Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But he also bids us fear rather the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna -- that is, the Lord alone -- and not those who can kill the body but have no power to harm the soul -- that is, human authorities. [2] By this we recognize both that the soul is of an immortal nature, incapable of being killed by men, and that the flesh is what is mortal, capable of being killed; and thus the resurrection of the dead too belongs to the flesh, which cannot be destroyed in Gehenna unless it has first been raised. [3] But since here too some quibble is raised over how "body" is to be interpreted, I for my part will understand the human body as nothing other than this whole mass of flesh, however it is composed and varied by whatever kind of materials -- what is seen, what is touched, what men, in the end, are able to kill. [4] So too I will admit no other "body" of a wall than mortar, stones, bricks. If anyone brings in some mysterious hidden body, let him show it, reveal it, prove that it too is a thing that can be killed by man -- and then the statement will apply to it. [5] Likewise, if a "body" is set up in opposition to the soul, the cleverness collapses of itself: for when both are put forward -- body and soul -- as being destroyed in Gehenna, the body is thereby distinguished from the soul, and we are left to understand by "body" what lies plainly at hand, namely the flesh -- which will indeed be destroyed in Gehenna if it has feared to be destroyed by God too little, and will likewise be brought to life into eternal life if it has chosen rather to be killed by men. [6] Accordingly, if anyone seizes on the destruction of body and soul in Gehenna as meaning the ruin and ending of both substances rather than their punishment -- as though they were to be consumed rather than punished -- let him recall that the fire of Gehenna is proclaimed eternal, for eternal punishment, and that the eternity of this human destruction is spoken of precisely so that it should be feared the more because it is not merely temporal. [7] In that case he will also have to believe the substances eternal, whose destruction in punishment is itself eternal. Certainly, since after the resurrection the body along with the soul is to be destroyed by God in Gehenna, this settles both points sufficiently -- both the resurrection of the flesh and the eternal destruction. [8] It would otherwise be utterly absurd, if the flesh, once raised, were destroyed in Gehenna merely in order to be ended -- which it would have suffered just the same without being raised at all: refashioned, that is to say, for the sole purpose of not existing, when not existing was already its lot. [9] To bolster this same hope for us he adds also the example of the sparrows, that not a single one of the pair drops earthward apart from God's own decree -- so that you may trust that the flesh as well, once it has dropped to the earth, can in the same way rise once more by the decree of that identical God. [10] For even if this is not granted to sparrows, yet we surpass many sparrows in this: that, having fallen, we rise again -- and indeed, affirming that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered, he thereby promises that they too will assuredly be kept safe. [11] For what reckoning would have counted things doomed to perish? Unless this is the very meaning of "that of all the Father has given me I should lose nothing" -- not a hair, any more than an eye or a tooth. [12] Besides, where will the weeping and gnashing of teeth come from, if not from eyes and from teeth -- the body, that is, having likewise been destroyed in Gehenna and thrust down into outer darkness, which are torments proper to the eyes? -- and if anyone at the wedding is found clothed in works too unworthy, he is at once to be bound hand and foot, as one who will rise again with a body. [13] So too, taking one's place at table within God's reign, and being seated upon the twelve seats of judgment, and standing thereafter at his right or his left, and partaking of the tree that gives life, are the surest tokens of a bodily arrangement.