Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
That our bodies return to the earth follows from the fact that it is from there that they have their substance; and that at the coming of the Word the image of God appears more clearly in us.
And since Adam's formation was taken from this earth, which belongs to us, Scripture records that God spoke thus to him: by the sweat of your brow you will earn your bread, till you go back into the ground out of which you were drawn. If, then, our bodies pass after death into some other soil, it would follow that their substance too comes from that other place. But if they are returned to this same earth, it stands clear that they were fashioned out of this earth — exactly as the Lord likewise demonstrated, when he shaped a man's eyes from that identical clay. And thus, by a wholly transparent proof, the hand of God is displayed — the hand by which Adam was indeed shaped, and by which we ourselves have likewise been shaped; and because the Father is one and unchanging, whose voice attends his handiwork from start to finish, and the material of our making is disclosed openly in the Gospel, there is no further cause to search out some second Father beyond him, nor a different substance for our making apart from what has already been proclaimed and revealed by the Lord, nor a separate hand of God apart from this one, which shapes and joins us together for life from start to finish, remains present to its own work, and brings it to completion after the pattern and resemblance of God. This Word, then, appeared openly at that moment when the human being turned into the Word of God made human, drawing man near to himself and himself near to man, so that through his kinship to the Son, humanity might come to be held dear by the Father. In earlier ages it had indeed been declared that man was fashioned after God's pattern, yet this had not been made evident, for the Word — after whose pattern man had been shaped — remained still unseen; and for that very reason man readily forfeited the resemblance. Yet once the Word of God took on flesh, he secured both: he displayed the genuine pattern by himself becoming exactly what his pattern was, and he firmly restored the resemblance, causing man to resemble the unseen Father by means of the Word now made visible. And it was not only through these matters already noted that the Lord disclosed both the Father and himself, but through his suffering as well. For by undoing the disobedience of man that had first taken place through a tree, he was made obedient all the way to death, even the death on the cross, curing through the obedience shown upon a tree the disobedience that had been committed upon a tree. Nor would he have set out to reverse, by that very means, the disobedience once directed against our Maker, had he been proclaiming some other Father. Rather, it was precisely through the same things by which we had defied God and refused to trust his word that he introduced this matching obedience and the assent belonging to his Word — through which he clearly revealed himself as God: him whom, in the first Adam, we grieved by refusing his command; in the second Adam we are restored to friendship, having been rendered obedient right up to death. For our debt was owed to no one else but him whose command we had broken from the start. One God and Lord alone exists, the Father and Maker of all things, who loved us in Christ, laid commandments upon us, and released us from our sins — the very one whose Son and Word Christ demonstrated himself to be, at the moment he pronounced sins forgiven.