Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Although, then, in proving that the flesh will rise, we thereby prove no other flesh will rise than the very flesh now under discussion, still each question and its grounds demand their own separate engagement, even where already cut down elsewhere. We shall therefore explain more fully both the force and the logic of 'change,' which is generally what furnishes the presumption that a different flesh will rise — as though ceasing to be the same in the change meant ceasing to exist altogether and perishing from one's former state. But change must be distinguished from every argument for destruction: change is one thing, destruction another. And it would be no different only if the flesh were so changed as to perish. But a changed thing will perish only if it does not itself endure in the change that is displayed at the resurrection. For just as a thing is lost when it fails to rise, so too, if it does rise but is spirited away in the change, it likewise perishes: it will equally not exist, exactly as if it had not risen at all. And how absurd, if it rises for this very purpose — not to exist — when it could simply have not risen and so not existed, since it had already begun not to exist! Change and destruction will never be conflated as one thing, being utterly different even in their operations: the one destroys, the other changes. So just as what has been destroyed has not been changed, so what has been changed has not been destroyed. For to have perished is to have wholly ceased to be what one was; to have been changed is to exist differently. But while it exists differently, it can still be the very same thing. For it retains existence, since it has not perished altogether — it has undergone change, not destruction. Indeed, a thing can be changed and yet remain, nonetheless, itself — just as a whole man, in this present age, remains the same substance even while changing in many respects: in demeanor, in physical bulk, in condition of health, in station, in rank, in years; in pursuit, occupation, and trade; in property, dwelling, laws, and morals — and yet loses nothing of being a man, nor is so turned into another that he ceases to be the same man; indeed he is not made another man, but simply other. Divine examples too bear witness to this pattern of change. Moses' hand is changed, made in the likeness of a dead thing, bloodless, white, and cold — yet with warmth recovered and color restored, it is the same flesh and blood. Afterward his very face is changed with an unbearable brightness — yet it was still the same Moses, only now not recognized by sight. So too Stephen had already put on an angelic radiance, yet it was no other knees that buckled beneath him at his stoning. The Lord too, in the retreat on the mountain, changed even his garments with light, yet kept his features recognizable to Peter — where Moses and Elijah also appeared, the one in the image of flesh not yet resumed, the other in the reality of flesh not yet laid down in death, and both taught that the same bodily condition persists even in glory. Instructed by this very example, Paul too says: 'He will transfigure the body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of his glory.' But if you maintain that both transfiguration and transformation amount to a substance passing over into something else, then Saul too, turned into another man, must have left his own body behind, and Satan himself, when he transfigures himself into an angel of light, must lose his own nature. I think not. So too, at the event of the resurrection, changing, turning, and reshaping will be permitted — with the substance kept intact.