Chapter XII.—The Eternal Home in Heaven. Beautiful Exposition by Tertullian of the Apostle’s Consolatory Teaching Against the Fear of Death, So Apt to Arise Under Anti-Christian Oppression. The Judgment-Seat of Christ—The Idea, Anti-Marcionite. Paradise.  Judicial Characteristics of Christ Which are Inconsistent with the Heretical Views About Him; The Apostle’s Sharpness, or Severity, Shows Him to Be a Fit Preacher of the Creator’s Christ.

As to the house of this our earthly dwelling-place, when he says that “we have an eternal home in heaven, not made with hands,”3417    2 Cor. v. 1. he by no means would imply that, because it was built by the Creator’s hand, it must perish in a perpetual dissolution after death.3418    As Marcion would have men believe. He treats of this subject in order to offer consolation against the fear of death and the dread of this very dissolution, as is even more manifest from what follows, when he adds, that “in this tabernacle of our earthly body we do groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with the vesture which is from heaven,3419    2 Cor. v. 2, 3. if so be, that having been unclothed,3420    Despoliati. we shall not be found naked;” in other words, shall regain that of which we have been divested, even our body. And again he says: “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, not as if we were oppressed3421    Gravemur. with an unwillingness to be unclothed, but (we wish) to be clothed upon.”3422    2 Cor. v. 4. He here says expressly, what he touched but lightly3423    Strinxit. in his first epistle, where he wrote:)  “The dead shall be raised incorruptible (meaning those who had undergone mortality), “and we shall be changed” (whom God shall find to be yet in the flesh).3424    1 Cor. xv. 52. 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.3425    Superinduti magis quod de cœlo quam exuti corpus. So that whilst these shall put on over their (changed) body this, heavenly raiment, the dead also shall for their part3426    Utique et mortui. recover their body, over which they too have a supervesture to put on, even the incorruption of heaven;3427    De cœlo. because of these it was that he said:  “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”3428    1 Cor. xv. 53. The one put on this (heavenly) apparel,3429    Induunt. when they recover their bodies; the others put it on as a supervesture,3430    Superinduunt. when they indeed hardly lose them (in the suddenness of their change). It was accordingly not without good reason that he described them as “not wishing indeed to be unclothed,” but (rather as wanting) “to be clothed upon;”3431    2 Cor. v. 4. in other words, as wishing not to undergo death, but to be surprised into life,3432    Vita præveniri. “that this moral (body) might be swallowed up of life,”3433    2 Cor. v. 4; and see his treatise, De Resurrect. Carnis, cap. xlii. by being rescued from death in the supervesture of its changed state. This is why he shows us how much better it is for us not to be sorry, if we should be surprised by death, and tells us that we even hold of God “the earnest of His Spirit”3434    2 Cor. v. 5. (pledged as it were thereby to have “the clothing upon,” which is the object of our hope), and that “so long as we are in the flesh, we are absent from the Lord;”3435    2 Cor. v. 6. moreover, that we ought on this account to prefer3436    Boni ducere. “rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord,”3437    2 Cor. v. 8. and so to be ready to meet even death with joy.  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.”3438    2 Cor. v. 10. Since, however, there is then to be a retribution according to men’s merits, how will any be able to reckon with3439    Deputari cum. 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,3440    2 Cor. v. 10. 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,3441    Per id, per quod, i.e., corpus. wherein the merit was itself achieved.  “If therefore any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;”3442    2 Cor. v. 17. and so is accomplished the prophecy of Isaiah.3443    Isa. xliii. 19. When also he (in a later passage) enjoins us “to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and blood”3444    His reading of 2 Cor. vii. 1. (since this substance enters not the kingdom of God3445    1 Cor. xv. 50.); when, again, he “espouses the church as a chaste virgin to Christ,”3446    2 Cor. xi. 2. a spouse to a spouse in very deed,3447    Utique ut sponsam sponso. an image cannot be combined and compared with what is opposed to the real nature of the thing (with which it is compared). So when he designates “false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves” into likenesses of himself,3448    2 Cor. xi. 13. of course by their hypocrisy, he charges them with the guilt of disorderly conversation, rather than of false doctrine.3449    Prædicationis adulteratæ. The contrariety, therefore, was one of conduct, not of gods.3450    A reference to Marcion’s other god of the New Testament, of which he tortured the epistles (and this passage among them) to produce the evidence. If “Satan himself, too, is transformed into an angel of light,”3451    2 Cor. xi. 14. such an assertion must not be used to the prejudice of the Creator. The Creator is not an angel, but God. Into a god of light, and not an angel of light, must Satan then have been said to be transformed, if he did not mean to call him “the angel,” which both we and Marcion know him to be. On Paradise is the title of a treatise of ours, in which is discussed all that the subject admits of.3452    Patitur. The work here referred to is not extant; it is, however, referred to in the De Anima, c. lv. I shall here simply wonder, in connection with this matter, whether a god who has no dispensation of any kind on earth could possibly have a paradise to call his own—without perchance availing himself of the paradise of the Creator, to use it as he does His world—much in the character of a mendicant.3453    Precario; “that which one must beg for.” See, however, above, book iv. chap. xxii. p. 384, note 8, for a different turn to this word. And yet of the removal of a man from earth to heaven we have an instance afforded us by the Creator in Elijah.3454    2 Kings ii. 11. But what will excite my surprise still more is the case (next supposed by Marcion), that a God so good and gracious, and so averse to blows and cruelty, should have suborned the angel Satan—not his own either, but the Creator’s—“to buffet” the apostle,3455    2 Cor. xii. 7, 8. and then to have refused his request, when thrice entreated to liberate him! It would seem, therefore, that Marcion’s god imitates the Creator’s conduct, who is an enemy to the proud, even “putting down the mighty from their seats.”3456    1 Sam. ii. 7, 8; Ps. cxlvii. 6; Luke i. 52. Is he then the same God as He who gave Satan power over the person of Job that his “strength might be made perfect in weakness?”3457    Job i. 12 and 2 Cor. xii. 9. How is it that the censurer of the Galatians3458    Gal. i. 6–9. still retains the very formula of the law:  “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established?”3459    2 Cor. xiii. 1. How again is it that he threatens sinners “that he will not spare” them3460    2 Cor. xiii. 2.—he, the preacher of a most gentle god? Yea, he even declares that “the Lord hath given to him the power of using sharpness in their presence!”3461    2 Cor. xiii. 10. Deny now, O heretic, (at your cost,) that your god is an object to be feared, when his apostle was for making himself so formidable!

