Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] 'No,' you say, 'what I hope for from him is precisely what proves the difference: an eternal kingdom of God, a heavenly possession.' Whereas your Christ promises the Jews their former condition back, through the restoration of their land, and after this life is over, refreshment in Abraham's bosom among the dead. What a fine 'best' god, if, once appeased, he gives back what in his anger he had taken away! O your god, who both wounds and heals, who forms evils and makes peace! O a god merciful even down to the underworld! [2] But more of Abraham's bosom in its proper place. As for the restoration of Judea—which the Jews themselves, misled by the names of places and regions, hope for exactly as it is described—how an allegorical interpretation applies it spiritually to Christ and the church and its condition and its fruit is a long story, and one I have set out in another work, which I entitle ON THE HOPE OF THE FAITHFUL; and here it would in any case be beside the point, since our question concerns not an earthly but a heavenly promise. [3] We do indeed acknowledge that we have a kingdom pledged to us upon the earth, prior to heaven, though in a different mode of being—that is to say, once the resurrection has come, spanning a thousand years, within that city of divine construction, Jerusalem, lowered out of the sky, the very one the apostle also singles out as the mother above us; and when he declares that our citizenship—our politeuma, that is—is in the heavens, he clearly assigns it to some heavenly city. [4] This city Ezekiel also knew, and the apostle John saw; and the utterance of the fresh prophecy that belongs to our own faith gives testimony to the same thing, foretelling as a sign that an image of the city would appear to view before its actual manifestation. And indeed this was just fulfilled to the letter, in the recent eastern campaign. For it is attested even by pagan witnesses that in Judea, for forty days, at the moments of morning, a city hung suspended from the sky, its entire wall-work fading away as the day advanced, and at no other time nearby was any such thing seen. [5] This city, we say, has been made ready by God to receive the saints at the resurrection and to refresh them with an abundance of every good thing—spiritual goods, of course—as compensation for what we have either scorned or lost in this present age. For it is both just and worthy of God that his servants should exult in the very place where they were also afflicted for his name's sake. Such is the plan of the heavenly kingdom, [6] after whose thousand years—within which span the resurrection of the saints is completed, some rising sooner and some later according to their merits—then, once the world's destruction and the conflagration of judgment have taken place, we shall be changed in an instant into angelic substance, by that overgarment of incorruption, and carried across into the heavenly kingdom. And it is precisely this kingdom that is now being called into question, as though it had never been foretold by the Creator, and as though this proved a different Christ, by whom alone and for the first time it was supposedly revealed. [7] Learn, then, from this very point, both that it was foretold by the Creator and that, even without being foretold, it ought to be believed as belonging to the Creator. What do you make of this: when Abraham's seed, after the first promise in which it is likened to the multitude of the sand, is also destined to be like the stars—are these not tokens of both an earthly and a heavenly arrangement? When Isaac, blessing his son Jacob, says, 'May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the richness of the earth'—are these not examples of both kinds of favor? [8] Notice, too, the very structure of this blessing. In the case of Jacob, who is a figure of the later and preferred people—that is, of us—the first promise is of heaven's dew, the second of earth's richness. For we are first invited to heavenly things, when we are torn away from this present age, and only afterward do we find that we obtain earthly things as well. Your own gospel says as much: 'Seek the kingdom of God before all else, and these other things will be granted to you besides.' [9] But to Esau he promises an earthly blessing and puts the heavenly one second, saying, 'Of the richness of the earth shall be your dwelling, and of the dew of heaven.' For the Jewish arrangement, figured in Esau—the sons who were first by birth but last in favor—is first steeped in earthly goods through the law, and only afterward led on to heavenly things through believing the gospel. And when Jacob dreams of a ladder planted upon the ground and stretching up into the sky, with angels moving both up and down it, and the Lord bending over it from on high—would it be too bold, perhaps, to interpret this ladder as showing the road to heaven, by which some arrive and from which others fall, all set by the Lord's own judgment? [10] But why, when he awoke and was first shaken with dread at the place, does he turn to interpreting the dream? For after saying, 'How dreadful is this place!' he goes on, 'It is nothing other than the house of God, and this the gate of heaven.' For what he had seen was the Lord Christ, who is at once the temple of God and the very gateway by which one passes into heaven. And he certainly would not have called it the gate of heaven if heaven were not something entered under the Creator. But there is both a gate that receives and a road that leads there, already paved by Christ. Of whom Amos says: 'He who builds his ascent into heaven'—and not for himself alone, but for his own, who will be with him. [11] 'You shall wrap them around you,' he says, 'like a bride's ornament.' So too the Spirit marvels at those pressing on by that ascent toward the heavenly kingdoms, saying: 'They fly like kites, like clouds they fly, and like the young of doves to me'—that is, simply, like doves. For we are, on the apostle's word, to be snatched up amid the clouds so as to meet the Lord (this being that same Son of man who arrives amid clouds, per Daniel), and thus shall we remain with the Lord forever—as long, that is, as we remain both on earth and in heaven; and against those thankless for both kinds of promise, he summons the very elements as witnesses: 'Listen, heaven, and lend your ear, earth.' [12] And I, for my part, even if Scripture were not so often holding out to me the hand of heavenly hope, would have enough grounds, even so, to anticipate this further promise, from the fact that, already holding an earthly favor, I would expect something from heaven as well, from a God of heaven just as of earth. So I would believe that the one promising the loftier things is the very one who had already promised the humbler ones—who had made his tests of the greater things by means of the smaller, and who had, perhaps, reserved this proclamation of an unheard-of kingdom for Christ alone, so that earthly glory should be announced through his servants, but heavenly glory through God himself. [13] But you, from this very fact, argue for a different Christ, on the ground that he announces a new kingdom. First produce some precedent of such generosity, so that I am not right to doubt the credibility of so great a promise, which you tell me to hope for; or rather, before anything else, you must prove that the one you claim promises heavenly things actually has some heaven of his own. But as it is, you invite me to a banquet without showing me the house; you dangle a kingdom without pointing to any palace. Or is it that your Christ promises a heavenly kingdom while having no heaven, just as he presented himself as a man while having no flesh? O utter phantom! O illusion of even so great a promise!