Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] He does not say that we have an eternal home not made with hands, in heaven, in place of our earthly dwelling, because the thing made by the Creator's hand is to perish, dissolved entirely after death. No — Paul, reconsidering this to console us against the fear of death and against the grief of that very dissolution, makes it even clearer through what follows, when he adds that we groan under this tent of an earthly body, longing to be clothed over with what is from heaven; since indeed, once stripped, we shall not be found naked — that is, we shall receive back what we were stripped of, namely the body. And again: "For we who are in this tent groan, being weighed down, not wishing to be unclothed but to be clothed over." [2] Here he has spelled out what he compressed in the first epistle: "And the dead will rise incorruptible" — those who have already died — "and we shall be changed" — we who shall be found still in the flesh by God. For those will rise incorruptible, having received back their body, and indeed whole, so that from this they are incorruptible; while these, because of the last moment of time and because of the merits of their trials — the shortcut of death, sparing them Antichrist — but changed, will attain rather to being clothed over with what is from heaven than to being stripped of the body. [3] So if these are to put on that heavenly garment over the body, then certainly the dead too will receive back the body, over which they in turn will put on incorruption from heaven; since of them too he says, "This decaying thing must be clothed with what cannot decay, and this thing bound to die must be clothed with what cannot die." Those put on once they have received back the body; these put on over, because they have not lost the body — and that is precisely why he did not say lightly "not wishing to be stripped of the body" but "to be clothed over," that is, not wishing to undergo death but to be overtaken by life, so that this mortal thing might be swallowed up by life, snatched from death by the overgarment of transformation. [4] So, to show that this is better — that we not grieve over death, should it perhaps overtake us first — he says that we have the earnest of the Spirit from God, as a kind of pledge toward that same hope of the overgarment, and that while we remain in the flesh we are away from the Lord, and that for this reason we ought to judge it preferable to be away from the body instead and to dwell with the Lord, so that we may even welcome death gladly. And so, he says, we must all be made manifest before the tribunal of Christ, so that each may receive back what he has done through the body, whether good or evil. [5] For if the requital of merits is still to come then, how can some already be reckoned as with God? By naming a tribunal, and by marking off the distinct sentence for good and for evil deeds, he shows the judge of each verdict, and he confirms the reappearance of all bodies. For what was done in the body cannot be judged apart from the body. God would be unjust if a man were not punished or rewarded through the very thing by which he acted. [6] If, then, there is some new order in Christ, "the old things have passed away, behold, all things are made new" — Isaiah's prophecy is fulfilled. If he also bids us cleanse ourselves from the defilement of flesh and blood, he is not denying the substance but the works of the substance a share in the kingdom of God. If he also appoints the holy virgin, the church, to be presented to Christ — as a bride to a bridegroom, surely — then an image cannot be joined to the enemy of the very truth it images. If he also calls the pseudo-apostles "deceitful workers, transfiguring themselves," he charges them, through hypocrisy, with corrupting their conduct, not their preaching. [7] So the dispute was over discipline, not over divinity. If Satan transfigures himself into an angel of light, this cannot be twisted to apply to the Creator. For God is not an angel — he is the Creator; Paul would have said Satan transfigures himself into the God of light, not into an angel, if he had not meant by it the very Satan whom both we and Marcion know as an angel. [8] Of paradise he has his own pen ready for whatever question arises. Here perhaps I might wonder — if God could have a paradise of his own, belonging to no earthly arrangement, unless he too has borrowed the Creator's paradise on loan, as he has borrowed the world. And yet the taking up of a man to the Creator's heaven has its precedent in Elijah. But I shall wonder still more at this "best of all" gods, a stranger to striking and raging, applying to his own apostle — for buffeting — not even an angel of his own but the Creator's angel of Satan, and, thrice begged, refusing to remove it. So even Marcion's god corrects those puffed up in imitation of the Creator, deposing the proud from their thrones, as it were. Or is it not the same one who gave Satan power over Job's body, that virtue might be proved in weakness? What of the form of the law still held by the castigator of the Galatians, laying down that every word shall stand on the testimony of three witnesses? What of his threat not to spare sinners — this preacher of the gentlest of gods? Indeed he even affirms that the power to act harshly in the present was given him by the Lord. Deny now, heretic, that your god is feared — the god whose apostle was feared!
13. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.