CAPUT XII.

Terreni domicilii nostri (II Cor. V, VI, VII, XI, XII et XIII) : Non sic ait habere nos domum aeternam, non manu factam in coelis , quia quae manu facta sit Creatoris, intereat, in totum dissoluta post mortem. Haec enim ad mortis metum, et ad ipsius dissolutionis contristationem consolandam retractans etiam per sequentia manifestius, cum subjicit: Ingemere 0501C nos de isto tabernaculo corporis terreni, quod de coelo est superindui cupientes; siquidem et despoliati non inveniemur nudi; id est, recipiemus quod despoliati sumus, id est corpus. Et rursus: Etenim qui sumus in isto tabernaculo corporis, ingemimus quod gravemur, nolentes exui, sed superindui. Hic enim expressit, quod in prima Epistola strinxit, Et mortui resurgent incorrupti, qui jam obierunt; et nos mutabimur, qui in carne fuerimus deprehensi a Deo. Et illi enim resurgent incorrupti, recepto scilicet corpore, et quidem integro, ut et hoc sint incorrupti: et hi propter temporis ultimum jam momentum, et propter merita vexationum Antichristi, compendium mortis; sed mutati consequentur , superinduti magis quod de coelo est, quam exuti corpus. Ita si 0501D hi super corpus induent coeleste illud, utique et mortui recipient corpus, super quod et ipsi induant incorruptelam de coelo: quia et de illis ait: Necesse est corruptivum istud induere incorruptelam, et mortale 0502A istud immortalitatem. Illi induunt, cum receperint corpus; isti superinduunt, quia non amiserint corpus. Et ideo non temere dixit: Nolentes exui corpore, sed superindui; id est, nolentes mortem experiri, sed vita praeveniri; uti devoretur mortale hoc a vita, dum eripietur morti per superindumentum demutationis. Ideo quia ostendit hoc melius esse, ne contristemur mortis si forte praeventu, et arrhabonem nos spiritus dicit a Deo habere, quasi pignoratos in eamdem spem superindumenti, et abesse a Domino, quamdiu in carne sumus, ac propterea debere boni ducere abesse potius a corpore, et esse cum Domino, ut et mortem libenter excipiamus. Atque adeo, omnes ait nos oportere manifestari ante tribunal Christi, ut recipiat unusquisque quae per corpus admisit, 0502B sive bonum, sive malum. Si enim tunc retributio meritorum, quomodo jam aliqui cum Deo poterunt deputari? Et tribunal autem nominando, et dispunctionem boni ac mali operis, utriusque sententiae judicem ostendit, et corporum omnium repraesentationem confirmavit. Non enim poterit, quod corpore admissum est, non corpore vindicari . Iniquus enim Deus, si non per id punitur quis aut juvatur, per quod operatus est. Si qua ergo conditio nova in Christo, caetera transierunt, ecce nova facta sunt omnia, impleta est Esaiae prophetia (Is. XLIII, 19). Si etiam jubet ut mundemus nos ab inquinamento carnis et sanguinis, non substantium capere regnum Dei, si et virginem sanctam destinat Ecclesiam assignare Christo, utique ut sponsam sponso; non potest imago 0502C conjungi inimico veritatis rei ipsius. Si et pseudapostolos dicit operarios dolosos, transfiguratores sui, per hypocrisin scilicet, conversationis, non praedicationis adulteratae reos taxat; adeo de disciplina, non de divinitate dissidebatur. Si transfiguratur Satanas in angelum lucis, non potest hoc dirigi in Creatorem. Deus enim, non angelus, Creator; in Deum lucis, non in angelum transfigurare se dictus esset, si non eum Satanam significaret, quem et nos et Marcion angelum novimus. De paradiso suus stylus est ad omnem quam patitur quaestionem. Hic illud forte mirabor, si proprium potuit habere paradisum Deus, nullius terrenae dispositionis, nisi si etiam paradiso Creatoris precario usus est, sicut et mundo. Et tamen hominem tollere ad coelum Creatoris, exemplum est 0502D in Helia (IV Reg. II). Magis vero mirabor Dominum optimum, percutiendi et saeviendi alienum, nec proprium saltem, sed Creatoris angelum Satanae colaphizando Apostolo suo applicuisse, et ter ab eo obsecratum 0503A non concessisse. Emendat igitur et deus Marcionis secundum Creatorem, elatos aemulantem, ut deponentem scilicet de solio dynastas. Aut numquid ipse est qui et in corpus Job dedit Satanae potestatem, ut virtus in infirmitate comprobaretur? Quid et formam Legis adhuc tenet Galatarum castigator, in tribus testibus praefiniens staturum omne verbum? Quid et non parsurum se peccatoribus comminatur, lenissimi Dei praedicator? Imo et ipsam durius agendi in praesentia potestatem a Domino datam sibi adfirmat. Nega nunc, haeretice, timeri Deum tuum, cujus Apostolus timebatur.