Note 77 — Chapter XVII · THE STOIC STRAIN IN CHRISTIANITY.

‘our mortal bodies cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor will what is perishable inherit what is imperishable’ 1 Cor. xv 50; ‘if we have known Christ as a man (κατὰ σάρκα), yet now we do so no longer’ 2 Cor. v 16. The Pauline doctrine of the spiritual resurrection, in spite of its place in the sacred canon, has never been recognised by popular Christianity, but it has found notable defenders in Origen in ancient times, and in Bishop Westcott recently. ‘No one of [Origen’s] opinions was more vehemently assailed than his teaching on the Resurrection. Even his early and later apologists were perplexed in their defence of him. Yet there is no point on which his insight was more conspicuous. By keeping strictly to the Apostolic language he anticipated results which we have hardly yet secured. He saw that it is the “spirit” which moulds the frame through which it is manifested; that the body is the same, not by any material continuity, but by the permanence of that which gives the law, the ratio as he calls it, of its constitution (Frag. de res. ii 1, p. 34). Our opponents say now that this idea is a late refinement of doctrine, forced upon us by the exigencies of controversy. The answer is that no exigencies of controversy brought Origen to his conclusion. It was, in his judgment, the clear teaching of St Paul’ Westcott, Religious Thought in the West, p. 244.