{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030619.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030619.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030619.htm","text":"Chapter XXXVII.\u2014Christ\u2019s Assertion About the Unprofitableness of the Flesh Explained Consistently with Our Doctrine.\nHe says, it is true, that \u201cthe flesh profiteth nothing;\u201d 7525 but then, as in the former case, the meaning must be regulated by the subject which is spoken of. Now, because they thought His discourse was harsh and intolerable, supposing that He had really and literally enjoined on them to eat his flesh, He, with the view of ordering the state of salvation as a spiritual thing, set out with the principle, \u201cIt is the spirit that quickeneth;\u201d and then added, \u201cThe flesh profiteth nothing,\u201d\u2014meaning, of course, to the giving of life. He also goes on to explain what He would have us to understand by spirit: \u201cThe words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.\u201d In a like sense He had previously said: \u201cHe that heareth my words, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but shall pass from death unto life.\u201d 7526 Constituting, therefore, His word as the life-giving principle, because that word is spirit and life, He likewise called His flesh by the same appellation; because, too, the Word had become flesh, 7527 we ought therefore to desire Him in order that we may have life, and to devour Him with the ear, and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith. Now, just before (the passage in hand), He had declared His flesh to be \u201cthe bread which cometh down from heaven,\u201d 7528 impressing on (His hearers) constantly under the figure of necessary food the memory of their forefathers, who had preferred the bread and flesh of Egypt to their divine calling. 7529 Then, turning His subject to their reflections, because He perceived that they were going to be scattered from Him, He says: \u201cThe flesh profiteth nothing.\u201d Now what is there to destroy the resurrection of the flesh? As if there might not reasonably enough be something which, although it \u201cprofiteth nothing\u201d itself, might yet be capable of being profited by something else. The spirit \u201cprofiteth,\u201d for it imparts life. The flesh profiteth nothing, for it is subject to death. Therefore He has rather put the two propositions in a way which favours our belief: for by showing what \u201cprofits,\u201d and what \u201cdoes not profit,\u201d He has likewise thrown light on the object which receives as well as the subject which gives the \u201cprofit.\u201d Thus, in the present instance, we have the Spirit giving life to the flesh which has been subdued by death; for \u201cthe hour,\u201d says He, \u201cis coming, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.\u201d 7530 Now, what is \u201cthe dead\u201d but the flesh? and what is \u201cthe voice of God\u201d but the Word? and what is the Word but the Spirit, 7531 who shall justly raise the flesh which He had once Himself become, and that too from death, which He Himself suffered, and from the grave, which He Himself once entered? Then again, when He says, \u201cMarvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth; they that have done good, to the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation,\u201d 7532 \u2014none will after such words be able to interpret the dead \u201cthat are in the graves\u201d as any other than the bodies of the flesh, because the graves themselves are nothing but the resting-place of corpses: for it is incontestable that even those who partake of \u201cthe old man,\u201d that is to say, sinful men\u2014in other words, those who are dead through their ignorance of God (whom our heretics, forsooth, foolishly insist on understanding by the word \u201cgraves\u201d 7533 )\u2014are plainly here spoken of as having to come from their graves for judgment. But how are graves to come forth from graves?\nThe divine nature of the Son. See our Anti-Marcion, pp. 129, 247, note 7, Edin.\n572:7532 572:7533","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part II: Christ...","type":"page"}