Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
In the very members by which we were perishing, working the things of corruption, in these same members we are made alive, working the things of the Spirit. For flesh is capable both of corruption and of incorruption, just as it is capable both of death and of life; and these give way to one another, and neither of the two remains fixed in place forever, but each expels the other in turn, and while one holds sway, the other fades away. If, then, death, seizing hold of a man, chased life out of him and left him showing as a corpse, how much more does life, taking possession of a man, expel death from him and bring the living man back to God? For if death caused a man to die, why should life, once it arrives, fail to quicken the man? As the prophet says, "Death has been swallowed up unto victory," and again, "God shall wipe every tear away from off every countenance." That earlier life was granted not through the Spirit but through the breath. For the breath of life, which also renders man a living creature, is one matter, while the life-giving Spirit, which renders him a spiritual creature, is quite another. And on this account the same Isaiah declares, "Thus speaks the Lord, who stretched out the heaven and set it firm, who founded the earth and all that fills it, and who gives breath to the folk upon it, and Spirit to them who tread upon it" — meaning breath as granted in common to every person dwelling on earth, while Spirit belongs properly to those who trample earthly cravings beneath their feet. For this cause the same prophet, marking out these foretold matters, again declares: "A Spirit shall issue forth from before me, and I have fashioned all breath." Here he assigns the Spirit as belonging properly to God, whom in the latter days he poured forth upon mankind by the adoption of sons, while showing the breath to belong in common to whatever has been shaped and formed. Now the thing formed is one matter, and its former is another. The breath, then, is fleeting, but the Spirit endures without end. And the breath swells briefly, lingers a season, then withdraws, abandoning its former dwelling wholly bereft of spirit. But the Spirit envelops man both inwardly and outwardly, abiding continually and never departing from him. Yet, as the apostle states, "that which is first is not the spiritual, but rather the natural" — addressing this, so to speak, to us mortals — "and only afterward the spiritual," following reason's order. For man had first to be shaped, and, once shaped, to receive a soul, and only thereafter to receive fellowship with the Spirit in this manner. And for this cause the first Adam was fashioned by the Lord into "a living soul," while the second Adam became "a spirit that gives life." So then, he who was fashioned a living soul, by turning toward the worse, forfeited life; while conversely that same man, on returning toward what is superior and taking on the life-giving Spirit, shall recover life.
For it is not one thing that perishes and a different thing that revives, just as it is not one thing lost and a different thing recovered; rather it was that identical sheep once lost which the Lord set out to seek. What, then, was undergoing death? Surely the substance of the flesh, which had forfeited the breath of life and had turned breathless and lifeless. This, then, is what the Lord came to revive, so that, just as in Adam we all perish being natural creatures, in Christ we might live being spiritual ones — casting off not God's own handiwork but the cravings of the flesh, and putting on the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle writes in his letter to the Colossians: "Mortify, therefore, whatever in you belongs to the earth." And he himself spells out what these are: "fornication, impurity, passion, base desire, and covetousness, which amounts to idol-worship." The Apostle declares that such things must be discarded, and states that those practicing them, being mere flesh and blood, are unable to inherit God's kingdom. For their soul, tilting toward the worse and sinking into earthly cravings, has taken on the very label of those cravings — which he tells us to strip away when he states again within that same letter: "Putting off from yourselves the old self together with its practices." Yet in stating this he was not annulling the ancient handiwork; otherwise we would have had to destroy ourselves outright to be freed from that earlier manner of living.
But the Apostle himself, this very man shaped within the womb who had emerged out of the womb, addressed us — and having acknowledged that abiding in the flesh is fruitful labor for him, in his letter to the Philippians he declares the same thing, saying, "the fruit of my labor is bodily wellbeing." For what other fruit could there be of the Spirit, who does not himself appear, than to ripen the flesh and render it fit for incorruption? "To go on living, then, in the flesh — that, for me, is fruitful labor." He was certainly not disdaining the substance of the flesh in saying this, any more than when he wrote, "Putting off from yourselves the old self together with its practices," he was clarifying the discarding of our earlier way of living, the part that ages and decays; and for that reason he continued, "and clothing yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed toward full understanding after the likeness of its maker." In stating, then, "which is being renewed toward full understanding," he indicated that this same man, formerly held in darkness — that is, without knowledge of God — is now renewed through the understanding granted him; for acquaintance with God restores man. And in stating "after the likeness of its maker," he clarified the recapitulation of that same man who from the start had been shaped after God's likeness. And that it was this identical Apostle who had emerged from the womb — namely, the same primeval substance of flesh — he states himself in his letter to the Galatians: "But when God, who set me apart even from my mother's belly and summoned me through his favor, was pleased to unveil his Son within me, so that I might announce him among the nations." It was not one man who had emerged from the womb, as noted above, and a separate man who announced God's Son; rather that same man, once held in darkness and once a persecutor of the Church, after a disclosure had reached him out of heaven and the Lord had conversed with him — as we set out in the third book — went on to announce God's Son, Christ Jesus, executed beneath Pontius Pilate's authority, his earlier darkness having been dispelled by the understanding that followed. It is exactly like those sightless men whom the Lord restored: their blindness was taken away, yet they got back the very same sound eyes, and through those identical eyes with which they had previously failed to see, they now gained sight, only the darkness being lifted from their vision while the substance of the eyes remained intact; so that by the very eyes through which they had not seen, now seeing once more, they gave thanks to the one who had given their sight back to them. So too with the man whose shriveled hand he restored, and indeed with everyone he healed without exception: they did not swap out the members granted them from the womb at their beginning, but recovered those very same members, made sound again.
For the Word of God, craftsman of all things, who also shaped man at the beginning, on finding his own handiwork wrecked by wickedness, restored it in every respect — sometimes touching each single member, exactly as it exists within his handiwork, and sometimes by setting the whole man right at once, whole and complete, readying him perfect for himself unto rising again. For what purpose would he have needed to mend the bodily members and bring them back to their true character, if those pieces mended by him were destined never to be saved? For had the benefit he bestowed lasted only a season, he would have accomplished nothing of consequence for those he restored. Or how could the flesh be incapable of the life proceeding from him, once it obtained restoration at his hands? For life arrives by way of restoration, and incorruption arrives by way of life. He, then, who grants restoration, that same one likewise grants life; and he who grants life, that same one likewise bestows incorruption upon the work of his own hands.