special purpose of opening the way to the present inquiry: so
that we have now only to discuss the resurrection of the flesh,
(treating it) just as if it were uncertain in regard to ourselves also,
that is, in the system of the Creator.7302
7302 Tanquam penes nos
quoque incerta, id est penes Creatorem. This obscure clause is very
variously read. One reading, approved by Fr. Junius, has:
“Tanquam penes nos incertum, dum sit quoque certum penes
Creatorem,” q.d., “As a subject full of
uncertainty as respects ourselves, although of an opposite character in
relation to the Creator;” whatever that may mean. |
Because many persons are uneducated; still more are of faltering faith,
and several are weak-minded: these will have to be instructed,
directed, strengthened, inasmuch as the very oneness of the Godhead
will be defended along with the maintenance of our doctrine.7303 For if the resurrection of the flesh be
denied, that prime article of the faith is shaken; if it be
asserted, that is established. There is no need, I suppose, to treat of
the soul’s safety; for nearly all the heretics, in whatever way
they conceive of it, certainly refrain from denying that. We may
ignore a certain Lucan,7304
7304 Compare Adv. Omnes
Hæreses, c. vi. | who does not spare
even this part of our nature, which he follows Aristotle in reducing to
dissolution, and substitutes some other thing in lieu of it. Some third
nature it is which, according to him, is to rise again, neither soul
nor flesh; in other words, not man, but a bear perhaps—for
instance, Lucan himself.7305
7305 Varro’s words
help us to understand this rough joke: “Ursi Lucana
origo,” etc. (De Ling. Lat. v. 100.) | Even he7306
7306 Iste: rather his
subject than his person. | has received from us a copious notice in our
book on the entire condition of the soul,7307
the especial immortality of which we there maintain, whilst we also
both acknowledge the dissolution of the flesh alone, and emphatically
assert its restitution. Into the body of that work were collected
whatever points we elsewhere had to reserve from the pressure of
incidental causes. For as it is my custom to touch some questions but
lightly on their first occurrence, so I am obliged also to postpone the
consideration of them, until the outline can be filled in with complete
detail, and the deferred points be taken up on their own
merits.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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