But how do they show that the resurrection is an undesirable factor? Chapter 25.-Of the Obstinacy of Those Individuals Who Impugn the Resurrection of the Body, Though, as Was Predicted, the whole World Believes It. Far be it from us to interpret these predictions as they do who have not believed, along with the entire world, in that which it was predicted the world would imagine in. He who has predicted these items, as I’ve already mentioned, and am not ashamed to repeat, is the God earlier than whom all other divinities tremble, as Porphyry himself owns, and seeks to prove, by testimonies from the oracles of these gods, and goes so far as to call Him God the Father and King. For the world has believed this which God predicted, as it was additionally predicted that the world would consider,-a prediction not as a result of sorceries of Peter,64 because it was uttered so long before. Why then do they still exclaim that this which God has promised, which the world has believed on God’s promise as was predicted, is an impossibility?
For Plato tells us that He said, “As ye have had a starting, so that you can’t be immortal and incorruptible; yet ye shall not decay, nor shall any fate destroy you or prove stronger than my will, which extra effectually binds you to immortality than the bond of your nature retains you from it.” In the event that they who hear these words have, we do not say understanding, however ears, they can not doubt that Plato believed that God promised to the gods He had made that He would effect an impossibility. For if they maintain that they interpret them in a different way only to keep away from charging Scripture with folly, and so doing an injury to that God to whom they bear so notable a testimony, is it not a much larger harm they do Him when they are saying that His predictions should be understood in any other case than the world believed them, although He Himself praised, promised, accomplished this perception on the world’s half? Refusing to believe that He can lie, allow them to imagine that He will do what He has promised to do; and let them imagine it because the world has believed it, whose faith He predicted, whose faith He praised, whose faith He promised, whose faith He now factors to.
For He who says, “Ye can’t be immortal, however by my will ye shall be immortal,” what else does He say than this, “I shall make you what ye cannot be?” The physique, subsequently, shall be raised incorruptible, immortal, spiritual, by Him who, according to Plato, has promised to try this which is unimaginable. In what situation shall the spirit of man be, when it has no longer any vice at all; when it neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to any, nor has to make conflict in opposition to any, but is perfected, and enjoys undisturbed peace with itself? How can I inform of the rest of creation, with all its magnificence and utility, which the divine goodness has given to man to please his eye and serve his purposes, condemned though he is, and hurled into these labors and miseries? If, due to this fact, of all these members that are uncovered to our view, there may be actually not one through which beauty is sacrificed to utility, whereas there are some which serve no objective however only beauty, I think it might readily be concluded that in the creation of the human body comeliness was more regarded than necessity.