Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 5.31

Some who are thought to have believed rightly nevertheless overstep the order of the just's promotion and ignore the modes of meditation that lead to incorruptibility, because they harbor heretical notions. Heretics despise God's creation and refuse to accept the salvation of their own flesh; they also scorn God's promise and presume to overstep God in their thinking. As soon as they die, they claim they will overstep the heavens and the Demiurge and go to the Mother, or to the Father whom they have fabricated. Since they reject the resurrection entirely and, as far as they can, remove it from the picture, why should it surprise us that they do not know the order of the resurrection or understand it? For if things were as they say, the Lord himself, in whom they claim to believe, would not have risen on the third day; instead, expiring on the cross, he would have gone up at once, leaving his body to the earth.

But he spent three days among the dead, just as the prophet says of him: "The Lord is mindful of his holy ones, who slept before on the earth of burial, and he descended to them, to draw them out and save them" (cf. Ps 16:10). The Lord himself said: "As Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth" (Jonah 1:17). The Apostle also says: "He ascended -- what does this mean except that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth?" (Ephesians 4:9). And David, prophesying about him, said: "You have rescued my soul from the lowest hell" (Ps 16:10). Rising on the third day, he appeared to Mary, who saw him first; she worshiped him, but he said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father" (John 20:17).

If the Lord kept the law of the dead so that he might become the firstborn from the dead, staying until the third day among the dead of the earth, then rising bodily to show the disciples the nail marks, and only then ascending to the Father, how can those not be confounded who claim the lower world is this present world, while their inner self, leaving the body here, ascends to a supercelestial place? When the Lord went into the midst of death's shadow, where the souls of the dead were, he afterward rose bodily, and after the resurrection he was taken up. It is therefore clear that the souls of his disciples, for whose sake the Lord did all these things, will go to an invisible place appointed for them by God, and there they will remain until the resurrection, awaiting it. Then, receiving bodies and rising perfectly -- that is, bodily, just as the Lord rose -- they will come into God's sight. No disciple is above the master; the fully trained will be like the master. Since our Master did not fly away at once but waited for the resurrection time appointed by the Father, revealed through Jonah, and rose after three days before being taken up, we too must wait for the resurrection time appointed by God, announced by the prophets, and so, rising, be taken up -- as many as the Lord deems worthy.