Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 63

The flesh will rise again—all of it, the very same flesh, and whole. It is on deposit with God, wherever that may be, held by the most faithful mediator of God and humanity, Jesus Christ, who will restore God to humanity and humanity to God, spirit to flesh and flesh to spirit. He has already pledged both in himself: the bride to the bridegroom and the bridegroom to the bride. Even if someone argues that the soul is the bride, the flesh will still follow the soul by right of dowry. The soul will not be prostituted by being received naked by the bridegroom; it has its instrument, its cultivation, its own property—the flesh—so that it may be accompanied by its nursling. But the flesh is the bride, and she has been pledged to the spirit, the bridegroom, through the blood of Christ. You think this is her destruction? Know that it is only her separation. Not only the soul is separated; the flesh has its own separations for now—in waters, in fires, in birds, in beasts. When it seems to dissolve into these, it is merely poured like liquid into vessels. Even if those vessels fail, once the flesh has flowed out of them, it will be absorbed back into its matrix, the earth, by winding paths, so that Adam may be formed from it once more, hearing from the Lord: "Behold, Adam has become like one of us" (Gen. 3:22). Then he will truly be composed of the evil he escaped and the good he invaded.

Why, soul, do you envy the flesh? No one is closer to you, the one you must love after the Lord; no one is more your brother, the one born with you in God. You ought to have pleaded for its resurrection; through you, perhaps, it sinned. But it is no wonder you hate it, since you have also rejected its Author—whom you are accustomed to deny or alter in Christ. And so you corrupt the very Word of God who became flesh, whether by pen or by interpretation, dragging in secret apocryphal fables of blasphemy. But God Almighty, pouring out his most provident grace against these minds of unbelief and perversity in the last days, has sent his Spirit into all flesh, into his servants and handmaids, and into the faith that labors for the resurrection of the flesh, giving it life. He has purified the former instruments from every obscurity of ambiguity by the manifest light of words and senses. Since heresies had to exist so that the approved might be revealed, and since heresies could not dare to arise without some occasion from the Scriptures, the former instruments seem to have supplied them with some materials—materials that can be refuted by those very same letters. Yet the Holy Spirit could not be hidden, lest such speeches overflow without scattering any seed for the cunning of heretics, but rather uproot their old plots. Therefore he has now cleared away all former ambiguities and the parables they prefer, through the open and clear preaching of the whole sacrament, by the new prophecy overflowing from the Paraclete. If you drink from its fountains, you will thirst for no doctrine; no heat of questions will burn you; by drinking the resurrection of the flesh everywhere, you will be refreshed.