Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
We possess the foremost illustration of resurrection in those Christ raised up from among the dead, and our hearts are proven capable of unending life by the very fact that they now welcome the Spirit of God. Let those who claim otherwise — namely, who work against their own deliverance — answer us this: in what bodies did the deceased daughter of the high priest, and the widow's son being borne out lifeless near the gate, and Lazarus, already four days in the tomb, rise once more? Clearly, in those exact bodies in which they had perished. For if it were not in those identical bodies, then those who rose were not the same persons who had died. For, as it is written, the Lord grasped the dead girl's hand and told her, "Little one, I tell you, get up," and the dead girl rose and sat, and he directed that she be given something to eat, and restored her to her mother. And he summoned Lazarus in a great voice, saying, "Lazarus, out here," and the dead man emerged, we are told, his feet and hands wrapped in burial bands — a figure of the man bound fast by his own sins. And on this account the Lord said, "Untie him and let him go free." Just as those healed were healed in those very same limbs which had suffered beforehand, so too the dead were raised again in those same bodies, their own limbs and frames receiving the cure and that life granted by the Lord — the Lord thereby foreshadowing the eternal by means of the temporal, and demonstrating that he alone is able both to bring restoration to his handiwork and to grant it life, so that his promise concerning rising from death might likewise be trusted. In the same way, at the last, when the Lord's final trumpet is sounded, the dead lying within their tombs shall rise up, and shall hear the summons of the Son of Man, and shall step forward — those who have practiced good, unto a rising into life, and those who have practiced evil, unto a rising into condemnation.
Empty, then, and truly pitiable are those who refuse to view matters so plain and evident, but instead run from truth's light, blinding themselves as tragic Oedipus did. And just as wrestlers untrained in the sport, grappling an opponent, grab hold with both hands of some single part of the body, and by gripping it fall over, and while falling suppose themselves victorious, because they cling stubbornly to that one limb first seized, even while beaten in every other respect and made a mockery — so likewise the heretics, asserting that "what is fleshly and bloody is unable to obtain a share in God's kingdom," wrench these few words free from Paul, and grasp neither the Apostle's intent nor weigh the force of his language, but, clutching the bare wording by itself, expire still gripping it, upending, insofar as it rests with them, God's entire design. For they insist this was spoken specifically of the flesh as such, rather than of fleshly deeds, as if the Apostle were at odds with himself. For he states directly afterward within that same letter, speaking pointedly of the flesh: "For this decaying thing must be clothed with the undecaying, and this dying thing must be clothed with deathlessness. And once this dying thing has been clothed with deathlessness, then the saying inscribed shall come to pass: Death has been swallowed into triumph. Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O death, is your triumph?" These words will be spoken fittingly at that moment, when this dying and decaying flesh, over which death likewise exerts a sort of rule, rising into life, shall have been clothed with the undecaying and the deathless. For only then will death truly be overcome, once the flesh held under its rule has escaped that rule entirely. And again, addressing the Philippians, he states: "Yet ours is a homeland in the heavens, out of which we likewise look for a Deliverer, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall reshape the body belonging to our lowly state, making it match the body of his splendor, through the operation whereby he can subdue all things beneath himself." What, then, is this lowly body that the Lord will reshape, making it match his glorious body? Though mortal and decaying, it turns deathless and undecaying — not by virtue of its own nature, but through the Lord's operation, who has power to dress the dying in deathlessness and the decaying in the undecaying. And for this cause he states in his second letter to the Corinthians: "So that what is mortal may be engulfed by life. Now the one preparing us precisely for this is God, who has furnished us the down payment of the Spirit" — speaking here quite unmistakably of the flesh, since neither soul nor spirit is subject to death. But the mortal is engulfed by life once the flesh, no longer a corpse but living and undecaying, persists, chanting praise to the God preparing us for this very purpose. That we might be made ready for it, he rightly tells the Corinthians: "Honor God through your body." For God is the source of the undecaying.
And that it is not some different body, but the fleshly body itself, of which he speaks here, he affirms clearly, unmistakably, and free of all doubt to the Corinthians: "Always carrying in our own body the death that Jesus underwent, so that the living power of Jesus too might be disclosed through our body. For we, the living, are constantly handed over unto death on account of Jesus, so that the living power of Jesus too might be disclosed within our perishable flesh." And that the spirit takes hold of the flesh, he states within that same letter: "For you yourselves are Christ's letter, drafted through our service, inscribed not with ink but by the Spirit of the God who lives, not upon slabs of stone, but upon fleshly slabs — the heart itself." If, then, hearts made of flesh already now become fit to hold the Spirit, what marvel is it should they, at the rising, obtain that life the Spirit bestows? Regarding this rising the Apostle, within that very letter to the Philippians, states: "Taking the shape of his dying, if somehow I might arrive at the rising up that comes out from among the dead." In what substance, then, besides this one, can life be understood to show itself within perishable flesh, other than in this identical substance likewise given over to death for the sake of the confession made toward God? As he himself declared, "If, speaking as men do, I contended with wild beasts in Ephesus, what benefit is that to me, should the dead not be raised? For unless the dead are raised, Christ too has not been raised; and unless Christ has been raised, our proclamation is hollow, and your trust is likewise hollow. We are found, besides, to be liars regarding God... for unless the dead are raised, Christ too has not been raised. And unless Christ has been raised, your trust is hollow, for you remain still bound in your sins. Then also those who have died within Christ are lost forever. If our hope set on Christ reaches only this present life, we are of all people the most to be pitied. Yet now Christ has been raised from among the dead, the first portion of the harvest of those who have died; for since death entered through a man, so too through a man comes the rising of the dead."
In all these matters, then, as we have already noted, they must either concede that the Apostle is at odds with his own words when he declares, "Flesh and blood are unable to inherit God's kingdom"; or else they will be driven to twisted and forced readings of everything he says, so as to bend and reshape its sense. For what sensible answer could they give if they tried reading otherwise the words he sets down: "this decaying thing is destined to be clothed with what does not decay, and this dying thing is destined to be clothed with deathlessness," together with, "that what dies may be consumed by life" — sayings in which the Apostle openly and unmistakably declares the raising up and incorruptibility of the flesh? They are thus driven to distort so very many weighty statements, all because they will not consent to grasp even this single one correctly.