Apologetics -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Celsus (Platonic philosopher), active 180; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
corruption, it will arise in incorruption: it is sown in weakness, it
will arise in power: it is sown in dishonour, it will arise in
glory.”[763] As, therefore, there is a kind of advance in man, so that
from being first an animal being, and not understanding what belongs to
the Spirit of God, he reaches by means of instruction the stage of being
made a spiritual being, and of judging all things, while he himself is
judged by no one; so also, with respect to the state of the body, we are
to hold that this very body which now, on account of its service to the
soul, is styled an animal body, will, by means of a certain progress,
when the soul, united to God, shall have been made one spirit with Him
(the body even then ministering, as it were, to the spirit), attain to a
spiritual condition and quality, especially since, as we have often
pointed out, bodily nature was so formed by the Creator, as to pass
easily into whatever condition He should wish, or the nature of the case
demand.
7. The whole of this reasoning, then, amounts to this: that God created
two general natures,—a visible, _i.e._ a corporeal nature; and an
invisible nature, which is incorporeal. Now these two natures admit of
two different permutations. That invisible and rational nature changes
in mind and purpose, because it is endowed with freedom of will, and is
on this account found sometimes to be engaged in the practice of good,
and sometimes in that of the opposite. But this corporeal nature admits
of a change in substance; whence also God, the arranger of all things,
has the service of this matter at His command in the moulding, or
fabrication, or re-touching of whatever He wishes, so that corporeal
nature may be transmuted, and transformed into any forms or species
whatever, according as the deserts of things may demand; which the
prophet evidently has in view when he says, “It is God who makes and
transforms all things.”[764]
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