IGNORANCE is constantly, so to speak, accompanied
by rashness, and leads men on to attach great importance to their wretched
fancies; and thus, those who are the victims of this malady entertain a great
idea of themselves, and imagine themselves possessed of such knowledge as no
man can gainsay. For they forget, as it seems, Solomon, who says, “Be not wise
in your own eyes,” that is, according to your own single judgment: and again,
that “wisdom not put to the proof goes astray.” For we do not necessarily
possess true opinions upon every individual doctrine that we hold, but often perhaps
abandoning the right path, we err, and fall into that which is not fitting. But
I think it right, that exercising an impartial and unprejudiced judgment, and
not rendered rash by passion, we should love the truth, and eagerly pursue it.
But the foolish Sadducees had no great regard for
such considerations. They were a sect of the Jews, and what was the nature of
the opinion which they entertained concerning the resurrection of the dead,
Luke has explained to us in the Acts of the Apostles, thus writing, “For the
Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the
Pharisees confess all.” They draw near therefore to Christ our common Savior,
Whois the Life and Resurrection, and endeavor to disprove the resurrection: and
being men contemptuous and unbelieving, they invent a story replete with
ignorance, and by a string of frigid suppositions wickedly endeavor violently
to shake into nothingness the hope of the whole world. For we affirm, that the
hope of the whole world is the resurrection from the dead, of whom Christ was
the first-born and first-fruits: and therefore the wise Paul also, making our
resurrection to depend upon His, says, “If the dead rise not, neither did
Christ rise:” and again adds thereto, as if urging the converse thought to its
conclusion, “But if Christ rose from the dead, how say some among you that
there is no resurrection from the dead?” And those who said this were the
Sadducees, of whom we are now speaking.
But let us examine, if you will, this senseless
fiction of their framing. They say then that there were seven brethren, who
successively became the husbands of one wife, according to the requirements of
the law of Moses; and she died without children: at the resurrection therefore
whose wife will she be? The enquiry however was but a senseless one, nor did
the question at all accord with the inspired Scriptures: and the answer of our Savior
amply suffices to prove the folly of their narrative, and make us reject both
their fiction, and the idea upon which it was founded.
Still I think it right to convict them plainly of
foolishly resisting the inspired Scriptures, and to show that they completely
mistook the sense of what the sacred writings teach. For come and let us see
what the company of the holy prophets has spoken to us upon this point, and
what are the declarations which the Lord of hosts has made by their means. He
said therefore of those that sleep, “I will deliver them from the hand of the
grave; I will redeem them from death: Where is your condemnation, O death? O
grave, where is your sting?” Now what is meant by the condemnation of death,
and by its sting also, the blessed Paul has taught us, saying, “But the sting
of death is sin: and the strength of sin is the law.” For he compares death to
a scorpion, the sting of which is sin: for by its poison it slays the soul. And
the law, he says, was the strength of sin: for so he himself again elsewhere
protests, saying, “I had not known sin but by the law:” “for where there is no
law, there is no transgression of the law.” For this reason Christ has removed
those who believe in Him from the jurisdiction of the law that condemns: and
has also abolished the sting of death, even sin: and sin being taken away,
death, as a necessary consequence, departed with it; for it was from it, and
because of it, that death came into the world.
As God therefore gives the promise, “I will
deliver them from the hand of the grave, and from death I will redeem them;” so
the blessed prophets also accord with the decrees from on high: for they speak
to us, “not of their own heart, nor of the will of man, but from the mouth of
God,” as it is written; inasmuch as it is the Holy Spirit which speaking within
them declares upon every matter, what is the sentence of God, and His almighty
and unalterable will. The prophet Isaiah therefore has said to us, “Your dead
men shall arise: and those in the graves shall be raised; and they who are in
the earth shall rejoice: for the dew from You is healing to them.” And by the
dew I imagine he means the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, and that
influence which abolishes death, as being that of God and of life.
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