Interim language carefully; no later system dump.
See how this topic lines up over time
The preservation of our bodies is confirmed by the resurrection and ascension of Christ: the souls of the saints during the intermediate period are in a state of expectation of that time when they shall receive their perfect and consummated glory. 1.
He contends that these testimonies already alleged cannot be understood allegorically of celestial blessings, but that they shall have their fulfilment after the coming of Antichrist, and the resurrection, in the terrestrial Jerusalem.
Men shall be actually raised: the world shall not be annihilated; but there shall be various mansions for the saints, according to the rank allotted to each individual. All things shall be subject to God the Father, and so shall He be all in all. 1.
And that Paradise is earth, and is planted on the earth, the Scripture states, saying: Genesis 2:8 And the Lord God planted Paradise in Eden eastwards, and placed man there; and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
Let us add in completion what follows, and exhibit now with greater clearness the plagiarism of the Greeks from the Barbarian philosophy. Now the Stoics say that God, like the soul, is essentially body and spirit. You will find all this explicitly in their writings.
But as the proclamation of the Gospel has come now at the fit time, so also at the fit time were the Law and the Prophets given to the Barbarians, and Philosophy to the Greeks, to fit their ears for the Gospel.
But — as is congruous with the goodness of God, and with His equity, as the Fashioner of mankind — He gave to all nations the selfsame law, which at definite and stated times He enjoined should be observed, when He willed, and through whom He willed, and as He willed.
1. As it was your desire, my beloved brother Theophilus, to be thoroughly informed on those topics which I put summarily before you, I have thought it right to set these matters of inquiry clearly forth to your view, drawing largely from the Holy Scriptures themselves as from a holy fountain, in order that you may not…
Let us now return to the resurrection, to the defense of which against heretics of all sorts we have given indeed sufficient attention in another work of ours. But we will not be wanting (in some defense of the doctrine) even here, in consideration of such persons as are ignorant of that little treatise.
But Christ prohibits divorce, saying, Whosoever puts away his wife, and marries another, commits adultery; and whosoever marries her that is put away from her husband, also commits adultery. Luke 16:18 In order to forbid divorce, He makes it unlawful to marry a woman that has been put away.
By ourselves the lower regions (of Hades) are not supposed to be a bare cavity, nor some subterranean sewer of the world, but a vast deep space in the interior of the earth, and a concealed recess in its very bowels;
There arises the question, whether this takes place immediately after the soul's departure from the body; whether some souls are detained for special reasons in the meantime here on earth;
It is either a very fine thing to be detained in these infernal regions with the Aori, or souls which were prematurely hurried away; or else a very bad thing indeed to be there associated with the Biaeothanati, who suffered violent deaths.
All souls, therefore, are shut up within Hades: do you admit this? (It is true, whether) you say yes or no: moreover, there are already experienced there punishments and consolations; and there you have a poor man and a rich.
These conclusions the Platonists disturb more by subtlety than by truth. Every body, they say, has necessarily either an animate nature or an inanimate one. If it has the inanimate nature, it receives motion externally to itself; if the animate one, internally.
So far as the philosophers are concerned, we have said enough. As for our own teachers, indeed, our reference to them is ex abundanti — a surplusage of authority: in the Gospel itself they will be found to have the clearest evidence for the corporeal nature of the soul.
But perhaps the dignity of the flesh may seem to be diminished, because it has not been actually manipulated by the hand of God, as the clay was at first. Now, when God handled the clay for the express purpose of the growth of flesh out of it afterwards, it was for the flesh that He took all the trouble.
n. Now such remarks have I wished to advance in defence of the flesh, from a general view of the condition of our human nature. Let us now consider its special relation to Christianity, and see how vast a privilege before God has been conferred on this poor and worthless substance.
"Every uneducated 96 person who agrees with our opinion will be apt to suppose that the flesh will have to be present at the final judgment even on this account, because otherwise the soul would be incapable of suffering pain or pleasure, as being incorporeal; for this is the common opinion.
This (heresiarch) makes the following statement. There are three unbegotten principles of the universe, two male (and) one female. Of the male (principles), however, a certain one, is denominated good, and it alone is called after this manner, and possesses a power of prescience concerning the universe.
But when they say, He begot me prior to all the Ages, Proverbs 8:22-24 such statements, he says, are alleged to hold good concerning the seventh power.
If, indeed, he is forgetful of himself, and ignorant of what becomes him, all his efforts are directed to serve the uses of the body, and in all his movements he is occupied with his own pleasures and bodily lusts;
1. The order of our arrangement now requires us, after the discussion of the preceding subjects, to institute a general inquiry regarding the soul; and, beginning with points of inferior importance, to ascend to those that are of greater.
Since, in our investigation of matters of such importance, not satisfied with the common opinions, and with the clear evidence of visible things, we take in addition, for the proof of our statements, testimonies from what are believed by us to be divine writings, viz., from that which is called the Old Testament, and…
On the Freedom of the Will, With an Explanation and Interpretation of Those Statements of Scripture Which Appear to Nullify It. 1. Since in the preaching of the Church there is included the doctrine respecting a just judgment of God, which, when believed to be true, incites those who hear it to live virtuously, and to…
Now I beg of the philosophers of this present time, both those whom I have known personally myself, and those of whom I bare heard by report from others, and I beg also of all other men, that they take in good part the statements I have just made.
But as Celsus makes a jest also of the serpent, as counteracting the injunctions given by God to the man, taking the narrative to be an old wife's fable, and has purposely neither mentioned the paradise of God, nor stated that God is said to have planted it in Eden towards the east, and that there afterwards sprang up…
1. I had frequently, Demetrianus, treated with contempt your railing and noisy clamour with sacrilegious mouth and impious words against the one and true God, thinking it more modest and better, silently to scorn the ignorance of a mistaken man, than by speaking to provoke the fury of a senseless one.
1. Although in very many of you, dearly beloved brethren, there is a steadfast mind and a firm faith, and a devoted spirit that is not disturbed at the frequency of this present mortality, but, like a strong and stable rock, rather shatters the turbulent onsets of the world and the raging waves of time, while it is not…
1. Many and great, beloved brethren, are the divine benefits wherewith the large and abundant mercy of God the Father and Christ both has laboured and is always labouring for our salvation: that the Father sent the Son to preserve us and give us life, in order that He might restore us;
I. From the Discourse on the Resurrection. I.
1. The Word which is ungrudgingly sent down from heaven, is fitted for the irrigation of our hearts, if we have been prepared for His power, not by speaking only, but by listening. For as the rain without the ground does not produce fruit, so neither does the Word fructify without hearing, nor hearing without the Word.
When, therefore, He had first formed the male after His own likeness, then He also fashioned woman after the image of the man himself, that the two by their union might be able to perpetuate their race, and to fill the whole earth with a multitude.
Therefore, when the times which God has appointed for death shall be completed, death itself shall be ended. And because temporal death follows temporal life, it follows that souls rise again to everlasting life, because temporal death has received an end.
Now let us refute the arguments of those who maintain the opposite opinions, which Lucretius has related in his third book. Since, he says, the soul is born together with the body, it must necessarily die with the body. But the two cases are not similar.
Let us now assign the reason why He made man himself. For if the philosophers had known this, they would either have maintained those things which they had found to be true, or would not have fallen into the greatest errors. For this is the chief thing; this is the point on which everything turns.