Tag: Man

Christ’s Risen Life is Given to Us in the Church through Baptism

The fruit of Baptism, its true fulfillment, is a new life; not simply a better, more moral or even more pious life, but a life ontologically different from the “old” one. And this difference, the very content of this “newness,” is that it is life with Christ: “…if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Rom 6:8). It is His Risen Life “unto God” that is given to us and becomes our life and our resurrection. But his Life in us, our life in Him is precisely the Church, for she has no other being, no other purpose and no other life but to be Christ in us and we in Christ.”

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 120

Christ elevates human nature to godhood

I adore one God, one Godhead but three Persons, God the Father, God the Son made flesh, and God the Holy Ghost, one God. I do not adore creation more than the Creator, but I adore the creature created as I am, adopting creation freely and spontaneously that He might elevate our nature and make us partakers of His divine nature.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part I

The soul and body are generated together at birth

If the flesh be the old man, when did it become so? From the beginning? But Adam was wholly a new man, and of that new man there could be no part an old man.  And from that time, ever since the blessing which was pronounced upon man’s generation, the flesh and the soul have had a simultaneous birth, without any calculable difference in time; so that the two have been even generated together in the womb, as we have shown in our Treatise on the Soul.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XLV

Hell is eternally experienced in the body

If, therefore, any one shall violently suppose that the destruction of the soul and the flesh in hell amounts to a final annihilation of the two substances, and not to their penal treatment (as if they were to be consumed, not punished), let him recollect that the fire of hell is eternal—expressly announced as an everlasting penalty; and let him then admit that it is from this circumstance that this never-ending “killing” is more formidable than a merely human murder, which is only temporal. He will then come to the conclusion that substances must be eternal, when their penal “killing” is an eternal one. Since, then, the body after the resurrection has to be killed by God in hell along with the soul, we surely have sufficient information in this fact respecting both the issues which await it, namely the resurrection of the flesh, and its eternal “killing.” Else it would be most absurd if the flesh should be raised up and destined to “the killing in hell,” in order to be put an end to, when it might suffer such an annihilation (more directly) if not raised again at all.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XXXV

The soul and body are both realities, neither can be allegorized

Since, however, things which belong to the soul have nothing allegorical in them, neither therefore have those which belong to the body. For man is as much body as he is soul; so that it is impossible for one of these natures to admit a figurative sense, and the other to exclude it.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XXXII

The body makes is possible for the soul to be saved through the sacraments of the Church

And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The flesh, indeed, is washed, in order that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed (with the cross), that the soul too may be fortified; the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands, that the soul also maybe illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may fatten on its God. They cannot then be separated in their recompense, when they are united in their service. Those sacrifices, moreover, which are acceptable to God—I mean conflicts of the soul, fastings, and abstinences, and the humiliations which are annexed to such duty—it is the flesh which performs again and again to its own especial suffering.  Virginity, likewise, and widowhood, and the modest restraint in secret on the marriage-bed, and the one only adoption of it, are fragrant offerings to God paid out of the good services of the flesh.

Tertullian 
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter VIII

God the Word created flesh as an image of his coming in the flesh later in time

For, whatever was the form and expression which was then given to the clay (by the Creator) Christ was in His thoughts as one day to become man, because the Word, too, was to be both clay and flesh, even as the earth was then.  For so did the Father previously say to the Son: “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” And God made man, that is to say, the creature which He moulded and fashioned; after the image of God (in other words, of Christ) did He make him. And the Word was God also, who being in the image of God, “thought it not robbery to be equal to God.” Thus, that clay which was even then putting on the image of Christ, who was to come in the flesh, was not only the work, but also the pledge and surety, of God.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter VI

God’s promises are to both body and soul

“And He breathed upon his face the breath of life, and man (that is, the clay) became a living soul; and God placed the man whom He had formed in the garden.” So that man was clay at first, and only afterwards man entire. I wish to impress this on your attention, with a view to your knowing, that whatever God has at all purposed or promised to man, is due not to the soul simply, but to the flesh also; if not arising out of any community in their origin, yet at all events by the privilege possessed by the latter in its name.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter V