Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Let us now look at what sort of body he argues the dead will come with. And it is good that he broke straight in to show it, as if someone were asking that very question. 'Fool,' he says, 'what you sow is not brought to life unless it dies.' [2] So this much is now settled, from the example of the seed: it is not some other flesh that is brought to life than the very one that has died, and the rest will fall into place in that light. [3] For nothing may be understood contrary to the rule the example sets, so that, because the next words are, 'And what you sow is not the body that is to be,' you should therefore reckon that a different body will rise than the one sown in death. [4] Otherwise you have stepped clean outside the example: for grain of wheat, once sown and dissolved in the earth, never sends up barley — it is the very same kind of grain, the same nature, quality, and form. In the end, where else would it come from, if not from itself? For even the decay is its own, precisely because it belongs to it. [5] Nor, indeed, does he even suggest that some other body than the one to come is what gets sown, when he says, 'But a bare grain, of wheat perhaps or of some such thing; but God gives it a body as he wills' — surely to that very grain which he says is sown bare? Surely, you say. [6] So then it is preserved, this thing to which God is to give a body. But how is it preserved if it is nowhere, if it does not rise, if it is not the very same thing that rises? If it does not rise, it is not preserved; if it is not preserved, it cannot receive a body from God. [7] But in fact it is agreed on all sides that it is preserved. To what end, then, will God give it a body as he wills, seeing that its own naked body is already there before him, unless it is precisely so that it may rise up no longer naked? So the body will be something added, built onto the body — and the thing it is built onto is not destroyed but enlarged. [8] And what is enlarged is preserved. For the grain is sown all alone, with no covering husk, no foundation of an ear, no defense of a beard, no pride of stalk; but what rises up is a wealth multiplied, a structure built joint by joint, an order raised course by course, a fortification adorned, and, in every part, clothed. [9] These things are for it a body from God that is other, into which it passes not through destruction but through growth; and to each of the seeds he has assigned its own body — not its former body, that is, not the identical one — so that it, too, may then be its own, the very thing it acquires from outside, from God. [10] Serve, then, the example, and keep for the flesh its mirror-image, believing that the very flesh that was sown will bear fruit — the same flesh, even if more full, not a different flesh even if returning in a different fashion; for it too will receive an added splendor and adornment, whatever kind God chooses to lay over it according to its merits. [11] Beyond doubt this is the point of, 'Not all flesh is the same flesh' — not meant to deny the flesh's community of substance, but to level out the ranking of privilege, reducing it to a difference of honor, not of kind. [12] To this end he adds figurative examples too, of animals and of the elements: 'One is the flesh of man' — that is, of the servant of God, who is truly man; 'another of beasts' — that is, of the pagan, of whom the prophet also says, 'Man became like the beasts that have no understanding'; 'another the flesh of birds' — that is, of the martyrs, who strive for the heights; 'another of fishes' — that is, of those for whom the water of baptism suffices. [13] So too he draws his argument from the heavenly bodies: 'One splendor belongs to the sun' — namely, Christ's; 'a different one to the moon' — namely, the church's; 'and yet another to the stars' — namely, Abraham's offspring; 'for star differs from star in glory' — and 'earthly bodies and heavenly,' namely the Jews and the Christians. [14] But if this were not figurative, it would be quite pointless of him to set the flesh and bodies of mules and kites and the bodies of the heavenly lights alongside human bodies — things having no bearing either on comparison of condition or on the attainment of resurrection. [15] Finally, having by these examples confined the difference to glory, not to substance, he says, 'Such, too, is the resurrection of the dead.' In what respect? In nothing except that splendor alone. [16] For again, recalling the resurrection to that same substance, and looking once more to the grain, he says: 'Sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; sown weak, it is raised strong; sown an animal body, it is raised a spiritual body.' [17] Certainly nothing rises but what was sown, nothing is sown but what is broken down in the earth, and nothing is broken down in the earth but flesh — for it was this that the sentence of God struck down: 'Earth you are, and to earth you shall go,' since it was from earth that it was taken. [18] From this the apostle too conceived of speaking of it as 'sown' when it is given back to the earth, since the earth is the storehouse for seeds too, where they are laid down and from which they are later fetched back; and that is why he seals the point again, pressing it home: 'for so it is written' — lest you should suppose anything else is being sown than, 'To earth you shall go, from which you were taken.' So it is nothing but flesh either: for so it is written.