Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] The simpler sort of advocate for our position will suppose that the flesh must be presented at judgment for this reason too: that otherwise the soul could not take in the experience of torment or of refreshment, being, as it is, incorporeal — for that is what the common crowd supposes. [2] We, however, both profess here, and have proved in our own treatise on the subject, that the soul is corporeal, possessing its own kind of substance and solidity, by which it is able both to feel and to suffer something. Indeed, that souls even now are tormented and cherished among the dead — naked though they be, exiles still from the flesh — the example of Lazarus will prove. [3] I have, then, granted our opponent the right to say: 'So then, a thing that has a bodily density of its own will find that sufficient, from its own resources, for the capacity to suffer and feel, so that it has no need of the flesh's presentation.' On the contrary — it will need it precisely to the degree that, while it is not that it cannot feel anything at all without the flesh, it is nonetheless necessary that it feel along with the flesh as well. [4] For whatever suffices of its own for acting, that same amount suffices also for suffering. But for acting, its own resources suffice for less: for it has, of its own, only to think, will, desire, plan — but for the accomplishing, it waits on the work of the flesh. [5] And so, for suffering too, it demands the flesh's partnership, that it may suffer through the flesh as fully as, without it, it could not act fully. And so, for those things which its own resources do suffice — desire, and thought, and will — it holds its verdict in suspense for the meantime. [6] Furthermore, if these were enough to make up the fullness of merits, so that deeds were not also required, the soul alone would suffice for the perfection of judgment, to be judged on those very things which it alone had sufficed to do. [7] But since deeds too are bound up with merits, and deeds are transacted through the flesh, it is no longer enough for the soul to be cherished or tormented alone, apart from the flesh, on account of the works of the flesh as well — even though it has a body, even though it has members there among the dead, which nonetheless do not suffice it to feel fully any more than they sufficed it to act perfectly. [8] And so for what it did in a given manner, in that same manner it also suffers among the dead, tasting judgment first, just as it led the way in the offense first — but still awaiting the flesh as well, that through it too it may settle accounts for the deeds it had entrusted to thought. [9] In short, this will be the rationale in the final, appointed judgment: that the whole divine tribunal can be brought to completion only through the presentation of the flesh — otherwise what the souls even now cull among the dead would not be sustained to the end, if the judgment were destined for souls alone.