Chapter XXXVIII.--Christ, by Raising the Dead, Attested in a Practical Way the Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Flesh.
After the Lord's words, what are we to think of the purport of His actions, when He raises dead persons from their biers and their graves? To what end did He do so? If it was only for the mere exhibition of His power, or to afford the temporary favour of restoration to life, it was really no great matter for Him to raise men to die over again. If, however, as was the truth, it was rather to put in secure keeping men's belief in a future resurrection, then it must follow from the particular form of His own examples, that the said resurrection will be a bodily one. I can never allow it to be said that the resurrection of the future, being destined for the soul only, did then receive these preliminary illustrations of a raising of the flesh, simply because it would have been impossible to have shown the resurrection of an invisible soul except by the resuscitation of a visible substance. They have but a poor knowledge of God, who suppose Him to be only capable of doing what comes within the compass of their own thoughts; and after all, they cannot but know full well what His capability has ever been, if they only make acquaintance with the writings of John. For unquestionably he, who has exhibited to our sight the martyrs' hitherto disembodied souls resting under the altar, [7534] was quite able to display them before our eyes rising without a body of flesh. I, however, for my part prefer (believing) that it is impossible for God to practise deception (weak as He only could be in respect of artifice), from any fear of seeming to have given preliminary proofs of a thing in a way which is inconsistent with His actual disposal of the thing; nay more, from a fear that, since He was not powerful enough to show us a sample of the resurrection without the flesh, He might with still greater infirmity be unable to display (by and by) the full accomplishment of the sample in the self-same substance of the flesh. No example, indeed, is greater than the thing of which it is a sample. Greater, however, it is, if souls with their body are to be raised as the evidence of their resurrection without the body, so as that the entire salvation of man in soul and body should become a guarantee for only the half, the soul; whereas the condition in all examples is, that which would be deemed the less--I mean the resurrection of the soul only--should be the foretaste, as it were, of the rising of the flesh also at its appointed time. And therefore, according to our estimate of the truth, those examples of dead persons who were raised by the Lord were indeed a proof of the resurrection both of the flesh and of the soul,--a proof, in fact, that this gift was to be denied to neither substance. Considered, however, as examples only, they expressed all the less significance--less, indeed, than Christ will express at last--for they were not raised up for glory and immortality, but only for another death.
[7534] Rev. vi. 9-11.
Chapter XXXIX.--Additional Evidence Afforded to Us in the Acts of the Apostles.
The Acts of the Apostles, too, attest [7535] the resurrection. Now the apostles had nothing else to do, at least among the Jews, than to explain [7536] the Old Testament and confirm [7537] the New, and above all, to preach God in Christ. Consequently they introduced nothing new concerning the resurrection, besides announcing it to the glory of Christ: in every other respect it had been already received in simple and intelligent faith, without any question as to what sort of resurrection it was to be, and without encountering any other opponents than the Sadducees. So much easier was it to deny the resurrection altogether, than to understand it in an alien sense. You find Paul confessing his faith before the chief priests, under the shelter of the chief captain, [7538] among the Sadducees and the Pharisees: "Men and brethren," he says, "I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am now called in question by you," [7539] --referring, of course, to the nation's hope; in order to avoid, in his present condition, as an apparent transgressor of the law, being thought to approach to the Sadducees in opinion on the most important article of the faith--even the resurrection. That belief, therefore, in the resurrection which he would not appear to impair, he really confirmed in the opinion of the Pharisees, since he rejected the views of the Sadducees, who denied it. In like manner, before Agrippa also, he says that he was advancing "none other things than those which the prophets had announced." [7540] He was therefore maintaining just such a resurrection as the prophets had foretold. He mentions also what is written by "Moses," touching the resurrection of the dead; (and in so doing) he must have known that it would be a rising in the body, since requisition will have to be made therein of the blood of man. [7541] He declared it then to be of such a character as the Pharisees had admitted it, and such as the Lord had Himself maintained it, and such too as the Sadducees refused to believe it--such refusal leading them indeed to an absolute rejection of the whole verity. Nor had the Athenians previously understood Paul to announce any other resurrection. [7542] They had, in fact, derided his announcement; but they would have indulged no such derision if they had heard from him nothing but the restoration of the soul, for they would have received that as the very common anticipation of their own native philosophy. But when the preaching of the resurrection, of which they had previously not heard, by its absolute novelty excited the heathen, and a not unnatural incredulity in so wonderful a matter began to harass the simple faith with many discussions, then the apostle took care in almost every one of his writings to strengthen men's belief of this Christian hope, pointing out that there was such a hope, and that it had not as yet been realized, and that it would be in the body,--a point which was the especial object of inquiry, and, what was besides a doubtful question, not in a body of a different kind from ours.
[7535] Tertullian always refers to this book by a plural phrase.
[7536] Resignandi.
[7537] Consignandi.
[7538] Sub tribuno.
[7539] Acts xxiii. 6.
[7540] Acts xxvi. 22.
[7541] Gen. ix. 5, 6.
[7542] Acts xvii. 32.