1. Therefore let those who support the contrary - that is, those who  speak against their salvation - tell us:

Regarding the dead daughter of the synagogue head, (1)  the widow’s dead son, who was being carried out near the city gate, (2) and Lazarus, who had been in the tomb for four days(3): with what bodies were they resurrected? Definitely the ones they had died with, because, if it was not with their own bodies, then obviously those deceased ones were not resurrected.

Thus, as the Gospel says, “The Lord took the hand of the dead man, and said to him: ‘young man, I am telling you, get up’. And the dead man sat up, and He ordered that something be given him to eat; and He delivered him to his mother.(4)”

And to Lazarus He “called out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Lazarus, come outside!’, and the dead man came out, with his feet and hands bound with bandages." (5) This symbolizes man who was bound by sins, and that is why the Lord then said, “Unbind him, and let him go."(6)  

So, those who have been cured had been cured in the members that were previously afflicted, and the dead were thus resurrected, with the same bodies, because their limbs and their bodies had received the cure and the life that the Lord gave. With temporal things He would prefigure the eternal things, and thus showed that it is He who can give His creation both the cure and the life, so that we may believe.

Also, in his word regarding resurrection, it will be likewise during the End when the Lord will cry out “in the last trumpet call" (7) that the dead shall be resurrected, as He Himself says: “The hour shall come, in which all the dead who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of man, upon which, those who have done good deeds shall proceed to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil deeds shall proceed to the resurrection of judgment."(8)

2. They are truly foolish and miserable, who do not want to notice such clear and obvious things, but instead avoid the light of truth, and – like the tragic Œdipus - blind themselves.

Heretics resemble those who were not practised in wrestling in the pit, so, when they quarrel with others, they firmly grasp a part of their [opponent’s] body; but by grasping it they fall - yet even when falling, they imagine that they are victorious, because by being disputatious, they keep holding on to the part that they grabbed at the beginning; however, besides falling, they also become laughing stocks.

Thus, with regard to Paul’s verse, that: “Flesh and blood are not able to inherit the kingdom of God;"(9) heretics remove two words without previously examining the meaning of the Apostle’s words, nor the power of his words; thus, by re-constituting the abstract meanings by themselves, they die with them, and, as much as they can, they overturn God’s entire Oikonomia (Providence). (10)

3. They actually assert that this was said of the flesh, and not of the works of the flesh, as we mentioned. They thus present the Apostle as contradicting himself. For immediately after, in the same Epistle, he says in reference to the body: “For this corruptible thing must don incorruptibility, and this mortal thing must don immortality. And when this mortal thing shall have donned immortality, then shall be brought to pass the written word: death is swallowed up unto victory. O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?”(11)  Now these words shall be rightly said, when this mortal and corruptible body -which is engulfed and dominated by death- shall receive life and shall don incorruptibility and immortality.  For then, indeed, shall death be truly vanquished, when that body which it possessed will leave its dominion.

And he also says to the Philippians: “...for our polity exists in heaven, on account of which we accept the Lord Jesus as Saviour – Who will transform the body of our humiliation, making it conformable to the body of His glory, enabling it according to the energy of His power.”(12) What, then, is this “body of humiliation” which the Lord will transform, making it conformable to “the body of His glory?” It is obviously our body, our flesh, which is indeed humiliated when it descends into the earth.

The transformation however of the body entails that albeit being mortal and corruptible, it becomes immortal and incorruptible - not on account of its own hypostasis, but on account of the power of the Lord, for He is the one who can give immortality to the mortal and incorruptibility to the corruptible. That is why he says: “so that the mortal be swallowed up by life. And the one who shaped us into this very thing is God; Who gives us the betrothal of the Spirit.”(13)

It is clearly evident that he says these things about the body, given that neither the soul nor the spirit can die.   In other words, it is the mortal thing that disappears from life, because the body does not remain dead but becomes alive and incorruptible and praises God who did this to us.  So, it is in order that we become perfected that he rightly says to the Corinthians, “Glorify God in your body.”(14) God is the cause of incorruptibility.

4. However, it is because he says these things - not about a certain other body but for that very same body, the flesh - that he very clearly and without any doubt or hesitation says to the Corinthians: “We always carry around the dying of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus Christ will be revealed in our body. We the living forever deliver ourselves to death through Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will also be revealed in our perishable flesh.”(15) And because the spirit joins itself to the body, he says in that same Epistle: “...for you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, inscribed not by ink, but by the Spirit of the living God - not in stone tablets but in fleshy tablets of the heart.”(16)  Therefore, if fleshy hearts have now become receptive of the Spirit, what is so wondrous if - during the resurrection - they receive the life that the Spirit gives? It is about this resurrection that the apostle speaks in his Epistle to the Philippians: “By being conformed to His death, I shall somehow end up in the resurrection of the dead.”(17) Therefore In which other mortal flesh can we understand that life is revealed, if not in our own hypostasis - which is even put to death for its confession of God?  Just as he again says: “If I as a human had fought against beasts in Ephesus, what is my benefit, if the dead are not raised?”(18)  “For if the dead are not raised, then neither was Christ risen. And if Christ was not risen, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is empty. We also find ourselves as false witnesses of God for having testified that He raised up Christ, whom He had not raised. For if the dead do not rise, then neither was Christ risen. And if Christ was not risen, your faith is futile, as you will again be in your sins. Therefore also those who had slept in Christ will be lost. If we have hope in Christ only in this life, then we are more pitiful than all men. But now Christ has risen from the dead as the first-fruits of those who have slept; for, just as death was through man,  through a Man will be the resurrection of the dead.”(19)

5. For all of the above, therefore - as we said earlier –they will either say that the Apostle contradicts himself regarding the statement that “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;”(20) or, again, they will necessarily make perverse and falsified interpretations of his words, in order to overturn and alter the meaning of those words.

Because they will have nothing to say if they attempt to interpret differently what he writes: “For this corruptible thing must don incorruptibility, and this mortal thing must don immortality..”(21) and “so that the life of Jesus will also be revealed in our perishable flesh” (22) – as well as all the other words by which the Apostle obviously and clearly proclaims the resurrection and incorruptibility of the flesh - so that they are compelled to misinterpret all of them, simply because they do not want to correctly understand one thing.

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FOOTNOTES

(1)  Matth.9:18 - Μark 5:22 - Luke 8:41. The Evangelists speak of “αρχισυνάγωγος” in the original Greek text – meaning chief or head of a synagogue, and not a “high priest” (αρχιερέας).

(2) Luke 7:12.

(3) John 11:39.

(4) Matth. 9:25, Luke 7:14-15, 8:55.

(5) John 12:17;  11:43-44.

(6) John 11:44.

(7) 1 Cor. 15:52.

(8) John 5:28-29.

(9) 1 Cor. 15:50.

(10) John of Damascus, on the Sacred Parallels. Issued by Halloixius (as per the subsequent one).

(11) 1 Cor. 15:53-55.

(12) Phil. 3:20-21.

(13) 2 Cor. 5:4-5.

(14) 1 Cor. 6:20.

(15) 2 Cor. 4:10-11.

(16) 2 Cor. 3:3.

(17) Phil. 3:10-11.

(18) 1 Cor. 15:32.

(19) 1 Cor. 15:13-21.

(20) 1 Cor. 15:50.

(21) 1 Cor. 15:53.

(22) 2 Cor. 4:11.

English rendition by A.N.