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| Even the Metaphorical Descriptions of This Subject in the Scriptures Point to the Bodily Resurrection, the Only Sense Which Secures Their Consistency and Dignity.
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Chapter
XXVI.—Even the Metaphorical Descriptions of This Subject in the
Scriptures Point to the Bodily Resurrection, the Only Sense Which
Secures Their Consistency and Dignity.
To a preceding objection, that the Scriptures are
allegorical, I have still one answer to make—that it is open to
us also to defend the bodily character of the resurrection by means of
the language of the prophets, which is equally figurative. For consider
that primeval sentence which God spake when He called man earth;
saying, “Earth thou art, and to earth shalt thou
return.”7461
In respect, of
course, to his fleshly
substance, which had been taken out of the ground, and which was the
first to receive the name of man, as we have already shown,7462
does not this passage give one instruction
to interpret in relation to the flesh also whatever of wrath or
of grace God has determined for the earth, because, strictly speaking,
the earth is not exposed to His judgment, since it has never done any
good or evil? “Cursed,” no doubt, it was, for it drank the
blood of man;7463
but even this was
as a figure of homicidal flesh. For if the earth has to suffer either
joy or injury, it is simply on man’s account, that he may
suffer the joy or the sorrow through the events which happen to his
dwelling-place, whereby he will rather have to pay the penalty which,
simply on his account, even the earth must suffer. When,
therefore, God even threatens the earth, I would prefer saying that He
threatens the flesh: so likewise, when He makes a promise to the earth,
I would rather understand Him as promising the flesh; as in that
passage of David: “The Lord is King, let the earth be
glad,”7464
—meaning the
flesh of the saints, to which appertains the enjoyment of the kingdom
of God. Then he afterwards says: “The earth saw and trembled; the
mountains melted like wax at the presence of the
Lord,”—meaning, no doubt the flesh of the wicked; and (in a
similar sense) it is written: “For they shall look on Him whom
they pierced.”7465
If indeed it will
be thought that both these passages were pronounced simply of the
element earth, how can it be consistent that it should shake and melt
at the presence of the Lord, at whose royal dignity it before exulted?
So again in Isaiah, “Ye shall eat the good of the
land,”7466
the expression
means the blessings which await the flesh when in the kingdom of God it
shall be renewed, and made like the angels, and waiting to obtain the
things “which neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, and which
have not entered into the heart of man.”7467
Otherwise, how vain that God should invite men to obedience by the
fruits of the field and the elements of this life, when He dispenses
these to even irreligious men and blasphemers; on a general condition
once for all made to man, “sending rain on the good and on the
evil, and making His sun to shine on the just and on the
unjust!”7468
Happy, no doubt, is
faith, if it is to obtain gifts which the enemies of God and Christ not
only use, but even abuse, “worshipping the creature itself in
opposition to the Creator!”7469
You will
reckon, (I suppose) onions and truffles among earth’s bounties,
since the Lord declares that “man shall not live on bread
alone!”7470
In this way the
Jews lose heavenly blessings, by confining their hopes to earthly ones,
being ignorant of the promise of heavenly bread, and of the oil of
God’s unction, and the wine of the Spirit, and of that water of
life which has its vigour from the vine of Christ. On exactly the same
principle, they consider the special soil of Judæa to be that very
holy land, which ought rather to be interpreted of the Lord’s
flesh, which, in all those who put on Christ, is thenceforward the holy
land; holy indeed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, truly flowing
with milk and honey by the sweetness of His assurance, truly
Judæan by reason of the friendship of God. For “he is
not a Jew which is one outwardly, but he who is one
inwardly.”7471
In the same way it
is that both God’s temple and Jerusalem (must be understood) when
it is said by Isaiah: “Awake, awake, O Jerusalem! put on the
strength of thine arm; awake, as in thine earliest
time,”7472
that is to say, in
that innocence which preceded the fall into sin. For how can words of
this kind of exhortation and invitation be suitable for that Jerusalem
which killed the prophets, and stoned those that were sent to them, and
at last crucified its very Lord? Neither indeed is salvation promised
to any one land at all, which must needs pass away with the fashion of
the whole world. Even if anybody should venture strongly to contend
that paradise is the holy land, which it may be possible to designate
as the land of our first parents Adam and Eve, it will even then follow
that the restoration of paradise will seem to be promised to the flesh,
whose lot it was to inhabit and keep it, in order that man may be
recalled thereto just such as he was driven from it.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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