Tag: Resurrection

The Marcionites believe in a resurrection of the soul only

Since there is even within the confines of God’s Church a sect which is more nearly allied to the Epicureans than to the prophets, an opportunity is afforded us of knowing what estimate Christ forms of the (said sect, even the) Sadducees. For to Christ was it reserved to lay bare everything which before was concealed:  to impart certainty to doubtful points; to accomplish those of which men had had but a foretaste; to give present reality to the objects of prophecy; and to furnish not only by Himself, but actually in Himself, certain proofs of the resurrection of the dead. It is, however, against other Sadducees that we have now to prepare ourselves, but still partakers of their doctrine. For instance, they allow a moiety of the resurrection; that is, simply of the soul, despising the flesh, just as they also do the Lord of the flesh Himself.  No other persons, indeed, refuse to concede to the substance of the body its recovery from death, heretical inventors of a second deity.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter II

The Platonists and philosophers were wrong about the soul but had vague beginnings of truth

It is satisfactory, however, that the no less important philosophy of Pythagoras and Empedocles, and the Plantonists, take the contrary view, and declare the soul to be immortal; affirming, moreover, in a way which most nearly approaches (to our own doctrine), that the soul actually returns into bodies, although not the same bodies, and not even those of human beings invariably:  thus Euphorbus is supposed to have passed into Phythagoras, and Homer into a peacock. They firmly pronounced the soul’s renewal to be in a body, (deeming it) more tolerable to change the quality (of the corporeal state) than to deny it wholly: they at least knocked at the door of truth, although they entered not. Thus the world, with all its errors, does not ignore the resurrection of the dead.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter I

Christ, in the flesh, sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven

Now, even if we did assert this as our opinion, we should be able to defend it in such a way as completely to avoid the extravagant folly which he ascribes to us in making us suppose that the very flesh of Christ was in Himself abolished as being sinful; because we mention our belief (in public), that it is sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven; and we further declare that it will come again from thence in all the pomp of the Father’s glory:

Tertullian
On the Flesh of Christ
Chapter XVI

Was God not really crucified?

But answer me at once, you that murder truth:  Was not God really crucified?  And, having been really crucified, did He not really die? And, having indeed really died, did He not really rise again?

…O thou most infamous of men, who acquittest of all guilt the murderers of God!

Tertullian
On the Flesh of Christ
Chapter V

God created out of nothing and will restore the flesh at the resurrection

But (once for all) let Marcion know that the principle term of his creed comes from the school of Epicurus, implying that the Lord is stupid and indifferent; wherefore he refuses to say that He is an object to be feared. Moreover, from the porch of the Stoics he brings out matter, and places it on a par with the Divine Creator. He also denies the resurrection of the flesh,—a truth which none of the schools of philosophy agreed together to hold. But how remote is our (Catholic) verity from the artifices of this heretic, when it dreads to arouse the anger of God, and firmly believes that He produced all things out of nothing, and promises to us a restoration from the grave of the same flesh (that died) and holds without a blush that Christ was born of the virgin’s womb!

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter XIX

Man appears before the judgment seat of Christ in the body

In this view it is that he informs us how “we must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according as he hath done either good or bad.” Since, however, there is then to be a retribution according to men’s merits, how will any be able to reckon with God? But by mentioning both the judgment-seat and the distinction between works good and bad, he sets before us a Judge who is to award both sentences, and has thereby affirmed that all will have to be present at the tribunal in their bodies. For it will be impossible to pass sentence except on the body, for what has been done in the body. God would be unjust, if any one were not punished or else rewarded in that very condition, wherein the merit was itself achieved.

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter XII

At the resurrection the dead receive their bodies back and the living have their bodies transformed

Both those shall be raised incorruptible, because they shall regain their body—and that a renewed one, from which shall come their incorruptibility; and these also shall, in the crisis of the last moment, and from their instantaneous death, whilst encountering the oppressions of anti-christ, undergo a change, obtaining therein not so much a divestiture of body as “a clothing upon” with the vesture which is from heaven. So that whilst these shall put on over their (changed) body this, heavenly raiment, the dead also shall for their part recover their body, over which they too have a supervesture to put on, even the incorruption of heaven; because of these it was that he said:  “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” The one put on this (heavenly) apparel, when they recover their bodies; the others put it on as a supervesture, when they indeed hardly lose them (in the suddenness of their change).

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter XII

Marcion preached only a resurrection of the soul

For Marcion does not in any wise admit the resurrection of the flesh, and it is only the salvation of the soul which he promises; consequently the question which he raises is not concerning the sort of body, but the very substance thereof. Notwithstanding, he is most plainly refuted even from what the apostle advances respecting the quality of the body, in answer to those who ask, “How are the dead raised up? with what body do they come?” For as he treated of the sort of body, he of course ipso facto proclaimed in the argument that it was a body which would rise again.

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter X

We are made alive in Christ in the body

Here in the word man, who consists of bodily substance, as we have often shown already, is presented to me the body of Christ.  But if we are all so made alive in Christ, as we die in Adam, it follows of necessity that we are made alive in Christ as a bodily substance, since we died in Adam as a bodily substance. The similarity, indeed, is not complete, unless our revival in Christ concur in identity of substance with our mortality in Adam.

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter IX