Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Meanwhile the Marcionite will produce nothing of this kind, since he is already afraid to declare whose Christ it more likely is who has not yet been revealed. Just as it is mine who must be looked for, because he was preached from the beginning, so it is not his, for the very reason that he was not from the beginning. We do better believing in a Christ who is to come than the heretic does believing in none at all. [2] How some in that day denied the resurrection of the dead must first be examined. Certainly in the same way they deny it now too, since the resurrection of the flesh is always what gets denied. As for the rest, most people, even the learned, claim the soul as divine and promise it safety, and the common crowd itself worships its dead on the very assumption that it is confident their souls survive; but their bodies, it is plain, are either consumed at once by fire or by wild beasts, or, however carefully laid away, are in time destroyed all the same. If, then, it is people rejecting any rising again of the flesh whom the apostle refutes, then he is certainly defending, against those very people, what they were denying — namely, that the flesh does rise. There you have the answer in brief. [3] The rest follows from that abundantly. For the very phrase "resurrection of the dead" requires us to press the proper sense of the words. Now nothing is called "dead" except what has lost the soul by whose power it lived. It is the body that loses the soul, and by losing it becomes dead; so the word "dead" applies to the body. Further, if resurrection is of the dead, and the dead is nothing other than the body, then the resurrection will be of the body. [4] So too the word "resurrection" claims nothing other than the thing that fell. For something can be said to "rise" even if it never fell at all, if it has simply been lying there all along. But to "rise again" belongs only to what has fallen; it is called rising again precisely because, having fallen, it rises a second time. The prefix RE- is always attached to signify repetition. We say, then, that the body falls to the earth through death, as the fact itself attests, by God's own law. For it was said to the body, "Earth you are, and to earth you shall go." So what is of earth will go into earth. What falls into the earth is what rises again. [5] Because through a man came death, and through a man, resurrection. Here Christ's body too is shown to me under the name of "man," who consists of a body, as we have already often taught. But if we are all thus made alive in Christ just as we are put to death in Adam, then since we are put to death in Adam in the body, it must follow that in Christ we are made alive in the body. Otherwise the parallel does not hold, unless the being-made-alive in Christ occurs in the same substance as the being-put-to-death in Adam. But something further about Christ has intervened, and it must not be passed over, given the present dispute. [6] The resurrection of the flesh will be proved all the more forcefully the more clearly I show that Christ belongs to that God with whom the resurrection of the flesh is believed. When it says, "For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet," it already, from this alone, proclaims God as an avenger, and further, that it is this same God who made this promise to Christ: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet: the Lord will send forth the rod of your strength out of Zion, and you shall rule in the midst of your enemies." [7] But it is necessary, for my argument, that I defend those very scriptures which the Jews too try to snatch away from us. They say, in fact, that this psalm was sung about Hezekiah, because he sat at the right of the temple and God turned back and destroyed his enemies; and therefore that the rest of it too, "Before the morning star I begot you from the womb," applies to Hezekiah, to Hezekiah's birth. We, however, present the gospels (whose reliability we should by now, after so great a work, have already established well enough for these people), which declare that the Lord's birth was at night, so that this is "before the morning star" — understood also from the star, and from what the angel bore witness to, proclaiming by night to the shepherds that it was Christ, precisely, who had just come into the world, and from the place of the birth, since it is at night that people gather at an inn. [8] Perhaps it was even done mystically, that Christ should be born at night, he who was to be the light of truth against the darkness of ignorance. But God would not have said, "I have begotten you," except to a true son. For though he says of the whole people, "I have begotten sons," he did not add "from the womb." But why add "from the womb" so pointlessly, as if it were ever doubted that any human being was born from a womb, unless he wanted it understood, more pointedly, of Christ: "From the womb I have begotten you" — that is, from the womb alone, without the seed of a man, assigning to flesh what comes from the womb, and to spirit what comes from himself. To this is added, "You are a priest forever." But Hezekiah was no priest, nor was anything about him "forever," even if he had been. "According to the order," it says, "of Melchizedek." [9] What has Hezekiah to do with Melchizedek, priest of the Most High, and one moreover uncircumcised, who blessed the already-circumcised Abraham after receiving from him the offering of tithes? But the order of Melchizedek will suit Christ perfectly, since Christ is God's own true and lawful high priest, pontiff of an uncircumcised priesthood, established first among the nations — by whom he was more readily to be received — while the circumcision, and Abraham's own people, he will one day, when he comes at the last, deign to recognize and to bless and accept. There is also another psalm that begins: "O God, give your judgment unto the sovereign" — meaning, to Christ, the one destined to rule — "and your righteousness to the sovereign's offspring" — meaning, to those who belong to Christ. [10] For his sons are those who are reborn in him. Yet this psalm too will be said to be sung about Solomon. But will people be able to teach that the rest of it, things that fit Christ alone, apply not to Solomon but to Christ? "He shall come down," it says, "like rain upon a fleece, and like drops falling gently upon the earth" — describing his gentle and imperceptible descent from heaven into flesh. But Solomon, even if he descended from somewhere, did not descend like rain, since he did not come from heaven. But let me set out the simpler proofs. [11] "He shall rule," it says, "from one sea unto another, and from the river all the way to the earth's furthest edge." This has been granted to Christ alone; Solomon, for his part, ruled over one small country, Judea. "All kings shall worship him." Whom, if not Christ? "And all nations shall serve him." Whom, if not Christ? "Let his name endure forever." Whose name, if not Christ's, is eternal? "Before the sun his name shall remain." For before the sun was the Word of God, that is, Christ. [12] "And in him all the nations shall be blessed." In Solomon no nation is blessed; in Christ, every one is. What now, if this psalm even shows him to be God? "And they shall pronounce him blessed: for blessed be the Lord, Israel's God, he alone who works wonders: and blessed be the name of his majesty forever, and let the whole earth be filled with his majesty." [13] Against this, Solomon, I dare say, even lost the glory he had in God, dragged as he was into idolatry by a woman. And so, since in the middle of the psalm this too is set down: "His enemies shall lick the dust," put, in other words, beneath his feet — that will bear on the point for which I have brought forward this psalm and defended it for my argument: to establish both the glory of the kingdom and the subjection of the enemies according to the arrangement of the Creator, one who is bound to result, of necessity, in belief in none other than the Creator himself.
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