Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] So too, if he says the flesh profits nothing, the sense must be steered by the subject matter of the saying. For because they had judged his words harsh and unbearable — as though he had truly determined that they should eat his own flesh — and in order to redirect their thinking toward the spiritual condition of salvation, he prefaced it with, It is the spirit that gives life, and only then added, The flesh profits nothing — profits nothing, that is, toward giving life. [2] He goes on to spell out what he wants understood by spirit: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit, they are life — just as above, He who hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and will not come into judgment but will pass from death into life. [3] So then, having established the word as the life-giver — since word is spirit and life — he then also called his own flesh word, because the Word was made flesh; and so it too is to be sought after for the sake of life, to be devoured by hearing, chewed over by understanding, and digested by faith. [4] Indeed, a little before this he had pronounced his own flesh also the bread from heaven, pressing home throughout, by way of allegory, the memory of the necessary food of the fathers, who had preferred the loaves and meats of Egypt over the divine calling. [5] So then, turning to reconsider their reactions, since he had perceived they were about to scatter, he says, The flesh profits nothing. What has that to do with destroying the resurrection of the flesh? As if it were not possible for a thing which, though it profits nothing of itself, might still be profitable to something else. The spirit profits, for it gives life; the flesh profits nothing, for it is put to death. [6] And so he has, if anything, arranged the two statements more in our favor. For in showing what profits and what does not, he equally illuminated what profits what — namely, that the spirit profits the flesh, being the life-giver of that which is put to death. [7] For, he says, a moment approaches in which those now dead will catch the sound of God's Son, and, having caught it, will live. What is dead, if not the flesh? And that sound of God — what else is it but the word? And the word — what else but spirit — fittingly destined to raise up the flesh, since he himself became that very flesh, and from the death he himself suffered, and from the tomb into which he himself was laid? [8] Finally, when he says, Do not be astonished that a moment is approaching in which every one lodged within the tombs will catch that same sound of God's Son and step forth — those whose deeds were good, unto life's resurrection; those whose deeds were wicked, unto the resurrection of condemnation — no one can any longer interpret the dead who are in the tombs as anything but bodies and flesh, since the tombs themselves are nothing but stalls for corpses. [9] Since indeed those very old men — that is, the sinners, that is, the dead through ignorance of God, whom the heretics argue are to be understood as the tombs — are openly proclaimed as about to come forth from tombs to judgment. [10] But how, in that case, could tombs come forth from tombs?