Irenaeus and Tertullian are well known for their vigorous defense of
the eschatological resurrection of the flesh, but their respective
appropriations of Paul towards this end are strikingly different. This
paper seeks to elucidate that difference by focusing on the relationship
between the resurrections of the righteous and the wicked. In contrast
to John and Revelation, the Pauline epistles never explicitly affirm the
resurrection of the wicked; instead, they integrate resurrection into
the economy of salvation through union with the resurrected Christ in
the Spirit. (Interestingly, Josephus claims that Pharisees affirmed the
resurrection of the righteous only.) Irenaeus, drawing heavily on Paul,
articulates a highly-developed account of the bodily resurrection of
Christians as an effect of their reception of the life-giving Spirit of
God. Consequently, many of his arguments for the resurrection of the
flesh, such as its reception of the Word in the Eucharist, apply only to
Christians. But when he insists that the wicked, too, will be
resurrected, he gives no account of how this can happen to those who
have not received the Spirit. The struggles of John Behr and Anthony
Briggman to explain how for Irenaeus non-Christians can be alive at all
become only more acute in explaining the resurrection. Tertullian solves
this problem by disconnecting the resurrection of the flesh from
reception of the Spirit, correspondingly omitting the Irenaean arguments
for the resurrection that only apply to Christians. He thus easily
explains the generality of the resurrection but is forced into strained
exegesis of Paul.
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