Commenting
on how Tertullian understood Paul’s words in 1 Cor 15:50 (" . . . flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God . . . ") with belief in the
physical nature of the resurrection, Anglican Dennis Okholm wrote:
At this point one might ask how these early
Christian thinkers can affirm a bodily resurrection
when the Apostle Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15:50 that “flesh and blood” do
not inherit eternal life. There is consensus among many of these that Paul was
not speaking of bodily flesh but of the works
of the flesh. Tertullian puts it well: “For not that is condemned in which
evil is done, but only the evil which is done in it. To administer poison is a
crime, but the cup in which it is given is not guilty. So the body is the
vessel of the works of the flesh, whilst the soul which is within it mixes the
poison of a wicked act” (Against Marcion,
5.10). As he says elsewhere, “Flesh and blood are excluded from the kingdom of
God in respect of their sin, not of their substance” (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 46). (Dennis Okholm, “The Dead
Are Raised—But How and Why? Conversations with the Church’s Fathers and Mothers
of the First Five Centuries” in Alonzo L. Gaskill and Robert L. Millet, eds. Life Beyond the Grave: Christian Interfaith
Perspectives [Salt Lake City/Provo: Deseret Book/BYU Religious Studies
Center, 2019], ,27-51, here, p. 43)
