Chapter XIX.—The Sophistical Sense Put by Heretics on the Phrase “Resurrection of the Dead,” As If It Meant the Moral Change of a New Life.

Now this consideration of the phrase in question, and its signification—besides maintaining, of course, the true meaning of the important words—must needs contribute to this further result, that whatever obscurity our adversaries throw over the subject under the pretence of figurative and allegorical language, the truth will stand out in clearer light, and out of uncertainties certain and definite rules will be prescribed. For some, when they have alighted on a very usual form of prophetic statement, generally expressed in figure and allegory, though not always, distort into some imaginary sense even the most clearly described doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, alleging that even death itself must be understood in a spiritual sense. They say that which is commonly supposed to be death is not really so,—namely, the separation of body and soul: it is rather the ignorance of God, by reason of which man is dead to God, and is not less buried in error than he would be in the grave. Wherefore that also must be held to be the resurrection, when a man is reanimated by access to the truth, and having dispersed the death of ignorance, and being endowed with new life by God, has burst forth from the sepulchre of the old man, even as the Lord likened the scribes and Pharisees to “whited sepulchres.”110    Matt. xxiii. 27. Whence it follows that they who have by faith attained to the resurrection, are with the Lord after they have once put Him on in their baptism. By such subtlety, then, even in conversation have they often been in the habit of misleading our brethren, as if they held a resurrection of the dead as well as we. Woe, say they, to him who has not risen in the present body; for they fear that they might alarm their hearers if they at once denied the resurrection. Secretly, however, in their minds they think this: Woe betide the simpleton who during his present life fails to discover the mysteries of heresy; since this, in their view, is the resurrection.  There are however, a great many also, who, claiming to hold a resurrection after the soul’s departure, maintain that going out of the sepulchre means escaping out of the world, since in their view the world is the habitation of the dead—that is, of those who know not God; or they will go so far as to say that it actually means escaping out of the body itself, since they imagine that the body detains the soul, when it is shut up in the death of a worldly life, as in a grave.

CAPUT XIX.

Et haec itaque dispectio tituli, et praeconii ipsius, fidem utique defendens vocabulorum, illuc proficere debebit, ut si quid pars diversa turbat obtentu figurarum et aenigmatum, manifestiora quaeque praevaleant, et de incertis certiora praescribant. 0820B Nacti enim quidam solemnissimam eloquii prophetici formam, allegorici et figurati plerumque, non tamen semper, resurrectionem quoque mortuorum manifeste annuntiatam, in imaginariam significationem distorquent; asseverantes ipsam etiam mortem spiritaliter intelligendam. Non enim hanc esse in vero, quae sit in medio, dissidium carnis atque animae: sed ignorantiam Dei, per quam homo mortuus Deo, non minus in errore jacuerit quam in sepulcro. Itaque et resurrectionem eam vindicandam, qua quis adita veritate redanimatus et revivificatus Deo, ignorantiae morte discussa, velut de sepulcro veteris hominis eruperit: quia et Dominus Scribas et Pharisaeos sepulcris dealbatis adaequaverit. Exinde ergo, resurrectionem fide consecutos, cum Domino esse, cum 0820C eum in baptismate induerint. Hoc denique ingenio etiam in colloquiis saepe nostros decipere consuerunt, quasi et ipsi resurrectionem carnis admittant. Vae, inquiunt, qui non in hac carne resurrexerit: ne 0821A statim illos percutiant, si resurrectionem statim abnuerint. Tacite autem, secundum conscientiam suam, hoc sentiunt: Vae qui non, dum in carne est, cognoverit arcana haeretica: hoc est enim apud illos resurrectio. Sed et plerique ab excessu animae resurrectionem vindicantes, de sepulcro exire, de saeculo evadere interpretantur: quia et saeculum mortuorum sit habitaculum, id est, ignorantium Deum. Vel etiam de ipso corpore, quia et corpus vice sepulcri conclusam animam, in saecularis vitae morte detineat .